Kashmir: Resetting the Narrative
The contention that India and Pakistan are making regarding Kashmir to the international community, including pursuing it diplomatically as a bilateral conflict, is wrought with misinterpretation of legal, historical, and political facts. The assertion of these two countries that the erstwhile Princely State of Jammu & Kashmir was to accede to either of the two dominions after the British left India is misrepresentation of legal framework that preceded prior to declaration by British parliaments Indian Independence Act of 1947 that created India and Pakistan as two (self-governing) dominions.
The Secretary of State for India, Lord Pethick Lawrence, on 19th February 1946 announced the decision of the British government to send a delegation of three Cabinet ministers to India to find a solution for the problem of India. The delegation, popularly known as the “Cabinet Mission”, arrived in India on 23 March 1946.
On 25 May 1946, it circulated a memorandum dated 12 May 1946. In its memorandum, the Mission affirmed that on the withdrawal of the British government from British India, it would no longer be possible for the rights of the states which flowed from their relationship with the Crown to exist and the rights surrendered by the states to the paramount Power would revert to the rulers of those states when the two new dominions of India and Pakistan were created….