Why the Jammu And Kashmir Instrument Of Accession had no legal standing

The official UN map for Jammu And Kashmir


On 19 June 2020 Narendra Modi publically stated on live television and then tweeted that the "Chinese have not intruded into our border" because Jammu And Kashmir is still independent under international law, UN maps and UN security council resolutions 47 and 39. This is the official UN map for Jammu and Kashmir. As you could see India, China and Pakistan are all out side its boundaries. Since the plebiscite requested by the UN security council resolutions 47 and 39, where the people of Jammu and Kashmir could decide their own future was never held, it remained independent under international law, therefore there is a major contradition between its legal status under international law and the ground reality. Narendra Modi knows that Jammu And Kashmir is still independent, that is why in the recent conflict between India and China he did not approach the UN Security Council. The Government of Indian is also in violation of many other United Nations Security Council resolutions on Jammu and Kashmir.


Narendra Modi removed article 370 from the Indian constitution so that he could change the demographics in Jammu and Kashmir in favour on India. But after the removal of Article 370 from the Indian constitution, all the contracts that India had with Jammu and Kashmir were totally broken. Additionally since India had no legal jurisdiction over the land that they forcefully occupied in Jammu and Kashmir, Narendra Modi could not challenge the Chinese at the United Nations Security Council. As a result he did not even approach the United Nations Security Council because there is a long list of United Nations Security Council resolutions on Jammu and Kashmir that the Government of India has been violating for over 70 years.


Google maps also shows the dotted lines in accordance with the UN maps. As do the maps shown by the BBC.

The international community is also familiar with the UN maps of Jammu and Kashmir.

Recently Joe Biden said that he seeks the restoration of peoples’ rights in Kashmir. Trump is of the same opinion and wanted to mediate in Jammu and Kashmir to achieve a peaceful resolution. All the diplomats around the world are aware that Jammu & Kashmiris is still an independent country under international law, as shown on the UN maps and hence no one spoke in favour of Narendra Modi.

The 57 countries in the OIC also issued a statement stating that the Kashmiris rights to self determination granted under the UN Security Council Resolutions 47 and 39 should be respected and the human rights violations need to stop.

Gulab Singh (a Hindu Dogra who worked for the Sikh Empire) betrayed the Sikhs in the Anglo-Sikh war (1845 and 1846). After the defeat of the Sikhs to pay for the war, the 7 year old Sikh Maharaja Duleep Singh Bahadur while he was under the control of the East India company was forced under duress to sign The Treaty of Lahore on 9 March 1846 which gave the people of Jammu and Kashmir to the East India company to tax to cover the cost of the war. This was invalid under international law. (The International Court of Justice has stated that there "can be little doubt, as is implied in the Charter of the United Nations and recognized in Article 52 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, that under contemporary international law an agreement concluded under the threat or use of force is void.)

The Treaty of Amritsar then gave the people of Jammu and Kashmir to Harri Singh's great grandfather Gulab Singh to collect taxes to pay for the Anglo-Sikh war. Many of the taxes were around 75%. This treaty was questioned from the very start. Arthur Brinkman argued how the entire population of Jammu And Kashmir could be sold into Slavery via the Treaty of Amritsar (1846), which violated the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 that abolished slavery in the British Empire. Arthur Brinkman in his paper "The Wrongs of Cashmere" written in December 1867, also states he "informs the reader of the wretched condition of a people we sold against their inclination, and their united cry to us."

Later the government of India said that this gave Harri Singh the authority to ask the Indian Army for assistance after the Jammu and Kashmir State Forces rebelled and removed him from Kashmir in  1947. They used this to justify their occupation on Kashmir.

But Article 7 of the Indian Independence Act 1947 stated that with the lapse of His Majesty’s suzerainty over the Indian states, all treaties agreements obligations grants, usages and sufferance’s will lapse. (Why keep the liabilities if you are giving away the assest)

Therefore all such powers and authority reverted to the sovereign authority, the people of Jammu and Kashmir and only they could decide their future through a plebiscite (referendum) as per UN resolutions 47 and 39
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1947/30/pdfs/ukpga_19470030_en.pdf

The Treaty of Amritsar lapsed before Harri Singh asked Mountbatten for assistance, therefore the letter that accompanied the alledged Instrument of Accession clearly stated that it was conditional of a plebiscite being held where the people of Jammu and Kashmir could decide their own future. Lord Mountbatten's remark and the the offer made by the Government of India to conduct a plebiscite or referendum to determine the future status of Jammu and Kashmir never happened, therefore Jammu and Kashmir retained its previous status under international law.

In 1947 The ruler of the state of Junagadh acceded to Pakistan but the Government of India refused to accept this and the Indian army invaded and under this formula a plebiscite was held and it joined India. September 1948 the Indian Army launched Operation Polo and invaded Hyderabad. Silette was in Assam and they voted to join Pakistan/Bangladesh under Article 7 of the Indian independence act 1947. The North West Frontier Provence joined Pakistan using this formula too.

