Mahesh Kaul
Neither
Nehru nor Patel had promised a separate political status for Jammu &
Kashmir
The
Kashmir problem is the outcome of a game that
the British played to keep the separatist Muslim elements alive in the country.
This move was further meant to make the northern Indian borders weak and
pregnable forever. The British had clearly moved to sow the seeds of the
balkanisation of the Indian Union.
The
process of maintaining the checks and applying brakes on the Indian
nationalists was already devised by the British well before 1947. Mohammed Ali
Jinnah was a British prop to help materialise the separatist Muslim claims for
the partition of India.
These
ploys and what was going on in the British mind has been revealed by Krishna
Menon, who was close to the British circles, in the following words to Lord
Mountbatten well before partition on June 14, 1947, “Is this frontier of
(the northwest of India abutting
Afghanistan and Iran) still the hinterland of the Imperial Strategy? Does the British still
think in terms of being able to use this territory and all that follows from
it? There is considerable amount of talking in this way; and if Kashmir, for
one reason or another, chooses to be in Pakistan, that is a further
development in this direction. I do not know of British policy in this matter.
I do not know whether you know it either. But if this be the intent, this is
tragic…As it becomes more evident, the attitude of India
would be resentful and Britain’s
hold on Pakistan
would not improve it”. (Pp 15-16, The Untold Story of India’s Partition)
written by Narender Singh Sarila)
Menon
was pointing towards the British strategy of using West Pakistan as a base to
stop the Soviet expansion towards the Indian Ocean, Afghanistan
and the Persian Gulf. He implied that was the
British policy so “subterranean” that even the Viceroy was ignorant about it.
These intrigues shaped the Kashmir problem and the end result is the present
state of chaos and desperation in the State and especially in the Kashmir Valley.
The
accession of Jammu & Kashmir to the Indian Union needs to be understood by
keeping in mind the traits of the British and the separatist Muslim mindset of
the Muslim League, which was nurtured by imperial policy-makers to divide India to suit
their strategic hold on the sub-continent.
There
is a false premise on which the State’s accession to India is always understood by
certain vested interests. It is that the Radcliffe Boundary Commission award giving Gurdaspur district to the Indian
East Punjab was announced on August 17, 1947, two days after the new Dominions
of India and Pakistan had already come into being. This is a totally absurd
premise.
The
demarcation of the areas that would go to Pakistan had been devised by the
British well before 1947. Its blueprint was already prepared by the then
Viceroy Lord Archibald Wavell in 1946 to forge an alliance with Jinnah’s Muslim
League, and the foundation of this unholy alliance was laid in 1940-41 by
Wavell’s predecessor VAJ Linlithgow to project Jinnah as the sole spokesman of
‘Muslim India’.
Narender
Singh Sarila, who was an ADC to the last Viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten, was a
witness to British decisions and policy. He has observed candidly in his book
that “secret archives cannot be depended upon to reveal the entire picture.
Many decisions that are taken by Government are never committed on paper or, if
so committed, are not revealed, even after the probationary period for keeping
them under wraps has lapsed. For instance, Lord Mountbatten’s reports to
London, sent after August 15, 1947, while he was the Governor-General of India,
have not been unsealed even after almost 60 years, thereby depriving us
information surrounding British policy on Kashmir”.(Pp168)
Wavell
was constantly in touch with the Secretary of State in London. His blueprint for partition was being
taken seriously in London.
On January 29,1946, the Secretary of State revealed the British policy by
stating in a telegram to Wavell that “it would help me to know when I may
expect to receive your recommendation as regards definition of genuinely Muslim
areas if we are compelled to give a decision to this” (Pp194-195).
Gurdaspur
district was not incorporated into the Indian Union after partition. In fact,
Wavell’s partition plan forwarded to London
on February 6-7, 1946, makes it clear as to what was in store for millions of
people of the Indian subcontinent. His partition plan, which was implemented by
his successor Mountbatten reads:
“(1)
If compelled to indicate demarcation of genuinely Moslem areas I recommend that
we should include (a) Sind, North-West Frontier Province, British Baluchistan
and Rawalpindi, Multan and Lahore Divisions of Punjab, Less Amritsar and
Gurdaspur districts. (2) In the Punjab the only Moslem-majority district that
would not go into Pakistan
under demarcation is Gurdaspur. Gurdaspur must go with Amritsar
for geographical reasons and Amritsar being the
sacred city of Sikhs must stay out of Pakistan…”
(Pp195).
Therefore,
it becomes clear that the decision regarding Gurdaspur district was taken well
before partition and the argument regarding its inclusion in the Indian Union
after partition does not hold any ground.
So,
the point raised by the fifth columnists and other Left liberal intellectuals
that ‘Maharaja Hari Singh of Jammu & Kashmir could not accede to the newly
created Indian Dominion and the Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, could
not accept such a request on or before August 15, 1947, because, under the
provision of the July 1947 Indian Independence Act passed by the British
Parliament, Pathankot tehsil at that time, the only geographical link of Jammu
& Kashmir, was located in Gurdaspur district of west Punjab which had been
notified under the aforesaid Act as part of Pakistan’, is a falsification of
the reality.
Another
observation by these individuals that the ‘Maharaja Sahib had, therefore, no
other option than to think of Standstill Agreement with both new Dominions of
India and Pakistan and making Jammu & Kashmir an Eastern Switzerland of
Asia’, is also a misinterpretation of constitutional realities and facts. As India under the British was composed of British
India and the Princely
States which accepted the
British paramountcy, the rulers of these States were thus bound to accede to
one of the Dominions and there was no provision for an ‘independent’ existence.
Celebrated political scientist MK Teng in the preface to his book titled,
Kashmir, the Myth of Autonomy, has cleared this misconception regarding the
accession of Jammu & Kashmir and other Princely States
to the Indian Union.
He
writes, “The partition of India
did not envisage the accession of the Princely States to the Dominion of India
and Pakistan on the basis
the British India was divided. The partition
of India
left the States out its scope and the transfer of power accepted the lapse of
the paramountcy: The imperial authority the British exercised over the States.
The accession of the States to India
was the culmination of a historical process which symbolised the unity of the
people in the British India and the Indian
States.” (Pp VII)
The
populist view in order to cover the truth regarding the accession is that
Maharaja Hari Singh was trapped and was hence indecisive on acceding to India. To clear
this misconception Mr Teng writes, “In 1947, when Jammu & Kashmir acceded
to India, the ruler of the State, Maharaja Hari Singh signed the same standard
form of the Instrument of Accession which the other major Indian States signed.
The accession of the State to India
was not subject to any exceptions or pre-condition to provide for any separate
and special constitutional arrangements for the State. Neither Nehru nor Patel
gave any assurances to Hari Singh or the National Conference leaders that Jammu
& Kashmir would be accorded a separate and independent political status on
the basis of the Muslim majority character of its population” (Pp VII).
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