ABSTRACT
The Indian National Congress, committed to secularism, had never recognized the logic of a confessional state and had only accepted Partition on the principle of national self-determination. The procrastination of the Indian government to divide the assets and stores of British India was seen in Pakistan as a device to reverse the Partition. Kashmir institutionalized in a microcosm all the historical irritations between India and Pakistan and has continued to defy rational solutions. The Indians sought to confine the activities of the Commission to peace-keeping and to act as observers in a plebiscite to be held under the incumbent pro-Indian Kashmiri administration. Jawaharlal Nehru was confident that in a fair and free plebiscite the people of Kashmir would opt to remain in India. Nehru refrained from intervening in Kashmir but was greatly disillusioned; and much of his determination for keeping Kashmir in India appears to have deserted him.