Article 370 in the Indian constitution was the last line of defence that the Indian Government had for station hundreds of thousands of troops in Jammu and Kashmir and even that was broken by Narendra Modi in August 2019 as he broke the Indian side of the bargain in the alleged Instrument of accession.

The Kashmiris have been asking the Indian Army to leave for over 70 years. The General Assembly Resolution No.2625/1970 "declaration on principles of international law friendly relations and co-operation among states in accordance with the charter of the united nations UN" also applies to Jumma and Kashmir which states "Convinced that the subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation constitutes a major obstacle to the promotion of international peace and security, Convinced that the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples constitutes a significant contribution to contemporary international law, and that its effective application is of paramount importance for the promotion of friendly relations among States, based on respect for the principle of sovereign equality".
https://www.un.org/ruleoflaw/files/3dda1f104.pdf|title=declaration

As history informs us, at the time of partition of British India, Jammu and Kashmir was a Princely State that, by not joining the dominions of India or Pakistan by August 15 1947 was totally independent.
Many scholars have questioned the dates on the alledged instrument of accession.

https://www.andrewwhitehead.net/full-text-a-mission-in-kashmir.html

In the book "Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy, 1846-1990" Alastair Lamb also questioned the dates on the Instrument of accession stating that Harri Singh had not been in Jammu on that date and a signed copy was not presented to the UN until the 1960s.

https://www.academia.edu/35488886/A_DISPUTED_LEGACY_ALASTAIR_LAMB

As early as 1948, the legal validity of the Instrument of accession was questioned by the legal advisor to the British Foreign Office, Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice. (He was also a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration between 1964 and 1973 and a Senior Judge of the International Court of Justice between 1967 and 1973, before becoming a Judge of the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg in 1974.)

He wrote in his legal opinion that accession was not capable of finally settling the status of Kashmir. It was because: (1) the Maharaja was not a free agent at the time of the accession to India (October 26 1947) as his actions were inconsistent with Kashmir’s obligations to Pakistan, because the Maharaja had signed the Standstill Agreement with Pakistan via telegrams dated August 12 and 15 1947; (2) he was not in proper control of his state as there were uprisings against his rule and as such he could not, as he had undertaken to do, ensure that due effect was given to the accession in his State; and (3) the acceptance of accession by Mountbatten was conditional to a decision of the people.

In 1947 Ram Chandra Kak (a Kashmiri Hindu also known as Pandit Kak) the Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir REFUSED to join India and wanted it to remain independent or join Pakistan (as 75.97% of the population was Muslim) but his arrest by Indian agents on 11 August 1947, kicked this off.

The Kashmiri Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists and Sikhs had no issues with each other and wanted to remain independent. For the last 70 years they have been asking all the armies to leave before there is world war 3 over high altitude killer glaciers.

Under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) the Indian Army can not be prosecuted for the rapes and the murders they commit. Indian officers are known to be promoted based on the number of people they kill. Therefore incidents of fake encounters where civilians are killed and arms planted on them are very common. The Indian Chief of Defence Staff Bipin Rawat has been at the centre of this policy.

The list of human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir is extremely long
https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/ASA2018742015ENGLISH.PDF
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cdp-2020-0063/
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=23198%20
https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/07/10/kashmir-un-reports-serious-abuses

Every day for the last 70 years the Kashmiri Muslims, Hindis, Buddhists and Sikhs have been killed by shelling on the line of control LOC that divides their villages and towns in Jammu and Kashmir. The shells travel 30 miles each way. Almost every child has injuries. Hundereds of thousands of Kashmiris have been killed. Millions of Kashmir Muslim refugees in Pakistan, UK and the US. And over a hundred thousand Kashmiri Hindu refugees in Jammu and in India. They all want the armies to leave. There are 3 nuclear powers in active conflict in Jammu and Kashmir the whole world is in danger.

Many scholars have written on these treaties over the last 150 years, for example Alistair Lamb disputed the validity of the Instrument of Accession in his paper 'The Myth of Indian Claim to JAMMU & KASHMIR –– A REAPPRAISAL'

Where he writes "While  the  date,  and  perhaps  even  the  fact,  of  the accession to India of the State of Jammu  &  Kashmir in  late  October  1947  can  be  questioned,  there  is  no  dispute  at  that time   any   such   accession   was   presented   to   the   world at large   as   conditional   and provisional. It  was  not  communicated  to  Pakistan  at  the outset  of  the  overt  Indian  intervention  in  the  State  of Jammu  &  Kashmir,  nor  was  it presented  in  facsimile  to  the  United  Nations  in  early  1948  as  part  of  the  initial  Indian reference  to  the  Security  Council.  The  1948  White  Paper  in  which  the  Government  of India set out its formal case in respect to the State of Jammu & Kashmir, does not contain the  Instrument  of  Accession  as  claimed  to  have  been  signed  by  the  Maharajah: instead, it reproduces  an  unsigned  form  of  Accession  such  as,  it  is  implied,  the  Maharajah  might have  signed.   To   date   no   satisfactory   original   of   this   Instrument   as   signed   by  the Maharajah has  been  produced: though  a  highly  suspect  version,  complete  with  the false date  26 October 1947,  has  been  circulated  by  the  Indian  side  since  the  1960s. On the present  evidence  it  is  by  no means clear  that  the  Maharaja  ever  did  sign an Instrument of Accession.

