A time comes when the real facts need to be revealed. It is sometimes necessary to let the real facts be known to clear the fog that envelops the history of Kashmir- the saffron valley, as I call it- the history that is a continuous chain of treachery, manipulation and betrayal of principles of justice, and law. The grim violation of the Line of Control in the Mendhar area of Poonch district of Jammu region, which resulted in the death of Lance Naik Hemraj and Lance Naik Sudhakar Singh of 13 Rajasthan Rifles, and decapitation of one of them 600 meters inside Indian territory, raises fundamental questions about New Delhi’s attitude towards this luckless region since the creation of the Republic.
Despite Islamabad’s frequent recourse to military means to grab Jammu and Kashmir from India, successive Congress regimes have made questionable deals with Pakistani leaders and later claimed ‘betrayal’ to silence critics. Yet few have been so passionately committed to diplomacy and back channel dialogue to surrender Indian advantages (Siachen, Sir Creek, Musharraf formula) as the Congress-dominated UPA, which remains keen to remove the Armed Forces Special Powers Act from the State despite objections from the Army.
State-funded scholars have connived to keep reams of critical material suppressed from the historical record for decades, and much is still sealed in the archives. Yet, enough evidence has seeped into the public domain in recent years to make a fresh appraisal of the independence era necessary and possible.
Briefly, the last ruler of the kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir fell into disfavor with the British Raj when he expressed support for the freedom movement at the Round Table Conference in London in 1930, “As Indians and loyal to the land of our birth, we stand as solidly as the rest of our countrymen for our enjoyment of a position of honour and equality in the British Commonwealth”.
Strangely, this did not endear him to the Congress leadership, which paid scant regard to British machinations in this strategically vital State, supported Sheikh Abdullah’s vicious campaign against one of the most progressive monarchies in the country in 1946, and connived in its difficulties and subsequent partition.
The British began fomenting communal trouble in the State through the services of a mysterious Abdul Qadir in June 1931 itself, and in 1935 forced Maharaja Hari Singh to lease the Gilgit Agency to them for a period of 60 years on grounds of securing the frontier against Russian designs. The lease was abruptly terminated on August 1, 1947, leaving an ill-prepared kingdom to take responsibility for a vast frontier in an extremely turbulent period. Not surprisingly, the bulk of this territory was successfully grabbed by Pakistan in the war of 1947-48 (and designated as the Northern Areas and Azad Kashmir) with the active connivance of the British officers there and the manoeuvring of Louis Mountbatten in Delhi.
The original boundaries of the kingdom stretched up to Tibet, China, Tsarist Russia and Afghanistan; such is the extent of territory lost to India due to the stranglehold of Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru on Congress, and Mountbatten’s influence on both. The Viceroy, it may be mentioned, actually hinted to the Maharaja that he should accede to Pakistan, explaining with maps and plans how the kingdom was physically integrated with the North West Frontier Province!
The kingdom’s Achilles heel was Mirpur, Poonch and Muzaffarabad, and the adjoining areas of Punjab where, around partition, communal passions were ignited and the Muslim population instigated to demand merger with Pakistan, triggering extreme anxiety amongst the Hindus and Sikhs of these regions, Hindus and Jammu, and Buddhists of Ladakh, who favoured India. This difficult situation caused the Maharaja to offer Standstill Agreements to India and Pakistan.
Indian academics have been scandalously remiss in not questioning the motives of the Congress leadership in Delhi for sitting pretty when Pakistan made its first moves by imposing an economic blockade on this critical region and starving it of essential commodities. Nehru promised to help on October 20, 1947, but made it clear that his priority was the release of Sheikh Abdullah from jail and his political empowerment at the height of the turbulence, even advising the king against acceding to India until the Sheikh was installed as popular ruler!
Nor did Delhi react when destitute refugees from Sialkot began entering Jammu. Pakistan armed Punjabi Muslims in Poonch and ex-servicemen from Mirpur, and turned the whole border with Punjab volatile. It then sent Major ASB Shah, joint secretary of its Foreign Ministry, to Srinagar with a blank Instrument of Accession for the Maharaja to sign, so confident was it of its ability to manoeuvre the kingdom into its lap!
