The Trouble in Kashmir
Though the military situation about Srinagar, thanks to the flow of airborne, reinforcements from Indian territory, is not desperate, the outlook in Kashmir permits of no optimism. With the harvest gathered and winter closing down on the hills, the bands of raiders converging on the capital will not lack reinforcements ; and though the garrison of Srinagar may deny the " invaders " the city's loot, which is in most cases their main incentive, this will be small con- solation to the defenceless villagers who form the majority of Kashmir's population. Nor is there any real reason to hope that, from the political angle, this nasty affair can be settled without further imperilling the precarious concord existing between India and Pakistan. It is true that India has proposed that a plebiscite should- eventually=be held in Kashmir to determine the wishes of the in- habitants, roughly three-quarters of whom are Moslem. But mean- while she has provisionally accepted the accession of the Hindu Maharajah, and is taking—in an emergency which left her no other choice—military action against insurgents whom their co-religionists in Pakistan inevitably, if not very realistically, regard as crusaders. Their political immaturity leads both sides to poison the atmosphere with unnecessarily partisan statements, and there is a real danger that some incident, of the kind which is almost bound to occur in confused fighting, may precipitate a major crisis between the Union and the Dominion.
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