When Nehru suggested Swiss model for Kashmir

By V.P. Bhatia

In his Urdu autobiography Aatish-e-Chinar (The flames of the Chinar), dictated to an aide named Mohammad Yusuf Teng a few years before his death, Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah says at one place, “On return from New York after attending a Security Council debate in January 1948 (on India’s complaint against Pakistan-sponsored tribal raid in October 1947), the impressions that I had brought from the functioning of the UNO seemed to tally with those of Gopalaswami Aiyengar, Nehru’s Minister for Kashmir affairs (who too had gone to present India’s case alongwith the Sheikh). When we were coming back by an aeroplane from New York, Aiyenger Saheb who was sitting close in the next seat to me, gave me a paper, asking me to read it. I found that in it he had expressed his view on the future of Kashmir, saying that keeping it independent was the best solution of this tangle because the boundaries of Kashmir were so long and extensive and touched so many countries that India could not bear the headache of the burden of a defending them.” (P.481).

In a nutshell, it meant that India could not hold Kashmir for long on its own, which seems to be the official view even now.

The Sheikh’s extensive 961-page autobiography has been selectively condensed by Khushwant Singh into a 176-page English translation, but the latter does not contain this original reference. Meanwhile, the self-serving autobiography, highly controversial in parts and sprinkled with blatant lies, has been awarded a Sahitya Akademy award against all norms. It is particularly full of venomous charges against the Dogras rule and Dogra Maharaja’s role in those days particularly the latter’s ‘flight’ from Srinagar to Jammu on October 25 in the wake of imminent danger of tribal takeover. As pointed out by Dr Karan Singh in his autobiography The Heir - Apparent, apart from Balraj Madhok in The Bungling in Kashmir, the Maharaja in fact left Srinagar reluctantly at the advice of V.P. Menon, the special emissary of the Centre to save him from falling into enemy hands. But the Sheikh calls it treachery to the people though he himself too had run away to Delhi. He, in fact, seems to be particularly chagrined that his arch enemy, the Maharaja escaped alive along with the Maharani and their staff in a night-long road journey to Jammu.

However, while the secularists reviewers have generally lauded the Sheikh’s posthumous political story, setting himself up as the only hope of secular India in those dark post-partition days, a Muslim writer Kamal Ahmed Siddiqui has a different tale to tell. As the chief producer of All India Radio at Srinagar station for long, claiming proximity to the Sheikh ever since those early days of his ‘undemocratic’ installation and dismissal in 1953, he punctures the Sheikh’s balloon on quite a few counts.

In a exhaustive 127-page review of the Sheikh’s assertions and inconsistent versions in an Urdu literary quarterly (Asri Adab, January to April 1990) which  I came across only recently, Siddiqui says that “Jawaharlal wanted to make Kashmir as the Switzerland of Asia”, while Patel considered it as the root cause of India’s future problems because of the communist nature of the ‘Naya Kashmir’ manifesto of National Conference. No wonder, Nehru was Sheikh’s ideal and fully posted with G.M. Sadiq’s mission to Pakistan in mid October, 1947. Sadiq talked there as Sheikh’s emissary, when all the Muslim leaders of National Conference, including Sadiq, Beg and Bakshi favoured accession to Pakistan. But they got clear hints Pakistan would have liquidated them especially the Sheikh. That scared them no end into the lap of India.

Siddiqui’s own counter version of the above-mentioned incident of Gopalaswami Aiyengar passing on to the Sheikh a piece of paper containing the latter’s view in support of independence of Kashmir is however most startling. With inside knowledge, he says that the paper was in fact passed on to the Sheikh from Pandit Nehru at the Delhi airport just minutes before his plane left for New York for the UN meet in January 1948.

According to Siddiqui, “when the Sheikh was going to participate in UN meeting at Lake Success as a member of the Indian delegation, then a few minutes after the plane took-off, the leader of Indian delegation gave him a piece of paper, which he read and passed on to another member Janaki Nath Zutshi. It was written on the paper that existence of Kashmir as an independent state could also be one of the solutions, if both India and Pakistan agreed to guarantee its independence,” However, the Sheikh put it in his book in a different sequence, telling. Siddiqui when questioned, that “such an unsigned piece of paper could have no significance”. Siddiqui says, that later when the Sheikh tried to make light of the matter thus, he reminded him that Gopalswami Aiyengar was Nehru’s Minister for Kashmir Affairs and you (Sheikh) were the Prime Minister for Kashmir. You know perfectly well that no Union Minister could pass on such a suggestion to you without the express approval of his Prime Minister. Moreover, such aidememoirs are generally unsigned. Moreover, while Nehru had kept the charge of foreign affairs with himself, you were also incharge of your own foreign affairs.” “Nehru had wanted to make Kashmir Switzerland of Asia, as buffer, but no post-Nehru regime dare tell the people of India about it,” he says.

