Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography (28 page)

The Indian army columns entered Hyderabad state on 13 September and were met with some resistance from the Razakdars as well as from regular troops. However, the result was never in doubt and, by the morning of 17 September, it was all over. The surrender was surprisingly meek.
Time
magazine (issue of 27 September 1948) tells the story of how the surrender took place a few miles outside the city. The commander-in-chief of Hyderabad’s army, a black-mustached Arab called Major General Syed Ahmed El Erdoos drove up in a shiny Buick. He then walked up to Major General Chaudhuri, the Indian field commander. ‘They shook hands, lit cigarettes and talked quietly while the spellbound villagers looked on’.
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The story of Jammu and Kashmir, however, is very different. Here a Hindu prince ruled over a Muslim-majority kingdom. However, the overall Muslim majority obscured a more complicated situation on the ground. The north-east of the state was Ladakh, a large but sparsely populated area dominated by Buddhists. To the north-west were the equally
sparsely populated areas of Gilgit and Baltistan. The population here was Muslim but from the Shia and Ismaili sects rather than the Sunni branch. In the middle was Kashmir itself, including the Valley, relatively densely populated and largely Sunni, albeit with significant Sikh, Hindu and Shia minorities. Finally, to the south was Jammu, home to the Dogra Rajputs who had conquered this kingdom, with a Hindu population boosted by recent refugees from West Punjab. Unlike Junagarh and Hyderabad, moreover, this state shared borders with both India and Pakistan. This meant that it was feasible for it to choose sides. Yet, Maharaja Hari Singh had visions of remaining independent as some sort of Asian Switzerland. The situation could not have been more complex.

One will never know how things may have eventually resolved themselves because the flow of history was hijacked by an unexpected turn of events. On 22 October 1947, thousands of armed Pakhtun tribesmen from Pakistan’s North West poured into Kashmir. No one knows for sure exactly who organized or instigated them, although they certainly had the support of newly formed Pakistan. Their initial progress was quick and largely unopposed. The remote mountain valleys were cut off from the rest of the world and even Hari Singh had no idea what was happening. The ruler only realized the seriousness of the situation when the invaders blew up Mahura power station, plunging the state into darkness. The tribesmen were just 75 km away from Srinagar, the capital. At this stage, they could just have driven down the short undefended and well-paved road and taken over. However, greed overpowered strategy and religious fervour. The tribesmen indulged in an orgy of rape and plunder where they
spared neither Hindu nor Muslim. They also stopped to rape the European nuns of a Franciscan mission in Baramullah, barely 50 km from the capital. All this delayed their progress by a critical forty-eight hours.

The Indian authorities in Delhi first heard of the invasion from a very curious source. Remember that this was barely two months after independence, and the Commanders-in-Chief of both the Indian and Pakistani armies were British. The Commander-in-Chief of the Pakistan army was Major General Douglas Gracey who received secret intelligence reports of what was going on in Kashmir.
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The first thing he did was to pick up his phone in Rawalpindi and call his Sandhurst classmate Lt. General Rob Lockhart, the Commander-in-Chief of the Indian army! It did not take long for Mountbatten and Nehru to find out what was happening.

Given the desperate situation, it was not difficult to convince a panicky Hari Singh to sign an Instrument of Accession in favour of India. By the morning of 27 October, Indian troops had secured Srinagar airport and were landing men and supplies. The tribesmen had lost the initiative and had been stopped at the gates of the city. Jinnah was furious. Bit by bit, the Indians began to push the invaders out even as the bitterly cold winter set in. It bears mention here that one of the heroes of the Indian side was Brigadier Mohammad Usman, a Muslim officer who had opted to stay with India. He would later be killed in battle in July 1948.

The first Indo–Pak war in Kashmir dragged on through 1948. Although Srinagar had been secured, western Kashmir, Gilgit and Baltistan remained in Pakistani hands. For a while, Pakistan even took over the strategically important towns of
Kargil and Dras and threatened Ladakh. However, by November 1948, Indian troops had cleared the two towns and secured supply lines to Ladakh. (Half a century later, Pakistan would try to recapture the towns in what is now known as the Kargil war of 1999.) Given the momentum, some Indian commanders wanted to push ahead. However, they were refused permission. The matter now shifted to the United Nations. The cease-fire positions of December 1948 have come to be the effective boundary between the two countries. This border was designated the ‘Line of Control’ as per the Simla Accord of 1972.

