Address to the Plenary Meeting of the United Nations General Assembly on October 11, 1963
The representative of India has stated:
“What grieves us most deeply in this context is the recent tendency of the unprincipled behavior of making friends of erstwhile enemies and of seeking strange alliances for collusion in aggression.”
I am constrained to exercise my right of reply because there can be no doubt of the representative of India’s aspersions against my country. May I ask, was China an erstwhile enemy of Pakistan with whom Pakistan has now become friends? If so, I should like the representative of India to produce evidence of Pakistan’s enmity with China.
Since the emergence of the People’s Republic of China towards the end of 1949, Pakistan has had a correct and friendly relation with that country. We recognized the People’s Republic of China in 1950, about the same time as India did, and also the United Kingdom. We voted for the admission of the People’s Republic of China to the United Nations in 1950 and in the following years. We became a member of the Manila Treaty-better known as SEATO in 1945 but, as this was purely a defensive treaty against aggression, our relations with the People’s Republic of China continued in their normal course.
In 1956 Prime Minister Chou En-Lai visited Pakistan at the invitation of the Government of Pakistan, and his visit was returned by the Prime Minister of Pakistan as a reciprocal gesture of courtesy and goodwill. In December, 1960, two years before the outbreak of the Sino-Indian conflict last October, Pakistan proposed a demarcation of the common border between China’s province of Sinkiang and the contiguous areas the defense of which is the responsibility of Pakistan. The People’s Republic of China gave a favorable indication of its willingness to negotiate a boundary agreement. The preliminary formalities were completed in May, 1962, and the negotiations themselves commenced in Peking before China and India clashed in the NEFA and the Ladakh frontiers.
Does this record of Pakistan’s relations with China establish that the two countries were enemies who became friends only after the outbreak of the Sino-Indian conflict last year?
The Representative of India, in the same passage, has accused Pakistan, by insinuation, of “seeking strange alliances for collusion in aggression”. May I ask the representative of India to produce evidence of these “strange alliances”? Was she referring perchance to the boundary agreement completed last year or to the trade and air agreement? What evidence is there in India’s possession of this “collusion in aggression”? I have already said that we have entered into no such collusion; if we had, we would have taken advantage of the opportunity to attack India last October when India was engaged in a conflict with China. We did not do so; and yet India, instead of appreciating the peaceful conduct and good neighborly intentions of Pakistan, has accused Pakistan of “collusion in aggression”.
It is clear from the allegation of the representative of India that in its pursuit of domination and hegemony of the Indian Ocean region. India cannot contemplate with equanimity the existence of small independent states on its borders and will not permit them the right to conduct their own affairs internally and externally. Only a few years ago, when the cry of Chini-Hindi Bhai Bhai, which means “China-India, our brothers” was resounding from one corner of India to the other, Pakistan was accused of not being friendly to India’s brother, the People’s Republic of China, and of aligning itself as a member of SEATO against China.
Today, when the relationship between India and China has become unfraternal, Pakistan is accused of having changed its feelings of enmity towards China to those of friendship. This kind of self-reversal is psychologically interesting. It indicates, I fear, a paranoid state. Otherwise, why should India expect its neighboring countries to regulate their own relationships with third countries according to the twists and turns of India’s own relations with them? The fact is that India cannot bring itself to recognize that its neighbors have the right, as equal sovereign states, to make independent judgments and conduct their foreign relations with other countries in the light of their own interests and in the interests of international peace and security. Is this not a covert claim to suzerainty of India over its smaller neighbors and the manifestation of neo-colonialism in its most insidious form?
The representative of India went on to state: “It is noteworthy that such collusion extends to the point where one of the parties describes the naked aggression committed by the other as “illusory” as was done in this Assembly only a few days ago.”
Obviously, the representative of India is referring to my reply to her allegations before this Assembly on September 30. Aggression, as this Assembly is aware, is both a matter of law and a matter of fact. What is the principle of international law that was transgressed in the outbreak of fighting between India and China last October? Is the MacMahon Line a legal line? It is so claimed by the Government of India. It is denied by the People’s Republic of China.
It may also be noted that the legality of the MacMahon Line was also denied by its predecessor government the Republic of China.
Have the Colombo Powers, which have been exercising their good offices to bring about a peaceful adjustment of the situation between India and China, given their verdict on this Indian charge of aggression against China? To the best of our knowledge the judgment, the fact of who committed aggression last October has yet to be established. Surely, India’s own word cannot be the final verdict even though India believes that it can do no wrong.
The representative of India also said, with all the authority of her government that she would like to deny categorically my assertion that the central issue in Kashmir is that of self-determination. Let me remind her of the statement of the Prime Minister of India, made on November 25, 1947, in the Indian Constituent Assembly: “The issue in Kashmir in whether violence and naked force shall decide the future or the will of the people.”
