Chapter 145: International Community

United Nations Security Council

Lake Success, New York

4 October 1950

The Council chamber at Lake Success was a converted gyroscope factory, and the delegates had never stopped complaining about the acoustics. It was a long, low hall with a horseshoe table in pale wood, and a gallery that on most days held twenty journalists and a handful of students. On the fourth of October, it held two hundred. They had been queuing since six.

V.K. Krishna Menon sat at the Indian place with a single typed folder and a glass of water he had no intention of drinking. He was fifty-four, thin, sallow, and combative, with a way of looking at his opponents as if they had been caught copying in an examination. Setalvad’s brief lay at his elbow, with Kao’s evidence in a sealed envelope beneath it.

Across the horseshoe sat Sir Gladwyn Jebb for Britain, tall and silvery. Beside him, the Frenchman Chauvel looked uncomfortable. Warren Austin, in the American chair, appeared to be wondering whether he had been sent to the right building. Dr. Tsiang, for China, a small neat man with a scholar’s stoop, had folded his hands on the table and was studying them. The Soviet seat stood empty, as it had since January.

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Sir Zafrulla Khan, had flown in the week before. He had expected to lodge a complaint. Instead, on the second day of his arrival, India had lodged one first, and with it a resolution.

The President of the Council, the Norwegian delegate, rapped his gavel. "The Council will hear the representative of India on the item before it."

Menon did not rise at once. He let the hall settle. Then he stood, buttoned his jacket, and spoke without notes, in a dry, precise voice that carried to the back of the gallery.

"Mr. President. I have been asked by my Government to present a proposal for the cessation of hostilities between India and Pakistan. I wish to say at the outset that it is not an appeal. India is not asking the Council for help. She is offering the Council the means to end a war.

"I will tell the Council what has happened, briefly, because it has been told so many versions that it may have forgotten the facts. In October 1947, six thousand armed men crossed the border into the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, which was in a mutual-defence pact with the then Union of India. They carried British-pattern rifles, mortars, and wireless sets. They were led by officers of the Pakistan Army in civilian dress. When our soldiers recovered the bodies of the dead in the snow, they found paybooks, identity cards, and service records. I have the paybooks. Two hundred and eleven of them. They are in this folder, and any member of the Council may examine them."

Jebb shifted slightly in his chair.

"That was the first act. Since then, Pakistan has declared that it is not at war with India. Between October 1947 and April of this year, its regular army conducted three offensives against Indian positions: at Gilgit, in the Thar desert, and on the Ravi. Each was defeated. Then, having lost the battle, it began a different war. Its agents placed a bomb in a vegetable market at Ajnala on the twelfth of April and killed fourteen people, among them two schoolchildren.

"On the night of the sixteenth, armed men crossed the Ravi into the village of Kot Mehrban and took twenty-six women from their beds. Three were found dead in a drainage ditch. Fourteen were taken across the border and held in a house near Sialkot, where they were to be sold in the markets of Peshawar. They were rescued by Indian volunteers. I have the testimony of one of them, a girl of sixteen, who told a journalist what she had heard the men say. I will not read it to this Council. I will say that she heard them count."

Nobody moved in the gallery; a woman reporter had put down her pencil.

"I do not say this to inflame. I say it because the Council has been asked, in the draft resolution now circulating in the corridors, to recommend that India withdraw to the lines of the fourteenth of May. I wish the Council to understand what it is being asked to recommend. It is being asked to return a quarter of a million Indian soldiers to positions from which they were bombed, to hand back the villages from which women were taken, and to leave in place the camps where the men who did it were trained.

"India does not propose to do that. India proposes instead the following." He opened the folder. "One, a cease-fire along the lines that the armies hold on the day it is signed. Two, the immediate release of every woman and girl abducted from Indian territory since August of 1947, living, to be certified by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which will be given access to every house, camp, and market from Peshawar to Attock. Three, the abolition of every market in which human beings are sold.