The State forces had to be spread out as Hindu homes and villages were being looted and burned. But the commander, Brigadier Scot and Inspector General of Police Powell both abruptly resigned from office just before the real trouble broke when they realised that the Maharaja was not for Pakistan. Clearly, the British design was to push him towards Pakistan, or create crisis and partition the State if he did not.
Pakistan fomented trouble in Poonch, Bhimbar, Kotli, Mirpur and Muzaffarabad, recruiting 60,000 retired and demobilized soldiers of the Indian Army. The besieged Maharaja appealed to Maharaja Yadvindra Singh of Patiala, who did his best to help.
The details of the battles fought by the State forces with little or no ammunition or food supplies, in adverse weather and with thousands of refugees from Punjab and the Kashmir border regions to escort to safety, cannot be detailed here. What India must remember with gratitude is that Maharaja Hari Singh had the vision to have the Pathankot Jammu road link completed on war footing to ensure physical integration with India. He urged Sardar Patel to send him guns and ammunition to blow up the Kohala Bridge from where he anticipated Pakistani ingress. Sadly, New Delhi was tardy and even Patel did not see the urgency of the situation and did not agree to immediate accession without transferring power to Sheikh Abdullah, whose legacy and that of his dynasty is there for all to see.
The actual war broke out on the night of October 21-22 at Muzaffarabad and Domel. Five days of murder, rape and mayhem of the civilian population was allowed before VP Menon flew to Srinagar with the accession document on October 26, 1947. Mountbatten accepted it, with conditions not imposed on any other ruler, on October 27, 1947. Then he steered India into the quagmire of the Security Council and secured the de facto partition of the strategic frontier and its control by Pakistan, and leaving India with a moth-eaten State of Jammu and Kashmir, returned to London in triumph.
It is time to question the ‘vision’ of the great men who presided over the nation’s destiny at that critical hour, and the wisdom of successors who keep trying to fool the nation so that strategic territory can be gifted to Pakistan
The duplicitous games played with the only monarch who embraced Indian nationalism long before freedom could be seen on the horizon, whose accession retained India’s civilization and geographical link with the land of sage Kashyap, is best gauged from his anguished letter to President Rajendra Prasad on 16-17 August 1952, three days before the monarch was abruptly abolished.
The 9000-odd word missive details the treachery of the Delhi durbar, choreographed by Jawaharlal Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah; Louis Mountbatten had moved on after initiating the State’s ruination. That such an important historical document is untraceable in the collected works of Indian statesmen is a telling commentary on how State-funded historians have fiddled with the history and memory of the Indian people. The integrity of such collections can be restored only by making every letter public, so that the nation can assess the heroes, villains and knaves for itself.
Writing from exile in Poona, Hari Singh informed the President that since his accession to the throne in 1925, the British had strengthened their hold on the State due to its great strategic importance. Hari Singh incurred their wrath as he tried to curtail their domination.
They instigated a religious rebellion in 1931 with slogans like ‘Down with Hindu Raj’ and ‘Islam in danger’; its key leaders like Chaudhary Ghulam Abbas and Maulvi Yusuf Shah received official posts in ‘Azad’ Kashmir. Within the kingdom, the leaders gained Congress cooperation by calling themselves ‘National Conference’. In 1947, Mountbatten hinted that the Maharaja join Pakistan, while the Government of India’s attitude was desultory.
In September 1947, Hari Singh was asked to appoint Mehr Chand Mahajan as Prime Minister; the latter was briefed by Sardar Patel and promised full cooperation. But on October 21, 1947, Patel wrote to MC Mahajan saying that Sheikh Abdullah (released from prison) was anxious to help the State deal with the troubles and wanted his hands strengthened. Nehru penned a similar letter to Mahajan, urging formation of a provincial government headed by Abdullah, the “most popular person in Kashmir”. Nehru urged withholding accession to India till such Interim Government was installed in the State. (Accession finally happened on October 26-27 in well-known circumstances).
