India-Pakistan relations

(I might be updating this post)

Frontline has a review by A.G. Noorani about a 10 volume work on India-Pakistan relations by Avtar Singh Bhasin who "served in the Ministry of External Affairs for three decades in various capacities". It contains an enormous amount of material displayed for the first time.

 Some of the quotes are eye-popping.

Deputy Prime Minister Vallabhbhai Patel demanded territory from Pakistan “to enable us to settle” the refugees from that country. Given his outlook, it is not surprising that President Rajendra Prasad agreed with him.

Nehru described Mohammad Ali’s [Pakistan's foreign minister] ‘approach as intriguing’. Ali had blamed India for Pakistan’s military alliances and alignment with the West, to which India had taken exception. Mohammad Ali said, since India had failed to resolve the issues between them to Pakistan’s satisfaction, he had to enter into a military alliance.
...
The Soviet Ambassador in New Delhi, reporting to Nehru on the meeting of his colleague in Karachi with Noon, told the Indian Prime Minister that Noon had offered to walk out of the Baghdad Pact, ‘provided the Soviet Union gave assurances to support Pakistan in the United Nations on the Kashmir issue and further assurances to give military aid to Pakistan if attacked by India’.”

Moscow exerted itself strongly to persuade New Delhi to stiffen its policy towards Beijing through a Treaty of Alliance with the USSR—and burn its bridges with China; the USSR remaining free, of course, to make up with China, as it did in 1986-89, leaving India high and dry very much like the U.S’ policy today. 

 Particularly useful is the record of the Swaran Singh-Z.A. Bhutto talks on Kashmir. Bhasin does a service in reproducing full texts of the rival proposals made on January 19, 1963. They prove that by 1963 Pakistan had discarded a plebiscite in favour of a partition. It wanted all of the State minus Kathua. India was prepared to concede 3,500 square miles