❈ ❈ ❈

Nehru and Kashmir: After SC’s Article 370 Order, BJP Attempts to Distort History Again

Ram Puniyani

After the Supreme Court upheld the dilution of Article 370, the RSS ideologues are celebrating it as a ratification of the Union government’s decision while leaders of parties based in Jammu and Kashmir are aghast with the decision.

Hours before the top court pronounced the order, Amit Shah took the opportunity to vilify Jawaharlal Nehru yet again. Using selective and distorted history, the RSS-BJP has been promoting the narrative that had Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel handled the Kashmir issue, the problem would have been solved then and there. Adding to that, Shah stated that Nehru’s decision to declare a ceasefire with Pakistan was a Himalayan blunder and that granting special status to J&K – which he painted as Nehru’s decision alone – was a mistake which led to a series of problems.

These accusations are far from the reality of the events that unfolded. The attempt to show Nehru and Patel as having differing opinions on Kashmir is a figment of imagination which abuses the facts of history to the extreme.

As such, it was due to the actions of Nehru (and Sheikh Abdullah) that Kashmir acceded to India. Maharaja Hari Singh had refused to merge with India, a decision that was supported by the Praja Parishad. Sardar Patel, who was dealing with the integration of princely states, had enough on his plate. Rajmohan Gandhi in his book Patel a Life points out that what Patel had in mind about Kashmir was to strike a bargain: to have Hyderabad for India and to let Pakistan have Kashmir. Rajmohan Gandhi cites a speech Patel delivered at the Bahauddin College in Junagadh following the latter’s merger with India, when he said, “We would agree to Kashmir if they agreed to Hyderabad.”

The treaty of accession with India was signed by Maharaja Hari Singh after the marauding tribal militias launched by the Pakistan army were close to Srinagar. He approached India, whose leaders sent the army on the condition that Kashmir accede to India.

When Hari Singh fostered dreams of an Independent Kashmir and Patel was content with making sure that Hyderabad merges with India, it was Sheikh Abdullah who advocated that the region join the Indian Union. His consideration was not religion but the ideals of secularism and socialism. He was keen on land reforms, which he saw as an impossibility in Pakistan, where the predominant leadership had a feudal mindset. With many Indian leaders talking socialism, he felt it was possible here. His belief in a secular India was based on Gandhi and Nehru’s messages.

Shah and other RSS ideologues say that Nehru’s decision to agree to a ceasefire was faulty and was under the pressure of British commanders, to whose opinion Nehru succumbed. This again is disproved by the facts of history. At the time, Lord Mountbatten was the governor general of India. He advised a cease-fire and took the matter to the United Nations. He was not alone. The Indian leadership saw the consequences of extending the war: many civilian casualties and a lack of resources for the Indian army. As per Sardar Patel’s Correspondence, 1945-50, published in 1974 by the Navjivan Publishing House, he expressed “on 4 June 1948, in a letter to Gopalswamy Ayyangar, that the ‘military position is not too good, and I am afraid that our military resources are strained to the utmost’.” So much for Amit Shah’s false bravado that had the ceasefire not been declared, the whole of Jammu and Kashmir would have been part of India! This is a concocted view that is not backed by historical facts.

As per the view that taking the matter to the UN was a historical blunder, let us again listen to Sardar Patel. “As regards specific issues raised by Pakistan, as you have pointed out, the question of Kashmir is before the Security Council,” he wrote in a letter to Nehru dated February 23, 1950. And that “… having invoked a forum to the settlement of disputes open to both India and Pakistan, as members of the United Nations Organization, nothing further need be done in the way of settlement of disputes than to leave matters to be adjusted through that forum.” The letter is available in the tenth volume of Sardar Patel’s Correspondence.

The UN called the Pakistan army’s actions in Kashmir an invasion and the resolution asked Pakistan to vacate the aggression while asking India to reduce the army to a minimum as a condition for a referendum. Pakistan, backed by US support, refused to withdraw its armies leading to a stalemate. And a referendum, to assess the opinion of the Kashmiri people, could not take place.

As far as blaming Nehru for Article 370 goes, the RSS combine deliberately forgets that Article 370 – which gave total autonomy to the J&K Assembly except in the matters of external affairs, defence and communication – was finalised in the Constituent Assembly. Sheikh Abdullah was a member of the assembly and Sardar Patel, as home minister, was overseeing the drafting.

At the end of five months of negotiations, when the outline of what would become Article 370 had been decided, N.G. Iyengar wrote a letter to Sardar Patel, which is again in the public domain for people to verify. “Will you please let Jawaharlal Ji know directly that all these provisions are agreeable to you… only after you agree will Nehru issue a letter to Sheikh Abdullah that you (he) can go ahead.” This shows Patel’s centrality to the provisions of Article 370.

The distortion of history is a major tool in the hands of communal forces. While they have routinely been distorting medieval history, lately they have intensified distorting the history of the freedom movement and the events related to Kashmir. Through these efforts, driven by their vast propaganda machine, Nehru is criticised to the hilt and an attempt is made to create a binary between Patel and Nehru. Nehru is targeted because he stood rock solid against the communalism practised by Hindu nationalists. What is needed most is the promotion of democratic norms in Kashmir and respect for the commitments which were given to the people of the region. Vilifying Nehru is no solution to this vexed issue.

(Ram Puniyani is president of the Centre of Study of Society and Secularism. Courtesy: The Wire.)

❈ ❈ ❈

Modi’s BJP Has Confirmed Nehru’s Worries About the Jana Sangh’s Divisive Plans for Kashmir

S.N. Sahu

While speaking in Calcutta (now Kolkata) on January 1, 1952, India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru stated that Jammu and Kashmir (J&K)’s accession to India was made possible because the leaders of the region, led by Sheikh Abdullah, were fascinated by the secular aspects of our struggle for independence and rejected Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s two-nation theory.