Nehru again pressed Hari Singh for Abdullah’s elevation on November 13, 1947. On December 9, 1947, Minister without Portfolio, N Gopalaswami Ayyangar, urged immediate changes in the State’s constitutional and administrative set up, and sent a draft Proclamation approved by Abdullah, for Hari Singh to issue. Gopalaswami insisted on the matter on March 1, 1948, claiming Sheikh was vital to India’s case in the Security Council. Nudged by Nehru, Abdullah made some polite noises and on March 5, 1948, the Maharaja issued the Proclamation referred to in Article 370 of the Indian Constitution.
Between March 1948 and April 1949 when he was forced to quit the State, Hari Singh complained that Sheikh Abdullah and his party assumed total control, ignoring the king and directly securing the consent of the Government of India for whatever they wished. Sheikh objected when the Maharaja and his wife began touring the State to interact with the people and got Delhi to make the Maharaja quit the State ‘for a few months’.
The Yuvraj was appointed Regent, but reduced to a figurehead. The Proclamation of March 1948 stipulated appointment of a Dewan and reserved subjects, yet Abdullah subverted this repeatedly with Nehru’s backing. Hari Singh’s record of this constitutional sabotage makes painful reading even today as the nation reels in shock at the brutal mutilation of its brave jawans defending its difficult borders.
After the king’s eviction, Sheikh Abdullah aspired for absolute control. In a frontal attack on the Maharaja, he began interfering with his private properties, including administration of the Dharmarth Trust created by the dynasty of which Hari Singh was sole Trustee. Charities and institutions maintained from Trust revenues were starved of funds, costs of Puja in temples and Devasthans denied, and the Jammu branch of the Imperial Bank of India ordered to deny the Trustee the amounts of the fixed deposits of the Trust and to transfer the deposits to its Bombay Office! This single episode is the best instance of how Nehruvian secularism would unravel in independent India. Even now, there should be an inquiry into whose orders made the bank act in this manner.
By far the worst was Sheikh Abdullah’s slander – repeated by Nehru in an exceedingly rude letter to the Maharaja – that Hari Singh ran away to Jammu when the invasion began, when the truth is that he left on October 25 at the urging of VP Menon and in the larger interests of the State as the raiders were already at Baramulla. It was Sheikh Abdullah who fled from Srinagar for Delhi (and Nehru’s home) and did not return till Indian troops started landing in Srinagar.
In November 1950, Vishnu Sahay urged the Maharaja to set up a Constituent Assembly for the State, as foreshadowed in the March 1948 Proclamation, and now demanded by the National Conference. A draft Proclamation was sent for the Maharaja’s comments.
Hari Singh objected to this manner of setting up the Constituent Assembly as he was the properly constituted authority in law to promulgate the Proclamation, and not the Regent (Yuvraj). He felt the powers and functions of the Constituent Assembly should be express, well-defined and accurately worded and exclude from its purview matters not expressly entrusted to it. It should report to the authority that constitutes it, i.e. the ruler who shall seek the advice of the Parliament of India in the matter. But ultimately, the Maharaja was forced to permit the Yuvraj to set up the Constituent Assembly.
Warning the President of the dangers ahead, the Maharaja said the Indian Government had failed to appreciate the legal position; Nehru was taking it for granted that the relevant Articles, particularly Article 370, of the Indian Constitution can be altered and/or amended to suit Sheikh Abdullah. But Article 370 refers specifically to the Maharaja’s Proclamation of March 5, 1948. That is the law which governs the State of Jammu and Kashmir until a new Constitution is framed, approved and adopted not only by the Constituent Assembly of the State but also approved by the King and then by the President of India. But Nehru asked the Yuvraj (who is acting only as Regent) to become the elected Head of State with immediate effort, even before the State Constitution was framed, let alone approved and adopted. He thus deposed the king and the dynasty.
How, the aggrieved king asked the President, could the Government of India take all these steps over the head of the person on whose authority they entered the State and are continuing there and who was the Chief Author of the Proclamation on which is based the future construction of political set up in the country? Despite acting in good faith on the advice of the Indian Government, Mountbatten, Nehru, Patel and Gopalaswami, and despite Abdullah’s promises and assurances, he was eliminated by a process which was neither fair nor honourable. “Only history and posterity will be able to do justice to our respective points of view,” Hari Singh concluded. Perhaps the time for this has arrived.
