Kashmir
81
the Kashmir people, and not the politicians in India (or, for that matter, Pakistan), should determine the future of the state. Despite these apparently significant obstacles the Indian government and Abdullah did reach an agreement. Under the Kashmir Accord of February , Abdullah accepted that Kashmir was ‘a constituent unit of the Union of India’ albeit with special status.53 In return he became chief minister. Abdullah’s Kashmiri opponents and the Pakistani government denounced the accord as a sell-out and there was no escaping the fact that it represented a great achievement for Indira Gandhi. In October she celebrated her political breakthrough by paying a state visit to Srinagar. Sheikh Abdullah laid on a traditional boat procession. When thirty-two turbaned oarsmen carried the Indian leader across the Dal Lake, the banks were lined by thousands of people. Given what has happened in Kashmir since it is a remarkable fact that they cheered her on her way. If the Indian government was making some limited moves to find an accommodation with the Kashmiri people, it remained determined to ensure that Pakistan be kept at bay. The latent hostility between Islamabad and Delhi found violent expression in when the country’s two armies clashed once again, this time fighting on the Siachin Glacier in the east of Kashmir. Despite all the attention paid to ceasefire lines in , at Tashkent and at Simla, no one had seen any point in demarcating the glacial wasteland that lay at the eastern end of the line of control. In any event, the territory was so hostile that independent survey teams were unable to access it. Consequently, the line of control stopped short of the glacier and there was no internationally recognised line that clarified which parts of it belonged to which side. The crisis over the Siachin Glacier had been developing for some years. In the late s, India was concerned to note that some mountain-climbing expeditions were seeking Pakistani, rather than Indian, permission to climb on the glacier. In Delhi became even more worried: some recently published Pakistani maps showed the glacier as part of Pakistani-held Kashmir. Delhi responded to this ‘cartographic aggression’ by deploying troops on the glacier, capturing the high ground that they have never subsequently relinquished. The two sides have fought for the glacier ever since, although the