User:Mar4d/sand

Nehru's plebiscite offer

With India's "abridged authority" in Kashmir, Nehru decided that a settlement must be found since India could not hold Kashmir "at the point of a bayonet". He asserted several of times since 1947 that only Kashmiris have the right to decide their own future. Nehru and the Pakistani Prime Minister Muhammad Ali Bogra discussed Kashmir informally during June 1953. The two then discussed in later talks in Delhi over the naming of a plebiscite administrator. Starting in July 1953, Nehru made a renewed push on the plebiscite option in discussions with Pakistan. In August he proposed that a plebiscite administrator be appointed within six months. Other than demanding that the plebiscite administrator not be from one of the major powers, he placed no other conditions. Reversing his earlier policies, he suggested that the plebiscite could be held in all regions of the state and the state would be partitioned on the basis of the results. He was open to a "different approach" to the scaling back of troops in the State so as to allow a free vote. Pakistan's reluctance to consider an arbitrator other than Admiral Nimitz, of whom India did not approve, stalled the whole proceedings.