Indian troops actually began overtly to intervene in the State’s affairs on the morning of 27 October 1947

It  is  now  absolutely  clear  that  the  two  documents  (a) the Instrument of Accession, and  (c)  the  letter  to  Lord  Mountbatten,  could  not  possibly  have  been  signed  by the Maharajah  of Jammu  &  Kashmir on 26 October 1947. The earliest possible time and date for their signature would have to be the afternoon of 27 October 1947. During 26 October 1947  the  Maharajah  of Jammu  &  Kashmir was  travelling  by  road  from  Srinagar  to Jammu. (The Kashmir State Army divisions and the Kashmiri people had already turned on him and he was on the run and had no authority in the state). His  new Prime  Minister,  M.C.  Mahajan,  who  was  negotiating  with  the Government of India,  and  the  senior  Indian  official  concerned  in  State  matters,  V.P.  Menon, were still in New  Delhi  where  they  remained  overnight,  and  where  their  presence  was  noted  by many observers.  There  was  no  communication  of  any  sort  between  New Delhi and the travelling Maharajah.  Menon  and  Mahajan  set  out  by  air  from  New  Delhi  to  Jammu  at about  10.00 a.m.  on  27  October; and  the  Maharajah  learned  from  them  for  the  first time the result of his Prime Minister’s negotiations in New Delhi in the early afternoon of that day. The  key  point,  of  course,  as has already been noted above, is that it is now obvious that  these  documents  could  only  have  been  signed  after  the  overt  Indian  intervention  in the  State  of Jammu  &  Kashmir on 27 October 1947.  When  the  Indian  troops  arrived  at  Srinagar  air  field,  that State   was   still   independent.   Any   agreements   favourable   to   India   signed   after   such intervention  cannot  escape  the  charge  of  having  been  produced  under  duress. (The International Court of Justice has stated that there "can be little doubt, as is implied in the Charter of the United Nations and recognized in Article 52 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, that under contemporary international law an agreement concluded under the threat or use of force is void.)"

Due to the resentment against the high taxes; there were numerous rebellions against Dogra rule. This is also mentioned in the census of Jammu and Kashmir 1910 held at the British Library in London. There was also the 1931 Kashmir agitation. Under these volatile conditions, it did not take much for the Gilgit Scouts and the Jammu and Kashmir State Forces to rebel against the Maharaja. There was also the 1947 Poonch rebellion. In the book THE GILGIT REBELLION 1947 By William A. Brown writes extensively about these events. The Maharaja was on the run. It has been stated that the prevailing international practice on the recognition of state governments is based on the following three factors: first, the government’s actual control of the territory; second, the government’s enjoyment of the support and obedience of the majority of the population; third, the government’s ability to stake the claim that it has a reasonable expectation of staying in power. The situation on the ground demonstrates that the Maharaja was not in control of the state of Jammu and Kashmir and was fleeing for his life and almost all of Kashmir was under the control of the Kashmiri people and the Kashmiri Army that had rebelled against him. His own troops had turned on him. With regard to the Maharaja’s control over the local population, it is clear that he enjoyed no such control or support. The people of Kashmir had been sold by the British Empire and he charged them high taxes therefore the Kashmir Muslims, Hindus Pandits and Buddhists hated him. Furthermore, the state’s armed forces were in total disarray after most of the men turned against him and he was running for his life. Finally, it is highly doubtful that the Maharaja could claim that his government had a reasonable chance of staying in power without Indian military intervention. This assumption is substantiated by the Maharaja’s letters.

The area west of the River Indus was not even in the The Treaty of Lahore (9 March 1846) and the Treaty of Amritsar (16 March 1846). The Gilgit Agency was independent at the time. In the book THE GILGIT REBELLION 1947 By William A. Brown writes extensively about this area. It had separate treaties of accession when it joined Pakistan.

There is a lot of documentation on Jammu and Kashmir in the UN archive

https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/un-documents/jammu-and-kashmir/

Many UN resolutions apply to Jammu and Kashmir including:
https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/PK/KashmirUpdateReport_8July2019.pdf
United Nations Security Council Resolution 47
United Nations Security Council Resolution 39

Cashmere Misgovernment By Robert Thorp 1868
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=dNPFmgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Book
The wrongs of cashmere By Arthur Brinkman

and
THE GILGIT REBELLION 1947 By William A. Brown. There is a link to the text in this book at the bottom of this page
https://hisamullahbeg.blogspot.com/2010/12/gilgit-rebellion-1947-by-william-brown.html

At this uncertain time it is critical that the Kashmiri Muslims, Pandits, Sikhs and Buddhists stick together



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