My thinking over more than 30 yrs on the Kashmir problem has been elemental: there was "British India" and "Indian India": Britain recognized in international law first India then Pakistan from "British India"; Kashmir was part of the "Indian India" of the puppet "Native Princes" https://twitter.com/subyroy/status/1163983524593930240

India was the sole Successor State of British India and so inherited the @un, IMF, membership etc. Pakistan was a "New State" in international law and hence had to apply afresh for membership, to sign treaties etc... India alone succeeded in suzerainty over the "Native Princes"..

The departing British, in their cunning or incompetence (recall this was post 1945 Britain w rationing & other miseries) invented a legal fiction that the wog "Native Princes" had been directly loyal to the Crown @RoyalFamily (not via HMG), could "Accede" to either India or Pak

Some of Indian India went thru the Accession process eg Patiala (Sikh), Bhopal (Muslim) Travancore-Cochin (Hindu) before the end of British India on 15.8.1947; others did not, Hyderabad Kashmir Junagadh Chitral etc. Technically, India inherited suzerainty over the latter...

as of 15.8.1947, the end of British India, Kashmir became ownerless/sovereignless territory; only the new Pakistan recognised it locally by entering a Standstill Agreement... (to get Sialkot Jammu supplies to continue etc, plus to appease Hari Singh)...Britain and India did not.

Pakistan entered the Standstill Agreement dishonestly, planning to break it shortly, as it gathered rifles and men to take the ownerless territory by force; Patel and Nehru insisted Hari Singh release Abdullah from jail as the rep of Kashmir's majority, but otherwise let it be..

Then the Pakistanis attacked. G Puri, Balraj Kapur and others had warned Delhi but the information was lost. The Pakistanis failed to take Srinagar airport as planned because they stopped for the Rape of Baramullah... India sent forces, and with Abdullah, forced them back.

The sovereignless territory of erstwhile Dogra J&K (which as of 15.8.47 ceased to exist in int law) was Res nullius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Res_nullius open to be taken by force... Pakistan's plans to do exactly that had failed; the territory was divided by "Military Decision" as @UN put it.

So @PMOIndia @DrJitendraSingh @DrSJaishankar @AmitShah @rsprasad @AkbaruddinIndia @NMenonRao @rammadhavbjp forget Hari Singh & his irrelevant "Accession" etc etc... As Sh Abdullah told UNSC Feb 1948 'Aggression is the issue, not Accession"... #TellHarishSalve this for @CIJ_ICJ

The "Accession" stuff was a British red herring from Churchill & Mountbatten, "misleading or distracting" to protect the fiction about the wog Native Princes being supposedly in a direct relationship w "the Crown" @RoyalFamily not just via HMG @10DowningStreet #imperialistfiction