War of 1947 was manipulated
Maharaja Hari Singh’s agony over the conduct of the war to liberate the invaded territories in 1947 raises serious questions about Delhi’s intentions towards the kingdom and people of Jammu and Kashmir. Did a core leadership in the Congress and native Indian bureaucracy have a secret understanding with the British regarding ‘sacrifice’ of a region contiguous to Pakistan and desired by the British to oversee Soviet Russia and its satellites in the looming Cold War? Scholars must examine the matter in view of new facts coming to light, beginning with the decision to retain Louis Mountbatten as first Governor General of India, when Mohammad Ali Jinnah, to whom the British gifted a new country, gave him the boot.
The modern kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir emerged when Gulab Singh, the Dogra general of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, became ruler of Jammu region in 1820. By 1850, Gulab Singh had settled the boundaries of the kingdom as they existed till 1947 when Pakistan attacked. Sadly, India’s new rulers subverted General KM Cariappa’s efforts to liberate the areas seized by Pakistan and allowed Gilgit to fall by November 1947. Mirpur fell the same month.
The invasion began on October 21-22, 1947. Muzaffarabad was quickly seized and Uri invaded. The Maharaja’s army had just 12 battalions with 12,000 soldiers and some officers, and a 700 km-long border to defend. Hari Singh decided to personally lead the defence of his beleaguered kingdom, but was dissuaded by his army chief, Brigadier Rajinder Singh, who was then deployed with just 125 soldiers on October 24, 1947, to stop the enemy at Baramulla at all costs, ‘to the last man and last bullet’, a command he followed in letter and spirit.
Citizens must ask why the Defence Committee chaired by Louis Mountbatten rejected Hari Singh’s call for help on October 25, and wasted valuable time sending VP Menon, Secretary, States Ministry, to Srinagar without the Accession document. There, realising the gravity of the situation, Menon urged Hari Singh to leave for Jammu and softened him regarding Sheikh Abdullah who was extremely hostile towards the king. On October 26 Menon returned to Jammu with the Instrument of Accession, which the king signed. The Indian Army landed in Srinagar on October 27. Anywhere in the world a commander-in-chief conducting a high-stakes war in such cavalier fashion would be court-martialled. But Congress allowed Mountbatten to lead it by the nose to ignominy and defeat.
Most of the Jammu province fell to Pakistan after October 27, 1947. In Kashmir, barring Muzaffarabad, all occupied areas were freed by November 10, 1947. Inexplicably, on January 1, 1948, India approached the UN Security Council with a complaint against Pakistan, instead of liberating all occupied areas, a decision that deserves critical scrutiny by scholars. To his credit, Sardar Patel realised grave blunders were being committed regarding this strategic State but was powerless to turn the tide and went along with Nehru’s disastrous decisions, including personally compelling Hari Singh on May 1, 1949, to make a ‘temporary exit’ from the State and appoint Yuvraj Karan Singh as Regent. Eventually, the monarchy was crudely terminated through a legally questionable resolution moved by DP Dhar in the nominated Constituent Assembly of the State on August 20, 1952.
While still in the State, however, Hari Singh wrote to Sardar Patel on January 31, 1948, expressing dismay at the army operations. In Mirpur district, he noted, the State forces held Mangla and the territory along the Jhelum Canal bank when the Indian Army arrived. But in the past two months, Mangla, Alibeg, Gurudwara, Mirpur town, Bhimber town, the villages of Deva and Battala, Rajouri town and the whole area adjoining Chhamb, and Nowshera were lost. Then, Jhangar, a key place for Mirpur and Kotli, was lost.
These defeats, Hari Singh lamented, hurt him badly but also undermined the prestige of the Indian Army which had so far not recovered a single town. Enemy attacks had intensified on the Kathua-Sialkot border, and everyday villages were being burnt, people looted, women abducted, crops lost. There were nearly 80,000 refugees in the city of Jammu.
Poonch and Rajouri remained under siege for one year. The heroic resistance of the J&K Army’s Brigadier Pritam Singh, Col. Hiranand Dubey, Captain Dewan Singh, and local leaders saved the day. But Bagh, Rawalakote and other areas west of Poonch town were lost. In his book, Jammu & Kashmir, The Blunders & Way Out, Prof. Bhim Singh of the Panther’s Party charged that the most strategic areas of the State were allowed to be lost because Sheikh Abdullah did not want them. In the original kingdom, the Kashmiri-speaking population comprised only 21 per cent. He wanted it to be the majority – a very British inspiration, one may add.
