Kashmir accession and the first Indo-Pakistani war

In October 1947, two months after independence, armed tribesmen from Pakistan's northwest frontier crossed into the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. The state's ruler, Maharaja Hari Singh, a Hindu who ruled a mostly Muslim population, had not decided whether to join India or Pakistan. On October 26, as the raiders approached Srinagar, he signed the Instrument of Accession to India, and on October 27 Indian troops were flown into the capital. The first Indo-Pakistani war followed, lasting until a ceasefire took effect on January 1, 1949.¹²

At partition the roughly 560 princely states were told to join one of the two new dominions, using the criteria of geography and population. Hari Singh hoped for independence and signed a standstill agreement with Pakistan. A revolt in Poonch, in the west of the state, and the arrival of the raiders, which Pakistan supported, pushed him to India. India agreed to hold a plebiscite once order returned, a promise it later said was conditional. Pakistani regular troops entered the fight in 1948.³

India took the issue to the UN in January 1948, and the Security Council called for a ceasefire, withdrawals and a plebiscite, and sent a commission. The ceasefire line, drawn in July 1949, left India with the Kashmir Valley, Jammu and Ladakh, and Pakistan with Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. After the 1971 war it became the Line of Control. The dispute shaped relations between the two countries ever since.²