Does the representative of India deny the statement? The representative of India also referred to the genesis of the Kashmir dispute and alleged that Pakistan is embarrassed by facts relating to its origin. She mentioned the acts of “plunder, arson, rape, and murder” alleged to have been committed by the tribesmen who entered Kashmir through Pakistan territory. But she passed over in complete silence the acts of plunder, arson, rape, and murder committed by the feudal tyrant, the Maharajah of Kashmir, and multiplied a thousand-fold in his campaign of genocide against his own people –the same tyrant from whom India claims to derive sovereignty over Kashmir. Let me cite the report of the London Times of October 10, 1947, that “237,000 Muslims were systematically exterminated, unless they escaped to Pakistan, by the Dogra forces, headed by the Maharajah in person. “
The representative of India gave her own version of the United Nations Commission’s resolutions on Kashmir, according to which she tried to fasten on Pakistan the obligation to affect an unconditional and unilateral withdrawal of its military forces from Kashmir. But the essence of these resolutions is that the obligations of withdrawal of forces by the two sides are reciprocal and that the withdrawals should be concurrent. Moreover, these withdrawals had to be governed by the Truce Agreement between the parties. It is India which has consistently refused to cooperate in the formulation of this agreement and the modalities of its implementation. Then it turns around and accuses Pakistan of failure to comply with the United Nations Commission’s resolutions.
The representative of India maintains that India’s sovereignty over Kashmir is complete and total and cannot be questioned. Not so long ago, we used to hear in these very halls similar reiterations of the unquestionable sovereignty of France over Algeria, and we continue to hear them from Portugal. These “unquestionable” claims have not only been questioned but unsettled by the irrepressible force of the principle of self-determination enunciated by the Charter.
But we find from the statement of the representative of India that India has, as it were procured proof of its claim to sovereignty from the fact of its involvement with China in Ladakh. I confess that it is hard for me to comment on a statement of this kind because the only inference to which it can lead is that India chose to provoke China into conflict so that it might thereby consolidate its title over Kashmir. Then the Indian representative opposes self-determination in the following terms; “It does not, however, apply to the present case, since it is not applicable to a section of a people. It applies to all those territories where, by force of arms or by the vicissitudes of history people are held under an alien power. If the policy of self-determination were to apply to parts of constitutionally created states most of them would be broken up. The plea of self-determination in a plural society could mean nothing but disruption. And may I add that most of the new states in Asia and Africa fall into this category. That is why, I venture to suggest, that United Nations tried so hard to prevent the secession of Katanga on the plea of self-determination.”
The representatives will note the attempt made here to denounce self-determination by trying to relate it to the question of Katanga’s secession. The Katanga question had nothing to do with self-determination. In fact, the secession of Katanga was aimed at the destruction of the self-determination of the Congolese people. Had Mr. Tshombe consulted the wishes of the population of Katanga, is there any doubt that the majority of the different tribes inhabiting that province would have voted against secession? What he did in fact was to substitute his own arbitrary will, as the Maharajah of Kashmir did, for the people’s right of self-determination. We trust that the representative of India will refrain from attempting to establish similarities where none exist.
In regard to the contention that the right of self-determination is not applicable to a section of the people and that if applied to parts of constitutionally created states most of them would be broken up let me remind the representative of India that the people of Kashmir are not a section of the people of India. Nor is Kashmir a part of the constitutionally created state of India. Let me remind the representative of India of the statement of the Prime Minister of India made in the Indian Parliament on March 31, 1955; “Kashmir, while a problem between India and Pakistan, is not a thing to be bandied about between India and Pakistan for it has a soul of its own and an individuality of its own. “
Let me remind the representative of India also of his statement of January 2, 1952: “Kashmir belongs to the Kashmiri people. If they tell us to walk out. I would have no hesitation in quitting Kashmir.”
The so-called argument about India being a plural society which should not be disrupted by the application of the principle of self-determination, if logically followed, would give a new lease on life to imperialistic establishments. It would mean that empires should never be dissolved. Then the representative of India referred to the “two-nation” theory on the basis of which British India was partitioned into India and Pakistan. This was never a theory. It was also a fact embedded in the history of the sub continent for a thousand years and its logical consequence – namely, the Hindus and Muslims are entitled to separate sovereignties in their respective majority areas was accepted as much by India as by Pakistan.
It did not mean any division of classes of citizenship between Hindus and Moslems either in India or in Pakistan. By bringing it into controversy the Indian leaders are only trying to question the principle of the establishment of Pakistan, thus making it impossible for relations between the two countries ever to be stabilized. This notwithstanding, we welcome the pronouncement of the representative of India in seeking the friendship and cooperation of my country. Pakistan has always demonstrated its sincere willingness to be a partner in the peaceful pursuit of a more prosperous and happier sub-continent. As I said on September 30, it is not the law of nature for our people to live in perpetual poverty. We are willing to share our talents and resources for a better life for our people, for the people of India and the people of Pakistan. What a great and glorious vista can be opened up only when India vacates its aggression in Kashmir and permits the unfortunate people of that strife-ridden region to share and participate in the mutual benefits as a people who have determined their destiny.
Pakistan has sedulously striven by peaceful means to achieve this honorable end. Unfortunately, India persists in holding the people of Kashmir in bondage. Let the chains of incarceration break, free the Kashmiris and have the friendship and good will of Pakistan. In so doing, India would be the greater for it. It would have then truly contributed to a peaceful order in the sub-continent.
Pakistan is one-third the size of India. We would, therefore, welcome from every consideration the complete amelioration of tension and bitterness between us. It has always been Pakistan’s effort to establish cordial relations with our neighbors, but in establishing this relationship it is wiser to break the barrier of injustice and aggression that divides us in Kashmir and which India has erected in defiance of the United Nations resolutions and its own solemn pledges.
Cooperation does not flow from words. It is rooted in conduct and in positive action. Let India’s words be matched by its actions. Neither India nor the world will find Pakistan faltering in its fullest response to a positive gesture recognizing the norms of justice and equity in the world.