India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

by Ramachandra Guha

  In the unification of India Vallabhbhai Patel had plenty of helpers. Most of them are now unknown and unhonoured. One who is not completely forgotten is V. P. Menon, who was both the chief draughtsman of princely integration as well as its first chronicler. Let us listen now to the lesson he drew from the process:

  To have dissolved 554 States by integrating them into the pattern of the Republic; to have brought order out of the nightmare of chaos whence we started, and to have democratized the administration in all the erstwhile States, should steel us to the attainment of equal success in other spheres.71

  We shall, in time, turn our attention to those ‘other spheres’ of nation-building. But we have first to investigate the case of the princely state that gave the Indian Union the most trouble of all. This particular apple stayed perilously placed on the rim of the basket; never in it, but never out of it either.

  4

  * * *

  A VALLEY BLOODY AND BEAUTIFUL

  My love of the mountains and my kinship with Kashmir especially drew me to them, and I saw there not only the life and vigour and beauty of the present but also the memoried loveliness of ages past . . . When I think of India, I think of many things . . . [but] above all, of the Himalayas, snowcapped, or some mountain valley in Kashmir in the spring, covered with new flowers, and with a brook bubbling and gurgling through it.

  JAWAHARLAL NEHRU,1946

  I

  THERE WERE MORE THAN 500 princely states that joined the Indian Union. Of these the most important was, and is, the state of Jammu and Kashmir. At 84,471 square miles it was even larger than Hyderabad. However, its population of just over 4million was more thinly spread. The state was marked by a great deal of cultural heterogeneity. There were five main regions. The province of Jammu, abutting Punjab, had low hills and large areas of arable land. Before Partition the Muslims were in a slight majority (53 per cent), but with the wave of panic migrations that year Jammu came to be dominated by Hindus. In contrast, the Valley of Kashmir, which lay to Jammu’s north, had a substantial Muslim majority. The Valley was, by common consent, one of the most beautiful parts of India, its lakes and slopes visited in the summer by wealthy tourists from Delhi and the Punjab. It was also home to a body of sophisticated craftsmen working with silk, wool, wood and brass, making exquisite artefacts that were exported to all parts of India and beyond. In both Jammu and the Valley there was also a fair sprinkling of Sikhs.

  To the Valley’s east lay the high mountains of Ladakh, bordering Tibet, and peopled mostly by Buddhists. Further west lay the thinly populated tracts of Gilgit and Baltistan. The people here were mostly Muslim, but from the Shia and Ismaili branches of Islam, rather than (as was the case in the Valley) from the dominant Sunni tradition.

  These disparate territories were brought under a single state only in the nineteenth century. The unifiers were a clan of Dogra Rajputs from Jammu who conquered Ladakh in the 1830s, acquired the vale of Kashmir (hereafter ‘the Valley’) from the British in the 1840s and moved into Gilgit by the end of the century. And thus the state of Jammu and Kashmir (hereafter ‘Kashmir’ came to share borders with Afghanistan, Chinese Sinkiang and Tibet. Only a very narrow tract of Afghan territory separated it from the Soviet Union.1

  Its location gave the state a strategic importance quite out of proportion to its population. This importance increased after 15 August 1947, when Kashmir came to share borders with both the new dominions. The anomaly of a Hindu ruling a mostly Muslim population was compounded by an accident of geography: unlike the other disputed chiefdoms, such as Junagadh and Hyderabad, Kashmir was contiguous with both India and Pakistan.

  The Maharaja of Kashmir in 1947 was Hari Singh. Having ascended the throne in September 1925, he spent much time at the racecourse in Bombay, and much time hunting in the vast and plentifully stocked jungles of his domain. In one other respect he was typical of his ilk. As his fourth and youngest queen complained, he ‘never meets the people – that’s the trouble. He just sits surrounded by fawning courtiers and favourites, and never really gets to know what is going on outside.’2