On 26 January 1950, the country threw off the last vestige of British rule by declaring itself a Republic. By now, India’s borders were recognizably like those that we know today. The country had a population of 359 million or 14.2 per cent of the world’s population (by comparison, China had 546 million people and the United States 152 million). However, its share of world economy stood at a mere 4.2 per cent in 1950 compared to 16 per cent in 1820, and a far cry from the 30–33 per cent that it had enjoyed in ancient times. Note that in 1950, the United States was by far the largest economy in the world with a 27 per cent share. Ravaged by war, the Chinese economy was just a tad larger than India’s. After adjusting for relative population sizes, even dirt-poor India had a per capita income level that was 40 per cent higher than the Chinese level.
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With the British withdrawal complete and the princely states absorbed, the Indian government now turned to the tiny
enclaves along the coast held by other European powers. These were remnants of an era of European exploration and conquest before Robert Clive changed the rules of the game. The French had five such enclaves. The largest was Pondicherry, south of Chennai and close to the ancient port of Mahabalipuram. The others included Chandannagar (just north of Calcutta), Yanam (on the Andhra coast), Mahe (on the Kerala coast) and Karaikal (on the Tamil coast).

As pressure from the Indian government and the local population grew, the French attempted to delay re-integration. However, they showed remarkable restraint compared to how they reacted in Algeria and Vietnam. Perhaps they recognized the inevitable. In June 1949, Chandannagar opted to merge with India, and a year later it was integrated with the state of West Bengal. The French hung on to their enclaves in southern India for a few more years, but the situation was growing increasingly tense on the ground. Finally, in 1954, the French handed over the rest of the territories.
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Pondicherry, renamed Puducherry, is today a Union Territory (i.e. a province directly ruled by the central government) but most Indians do not realize that it also includes the three other enclaves of Yanam, Mahé and Karaikal. French influence lives on in many ways. The main town of Puducherry retains many colonial-era buildings as well as the rigid street-grid designed by the French. Many locals even hold French citizenship, descendants of those who chose to remain French at the time of the handover. Perhaps the most thriving of French legacies, however, is also the most unexpected: a community set up by a Bengali revolutionary, Aurobindo Ghosh, who fled British India in 1910 to avoid arrest and was
granted asylum by the authorities in Pondicherry. Here he shifted his focus from politics to spirituality and attracted a huge following. Although the movement has branches all over India and abroad, Pondicherry remains home to many institutions as well as a commune inspired by the spiritual leader.

Having tackled the French, New Delhi now turned its attention to the Portuguese. The Portuguese held several small enclaves along the western coast. Goa was the single largest territory, but there were also Diu, Daman, Dadra, and Nagar-Haveli. In the sixteenth century, the Portuguese had used a network of such enclaves to enforce their control over the Indian Ocean. Although much diminished in power by the twentieth century, they had survived Vijayanagar, the Mughals and the British. They saw no reason why they should leave just because India had been declared a Republic. The Portuguese dictator Antonio Salazar condescendingly declared that Goa represented the ‘light of the West in the Orient’.

For all their bravado, the Portuguese should have recognized their situation when, in the summer of 1954, a small group of local activists simply took over the government in Dadra and in Nagar-Haveli. It was not immediately absorbed into India and for a while it remained an independent country in the eyes of international law! The Portuguese responded by bolstering their defences in the remaining territories with African troops from Portuguese East Africa (now Mozambique). Protests and strikes were severely put down and thousands were arrested. Prime Minister Nehru had hoped that the matter would be eventually resolved through negotiation but, by late 1961, patience had run out.