Gen. Cariappa was ordered to stop the liberation campaign at Teetwal after the Army recaptured Uri town, and abandon attempts to liberate highly sensitive zones in Uri and Karnah – precisely the places of repeated encounters with Pakistan forces to this day.
Thus, non-Kashmiris were kept out of J&K and one-third of the State (PoK, Gilgit-Baltistan, Mirpur, Kotli, Muzaffarabad) axed out of its geographical boundaries. This suited British strategic interests and helped entrench the Abdullah dynasty in the State. Sheikh did not want Ladakh and Jammu either, but Delhi could not go that far.
In all this misadventure, Louis Mountbatten was Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army and Governor-General of India, and Commander-in-Chief of the Pakistan Army! He must legitimately be viewed as the kingpin of the State’s tragedy.
Continuing Anglo-American designs, the Security Council sent Frank Graham and Owen Dixon to Kashmir to find a ‘working situation’ after Pakistan refused to withdraw from POK and Gilgit. He proposed a buffer State of Greater Kashmir comprising the Kashmir Valley and Muslim majority areas of Jammu province (north of the Chenab). Congress dared not support it then, but the formula keeps reappearing as Chenab formula, Musharraf formula, and is a Track II favourite.
J&K’s travails did not end here. In 1965, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri inexplicably surrendered the strategic Haji Pir Pass to Ayub Khan at Tashkent. In 1971, India surrendered Chhamb at Shimla. It transpired that Indira Gandhi’s principal secretary PN Dhar was abruptly shunted out of Shimla and the disastrous accord sealed. We must uncover the truth about what transpired in Shimla.
The worst is New Delhi’s silence when China seized 5000 square miles of territory in the Karakoram from Pakistan in 1963 to build a highway from Beijing to Peshawar, in violation of UN Resolutions. Perhaps Nehru quailed after the stunning debacle of 1962. But sovereign nations cannot conduct statecraft in such lackadaisical fashion. We must get to the bottom of the matter
Congress was never serious about Kashmir
The recent grim violation of the Line of Control in the Mendhar area of Poonch district of Jammu region, which resulted in the death of Lance Naik Hemraj and Lance Naik Sudhakar Singh of 13 Rajasthan Rifles, and decapitation of one of them 600 metres inside Indian territory, raises fundamental questions about New Delhi’s attitude towards this luckless region since the creation of the Republic.
Despite Islamabad’s frequent recourse to military means to grab Jammu and Kashmir from India, successive Congress regimes have made questionable deals with Pakistani leaders and later claimed ‘betrayal’ to silence critics. Yet few have been so passionately committed to diplomacy and back channel dialogue to surrender Indian advantages (Siachen, Sir Creek, Musharraf formula) as the Congress-dominated UPA, which remains keen to remove the Armed Forces Special Powers Act from the State despite objections from the Army.
State-funded scholars have connived to keep reams of critical material suppressed from the historical record for decades, and much is still sealed in the archives. Yet, enough evidence has seeped into the public domain in recent years to make a fresh appraisal of the independence era necessary and possible.
Briefly, the last ruler of the kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir fell into disfavour with the British Raj when he expressed support for the freedom movement at the Round Table Conference in London in 1930, “As Indians and loyal to the land of our birth, we stand as solidly as the rest of our countrymen for our enjoyment of a position of honour and equality in the British Commonwealth”.
Strangely, this did not endear him to the Congress leadership, which paid scant regard to British machinations in this strategically vital State, supported Sheikh Abdullah’s vicious campaign against one of the most progressive monarchies in the country in 1946, and connived in its difficulties and subsequent partition.