Siddiqui’s comment in the whole context is that Sheikh would plead ignorance of many things he had revealed earlier, after the withdrawal of the conspiracy case against him. Still he chose to mention this Nehruvian note in a rather round about way as emanating from Gopalsawami Aiyengar and not from Jawaharlal Nehru. So it would appear that Nehru knew the Sheikh’s mind and agreed with him on keeping Kashmir independent. In this way the two agreed with another ace Kashmiri, Pt. Ramchandra Kak, who was dismissed by the Maharaja in August 1947 as his PM for hobnobbing with the British.

At another place, the writer says quite bluntly that after an undemocratic installation, Sheikh confirmed himself in power by a rigged “100 per cent unopposed” election of the State’s Constituent Assembly in October 1951. For, all the opposition candidates were kept out either by wholesale rejection of nomination papers or plain physical coercion. He describes the Peace Brigade set up by National Conference as a band of goons who terrorised the people, particularly the opponents, into submission. “It was like Gestapo of Nazi rulers”.

However, another interesting fact revealed in this context is the total volte face of the Sheikh’s pro-accession stand which Nehru expected him to endorse in his inaugural speech at the State’s CA in November 1951, as a fulfillment of the Indian promise of plebiscite to scotch the mischief for ever. Obviously, the public pressure had become too great. So, in the written speech prepared for the Sheikh for reading at the session, there was a sentence describing the Constituent Assembly as perfectly entitled to decide the future of J&K as representative of the epeople. The Sheikh was supposed to say that the accession document was signed at his behest and that he now sealed it politically with his endorsement on behalf of the elected Assembly of the people. Now the two leaders reversed their roles.

However, says Siddiqui, the Sheikh did not read this part of the script which had been shown to Nehru earlier. The Sheikh changed his mind at eleventh hour at the advice of Mirza Afzal Beg who told him that he would be finishing his own importance and indispensability to India, at a time when his stock was going down. In fact, his administration was already becoming very unpopular because of repression, corruption, rising prices and unemployment aggravated by ban on Indian enterprise and investment in the state. But his dismissal in 1953 raised his stock again as anti-Centre crusader. Thus, the Sheikh wanted India to continue its “Platonic love” with Rs one crore daily expenditure in the state at the cost of Indian economy while he claimed his own independence and freedom to flirt with Pakistan, says the writer.

***

PERHAPS the most interesting part of K.A. Siddiqui’s long review is reconstruction of the events leading up to the Sheikh’s dismissal, particularly the Praja Parishad movement and the role of late Rafi Ahmed Kidwai who acted as “Nehru’s biggest trouble-shooter”. The following dialogue between Rafi Ahmed Kidwai and the Sheikh in Nehru’s room in New Delhi was related by Sheikh himself to him, says Siddiqui:

Scene: Nehru’s room. Time: A little before dinner.

Character: J.L. Nehru, S.M. Abdullah, R.A. Kidwai.

Kidwai and Abdullah are seated on a sofa while Nehru is absorbed in a file at his table a little away. The dialogue proceeds as follows:

R.A. Kidwai: Sheikh Saheb, how is the situation in Kashmir?

Sheikh Abdullah: Alhamad-dullah (Everything is OK by God’s grace)

Kidwai: But the papers tell as different story.

Sheikh: Do you take press reports to be true?

Kidwai: You can’t ignore newspapers in a democracy.

Sheikh: That is for you to see.

Kidwai: But you are also concerned with it.

Sheikh: You need not worry much about me. I can take care of myself.

Kidwai: Alright. If there is a plebiscite today, who will get more votes?

Sheikh: That is for me to see because it is my headache, but the agitation in Jammu is having a bad reaction on the Muslism of the Valley.

Kidwai: Which means, the verdict for India is not certain.

Sheikh: That may be the result, if the Jammu agitation continues.

Kidwai: But Jammu is also under your rule.

Sheikh: But the intriguers there are getting help from the territory under your control.

Kidwai: India is a democratic country; we can’t suppress the opponents.

Sheikh: It is for you to see. Keep their intrigues confined to the territory under your charge.

Kidwai: Then stop the agitation, otherwise its impact on Kashmir will be very bad.

Kidwai: Then we have a remedy for that also.

Sheikh: What is ti?

Kidwai: Like in other parts of India, the refugees from East Pakistan can be settled in Kashmir as they have been settled elsewhere.

Sheikh: (Provoked) Kidwai Saheb, what are you saying? Instead of stopping your under cover support for Jammu agitation, you want to turn Kashmir into a Muslim minority region. This cannot happen in my lifetime. I will lay down my life for Article 370. I will not allow the right to vote or acquire property to any non-state subject.

(Jawaharlal pretends to be startled, although he has heard the whole dialogue)

Nehru: What is the matter?

Then Nehru puts his hand on the Sheikh’s shoulders and takes him to the dinner table.

Obviously, Nehru and Kidwai (who died in 1954, a year after Sheikh’s dismissal) were made of different mettle even though Nehru had been forced to dismiss the Sheikh by Kidwai’s almost single-handed coup against Abdullah. But Kidwai regretted that “Nehru did not use it for complete absorption of the state into India for good.” He even sent the Sheikh to Pakistan to negotiate support for independence of Kashmir in 1964. But Abdullah had to cut short his parleys with Ayub Khan because of Nehru’s sudden deathr

(Organiser, Nov. 6, 1994)

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