“The national state is too small a unit today and small states can have no independent existence.” (J.Nehru, The Discovery of India, London, 1956). “…the small national state is doomed. It may survive as a cultural, autonomous area but not as an independent political unit.” The Discovery of India.)
Such statements are in clear contravention of the UN Declaration on Fundamental Rights and a cruel threat to the existence of the smaller nations neighboring India. Still, almost all the Indian leaders from Nehru to Modi, more or less, are accused of possessing such a hegemonic idea. India’s geography was much smaller in 1947. Applying such hegemonism, India keeps extending its size since 1947.
India deceived and cheated not only its neighboring countries, but also its own countrymen. Analysts scrutinizing its conspiratorial policies and misdeeds of the past and present predict that its successors will also follow and repeat the same in the future. Due to such deliberate commitments, falsity, treachery and cruelty of the Indian leadership, their glassy house, named India, still survives.
The current Prime Minister of India, who is infamous for killing over 30,000 innocent Muslims in Gujarat, is a great danger for the neighboring countries of India. He can be deemed even worse than Sardar Patel, who illegally expanded India applying cruelty and brutal force.
Indian politicians, neutral knowledgeable personalities and the media keep the world informed about Modi’s repeated lies. The same Modi, in an interview with an Indian daily, claimed he is striving to strengthen good relations with Bangladesh since the first day he assumed power in New Delhi. The people of Bangladesh comprehend it better than me, whether Modi’s so-called efforts are positive or negative for them. Our people are also the witnesses as to whether Modi’s claim is true.
Let us look at the past at how his predecessors occupied independent countries which were not within Indian territory before the British government occupied them.
Nehru implemented his expansionist intrigues using Patel. Their first and foremost victim was the Hindu-dominated, independent state of Hyderabad. India became serious about annexing the richest and largest (80,000 square miles) princely state of British India. They even claimed, without any documents, that Mir Osman Ali Khan Asaf Jai, the 7th. Nizam of Hyderabad, was planning to join Pakistan, a fake excuse. Nehru asked the Nizam (king/ruler) of Hyderabad to merge his kingdom with India, as its majority population was Hindu. The Nizam declined the offer, which prompted Nehru to orchestrate communal chaos between the Hindus and minority Muslims, who were about 20% of the total population of Hyderabad. The Hindustan Times (August 14, 2012) wrote, “India was furiously pursuing Hyderabad to join the Indian Union adopting a carrot and stick policy authored by Sardar Vallabbhai Patel.” “Patel was gearing up to launch a military operation euphemistically called Police Action. Congress (party), Arya Samajis and Communists were running freedom movements both for the so-called liberation of Hyderabad from Nizam’s rule and an end to feudalism,” the same daily added.
The Indian army attacked Hyderabad from three sides and overpowered the small forces, known as razakars, of Hyderabad, who were basically raised to maintain internal law and order. According to the Sundurlal report, about 50,000 people in this operation were killed. An unknown number of women, girls, and children were raped or killed. India annexed Hyderabad on September 17-18, 1948. Nehru and Patel cheated with the Nizam, keeping him in power till 1950 to consolidate India’s annexation with India.
The current Indian home minister, the infamous Amit Shah went to Hyderabad to celebrate the annexation and so-called 70th. liberation day of Hyderabad. What mockery and cruelty that is!
To occupy the vast Muslim-majority Kashmir, a princely state, the same Nehru Hindu-majority card was played. India occupied it using entirely a false document that the Hindu king, Hari Singh signed a so-called instrument of accession to merge Kashmir with India. But neither Nehru nor his successive Indian governments were able to show such an accurate document till date. He didn’t care for the Kashmiri Muslims who were sure that Kashmir will be part of Pakistan as they were overwhelming the majority in Kashmir.
Hari Singh had no right or legitimacy to personally or unilaterally annex Kashmir with India or Pakistan without fulfilling the preconditions for the princely states set by the British government. Those conditions were: the religious belief of the majority people living therein (since the subcontinent was divided on the basis of religious beliefs), their hopes and aspirations and geographical proximity. All these must be taken into consideration before joining any country. If these three conditions are taken into account, the whole of Jammu and Kashmir should be a part of Pakistan. The local Muslims also desired and wanted the same.
But Raja Hari Singh and his hegemonic Indian leadership accomplices completely ignored the preconditions of the British government. That is why thousands of Kashmiri people keep continuing to fight till today against the Indian occupation in Kashmir, as they are desperate to join Pakistan. Seeing the life-and-death battle of the Kashmiris to end India’s illegal occupation in their motherland, the Machiavellian Nehru raised the Kashmir issue at the UN.
The UN Security Council decided that a referendum should be held under the auspices of the UN to determine whether the people of Kashmir opt to remain with India or to join Pakistan. Nehru gladly acclaimed and welcomed the UN resolutions and repeatedly pledged before the international community, including the UN, that India was committed to holding a referendum on Kashmir. He even declared that India would accept it even if the results of the referendum should go against India.
But Nehru never honored and implemented his commitment, though he acted as the Prime Minister for the following 17 years till his death in 1964. Since then, India’s treacherous leadership argue that the participation of the Kashmiris in the Indian-sponsored elections held in occupied Kashmir was equivalent to that of the referendum which also proved that the Kashmiris accepted Indian occupation in Kashmir. So, Indian leaderships claim there is no need to hold a separate referendum under the UN. What a lie and betrayal that is! India still stands as the lone record of duplicity and cunningness in human history.
*The writer is a Bangladesh-origin American journalist and researcher.
January 5, 2021
The viewpoints expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints and editorial policies of Aequitas Review.
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