Failure in Kashmir
The United Nations Kashmir Commission has now abandoned its efforts to mediate between India and Pakistan and has gone into retirement at Geneva for the purpose of writing its report. This failure is all the more depressing because on several occasions since a cease-fire was agreed to on January 1st it has seemed as though the ground had been sufficiently prepared for a plebiscite to be finally possible. Today the plebiscite is further away than ever, although both India and Pakistan are still theoretically committed to its support. The actual deadlock has arisen over the terms of the truce which, it was hoped, would supersede the cease-fire. Both States have built up effective control over a part of Kashmir territory, and though both profess equal confidence that a fairly-organised plebiscite would return a verdict in their favour, neither is prepared to make an effective surrender of the positions it has directly or indirectly established to its own advantage. But the basic divergence between the views of the Indian and Pakistani Governments is more profound. The existence of Pakistan as a separate State is based on the intractable cleavage between the Hindu and Moslem populations of the sub- continent, and in their hearts Mr. Nehru and his colleagues have never conceded that this cleavage is right or necessary. It will be disastrous to fight the battle again over the body of Kashmir.
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