Of all India's leaders, the man who might best have induced Hindu and Moslem to live peacefully together is one of Nehru's old comrades-in-arms, Sheik Mohammed Abdullah, the Lion of Kashmir. Despite Kashmir's overwhelmingly Moslem population, Sheik Abdullah believed that it was in his border state's best interest to accede to India rather than to Pakistan after the 1947 partition, and he won Nehru's solemn promise that the people of Kashmir would be permitted free elections to determine their own future—accession to Pakistan or India, or independence.
The sheik was Kashmir's first Prime Minister, and might still be in office if the...
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