The British began fomenting communal trouble in the State through the services of a mysterious Abdul Qadir in June 1931 itself, and in 1935 forced Maharaja Hari Singh to lease the Gilgit Agency to them for a period of 60 years on grounds of securing the frontier against Russian designs. The lease was abruptly terminated on August 1, 1947, leaving an ill-prepared kingdom to take responsibility for a vast frontier in an extremely turbulent period. Not surprisingly, the bulk of this territory was successfully grabbed by Pakistan in the war of 1947-48 (and designated as the Northern Areas and Azad Kashmir) with the active connivance of the British officers there and the manoeuvring of Louis Mountbatten in Delhi.
The original boundaries of the kingdom stretched up to Tibet, China, Tsarist Russia and Afghanistan; such is the extent of territory lost to India due to the stranglehold of Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru on Congress, and Mountbatten’s influence on both. The Viceroy, it may be mentioned, actually hinted to the Maharaja that he should accede to Pakistan, explaining with maps and plans how the kingdom was physically integrated with the North West Frontier Province!
The kingdom’s Achilles heel was Mirpur, Poonch and Muzaffarabad, and the adjoining areas of Punjab where, around partition, communal passions were ignited and the Muslim population instigated to demand merger with Pakistan, triggering extreme anxiety amongst the Hindus and Sikhs of these regions, Hindus and Jammu, and Buddhists of Ladakh, who favoured India. This difficult situation caused the Maharaja to offer Standstill Agreements to India and Pakistan.
Indian academics have been scandalously remiss in not questioning the motives of the Congress leadership in Delhi for sitting pretty when Pakistan made its first moves by imposing an economic blockade on this critical region and starving it of essential commodities. Nehru promised to help on October 20, 1947, but made it clear that his priority was the release of Sheikh Abdullah from jail and his political empowerment at the height of the turbulence, even advising the king against acceding to India until the Sheikh was installed as popular ruler!
Nor did Delhi react when destitute refugees from Sialkot began entering Jammu. Pakistan armed Punjabi Muslims in Poonch and ex-servicemen from Mirpur, and turned the whole border with Punjab volatile. It then sent Major ASB Shah, joint secretary of its Foreign Ministry, to Srinagar with a blank Instrument of Accession for the Maharaja to sign, so confident was it of its ability to manoeuvre the kingdom into its lap!
The State forces had to be spread out as Hindu homes and villages were being looted and burned. But the commander, Brigadier Scot and Inspector General of Police Powell both abruptly resigned from office just before the real trouble broke when they realised that the Maharaja was not for Pakistan. Clearly, the British design was to push him towards Pakistan, or create crisis and partition the State if he did not.
Pakistan fomented trouble in Poonch, Bhimbar, Kotli, Mirpur and Muzaffarabad, recruiting 60,000 retired and demobilised soldiers of the Indian Army. The besieged Maharaja appealed to Maharaja Yadvindra Singh of Patiala, who did his best to help.
The details of the battles fought by the State forces with little or no ammunition or food supplies, in adverse weather and with thousands of refugees from Punjab and the Kashmir border regions to escort to safety, cannot be detailed here. What India must remember with gratitude is that Maharaja Hari Singh had the vision to have the Pathankot Jammu road link completed on war footing to ensure physical integration with India. He urged Sardar Patel to send him guns and ammunition to blow up the Kohala Bridge from where he anticipated Pakistani ingress. Sadly, New Delhi was tardy and even Patel did not see the urgency of the situation and did not agree to immediate accession without transferring power to Sheikh Abdullah, whose legacy and that of his dynasty is there for all to see.
The actual war broke out on the night of October 21-22 at Muzaffarabad and Domel. Five days of murder, rape and mayhem of the civilian population was allowed before VP Menon flew to Srinagar with the accession document on October 26, 1947. Mountbatten accepted it, with conditions not imposed on any other ruler, on October 27, 1947. Then he steered India into the quagmire of the Security Council and secured the de facto partition of the strategic frontier and its control by Pakistan, and leaving India with a moth-eaten State of Jammu and Kashmir, returned to London in triumph.
It is time to question the ‘vision’ of the great men who presided over the nation’s destiny at that critical hour, and the wisdom of successors who keep trying to fool the nation so that strategic territory can be gifted to Pakistan.
Dr. Bikram Lamba, a political & business strategist, can be contacted at torconsult@rogers.com
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Kashmir- A Saga of Betrayal and Manipulation
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