Tag: Sheikh Abdullah articles

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

The attempt to show Nehru and Sardar Patel as having differing opinions on the issue of Kashmir is a figment of imagination which abuses the facts of history to the extreme.

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.

Also Read | The Backstory of Article 370: A True Copy of J&K’s Instrument of Accession

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.

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

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.

After Article 370 Move, Airbrushing Sheikh Abdullah Is the Centre’s New Agenda

Every Indian who values Kashmir as a part of the country owes him a debt of gratitude.

The great Czech writer Milan Kundera starts his novel, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, with a historical anecdote: In 1948, Comrade Clementis gave his hat to communist leader Klement Gottwald, who was standing bareheaded in the snow, making a speech. Four years later, Clementis was charged with treason and hanged. The propaganda machinery immediately airbrushed him out of the photographs, not to speak of history! Ever since, Gottwald has stood alone in the snow. Where Clementis once stood, there is a bare wall. All that remains of Clementis in the photograph is the hat on Gottwald’s head!

In 2020, Sher-i-Kashmir, Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah, is being airbrushed; not from the photographs just yet but from the history of Kashmir. The one whose hagiography was once the definitive political history of Kashmir, may soon struggle to find his name in the new official history.

To start with, his birth anniversary is not to be found in this year’s list of official holidays. The police gallantry medals are no longer inscribed with his commemorative epithet. The iconic SKICC has dropped the prefix to become Kashmir International Convention Complex. The Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, SKIMS, too may lose its prefix soon.

Yet the many hats that Sheikh Abdullah wore – that of an anti-feudal revolutionary in 1931, the pragmatic secularist in 1936, the emotional communist in 1944, the egalitarian head of government in 1948, the ethnic nationalist of 1952, or the giant with feet of clay in 1975 — will remain! It is not possible to erase him from history. Hence an attempt is being made to erase him from the collective memory of Kashmiris.

This is akin to “damnatio memoriae”– the ultimate punishment Romans gave to the condemned by scratching their name from the inscriptions. The fate of being forgotten was considered worse than execution.

Also read: Will Farooq Abdullah Speak at This Parliament Session? Here’s What A.S. Dulat Says

For the last three decades, Sheikh Abdullah’s grave is guarded for the fear of desecration. His “cardinal sin”: he threw the lot of Kashmiris with India. The sui generis terms on which he did so, recently reneged, are now matters of irrelevant archival detail.

This one “political sin” has overshadowed his enormous contributions. He transformed the life of every single Kashmiri; be it by spearheading the anti-feudal movement or by redistributing land to the tiller along with debt waiver on a scale that has no parallels in the democratic world.

Every Indian who values Kashmir as a part of the country owes him a debt of gratitude. It was because of him that Kashmir was the only place in the subcontinent where ideology and conviction overruled religion as the consideration for accession.

Indeed, if the Bharatiya Janata Party could do away with the constitution of Jammu and Kashmir, it was only because, in 1975, Sheikh Abdullah consented to surrender the powers of the J&K legislature to amend its constitution. He oversaw the castration of the J&K constitution that he had earlier envisioned.

When the erstwhile prime minister of J&K accepted to being the chief minister of J&K, it was more than just a personal comedown. He effectively ratified the hollowing out of Article 370 that had been done while he was incarcerated. The Indira-Abdullah accord notwithstanding.

The aggressive flag hoisting in Lal Chowk by BJP leaders in the early 1990s and the assertive flag ceremonies in every nook and corner of the state since have been possible because he grafted the national flag in the constitution of J&K. Speaking in the state’s constituent assembly in 1952, it was Sheikh Abdullah who accorded primacy to the national flag. In the process, he made the flag of J&K, which has now been relinquished, subservient.

Forty years later in a hugely symbolic gesture, he carried the national flag to his grave; his body was draped in the tricolour. He may have been born and bred as a Kashmiri ethno-nationalist but he surely died an Indian.