  For much of his rule, the maharaja’s bête noire was a Muslim from the Valley named Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah. Born in 1905, the son of a shawl merchant, Abdullah graduated with a master’s degree in science from the Aligarh Muslim University. Despite his qualifications he was unable to find a government job in Kashmir, for the state administration was dominated by Hindus. Abdullah began to question ‘why Muslims were being singled out for such treatment. We constituted the majority and contributed the most towards the State’s revenues, still we were continually oppressed . . . Was it because a majority of Government servants were non-Muslims? . . . I concluded that the ill-treatment of Muslims was an outcome of religious prejudice.’3

  Denied a job by the state, Abdullah became a schoolteacher instead. He started a reading club and spoke out on behalf of his fellow subjects. His was an inspiring presence: he stood 6’ 4” tall and was a witty and compelling orator. Although he smoked the odd cigarette he did not drink. He visited the mosque every Friday, and had a deep knowledge of the Quran.4

  In the summer of 1931 Abdullah was chosen as part of a delegation of Muslims that hoped to place their case before the maharaja.5 Before they could meet with him, an activist named Abdul Qadir was arrested and put on trial. This led to a clash between protesters and the police in which twenty-one people died. This was followed by a wave of communal violence in the Valley, in which many Hindu shops were looted and burnt.

  The next year, 1932, an All-Jammu Kashmir Muslim Conference was formed to give shape to the growing opposition to the maharaja. Among its leading lights were Sheikh Abdullah and Ghulam Abbas, a lawyer from Jammu. Six years later, Abdullah took the lead in transforming the organization into a ‘National Conference’, which would also include Hindus and Sikhs. The newbody asked for representative government based on universal suffrage.

  At about this time Abdullah also made the acquaintance of Jawaharlal Nehru. They hit it off instantly. Both were impulsive and had strong views, but fortunately these were the same – a commitment to Hindu–Muslim harmony and to socialism. The National Conference grew closer to the Indian National Congress, alienating some of its members, most notably Ghulam Abbas, who left the party and sought to organize Kashmiri Muslims on their own. This was the beginning of a bitter rivalry with Sheikh Abdullah, a feud which was as much personal as it was ideological.

  In the mid-1940s Abdullah was winning this popularity contest hands-down. He was, recalled one contemporary, ‘greatly loved by the people of Kashmir at the time’.6 He had been in and out of jail since 1931, and in 1946 he was incarcerated once more after he asked the Dogra dynasty to ‘quit Kashmir’ and hand over power to the people. In the ensuing unrest more than twenty people died. The maharaja declared martial law and had the Sheikh sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for ‘sedition’. This particularly angered Jawaharlal Nehru, who dashed to the state in his friend’s defence. Nehru was prevented from entering by the maharaja’s men, who stopped him at the border and sent him back to British India.7

  Now that it was clear that the British would soon leave the subcontinent, Hari Singh’s prime minister, Ramchandra Kak, encouraged him to think of independence for his state. On 15 July 1946 the maharaja stated that the Kashmiris would ‘work out our own destiny without dictation from any quarter which is not an integral part of the State’8 In November the British Resident in Srinagar observed that the

  Maharaja and Kak are seriously considering the possibility of Kashmir not joining the [Indian] Union if it is formed. On a previous occasion Kak hinted to me that Kashmir might have to stay out of the Union in view of the antagonism likely to be displayed by a Congress Central Government towards Kashmir. The Maharaja’s attitude is, I suspect, that once Paramountcy disappears Kashmir will have to stand on its own feet, that the question of loyalty to the British Government will not arise and that Kashmir will be free to ally itself with any pow
er – not excluding Russia – she chooses.9

  The idea of independence had taken strong hold over the maharaja. He loathed the Congress, so he could not think of joining India. But if he joined Pakistan the fate of his Hindu dynasty might be sealed.10

  In April 1947 a new viceroy took over in New Delhi. As it turned out, he was an old acquaintance of Maharaja Hari Singh; they had served together on the Prince of Wales’s staff back when the prince visited India in 1921-2. In the third week of June 1947, after the decision was taken to divide India, Lord Mountbatten setoff for Kashmir,('largely to forestall Nehru or Gandhi from doing so').11 He wanted to make his own assessment of where the state might be going. In Srinagar, the viceroy met Kak and advised him to tell the maharaja to accede to either dominion – but to accede. The prime minister defiantly answered that they intended to stay independent.12 The viceroy then fixed a private meeting with the maharaja. On the appointed day, the last of Mountbatten’s visit, Hari Singh stayed in bed with an attack of colic, this most probably a ruse to avoid what would certainly have been an unpleasant encounter.13

