Stonewall Nehru
Mr. Nehru is a man of great integrity, a lover of peace and an upholder of law. It is all the more distressing, therefore, that his speeches and actions concerned with Kashmir seem to be dis- ingenuous and provocative. Once again he, as Prime Minister of India, has rejected a plan which appears to the rest of the world to offer a reasonable chance for securing a settlement of the dispute over Kashmir; once again the plan which India rejects has been accepted by Pakistan. The Security Council's plan would have sent a United Nations mediator to try his hand at arranging the preliminaries for the plebiscite in Kashmir which both the Indian and Pakistani Governments have admitted should take place. The new part of the plan was that which made provision for the appointment of a panel of arbitrators if, after three months, the mediator had failed in his task. In other words, the United Nations tried to provide a way out of the deadlock which experience had taught them was all too likely to result. The idea of compulsory arbitration has aroused Mr. Nehru to new extremes of indignation. It appears that the only solution which he could consider just is ,one which awards Kashmir to India, or rather, since he claims that Kashmir is already "juridically and politically a part of India," one which confirms India in her title of possession. Mr. Nehru's intransig- ence is based on the cession of his State to India made by the Maharajah and its acceptance by the last Viceroy. Since Mr. Nehru has never, if he disagreed with them, shown much respect for the authority of Viceroys or Princes, he should not be sur- prised if this juridical argument is not taken very seriously outside India. But his intransigence has the more serious effect of involv- ing him in a direct conflict with the United Nations—the very authority to which he is prepared to appeal when, as in the case of the Indians of South Africa, he believes that international opinion is on his side. But Mr. Nehru cannot have it both ways.
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