“Most nations have an Army but Pakistan Army has a nation.” — A general quote on Pakistan.
There is a widespread belief among Pakistanis, and even most Kashmiri Muslims have entertained this notion, that Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), being a Muslim-majority state, should be part of Pakistan, or as most Pakistani Muslims claim it as their ‘Jugular Vein’. Is it so? There could not be a bigger lie than this. It is a tragedy of history that most Indians too think so. Religion was never the reason. J&K was never a jugular vein of Pakistan. It has existed and breathed for 78 years without J&K and survived due to some Indian leaders’ follies. It is a different matter if Pakistan now wants to commit suicide by claiming it.
In 1947-49, it was Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru who disallowed the Indian Army to cross the Uri Bridge, probably on the advice of Sheikh Abdullah, a popular Kashmiri leader, who had his own axe to grind. Many history books say so. Then, again Nehru disallowed reinforcements being sent to Skardu Garrison in Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B), which was held by J&K state forces, under Lt Col Sher Jung until April 1948, who later surrendered. G-B and PoK were given on a platter by India without contesting it. PoK & G-B were inadvertent gifts by India and a gift cannot be a jugular vein.
Three Reasons Behind Pakistan’s Claim
So, what were the reasons for Pakistan to claim the entire state of J&K? Was it because of its Muslim majority status? No, not at all. The real reasons were described by Major General Akbar Khan of the Pakistan Army in his book ‘Raiders in Kashmir’. Being a senior Muslim officer of the British Indian Army, he was self-styled chief advisor to Mohammad Ali Jinnah in 1946-47. He was also the infamous ‘General Tariq Ali’ who led the tribal invasion of Kashmir Valley in October 1947. He spells out three reasons in his book to justify Kashmir’s merger with Pakistan: Military, Economic and Agriculture.
The military reason was to provide the newly-created state of Pakistan defence against India from North and North East. It was a general belief among Pakistani intellectuals and military leaders then that ‘Hindu-majority’ India would not accept the creation of Pakistan. This belief continues to haunt most Pakistanis even today. And even after Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in February 1999, assured Pakistan a reality from Minar-e Pakistan, the false fear did not go away. So, it was not the religion but the first line of ‘defence’ that J&K provided to Pakistan as a ‘sacrificial goat’.
The second reason was economic because of the timber from Kashmir forests. Besides, he cites that Kashmir Valley’s scenic beauty attracts tourists. Its snow-covered high mountain peaks were good for adventure sports. It may be noted that before India occupied Siachen Glacier in 1984, Pakistan had been sending mountaineering expeditions to Siachen Glacier. India came to know only in 1983 through a mountaineering expedition, led by Col K I Kumar. Frankly speaking, 1949 CFL (cease fire line) had ended at a map point NJ 9849. Beyond it, the territory was very badly fractured and snow-covered and it was not identified on the ground. This non-identification allowed Pakistan to exploit Siachen as an area to be utilised by foreigners for adventure sports and the money flowed in.
The third reason, agriculture, was most important. It may be noted that Pakistan is an agricultural economy even today. Back in 1947, Pakistan’s Punjab province was the mother of the canal network, serviced by rivers flowing out of J&K. Due to a sheer quirk of fate, eastern Punjab, which formed part of India, was denied this. But agriculture, besides military service, was the primary occupation of the people of Punjab on both sides of the Radcliffe Line. However, Pakistan’s agricultural economy was serviced by and depended on the waters of these canals, which further depended on six rivers – Indus, Jhelum, Chenab, Raavi, Beas and Satluj. These rivers though flowed from Indian Kashmir, making it an upper riparian state and Pakistan a lower riparian state.
Maharaja Hari Singh had no intentions of joining India, or Pakistan. That is why the ‘Stand Still Agreement’ was offered, which Pakistan accepted and signed. After doing so, it committed a blunder by throwing J&K into India’s lap with the tribal invasion, which made the sulking Maharaja decide to join India
Key Factor Behind the Merger with India
Thus, a view prevailed that if J&K was not part of Pakistan, it would give an advantage to India and shatter its economy. But J&K under Maharaja Hari Singh had no intentions of joining India, or Pakistan. This is why the ‘Stand Still Agreement’ was offered, which Pakistan accepted and signed. After doing so, it committed a blunder by throwing J&K in India’s lap by launching the tribal invasion, which made the sulking Maharaja decide to join India. If the tribal invasion had not taken place, who knows what would have been the history of South Asia?