  Nehru now told Mountbatten that ‘your visit to Kashmir was from my particular point of view not a success’; he wanted to go and break the political deadlock himself. Gandhi also wished to go. Hari Singh, expectedly, wanted neither.14 In the event, Nehru was busy with other matters, so the Mahatma went instead. At the maharaja’s request he addressed no public meetings during his three days in Srinagar. But he met delegations of workers and students, who demanded Abdullah’s release and Prime Minister Kak’s dismissal.15

  On 15 August, Jammu and Kashmir had not acceded to either India or Pakistan. It offered to sign a ‘stand still agreement’ with both countries which would allow the free movement of peoples and goods across borders. Pakistan signed the agreement, but India said it would wait and watch. However, in the middle of September the rail service between Sialkot in West Punjab and Jammu was suspended, and lorry traffic carrying goods for the state was stopped on the Pakistan side of the border.16

  As relations with Pakistan deteriorated, the maharaja sacked two prime ministers in quick succession. First Kak was replaced with a soldier named Janak Singh; then he in turn gave way to a former judge of the Punjab High Court, Mehr Chand Mahajan, who had better relations with the Congress bosses. Of these, the two top ones were crucial: the prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru (who was himself an ethnic Kashmiri), and the home minister and minister of states, Vallabhbhai Patel. Notably, while Nehru always wanted Kashmir to be part of India, Patel was at one time inclined to allow the state to join Pakistan. His mind changed on 13 September, the day the Pakistan government accepted the accession of Junagadh. For ‘if Jinnah could take hold of a Hindu-majority State with a Muslim ruler, why should the Sardar not be interested in a Muslim-majority State with a Hindu ruler?’17

  On 27 September 1947 Nehru wrote along letter to Patel about the ‘dangerous and deteriorating’ situation in the state. He had heard that Pakistan was preparing to send infiltrators ‘to enter Kashmir in considerable numbers’. The maharaja and his administration could hardly meet the threat on their own, hence the need for Hari Singh to ‘make friends with the National Conference so that there might be this popular support against Pakistan’. Releasing Abdullah, and enlisting the support of his followers, would also help ‘bring about the accession of Kashmir to the Indian Union’.18

  On 29 September Sheikh Abdullah was released from prison. The next week, in a speech at the great Hazratbal mosque in Srinagar, Abdullah demanded a ‘complete transfer of power to the people in Kashmir. Representatives of the people in a democratic Kashmir will then decide whether the State should join India or Pakistan’. A popular government in Kashmir, he added, ‘will not be the government of any one community. It will be a joint government of the Hindus, the Sikhs and the Muslims. That is what I am fighting for.’19

  Pakistan naturally expected Kashmir, with its Muslim majority, to join it. India thought that the religious factor was irrelevant, especially since the leading political party, the National Conference, was known to be non-sectarian. By early October, as Patel wrote to Nehru, there was no ‘difference between you and me on matters of policy relating to Kashmir’: both wanted accession.20 What were the feelings of the Kashmiris themselves? Shortly after Abdullah’s release, the British commander of the state forces noted that ‘the vast majority of the Kashmiris have no strong bias for either India or Pakistan’. However, while there was ‘no well-organized body in Kashmir advocating accession to Pakistan’,the ‘National Conference has been pro-Congress and anti-Pakistan’.21

  As for Maharaja Hari Singh, he still clung to the dream of independence. On 12 October the deputy prime minister of Jammu and Kashmir said in Delhi that ‘We intend to keep on friendly relations with both India and Pakistan. Despite constant rumours, we have no intention of joining either India or Pakistan . . . The only thing that will change our mind is if one side or the other decides to use force against us . . . The Maharaja has told me that his ambition is to make Kashmir the Switzerland of the East – a State that is completely neutral.’22

  II

  The only thing that will change our mind is if one side or the other decides to use force against us. Two weeks after these words were spoken a force of several thousand armed men invaded the state from the north. On 22 October they crossed the border that separated the North-West Frontier Provinces from Kashmir and briskly made their way towards the capital, Srinagar.

