Two incontrovertible truths dominate the horizon like ancient but immoveable rocks. Nehru thought a federal link would repudiate the two-nation theory, which he had always found repugnant. Bush Jr’s retaliation over 9/11.Across the chasm of time and space, I heard the lamenting voice of Arthur Moore, possibly the most famous of the Statesman’s editors, as Gen. Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru hovered approvingly behind Moore, whose counsel of reason demands to be heard with respect as a wounded India desperately seeks a solution. Moore was about to do so when tragedy struck — the Mahatma was assassinated. Geography allows no alternative. A shattered Abdullah flew back to New Delhi for the Prime Minister’s cremation. It did just that, and Field Marshal Ayub Khan was later to claim that he rejected Sheikh Abdullah’s proposed confederal arrangements among India, Pakistan and Kashmir. He replied that “the time is not yet.

Without that running sore (to repeat Napoleon’s term for the resistance in Spain), the Pakistanis would have no excuse for intrusion.Arthur Moore, an Ulsterman who was editor of the Statesman from 1932 to 1942 when he was sacked under pressure wholesale screw plugs from the Viceroy, was convinced federation was the only way out for the subcontinent. Kashmir is the great test for Narendra Modi’s statesmanship, as it was for Nehru’s.”That sad truth, as relevant today as in 1948, demands an imaginative far-reaching vision. He had been converted to the one-world theory in the l930s and proposed self-government for India in an article in the Manchester Guardian in October 1938 titled “A Federal British Commonwealth”.It was with these considerations in mind that Nehru had confessed to Selig Harrison of the Washington Post: “Confederation remains our ultimate goal”.” As Moore warned: “Pakistan canal disputes, boundary disputes, displaced persons disputes — all these may be solved; trade between the two countries may be developed; but there will never be satisfactory relations between India and Pakistan till the Kashmir issue is amicably settled. Gandhi “was much interested” in his views and asked him to get Nehru’s opinion.

Nehru’s mention of federalism to Harrison was off the record for he knew that premature publicity would raise Pakistani hackles. Students of history will hear in that passion for vengeance echoes of Cato the Elder, the 2nd century Roman politician who began every speech with “Delenda est Cartago (Carthage Must Be Destroyed)”. He saw it as a ruse for Indian domination. He may even have sent Sheikh Abdullah to Pakistan in May 1964 to broach these ideas.The writer is a senior journalist, columnist and author. The two eminent panellists were too responsible to recommend outright hostilities like some TV anchors and newsreaders ever since the Uri massacre. That was in 1962, 14 years after Moore spoke to Gandhi about his plan for Kashmir to “be treated as an equal third party” in “a federated Commonwealth state, with common foreign affairs, common defence, and such finance as concerned these subjects, but all three to be separate self-governing states”. Neighbours must always remain neighbours, and it’s in their own ultimate interest to be good neighbours.