Jeremy Corbyn

I will be brief, because a lot of colleagues want to get in. I compliment the hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) on his superb presentation, which showed passion and knowledge of the issue. The fundamental issue, of course, is the one that the hon. Gentleman hit on many times: this is not a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan, but an international issue that comes from all that went on in the process of the decolonisation of British India in 1947-48. It was India that referred the issue to the United Nations for resolution, so India’s constant denial that it is a UN matter fits rather strangely with Indian political history ever since that time. The effects of the partition of Kashmir and the line of control have been beyond dramatic for both India and Pakistan. The partition encouraged massive levels of arms expenditure in both countries, doing enormous damage to the social infrastructure of both societies, in the ’50s, ’60s and ever since. It then encouraged both countries to develop nuclear weapons and to leave the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. The inadequacy of British behaviour in the 1940s led to the militarisation of the whole of the subcontinent; the loss of thousands of lives in successive conflicts between India and Pakistan, as well as with China; and, of course, the ever presence of nuclear weapons. If we look at India’s and Pakistan’s expenditure on defence compared with the expenditure that should be going on education and social needs, we begin to see the consequences of the issue. Many people in this country feel very strongly about this issue. They are from Kashmir themselves, or they have grandparents, parents and many relatives in Kashmir; there is a very close relationship. They feel angry—the hon. Member for Bradford East put this well—that at every election, when party leaders happen to descend on Birmingham, Bradford or parts of London, they are given a note by their offices saying, “Say something about Kashmir, because it’ll go down well.” They do, and it does go down well, and that is the end of the story. Absolutely nothing has been done, by any Government, for a very long time to promote the idea that the people of Kashmir should be allowed to decide their own future. That is not to say that there are not serious imperfections in both Azad Kashmir and Jammu Kashmir. The Indian military presence in Indian-occupied Kashmir is now the biggest it has been for a very long time. Successive laws have been passed, particularly by the Modi Government, to reduce the special status of Kashmir—which at least gave a nod towards the idea that it was an international dispute to be settled—and, essentially, to try to fully annex it. I hope that, when the Minister replies, he will tell us that the Government recognise, first, that the issue should go to the UN, that the Government will push it at the UN as a permanent member of the Security Council, and that the Government will revisit the UN statements made in the 1940s and the many since. Secondly, I hope that the Government will do everything they can to encourage the self-determination of the people on both sides of the line of control in Kashmir. The idea that a beautiful place such as Kashmir, with such history and potential, should be divided and occupied by the military, and that resources go into the military and into what becomes a security state because of the tensions over the occupation of Kashmir is incomplete decolonisation. It is decolonisation that should have happened in the 1940s. Britain, because of its colonial history, has a very special responsibility to ensure that the people of Kashmir are able to decide their own future.