|
Magazine
PAST & PRESENT
The strange case of Sir C.P. Ramaswamy Iyer
RAMACHANDRA GUHA
|
Why was Sir C.P. not chosen to represent India at the U.N. over the Kashmir issue?
|
Photo: The Hindu Photo Library
Missed opportunities: Sir C.P.Ramaswamy Iyer with Sir James Rae, Sir Henry and Lady Wheeler and other members of the Wheeler Committee, at Madras in 1936.
On January 1, 1948, India decided to take the Kashmir dispute to the United Nations. That decision has in recent years been subject to much criticism. Some Indians believe that Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru should have settled the dispute by force,
and instructed the army to clear the State of Jammu and Kashmir of all infiltrators. They claim that he was badly advised by his Governor General, Lord Mountbatten, and add that Nehru listened because of his friendship with Mountbatten’s wife and his general admiration for all things British.
On the other hand, it has been argued that as a new nation-State, India had certain obligations. These included the acceptance of the U.N. as a body for arbitration in the case of inter-national disputes. Since the Pakistani aggression was so manifestly a case of unprovoked aggression, India was hopeful that a resolution would come in its favour. Those who understand military matters also point out that the northern part of Kashmir was rocky terrain, where the army would have been bogged down by guerrillas.
Wrong choice of representative
Many years ago, I was told by the civil servant C.S. Venkatachar, then a high official in the Government of India, that we were right in going to the United Nations, but wrong in the choice of the man sent to represent us. Pakistan had deputed Mohammed Zafrullah Khan to argue their case. Zafrullah was both a brilliant lawyer and a superb host. In the meetings of the Security Council he argued the Pakistani point of view eloquently and effectively. Outside the portals of the U.N., he entertained the representatives of the powerful Western powers.
The Indian representative was the canny administrator, Gopalswami Iyengar. Iyengar was a good man to have in the Secretariat, masterly in writing notes on file that summarised in a few crisp points a complex argument. But he was not the best of speakers, nor — at least in the context of Manhattan — the most charming of hosts (that he was a vegetarian and teetotaller hardly helped). In the early discussions, Zafrullah ran rings around Iyengar, establishing an advantage that Pakistan have never since relinquished. For, from those first days of the internationalisation of the Kashmir dispute, the Western nations have been inclined to take Pakistan’s side against India’s.
A better choice
Venkatachar believed that Zafrullah could have been neutralised had India instead sent C.P. Ramaswamy Iyer as its principal spokesman. Sir C. P. was a brilliantly gifted lawyer and speaker, who had travelled widely in Europe and imbibed the best (some would also say the worst) in European culture. He had no dietary or drinking inhibitions. In and out of the U.N., he would have put the best possible spin on India’s case for Kashmir.
Why then did India not send Sir C.P.? The answer is that it could not. That Iyer was brilliant was beyond doubt; but that he was committed to the Indian nation was. His patriotism had been called into question when, in the summer of 1946, he announced that the State of Travancore (of which he was then Dewan) would not join the soon-to-be-free India but claim an independent status of its own. He established secret ties with senior Ministers of the British Government, who encouraged him in the hope that he would give them privileged access to monazite, a material Travancore was rich in and which could give the British a lead in the atomic arms race. Also egging on Travancore’s bid for independence was Mohammed Ali Jinnah. On June 20, 1947, Jinnah wired Iyer to say that Pakistan was “ready to establish relationship with Travancore which will be of mutual advantage”. The Dewan replied that since his State was taking steps to “maintain herself as an independent entity”, he proposed that a treaty be signed between the “independent Sovereign State” of Travancore and the Government of Pakistan.
A month later, on July 20, Iyer met Lord Mountbatten in Delhi, and told him in no uncertain terms of what he thought of the main leaders of Indian nationalism. The Prime Minister-in-waiting, Jawaharlal Nehru, was dismissed as “unstable”. The Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, was described as “the most dangerous influence in India” and a “sex maniac who could not keep his hands off young girls”. Having thus unburdened himself, Sir C.P. returned to Travancore, where, a week later, he was attacked and seriously injured by a left-wing activist. The injury induced an abrupt change of mind as, from his hospital bed, Iyer advised the Maharaja to abandon their shared dream of independence and join the Dominion of India.
Different fortunes
The historian Sarvepalli Gopal once described C.P. Ramaswamy Iyer as a man “of unbalanced ambition and vanity”. But he was also very competent and, in the sphere of legal argument, quite outstanding. But after what he had done in the run up to Independence, we could scarcely have chosen him to represent us in the United Nations. In later years, however, Iyer made his peace with the rulers of free India, being rewarded, among other things, with the Vice Chancellorship of the Banaras Hindu University. Ironically, the man he might have opposed in New York, Zafrullah Khan, instead parted ways with a country which he had served loyally. Zafrullah was an Ahmadiya, a member of a sect regarded by orthodox Muslims as heretical. And so, as the influence of fundamentalism grew in Pakistan, the man who had helped keep their case for Kashmir alive was forced into long years of exile in London.
ramguha@vsnl.com
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Magazine
|