Why then does the BJP want him erased from memory? If anything they should strengthen his legacy; not his biological or even his political legacy, but surely his ideological one.

Also read: ‘Kashmiris Don’t Want to Die Cheaply’ Says Former RAW Chief on Absence of Mass Protest

Admittedly, ascribing the salvation of Kashmir to Abdullah did lead to a sense of entitlement in his party and progeny. In this dynastic, if not a demagogical context, the names of institutions, roads or parks did reflect an element of absorption with the self. But there is more to it. Much more, in fact.

A place or an institution named after Sheikh Abdullah is a genuine tribute to the person who initiated the freedom struggle of Kashmir. These are expressions that promote a distinctive national consciousness which in turn helps nation-building. It is a re-dedication by the “nation” that was formed on the foundation laid by him. To erase this that is to distort history.

The fact is that over time these names, SKICC, SKIMS, etc have come to become symbolic elements of landscape and reflect civil sensibilities, social sentiments, and real-life associations. Just like in many other cases.

For instance, the alma mater of most Kashmiris, even after 70 years of democracy bears the names of the Dogra Maharajas; be it Sri Pratap College or Amar Singh College. So does the biggest hospital, SMHS. And the main trading hub, Hari Singh High Street. To be sure, every one of them is based on the dynastic glorification of rulers furthering their personal legacy. None of these have been or are being obliterated.

It is obvious that there is a well thought out plan to make changes selectively to only a part of the inherited past of Kashmir. That too by a regime that neither has a democratic mandate nor does it have popular legitimacy. Indeed, even its legal legitimacy is under question in the Supreme Court!

Changing the name of a place or an institution or an award is not a simple disassociation. Nor is it a routine administrative decision. A political name is being erased for ideological reasons. Indeed, it goes far beyond the individual as also the immediate.

Such changes have a much larger agenda: snap every day’s historical connection so as to erase the memory of the past. The toponymic changes are used as a tool to disrupt the ethnocultural continuity of Kashmiris which is the core of historical identity.

In reality, it is an assault that will, in the long run, prove to be more debilitating and damaging than abolishing the compromised constitutional provisions.

Also read: ‘I Am Free’ Says Farooq After PSA Detention is Revoked, Asks for Release of Others

How can a democratic society grow so hostile to the past of its constituent part? That too a past which saw and sealed the future of Kashmir with India. While Kashmir did become a part of a large entity in 1948, it in no way meant that its own past had to be subsumed in a larger past. The past can’t be rewritten to align with the ideological predilections of the present. This sort of thing is normally associated with tyranny.

This is especially so when alongside erasing of one set of names, is the process of new naming. The Chenani-Nashri tunnel has been named as Syama Prasad Mookerjee tunnel. The city chowk of Jammu has become Bharat Mata Chowk. Another intersection has been renamed Atal Chowk. A proposal is afoot for the Jammu Airport to become Maharaja Hari Singh Airport and the Jammu University to be renamed as Maharaja Gulab Singh University.

To be fair, this renaming is understandable. The BJP is, arguably, setting the record straight. It will be rationalised as the restoration of parts of history that have been purposely or conveniently excluded so far by the earlier regimes. It is epochalism being expressed through place-names to reflect the new Indian politics in its political ideology, behavioural values and, of course, historical figures. While restoring “their” great men in the new narratives of India, throwing the stalwarts of Kashmir’s political history down Orwell’s memory hole is unacceptable.

It is ironic that in the 1950s, Sheikh Abdullah’s person was under assault even as his ideology thrived. Since the 1990s, both his person and his ideology have been under attack. Now, his memory is. All, mind you, from very different and diametrically opposite quarters.

Poets are not prophets but oftentimes are prophetic. Aga Shahid Ali, Kashmir’s very own poet, prophesied, “My memory is again in the way of your history”. Indeed, it is and how!

This piece first appeared in Greater Kashmir and has been republished with the permission of the author.