June 29, 1998
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Red Star
Over Rawalpindi Story of the only communist coup attempt in Pakistan, with a Kashmir angle to boot. By A K Ray THE RAWALPINDI CONSPIRACY 1951 The first thing that strikes the reader is the author's access to classified records. The volume and the type of archives declassified by the Pakistan Government in this connection are truly remarkable. One hopes our hyper-secretive babudom will learn something from this. The title of the book (The Times and Trial of the Rawalpindi Conspiracy 1951: The First Coup Attempt in Pakistan) is somewhat misleading. The 137-page chapter titled "The first cause -- the state of Jammu and Kashmir" constitutes the bulk of the work. It is a plausibly argued restatement of the Pakistani stand on Kashmir but free of the usual rancour and rancid rhetoric. An overdependence on the none too reputed work of Alastair Lamb has undoubtedly flawed it but that was perhaps to be expected. There is one other fault. It lies in the unquestioning acceptance of whatever appeared in the operations diaries of various units engaged in the fighting in Kashmir. The author has obviously not paid heed to the caveats of the Pakistani Army's Lt-General (retd) Shaukat Riza in his book on the 1965 war. The result is often the clothing of overall failures with minor successes. Indian readers will be greatly interested in the author's admission, with proof, that by November 1948 Pakistan was in dire military straits and a cease-fire was the only way out. This underscores India's grievous blunder at that time. Zaheer's attempt to portray Mountbatten as more or less our errand boy does not succeed. The conspiracy, the trial and the verdict were one-day stories for our media. Our legal luminaries will no doubt take note of the writer's exposure of the iniquities of the Rawalpindi Conspiracy (Special Tribunal) Act, 1951 and the procedures followed by the tribunal. It seems the accused were denied even the minimum norms of natural justice. The conspiracy story itself is not a whodunit but a narration of facts based on official records. What strikes one, as it did the writer, is the hamhanded manner in which Major-General Akbar Khan went about organising the coup. His interviews with the accused and others only confirm this impression. It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that the whole thing was a got-up job in which Khan had to pay the price for tying up with the communists. Indeed, it is the communist and Soviet connection which is a fascinating part of the story. It is significant that at every crucial point two characters pop up, both of whom were convicted in the Rawalpindi Conspiracy case. The first was Sajjad Zaheer of the Communist Party of India (CPI) who had been sent to Pakistan with false papers by the CPI to work underground and organise the Communist Party of Pakistan.The second was poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz (his fans in India will please note). It seems that the Soviet Union was ready to back Akbar Khan if the projected coup would have helped gain it the coveted access to warm waters. It can be also surmised that Stalin's invitation to Liaqat Ali Khan was based on a rather rosy picture of the military situation in Kashmir painted by Sajjad Zaheer as well as Pakistani Army sources. When the tide turned, the USSR wriggled out. The author has done quite well to provide enough material on these two points. On the whole, how-ever, this is a well-written book. Hasan Zaheer's prose is spare, lucid and direct, with hardly a trace of bureaucratese. The index could do with some improvement. Nevertheless, it seems a good and useful book to have and to read.
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