THE history of Indian-occupied Kashmir is marked by bloody incidents, extensive violence, killings, displacement and severe human rights violations against innocent and unarmed Kashmiri people. It is evident that India has long been deliberately involved in systemic oppression, military actions and causing high civilian casualties. UN reports and Amnesty International documents have highlighted allegations that Indian forces are intentionally targeting Kashmiri youth, children and women, resulting in atrocity crimes across the region. Global media have also reported that Indian forces have deliberately created destructive living conditions and been involved in the destruction of infrastructure. Similarly, international agencies have highlighted that India is subjecting the region to institutional discrimination through territorial fragmentation and segregation, which amounts to the crime of apartheid under international law.
Today, Kashmiris around the world are observing Black Day (27 October 1947), which marks the anniversary of the landing of Indian troops in Srinagar, initiating the illegal occupation and the long-standing dispute over Jammu and Kashmir. In this regard, the people and government of Pakistan express solidarity with the Kashmiri people in their just struggle for the right to self-determination and condemn the ongoing atrocities committed by Indian forces over the last seventy-nine years. On that day, India violated the legitimate aspirations of the Kashmiri people to determine their own destiny. Historically, renowned historians have also argued that India’s military action was illegal, illegitimate and unlawful. In this regard, British historian Alastair Lamb’s pivotal work, Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy, 1846–1990, traces the roots of the Kashmir conflict back to the 1846 Treaty of Amritsar, through which the British sold the region of Kashmir to Raja Gulab Singh of Jammu, creating an artificial Dogra princely state with a Hindu ruler over a Muslim-majority population. Lamb argued that the Instrument of Accession was either signed after Indian troops landed in Srinagar on 27 October 1947 or was backdated and manufactured under duress.
According to Alastair Lamb’s hypothesis, research, official records and travel timelines suggest that Maharaja Hari Singh was travelling by road from Srinagar to Jammu and that Indian emissary V.P. Menon did not obtain a signed Instrument of Accession until 27 October, after Indian troops had begun landing at Srinagar airport. Lamb argued that the document was either predated or signed under pressure to regularize a military fait accompli. Both Lamb and Stanley Wolpert, the American historian and author of Jinnah of Pakistan, pointed out that a Muslim-majority princely state contiguous to Pakistan, with vital communication and economic routes running through Pakistan, made accession to India an anomaly under the general principles of the 1947 Partition. Moreover, under the Indian Independence Act of 1947, following the 3 June Partition Plan, the authority to accede rested with the ruling monarch, not the populace. India maintained that questioning the ruler’s internal legitimacy would constitute unlawful interference in a sovereign state’s affairs.
Against this background, Lamb challenges the traditional narrative surrounding the Instrument of Accession, arguing that Maharaja Hari Singh could not have validly signed the document on 26 October, as he was travelling by road to Jammu and that the narrative was shaped by post-facto political manoeuvring. According to this interpretation, the Indian claim that the Instrument of Accession was signed before Indian forces entered Srinagar is untrue and highly improbable. Lamb further claimed that Indian troops began landing at Srinagar airfield on the morning of 27 October, before any valid or verified legal accession process had been completed. He characterized the document as a conspiracy or a manufactured agreement between Indian leaders, the Maharaja’s administration and military officials, rather than a legitimate legal transfer of sovereignty.
In this situation, it is not difficult to understand that Indian leaders have persecuted Muslims under their rule and employed suppression and human rights violations. According to Lamb, the Government of Pakistan had never been directly involved in the conflict. Although Jinnah had asked the army command to take notice of Indian intervention in the region, the command refused, as the armies of both countries were still under a unified British command. It was also claimed that Indian forces landed in the valley in September 1947, while tribal people were on their way to support the Kashmir struggle. In fact, according to this account, the Maharaja signed the Instrument of Accession under Indian pressure and its authenticity remains dubious.
Furthermore, Lamb concluded that Kashmir was a carefully conceived problem created for Pakistan by the last Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten and Indian leaders. The region remains under Indian rule and the dispute remains unresolved. Article 370 was abrogated under the BJP government and Kashmir’s future remains uncertain, with the people continuing to be the ultimate victims. Indian leaders had promised to respect the will of the people through a plebiscite, but India has bypassed or indefinitely postponed the implementation of UN Security Council resolutions, culminating in subsequent constitutional changes that have deprived the process of democratic validity.
—The writer is a Defence and Security Analyst based in Islamabad.
