Body of Victim, Body of Warrior. Cabeiri deBergh Robinson
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assembly). International representatives and relief workers recognized both of these governments as “local authorities.” They negotiated with both administrations on pragmatic issues, such as entry into specific territories, and on humanitarian issues, such as refugee relief, protection of minorities, and prisoner exchanges.50 The United Nations Commission on India and Pakistan (UNCIP) tacitly acknowledged both the Interim Government and the Azad Kashmir Government in Security Council resolutions on Kashmir. The resolutions distinguished the Azad Kashmir Government from the Government of Pakistan and the Interim Government from the Government of India, instructing the UN to work with local authorities in reestablishing law and order and arranging for a popular referendum to determine the political future of Jammu and Kashmir.51
Neither government recognized the authority of the other, however. The National Conference and Sheikh Abdullah (who represented Jammu and Kashmir at the UN in Geneva), claimed to be the local authority for the whole of the former Princely State.52 The Muslim Conference identified the Azad Kashmir Government as the government of both “territories of the State of Jammu and Kashmir which have been liberated by the people of that state” and of “the people of the state of Jammu and Kashmir” as a whole.53 As soon as the 1949 ceasefire between India and Pakistan was established, this recognition of local authorities became a central problem for UN mediators, who were trying to carry out the Security Council resolutions by arranging a popular referendum on the future political status of the state. The Government of India and the National Conference’s Interim Government refused to recognize the Muslim Conference’s Azad Kashmir Government, suggesting instead that all officials in AJK territory be replaced with Kashmir State officials appointed by Sheikh Abdullah. They also insisted not only on the withdrawal of Pakistan Army troops but also on the complete disbanding of the Azad Forces and Azad Government Police Services, to be replaced by Kashmir State Troops. The British Commonwealth appointed mediators in 1950 and in 1951, both of whose proposals eventually failed, at least in part, over the question of recognizing the actual authority of the Azad Kashmir Government.54 During these negotiations, refugees from Jammu and Kashmir were recognized as a nascent political constituency when the Government of India agreed to keeping civil armed forces in Azad Kashmir territories, provided that the troops consisted of “residents of the territories who were not followers of the Azad Government,” preferably refugees from the Kashmir Valley.55
The National Conference’s Interim Government and the Muslim Conference’s Azad Kashmir Government each operated under the legal provisions and practices established by the Maharaja’s court.56 Each government attempted to establish its legitimacy by claiming to represent displaced people who were dispersed across spaces not under the governments’ actual territorial control. By 1951, the definition of a “refugee of Jammu and Kashmir” had been firmly established through principles laid out in bilateral Inter-Dominion agreements between India and Pakistan and in the actual administrative practices of allocating temporary land and properties to people displaced from and unable to return to their homes and lands. A Kashmiri refugee was defined as a state subject of the Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir who was displaced from his or her home or who could not return as a result the war of 1947–1948.
Jammu and Kashmir State maintained a distinct “permanent resident” status that conferred separate state rights and privileges even after the Delhi Agreement (1952) gave Indian citizenship to Jammu and Kashmir state subjects.57 This separate status was important for many reasons, not least because it recognized the continuing and uninterrupted status of displaced state subjects resident in Azad Kashmir territory and in Pakistan. In his address to the Constituent Assembly of Jammu and Kashmir on August 11, 1952, Sheikh Abdullah instructed the representatives to recognize the rights of “State Subject Evacuees [who were] living as refugees in [Pakistan and Azad Kashmir].”58 The constitution that the assembly drafted based Jammu and Kashmir state “permanent resident” status on the 1932 Hereditary State Subject definition59; the rights reserved for permanent residents of Jammu and Kashmir were the same as those granted state subjects under the Maharaja’s government. These included the exclusive right to acquire and hold property in the state, to stand for election or be employed by the government, and to receive any form of patronage, such as scholarships.60 Adopted in 1956, the Constitution of Jammu and Kashmir State defined the state as “all the territories which on the 15th day of August, 1947, were under the sovereignty or suzerainty of the Ruler of the State.”61 This included the territories actually controlled by the Azad Kashmir Government and by Pakistan, for which twenty-five seats in the new Legislative Assembly were reserved and held vacant for representatives from the “Pakistan-Occupied territories.”62
Unlike Jammu and Kashmir State in India, Azad Jammu and Kashmir did not adopt a formal constitution until 1970; instead, a series of provisional orders defined the state’s administrative structure until the Azad Jammu and Kashmir Interim Constitution Act was ratified in 1974. In the 1960s, political leaders in AJK debated the transition to a democratic legislative system.63 The Muslim Conference particularly resisted the transition to an electoral system on the grounds that “the institution of democracy would damage the freedom movement and that the area [AJK] would become a settled territory and not a base camp for the liberation of the State.”64 Also unlike Jammu and Kashmir State in India, AJK is not represented in the federal Pakistan Legislative Assembly, and it maintains constitutional autonomy from Pakistan as an internationally disputed territory.
Successive administrations of the Azad Kashmir Government, like those of Jammu and Kashmir State (India), extended citizenship recognition to all hereditary state subjects. The Rules of Business of the Azad Kashmir Government of 1950 reserved state employment and property ownership for state subjects and recognized all displaced state subjects as Kashmiri refugees. Once franchise rights were made a part of an electoral process, all hereditary state subjects were guaranteed electoral representation, AJK political parties demanded that the 1932 Hereditary State Subject law be integrated into the constitutional definition of state citizenship when the first Interim Constitution Act was drafted in 1970.65 The Azad Jammu and Kashmir Interim Constitution Act of 1974 structured the state as a parliamentary democracy, with an elected Legislative Assembly. The franchise was extended to “any state subject who left the Indian-occupied part of Jammu and Kashmir due to the “War of Liberation” and who was living in Azad Kashmir territory or in Pakistan66 and to state subjects who left their homes after 1947 due to the “Indian occupation of the State.”67 Under the Act, displaced state subjects (muhājarīn-e-riyāsat-e-jammū-o-kashmīr) living in Pakistan elect representatives to twelve seats in the Assembly. These seats are not linked to residential electoral areas but rather are allocated according to constituencies based on the last district of residence in the former Princely State. Six of the seats are allocated for refugees displaced from the Kashmir Province and six for refugees displaced from the Jammu Province.
The reservation of refugee seats carries an important representational force with lasting political effects. The equal division of AJK assembly seats does not proportionally represent the refugee electorate, since the overwhelming majority of refugees living in Pakistan were displaced from Jammu Province and most refugees from Kashmir Province are resettled in AJK territory. Instead, it represents the state’s territorial claims through the property claims of refugees in Pakistan. Their participation in AJK elections serves as a ritual that demonstrates the continuous and distinct identity of people from the former Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir, and their registration by district of origin maintains the AJK government’s claims over territories that it does not administer.
LOCATING DISPLACEMENT: THE LINE OF CONTROL AND ITS REFUGEES
When the war between India and Pakistan ended with a UN-negotiated ceasefire on January 1, 1949, the former Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir had two successor political regimes, each of which claimed the legitimate right to rule over the whole state. The so-called UN Ceasefire Line divided the former Princely State’s Kashmir Province, Jammu Province, and the Frontier Areas into regions controlled by India and those controlled by Pakistan. It re-oriented historical regional routes of trade and travel such as the Jhelum River Road, which had connected Muzaffarabad city to Srinagar, to the silk route and the Central Asian cities of Kabul and Kashkar, to Leh and