Probably, the tribal invasion was because of the agricultural and economic importance of the waters of the Kashmir rivers. It had led Major General Akbar Khan to convince Jinnah to annex Kashmir, despite the ‘Stand Still Agreement’ with Maharaja Hari Singh, who incidentally wanted to be an independent buffer nation between two new countries. Had J&K been an independent buffer between India and Pakistan, this threat wouldn’t have been there. But emotions, particularly religious ones, blind even sane people and there is darkness all around. In darkness, nothing can be seen. This intellectual darkness led Pakistan to give religious colour and attempt annexation of Kashmir.
This religious colouring masked the Pakistan Army’s own interests in controlling and ruling the nation. Religion was never in its calculations. Kashmir was, to act as a ‘front line of defence’ for Pakistan. Corollary to it was to seek Afghanistan as part of ‘strategic defence’. Unofficially, Pakistan treated Afghanistan as its fifth state. Afghans have understood this conceited purpose of the Pakistan Army.
Pakistan Army’s Bid to Divert Attention
What made Kashmir a ‘jugular vein’ of Pakistan was to ensure the Army’s control over Pakistan. To do so, the Pakistan Army devised a method to perpetuate Indo-Pakistan enmity. Muslim-majority Kashmir became the religious screen of this enmity. The ambiguity of some Indian leaders and some self-oriented Kashmiri leaders allowed this thought to dominate Indo-Pakistan relations.
Feudal society, swarming with illiteracy and poverty-struck masses, therefore, became easy soldiers of this religious madness. Even today 40% of Pakistan’s population is illiterate and lives below the poverty line. But they get easily swayed by such misleading slogans by the Pakistan Army’s Generals. According to the late Tariq Fateh of Pakistani origin but Canadian citizen, more than 200 retired Generals of the Pakistan Army were living in Australia, Canada, the USA, and the UK with their families, after making huge amounts of money.
Imran Khan, ex-cricketer and former Prime Minister of Pakistan, unsuccessfully tried to break this hold of the Pakistan Army in May 2023. But he is now languishing in jail. Still, his party, Pakistan’s Tehreek-e Pakistan (PTI), has been denting the popularity of the Pakistan Army. Besides, militancy in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), where the army was getting the beating, had left no choice with the Army but to divert people’s attention. What was a better way than arousing religious sentiments over ‘Kashmir’.
“Kashmir is the jugular vein of Pakistan,” thundered General Sayeed Asim Munir, chief of the Pakistan Army, while addressing overseas Pakistanis on April 16, 2025. He repeated the same, a day later, while talking to graduating cadets of the 151st Course of Pakistan Military Academy (PMA) at Kakul. He lacerated it with the ‘Two Nation Theory’ to say that Hindus and Muslims were two separate nations and could not stay together. This is the reason, he stressed, that Pakistan was created in the first place. He is not alone. It has been the staple diet of all his predecessors.
The underlying theme of his assertion to say that Kashmir was Pakistan’s jugular vein was to blind Muslims with emotions. It was to arouse the dying religious sentiments of Kashmiris because it was a ‘Muslim majority state’. It is a long-held view of most Pakistanis and even some of the Kashmiri Muslims. And, it is this theme, which led to the killing of 28 ‘Hindus’ on April 22, 2025, in the terrorist attack in the Baisaran Valley of Pahalgam in Kashmir.
The underlying theme of Pakistan Army Chief General Asim Munir’s assertion that Kashmir is Pakistan’s jugular vein aims to arouse the dying religious sentiments of Kashmiri Muslims. It is this theme that led to the killing of 28 ‘Hindus’ on April 22 in the terrorist attack in the Baisaran Valley of Pahalgam in Kashmir
Kashmiri Muslims Brainwashed
It is undoubtedly clear that besides the Pakistani terror group TRF (The Resistance Front), some locals were also involved in facilitating this carnage. This is amply made clear by a tourist Arti Tiwari who had tried to visit Baisaran Valley on April 21, 2025. But she returned halfway, after talking to a suspicious pony driver, who she later identified as the one involved in the terror attack the next day, April 22, 2025. The religious hatred of Kashmiri Muslims is complete.