However, Nehru was constrained to say that the Jana Sangh, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Praja Parishad of Jammu used abusive language against Sheikh Abdullah and wanted the restoration of Hari Singh as maharaja of J&K.

He asserted in that speech: “You can see that there can be no greater vindication than this of our secular policies, our Constitution, that we have drawn the people of Kashmir towards us.”

“But just imagine,” he remarked with apprehension, “what would have happened in Kashmir if the Jana Sangh or any other communal party had been at the helm of affairs.”

Nehru’s apprehensions fructified by the BJP

Nehru’s far-sighted observation of Kashmir chillingly played out when in August 2019, the Jana Sangh’s successor, the BJP, was “at the helm of affairs” and its leader Narendra Modi, by virtue of being prime minister of India with a huge majority in the Lok Sabha, controlled the entire state apparatus and unilaterally downgraded J&K from a full-fledged state to a Union territory (UT) while also doing away with its special status.

As a result, the people of J&K suffered from a huge democratic deficit for no fault of their own and confronted several harsh measures, including prolonged Internet bans and a clampdown on electoral processes, without which they remained unrepresented at the highest level of their government.

Nehru linked the Babri mosque issue with Kashmir in 1950

It is quite coincidental that on the intervening night of December 22-23, 1949, two idols – Lord Ram and Sita – were surreptitiously placed under the central dome of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, Nehru expressed his anxiety in a letter to the chief minister of the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh) that this development could affect Kashmir.

In one letter he wrote on February 5, 1950, to G.B. Pant, Nehru categorically stated that the developments concerning the idols’ secret placement would spell serious consequences for the rest of the country and gravely impact the Kashmir issue.

It is worthwhile to reproduce Nehru’s exact words from that letter. He wrote, “I shall be glad if you will keep me informed of the Ayodhya situation. As you know, I attached great importance to it and to its repercussions on all-India affairs and more especially Kashmir.”

Those remarks by Nehru brought out his sensitivity in understanding, in 1950 itself, that the placement of those idols inside the Babri mosque would exacerbate communal problems so severely that the secular fabric of our country would be torn apart, and the democratic processes set in motion in J&K after it joined the Indian Union would be badly vitiated.

The fears expressed by Nehru about Jana Sangh’s unfavourable disposal towards J&K have been materialised by the Modi-led BJP regime. Apart from scrapping J&K’s special status in August 2019 and downgrading it to a UT, Modi laid the foundation brick for a Ram temple almost exactly a year later at the same place where the Babri mosque was illegally demolished, following the Supreme Court’s judgement permitting the temple’s construction.

It is remarkable that the Supreme Court gave the land to those who demolished the Babri mosque for the construction of Ram temple in the same place where that mosque once stood.

The same apex court, in another remarkable turn of events, approved the abrogation of J&K’s special status and evaded adjudicating the issue of its reduction to a UT even as it upheld the UT status of Ladakh, one of J&K’s erstwhile constituent parts.

J&K’s status was downgraded to a UT by the Modi regime while President’s Rule was imposed – because the politically appointed governor dissolved the state assembly in November 2018. This raises the concern that what was done to J&K can be done to any other state.

This prospect is worrisome as far as federalism is concerned. The overwhelming sway of the Union government in tinkering with the statehood of a federal unit has grave implications for the unity and integrity of India.

Democratic deficit in J&K

Since the assembly was dissolved in November 2018, elections have so far not been conducted in J&K. It has troubled all those who believed in our constitutional scheme of governance, at the centre of which is a federal framework and the people’s will.

While upholding the revocation of J&K’s special status under Article 370, even the Supreme Court ruled that elections to J&K’s legislative assembly should be completed before September 30, 2024.

Never in the history of the Republic of India has any Union government downgraded a state to a UT as was unilaterally done in the case of J&K, which has serious implications for its identity and democratic credentials as an organic component of India.

It is worthwhile to note that even at the time of J&K’s accession to the Indian Union in October 1947 in the face of an invasion by Pakistan-backed Pashtun tribesmen with the intention of making it a part of that country, Nehru never contemplated making it a UT and ensuring direct rule by the Union government.

So, it is rather shocking that those who vociferously claimed that the abrogation of J&K’s status would end all forms of terrorism there and bring it all-round progress have failed to restore its statehood even four years after it was downgraded to a UT, as well as to ensure elections and the large-scale participation of its people in its representative bodies.

Besides, even MPs and several others – be they journalists or civil society representatives – who took a critical stand against direct rule by the Union government were subjected to coercive measures, incarceration and prolonged harassment.

The long-drawn-out internet clampdown in the whole of J&K very gravely impaired the people’s rights and liberties to communicate. In fact, the Supreme Court has interpreted the right to access the internet as a fundamental right, and so in shutting it down, the regime there grossly infringed upon the people’s fundamental rights.

At the time of its accession to the Indian Union, the people of Kashmir never suffered in terms of the deprivation of their democratic rights, which were affirmed by establishing a representative government in place of its monarchy.

Now, the Supreme Court is telling the Union government to conduct elections for J&K’s state assembly. It represents a sorry state of affairs that Nehru apprehended J&K would be reduced to in case the Jana Sangh controlled the state’s affairs.

Rid India of the communal virus by learning from Kashmir

While making a statement in the constituent assembly (legislative) on March 5, 1948, Nehru categorically stated that the J&K issue is not an issue of communalism, and that the rest of India should learn from it the lessons of communal harmony.

Can India, currently embroiled in a majoritarian narrative, save itself from a communal imbroglio by defending the secular and composite ethos of Kashmir?

(S.N. Sahu served as an officer on special duty to President K.R. Narayanan. Courtesy: The Wire.)