"Four, the dissolution of the tribal lashkars, and the closure of the training camps at Attock, Jhelum, and Sargodha. Five, the return of every Indian prisoner of war and civilian internee. Six, the surrender, for trial, of the officers who organised and directed the raids. The trial to be conducted by an international tribunal, on the model of the one that sat at Nuremberg. And seven, the recognition by Pakistan of the accessions of Jammu and Kashmir, Gilgit and Baltistan, Sindh, Kalat, and the Makran coast, and of the areas of the Punjab now under Indian administration.

He closed the folder.

"The Council may find these terms hard. I will say that they are the terms of a victor who has chosen to forgo the right to dictate. India could have advanced to Rawalpindi. She has not. India has fed every civilian who asked for food in every town she has taken, and she has put no one on a train. If these terms are refused, I will not say what India will do. I will say only that she will not do less."

He sat down. The silence lasted perhaps three seconds. Then the gallery began to buzz.

Sir Gladwyn Jebb asked for the floor at once, and the Norwegian recognised him. Jebb spoke in the beautiful, unhurried English of a man who had been briefed by the Foreign Office and was determined to deliver it as if it were his own opinion.

"The United Kingdom has listened with the closest attention to the distinguished representative of India. We do not question the gravity of what he has described. Any crime against women and children must be condemned. But the Council’s task is not to adjudicate guilt. It is to restore peace. His Majesty’s Government considers that the surest path to peace is a prompt cessation of hostilities, followed by a withdrawal of forces, and the holding of a plebiscite under the auspices of this body. We believe that India’s proposal, while thoughtful, goes beyond what is within the Council’s competence to demand."

"The proposal does not demand anything of the Council, Sir Gladwyn," Menon said, from his seat, without raising his voice. "It is offered to Pakistan."

"I hope the representative of India will not interrupt."

"I hope the representative of Britain will not misdescribe it."

The Norwegian rapped. Jebb inclined his head with an air of weary patience, and sat.

Chauvel of France spoke briefly. His government, he said, was sympathetic to the humanitarian provisions, particularly items two and three, and would wish to see them examined by a commission. It could not, in the present circumstances, support the territorial provisions. Everyone in the room understood that he meant Geneva, and that France had not forgotten it.

The Egyptian delegate, Dr. Mahmoud Fawzi, a polished diplomat who had been educated in London and had never once raised his voice, spoke next. He said that Egypt, as a Muslim state, felt a natural sympathy for a sister state in distress. He said also that the provisions regarding women were, in the view of his government, beyond reproach, and that no state which claimed to represent Islam could resist them. He would, he said, wish to examine the whole text in committee.

Menon wrote a single word on his pad. Open.

Warren Austin of the United States was the last to speak, and he spoke briefly, with the stiffness of a man reading a paper that had been agreed in Washington an hour earlier. The United States, he said, had followed the developments in the subcontinent with deep concern. It did not wish to prejudge any party. It urged all sides to exercise restraint. It would support any measure that brought the fighting to an end. The American delegation believed that the proposals of India and of Pakistan should be examined together by a committee of the Council.

"Together," Menon murmured to the aide beside him. "He means to bury it."

"Or to hold it."

"It is the same thing, in this room."

Dr. Tsiang, for China, said nothing at all, and when the President asked whether he wished to speak, he rose, bowed slightly, and said that the delegation of China wished to study the text.

Sir Zafrulla Khan, who had sat through the session with the stiff dignity of a man listening to his own funeral oration, asked for the right of reply. He spoke for forty minutes. He said that Pakistan had been the victim of aggression. He said that the Indian Army had crossed the international boundary in violation of the Charter. He said that the evidence offered by India was fabricated, and that the paybooks might have been forged, and that the girl at Kot Mehrban had been coached. He did not say what Pakistan proposed to do about the market at Peshawar.

When he had finished, Menon asked to reply.

"The distinguished representative of Pakistan says that the paybooks were forged," he said. "I invite him to let the International Committee of the Red Cross examine them. I invite him to let it examine the markets at Peshawar. He says that the girl at Kot Mehrban was coached. I invite him to let her be examined by any physician the Council chooses. I invite him to open the camps at Attock and Sargodha to a neutral commission. If he is right, he has nothing to fear. If he is wrong, I should like to know why he is afraid."