But they don’t understand that it is not religion that brings people together but culture, history, geography, and traditions. Conversion does not detach one from one’s ethnicity. It is the biggest tragedy that the bulk of Kashmiri Muslims have been so brainwashed to think that their future was bright with Muslim Pakistan. They do not know or don’t understand that the commonality of religion was not the reason that Pakistan wanted Kashmir. Reasons were different as explained by Major General Akbar Khan. They forget that Pakistan had betrayed the pre-partition state of Jammu & Kashmir even after signing the Stand Still Agreement with Maharaja Hari Singh.
Hypothetically speaking, if Pakistan had not invaded J&K in October 1947, then, probably J&K would have been an independent country under a monarchy. It was a betrayal of the people of J&K on the whole and Kashmiri Muslims in particular, by Pakistan in October 1947, that ultimately led to its merger with India. Indian help was sought by Maharaja Hari Singh after acceding to it, under the British Parliament Act of June 4, 1947, which had allowed princely states (some 562 of them under British protection, then) to choose either of the two dominions, India or Pakistan. It is a different matter that India, under Prime Minister Nehru, was a dilly-dallying intervention, as narrated by Field Marshal (then Lt Col) SHFJ Manekshaw to Prem Shankar Jha in his book ‘Rival Versions of History’. Fortunately, Sardar Patel had intervened to force Nehru to a decision to send the Indian military, before so-called tribal raiders of General Tariq Ali could capture Srinagar airport.
Jugular Vein of Pakistan Army
The creation of Pakistan was a conspiracy of Britain. There are ample proofs for this. That is why the West has always favoured it. Lord Mountbatten, then Viceroy of India, wanted J&K state to join Pakistan. This is evident from his statement in reply to a journalist on June 4, 1947, who had asked him about the sovereignty of a princely state. It may be noted that in 1947, British India was in two parts, namely, one ruled directly by the Crown and two, 562 Princely states who had separate pacts with India’s British Government. Indian Act of Independence of 1947 allowed the Princely States to either stay independent or join either of the two dominions. The journalist had asked Mountbatten as to what should be the principle of a princely state to choose between the two dominions. The curt reply of the Viceroy was, “It depended upon geographical contiguity and people’s desire.” It indirectly meant that the J&K state must merge with Pakistan.
Kashmiri Muslims don’t understand that it is not religion that brings people together but culture, history, geography, and traditions. Conversion does not detach one from one’s ethnicity. It is the biggest tragedy that the bulk of Kashmiri Muslims have been so brainwashed to think that their future was bright with Muslim Pakistan
It may also be noted that when the Indian Army intervened in J&K, it was against the wishes of Lord Mountbatten. He was using his relationship with Nehru to dilly-dally it as explained in the book ‘Rival Versions of History’. But when tribal raiders’ offensive was blunted by the Indian Army’s intervention before reaching Srinagar, the Pakistan Army and Jinnah contemplated using the army to attack near the Jammu region to cut off Indian forces in the valley. India was ready to counter it. Lord Mountbatten had rushed to Lahore in November 1947 to tell Jinnah that he would be declared aggressor and the UN would get involved to evict him. He told Jinnah that he would prevail upon Nehru to take the matter to the UN to settle the dispute. And so, it happened. Nehru took the matter to UNSC but under a wrong charter. Instead of asking for eviction of the aggressor, he sought settlement of the dispute – while the Maharaja of J&K had already acceded to India legally on October 25, 1947. It was Lord Mountbatten-induced blunder by Nehru that Pakistan was allowed to consider Kashmir as a jugular vein. Ironically, it is not the jugular vein of Pakistan anymore but of the Pakistan Army. If peace takes place between two nations, there goes the Pakistan Army, and its Generals, dead or alive, will face Nuremberg-type trials.
-An ex-NDA and Wellington Staff College graduate, Col Rajinder Singh is a renowned author and security analyst. He has authored four books, two individually and two in collaboration. His best-selling books are Kashmir – A Different Perspective and The ULFA Insurgency. The views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Raksha Anirveda