  Most of these raiders were Pathans from what was now a province of Pakistan. This much is undisputed; what is not so certain is why they came and who was helping them. These two questions lie at the heart of the Kashmir dispute; sixty years later, historians still cannot provide definitive answers to them. One reason for this was that the northern extremity of Kashmir was both obscure and inaccessible. No railways or roads penetrated these high mountains. No anthropologists had come here, nor any journalists either. There are thus no independent eyewitness accounts of what came to be known as the ‘tribal invasion of Kashmir’.

  There are, however, plenty of loaded accounts, biased in one direction or the other. At the time, and later, Indians believed that the tribals were pushed across the border by Pakistan, who also supplied them with rifles and ammunition. The Pakistanis disclaimed any involvement in the invasion -they insisted that it was a ‘spontaneous’ rushing of Pathan Muslims to the aid of co-religionists persecuted by a Hindu king and a Hindu administration.23

  There was, indeed, discontent in one part of Kashmir. This was the district of Poonch, which lay to the west of Srinagar. Until 1936 Poonch had been ruled by a subsidiary clan of the Dogra ruling family, but in that year the district came directly under the control of the maharaja in Srinagar. The loss of autonomy hurt, as did the new taxes imposed by the king. There were cesses on individual goats, sheep and cattle and a tax on entering the forest. Hardest hit were the pastoralists of Poonch, almost all of whom were Muslim.24

  During the Second World War many Muslims from Poonch served in the British Indian Army. They came back, as demobilized soldiers tend to do, as highly conscious political beings. The rule of the Maharaja of Kashmir had already been challenged in the Valley by Sheikh Abdullah and his party. To that was now added the independent challenge of the men of Poonch.

  On 14 August several shops and offices in Poonch had flown Pakistani flags, indicating that their allegiance lay to that country, and not to the still unaffiliated state of Kashmir. In the following weeks clashes between Dogra troops and local protesters were reported. By the beginning of September dozens of Poonch men had equipped themselves with rifles obtained from ‘informal sources in Pakistan’. They had also established a base in the Pakistani town of Murree; here were collected arms and ammunition to be smuggled across the border to Kashmir. Pakistani accounts acknowledge that both the prime minister, Liaqat Ali Khan, and a senior Punjab Muslim League leader, Mian Iftikharuddin, knew and sanctioned assistance to the Poonch rebels. Overse
eing the operation was Abkar Khan, a colonel in the Pakistan Army. Khan had collected 4,000 rifles from army supplies and diverted them for use in Kashmir. More fancifully, he had adopted the nom de guerre ‘General Tariq’, after a medieval Moorish warrior who had fought the Christians in Spain.25

  Within Poonch, Muslim officials and soldiers had left their jobs in the state administration and joined the rebels. So, by the end of September, there were intimations of a serious conflict between a dissenting district and the government of Maharaja Hari Singh. But, although there were clashes here and there, there was no major eruption, no head-on battle. Poonch bordered West Punjab; Pakistani cities such as Rawalpindi were easily reached from there. However, the North-West Frontier Province is some distance to the west. Did the raiders from that province hear of the brewing insurrection in Poonch? Or were they planning to come anyway?

  For these questions too one cannot supply uncontested answers. All we know for certain is that after the Pathan raiders crossed the border on 22 October they made remarkably swift progress in their march southwards. ‘The principal characteristics of the tribal invasion’, writes the historian Michael Brecher, ‘were the surprise tactics of the tribesmen, the absence of the most rudimentary defence by the Kashmir State Army, and the pillage, loot and rapine of the tribesmen inflicted on Hindus and Muslims alike.’ Or, as a British social worker familiar with Kashmir laconically put it, the invading Pathans had sensed ‘an opportunity of gaining both religious merit and rich booty’.