Two days before sweeping the polls, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said at an election rally that Great Britain owed it to its rule over India to settle Kashmir. He was, no doubt, making a last-minute effort for wooing the support of the Pakistanis settled in England. But while doing so, he has enunciated a principle that an imperialist power, despite the passage of time, does not change its mind-set.

As coincidence had it, I was in Amritsar when I read Blair's statement. This is the city where the British had the distinction of exhausting all their bullets on some 10,000 people huddled in a walled space on April 13, 1919. General Dyer was then teaching the natives a lesson for raising the demand for independence.

Such are the rich traditions of the Raj which the new British Prime Minister throws at us to remind us of its `obligation' to settle Kashmir. Let him not stir up memories because the entire country is littered with the residues of brutality and crime the British committed during the rule of 150 years.

I hope that the Labour government, if not the party, would be more circumspect in its observations and actions. Throwing at us the obligation of an imperialist power may be goading Indians to a situation where, on the 50th year of Independence, they would be recalling the hanging of revolutionaries, the firings on the innocent and the sufferings of thousands of people in jails, particularly the notorious one at the Andaman.

But I sympathise with Blair who is guided by some of his elders in the party so far as India is concerned. He was 36 when the Ministry of External Affairs sponsored his tour to India. That is an impressionable age. He learnt about Kashmir from Gerald Kaufman, then the shadow foreign minister, who was his companion during the trip. Kaufman's bias against India on Kashmir is well known. A substantial number of voters in his constituency are Mirpuris.

It is not India's case that the Kashmir problem did not exist. In fact, it has conceded even in the Shimla agreement, signed after India's victory, that `a full settlement' on Kashmir was yet to take place. But it was made clear then that the problem was bilateral. Lately, America has understood the position and it has stopped demanding a third-party intervention. Great Britain should also do so.

Some Labour leaders continue to harbour the impression that Kashmir, being a Muslim majority state, should go to Islamic Pakistan. They forget that India has 120 million Muslims, more than the population of Pakistan. At the time of Independence, the princely states were given the option of acceding either to India or to Pakistan. The then Maharajah of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, a Hindu, wanted to stay independent. But when Pakistan's regular and irregular troops attacked the state, he decided to sign the Instrument of Accession with India.

The accession was also endorsed by Sheikh Abdullah, a Muslim leader of the largest popular party, the National Conference. In fact, Jawaharlal Nehru insisted on the ratification of the Instrument of Accession by the Sheikh before accepting it. The Sheikh was approached by Mohammed Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan, twice before partition to join Pakistan but he said no. He preferred secular India.

Blair may not be aware that the plebiscite in the state was not demanded by the United Nations but was offered by Nehru. He stuck to it till 1954 when Pakistan accepted US arms and became a member of CENTO. A new situation was created. It was not Nehru who went back on his offer. It was Pakistan which became part of the Cold War and sided with America to change the very environment in which the offer was made.

The Shimla agreement in 1972 superseded earlier agreements. One operative clause is; ``That the two countries are resolved to settle their differences by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations or by other peaceful means mutually agreed upon between them.'' Pakistan has violated the agreement by fomenting trouble in the Valley through training Kashmiri youths, sending arms and funds and encouraging fundamentalism.

Still New Delhi has laid no condition for holding talks. What India is defending in Kashmir is not territory alone. It is fighting to preserve the principle of secularism which sustains the Indian democratic structure. India did not accept partition of the subcontinent on religious grounds. Nor will it now accept the demand that a Muslim area can secede from the Union on the basis of religion.

The Conservative government had come to appreciate India's stance. So had the Labour leadership despite the prejudice of a few MPs. Blair should not allow their view on Kashmir to prevail. They may wreck the Indo-British relationship which has in the past gone through ups and downs. After the visit of President Venkataraman in 1990, a close understanding came to develop. For Blair to stoke the fires of differences is unfortunate.

The liberal British are a dwindling lot and whatever their number, they are less vociferous than before. It is ironic that democratic socialism was born in the UK. It was a country where ideals of egalitarianism thrived. I think the absence of men of stature outside the system has made the British dependent on mediocre politicians. There are no bright ideas, no intellectual debate. On TV one watches puerile discussions by experts of limited intelligence and politicians of dubious conviction. Thinkers, if there are any, seem to have been pushed into the background.

Blair may well redeem the British. He is dedicated and dynamic. He wants to turn a new leaf. But if he remains lost in the thickets of the `obligation' of the raj, he may fail to pull the country out of the illusions in which it lives.

When I was in London, Labour had the image of a centrist party. Now it is right-of-centre. At times it looks as if Labour is wearing the discarded cloths of Conservatives. To defend its own independent views on solving the country's problems would mean entering into an altogether different debate. Harking back to imperialism will not do.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.