Sir Zafrulla did not reply. The Norwegian adjourned the meeting.

New York, the Waldorf Astoria

That evening

The telephone in Menon’s suite rang at nine. It was the American delegate’s private secretary, a quiet young man named Hartley, who asked whether Mr. Menon would care to take a walk.

They walked along Park Avenue in the October dark. Hartley did not talk until they had gone three blocks.

"Mr. Menon, I have been asked to say something that is not an official communication."

"Naturally."

"The Secretary of State was impressed by your statement. So was Ambassador Austin, though he would never admit it. I understand that a number of people in the State Department read the account of Kot Mehrban in the Tribune and have not slept since." Hartley paused. "I am told that the resolution which the British have drafted is going nowhere."

"Nowhere?"

"The Egyptians will not vote for it. They have received instructions from Cairo, as of this afternoon. The Yugoslavs are reluctant. The Cubans and the Ecuadorians will follow Washington, and Washington has decided not to support a resolution that asks India to withdraw. We believe Britain will not put it to a vote."

Menon walked a few paces before he spoke. "And the Indian proposal?"

"Will not be put to a vote either, I think. It would not carry, and Mr. Acheson would rather not have it fail." Hartley’s voice was careful. "I will say one more thing, Mr. Menon, and then I shall go back to my hotel. The Secretary has asked the Ambassador in Rawalpindi to convey the substance of the Indian terms to the Pakistani Government, informally. He has also asked him to say that the United States regards the first two provisions, the women and the markets, as matters on which no honourable government could refuse."

"That is more than I expected."

"It is, I think, more than the British expected." Hartley stopped at a corner and looked at him. "The Americans do not like what happened at Kot Mehrban. Not because of politics. Because of what it is."

Menon was silent for a long moment. "Thank you, Mr. Hartley. I shall convey that to my Prime Minister."

"Please do. And Mr. Menon." The young man smiled slightly. "I believe it was the girl’s statement that did it. The one in the Tribune. Somebody left it on Mr. Acheson’s desk."

South Block

6 October 1950

Menon’s cable reached Delhi at noon. By two, it had been read aloud to the Cabinet, and by three the room had settled into a kind of watchful, unglad calm.

"They will not vote," Nehru said. "On either."

"They will let them lie," Ram said. "The British will not push theirs because they cannot win it. We shall not push ours because it would give the Council a chance to amend it. The thing will go to a committee, and the committee will meet for six months and report nothing."

"And Pakistan?"

"Is going to be told, quietly, by the Americans, that two of our terms are not negotiable in decency." Ram almost smiled. "I did not expect Acheson to say it. I think someone read the Tribune."

Mullick, who had come in with a fresh dispatch, cleared his throat. "Prime Minister, there is something from Karachi. An unofficial approach, through a Swiss intermediary. It came last night."

"Go on."

"The War Cabinet is split. Liaquat Ali Khan wishes to fight on. Chaudhry Muhammad Ali and several of the civilians wish to treat. Akbar Khan has been dismissed from the Council, or demoted; it is unclear which. The Swiss say that a delegation might be sent to Delhi within three weeks, if India would agree to talk without publicity."

"What do they want?"

"A cease-fire on the present lines. Release of prisoners. A discussion of the rest." Mullick glanced at the paper. "They do not mention the women."

"Then they will not get a cease-fire." Ram’s voice was quiet. "The women are not a term, Bhola Nath. They are a condition. Tell the Swiss we will receive a delegation the day the Red Cross is in Peshawar. Not before."

"They may refuse."

"They may. I do not think they will refuse for long." Ram turned to Patel. "Vallabhbhai, you have been quiet."

"I am eating," Patel said, with dignity. He set a spoon of ghee down on the saucer. "I am considering whether I trust the Swiss."

"And?"

"I trust them as I trust a cat that has been left alone with a fish. They will carry the message. They will not be sorry to see it carried." He wiped his mouth. "The Red Cross condition is right. It is the one thing they cannot dispute without admitting what Pakistanis have done."

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