The title of the book addresses an interesting and opaque chapter of Indian history. That period when the partition of India was being drafted; when claims, counter claims, intrigue and above all British security interests impacted every decision. If India was the Jewel in the British Crown, and its defence influenced British foreign policy, then Kashmir was the Jewel in the Crown for India and Pakistan, and remains a point of constant conflict. Iqbal Malhotra’s book brings us a new perspective on this dispute. That of the role played by specific British interests, first with regard to Russian expansionism and second, post-partition with their own nuclear monitoring of Russian activities.
Well-researched and replete with interesting anecdotes, the book refreshes our memory about various dominant personalities of the period and sheds new light on the intrigues that created the Kashmir LAC as we know it today. Malhotra contextualises his book both within the domestic and religious politics of the period, and also in the wider context of the old Great Game between Britain and Russia. The book provides useful background linked to the expeditions of Francis Younghusband and his encounters with Russian agent Grombchevsky in Hunza in 1888.
It is these encounters that acquire significance for British intelligence, especially the Gilgit-Baltistan region. The term the Great Game was largely popularised by Rudyard Kipling in his dispatches and in his novel Kim in the aftermath of the Anglo-Afghan wars. It was this Russian bogey that was instrumental in England’s policies towards Kashmir as India’s frontier with Chinese Turkestan and Russian expansionism in the region. He points out how, later, this focus was coupled with heightened surveillance of Soviet presence in Indian politics with the success of the Russian revolution of 1917 and the founding of Communist parties internationally under the leadership of the Comintern. This led to extensive monitoring of Indian Communists.
Malhotra’s book is significant in that it places the story of the Royal house of Kashmir at the centre of the narrative and presents us with ample evidence to show that domestic royal intrigue amongst the sons of Maharaja Ranbir Singh of Kashmir played into the hands of the British and allowed them to impose direct control over the kingdom in 1920, a move designed to strengthen their policies against expanding Russian presence in Chinese Turkestan. Interestingly, this book also shows us the ambitions of the then Maharaja Pratap Singh of Kashmir in the early 20th century as he seeks to expand his own influence into Xinjiang and the regions of Hunza and those bordering his domains. An anti-Russian policy and Britain’s own nuclear security interests in this regard would, as Malhotra shows, also impact the final boundaries and claims over Kashmir and determine its partition and tension in the region.
The book is an interesting reading of British policy in the region and corroborates studies that have highlighted how the British encouraged the partition of India, and how their desire to retain a toehold in the region, through the creation of a pliant and dependent state Pakistan, suited their interests in this period. This was the last act of a dying imperial power, revenge even for India’s 1942 non-cooperation in the war effort.
The partition of India and division of Kashmir had more to do with British security assessments of their interests than with the domestic politics of Kashmir. From the then Maharaja Hari Singh of Kashmir, to Sheikh Abdullah and finally, the newly ushered-in government of Pakistan, the British forced each to move as they would have wished. And of course, Lord Mountbatten carried out the coup de grace, ensuring that India lacked strategic depth via its Kashmir borders with Central Asia and now Xinjiang.
Dark Secrets: Politics, Intrigue and Proxy War in Kashmir
By: Iqbal Chand Malhotra
Publisher: Bloomsbury India
Pages: 227
Price: Rs 795