The First War

    Mohammed Ali Jinnah was the leader of the movement for Pakistan. He wanted a Muslim homeland for South Asia. The Indian nationalist movement wanted a democratic, secular state.
The two parties could not come to an agreement on a unified India. Lord Mountbatten decided that the British states in India would go to Pakistan if they had a Muslim majority and they would become part of India if they had a Hindu majority. Princely states were to choose on their own.
Kashmir had a Muslim majority but was ruled by a Hindu maharajah. There were many poor Muslims in Kashmir who favored accession to India because they believed India would make land reforms in favor of them. There were also influential Muslim clerics in the Kashmir valley who definitely supported joining Pakistan.
The poor peasants preferred Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah, a Muslim from Kashmir, as their leader. He formed the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference which embraced Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists. Abdullah got a lot of followers by strongly opposing maharajah rule and strongly supporting land distribution reform. He was mentored by India’s prime minister, Nehru.
The maharajah did not know which country to choose. While he was stalling, a tribal rebellion emerged in Kashmir in 1947. Parts of the Pakistan military aided the insurgents. They reached the capital of Kashmir where the maharajah lived. Maharajah Singh was forced to ask India for help which said it would only help if he agreed to accede to India and have Sheik Abdullah be chief minister. Maharajah Singh agreed, India stopped the insurgency but they held on to a third of Kashmir.
After much fighting and casualties, India realized it did not have the will to try and push out all the insurgents that Pakistan was supporting. Abdullah did not have much influence outside of the valley. Nehru proposed dividing the state along the cease-fire line.
India sought the UN to help it with Pakistan's act of aggression. Pakistan declared that it had nothing to do with the tribal insurgents and had not helped them. It also said that India had allowed genocide of its muslim population and complained of the way India had gotten Kashmir to accede.
The UN formed a Security Council called on Pakistan to withdraw tribesmen and Pakistani nationals from Kashmir and asked India to withdraw its forces except for maintaining order in the area. It also asked for a plebiscite for Kashmiris to vote for who they wanted to accede to. India and Pakistan could not agree on the many drafts of resolutions called for by the UN.
In 1950-51, riots in East Pakistan drove Hindus there to flee to West Bengal and Muslims in W. Bengal to flee to East Pakistan.
In 1951, the General Council of Sheik Abdullah’s Jammu and Kashmir National Conference voted for a Constituent Assembly and the maharajah lost all power. Kashmir gained more autonomy than other Indian states. In 1953, however, Delhi arrested Abdullah for giving Kashmir too much autonomy.
Bilateral discussions from 1953-6 failed to produce a plebiscite because a US-Pakistan military relationship changed India’s mind on allowing one.
India’s support of Egypt in the 1956 Suez crisis and its ambivalent position on the invasion of Hungary by the Soviets displeased several Western governments.
The Security Council proposed to demilitarize Kashmir and station UN forces there. The Soviet Union vetoed this resolution. India was also mad at the UN for asking for a prime ministers' conference because it made the aggressor equal to the victim.