Operation Vijay began with the Indian Air Force bombing Dabolim airport at dawn on 18 December 1961. This is the same airport that tourists use today when they fly to Goa. Within hours, Indian ground troops were pouring into Goa from the north, south and east. The Indian Navy pressed in from the west. Similar operations were carried out simultaneously against the other enclaves of Daman and Diu. Lisbon had instructed the defenders to fight to the end, but they simply had no chance against such overwhelming force. The only show of defiance came from
NRP Alfonso de Albuquerque
, the sole Portuguese warship in Goa. Built in the 1930s, it was a medium-sized frigate that was outmoded and hopelessly outgunned by the large, modern fleet it faced on the morning of 18 December. By noon, it was engaged by two Indian frigates at the entrance of Marmagao port. The two sides exchanged fire but, within half an hour,
Alfonso de Albuquerque
was no longer a functioning ship. The crew then ran it aground near Dona Paula beach and used it as a fixed battery. They defiantly kept firing the guns for another hour and a half till they stopped due to mounting casualties and a lack of ammunition. The Portuguese had come to India with cannons firing from their ships, and they left in the same way. Yet another of the circularities of Indian history.

Barely thirty-six hours after the invasion began, the Portuguese Governor General Vassalo e Silva saw the futility of his position and signed the document of unconditional surrender. It was Christmas season, but Lisbon was in mourning. ‘Cinemas and theatres shut down as thousands marched in a silent parade from Lisbon’s city hall to the cathedral, escorting the relics of St. Francis Xavier’.
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Vassalo e
Silva returned home to a hostile reception. Salazar had him court-martialed and then exiled. I must admit that I feel somewhat sorry for the last colonial.

Reading press reports about the liberation of Goa half a century after the event, I was struck by the extreme hostility with which Western diplomats and media of that time reacted to Indian actions. The United States and Britain pushed for a UN resolution against India, but it was vetoed by the USSR. Press reports railed against Indian aggression and shed many a tear for Goa’s Christians, ignoring the fact that leading pro-liberation activists like Tristão de Braganza Cunha were themselves Christian.
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A
Time
magazine article ‘India: End of an Image’ dated 29 December 1961, openly called Nehru a hypocrite who preached peace abroad but used force at home. The magazine appears not to have noticed that after waiting for fourteen years for the Portuguese to come to the table, the Prime Minister was looking increasingly ridiculous.

Taking Goa from a spent power like Portugal was one thing, but it was quite another to deal with Mao’s China. The Sino–Indian border can be divided into two sectors. In the east, it is defined by the McMohan Line which had been agreed upon between the Tibetans and the British as per the Simla Agreement of 1914. It was named after Sir Arthur Henry McMohan who was the chief negotiator for the British side. It generally followed the crest of the Himalayan range eastwards from Tawang near the Bhutan tri-border and defined the northern boundary of the North East Frontier Agency
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(what we now
know as the state of Arunachal Pradesh). An early version of the Line had also been endorsed by a Chinese representative, but the final detailed version was signed only by Tibet and British India.

In the middle Himalayas, India and China were separated by three kingdoms—Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim (the last was then an Indian protectorate). The border resumed in the western Himalayas and ran along what are now the states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh and finally ran into Ladakh. Here, India had inherited the territorial claims of the former kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir. However, there was uncertainty about a large but uninhabited territory that is now Chinese-controlled Aksai Chin. Nineteenth-century British surveyors had demarcated the border on two separate occasions, using two different natural contours.
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The first demarcation is called the Johnson Line, drawn in 1865 between Kashmir and Turkestan (this was during the Dungun revolt, when the Chinese were not in control of the area). This line used the Kunlun mountains as the natural boundary which left Aksai Chin within Kashmir.

The famous explorer Francis Younghusband visited Aksai Chin in the 1880s and reported that the area largely uninhabited except for a few bands of nomadic herdsmen, and a small fort in the cold and barren landscape, intermittently manned by the Maharaja of Kashmir. In 1899, however, the British drew a new border called the Macartney–Macdonald Line. This time, they used the Karakoram range as the natural boundary and left out Aksai Chin, possibly to create a defensible buffer against Russian expansion in the region. The British then went on to use both the lines in their maps till 1947. It must be
added here that no Chinese map showed Aksai Chin as part of China before the 1920s, and a map of Xinjiang from the 1930s also shows the Kunlun rather than the Karakoram as the customary boundary.
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In short, Aksai Chin’s status was unclear and it was up for grabs, although the Indian claim was probably a bit stronger.