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(https://frontline.thehindu.com/dispatches/article26304497.ece)
ESSAY
History of betrayals
A .G . NOORA NI
Ajit Doval, National Security Adviser, at a function to release a book on Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, in New Delhi on Sep
4. Photo: Kamal Kishore/PTI
The National Security Adviser’s rants against Jammu and Kashmir’s Constitution stem from
not only ignorance of history but also the fascist mindset of the RSS and the BJP.
This was not the rst time that Ajit Doval, the National Security Adviser, rushed to
pronounce judgment rashly. His remarks on September 4 at the right-wing think
tank Vivekananda International Foundation, of which he is one of the founders, have
evoked varying reactions from disdain to ridicule. He let forth a fusillade of
judgments—each manifestly, demonstrably wrong—and he did this with utter
disdain for relevance.
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The event was organised in Mumbai for the launch of a book on Vallabhbhai Patel.
Mark the orator’s gems: 1. Patel could see the plan “of the British to sow the seeds
of disintegration in the country”. In fact, the British emphatically ruled out any
relations with the princes after Independence. It was a Brit who, assisted by V.P.
Menon, was largely responsible for their accession to India. Patel imagined that
after Independence the people would rise in revolt. Mountbatten warned him that
the rulers had armies and volunteered his help. Patel said: “I am prepared to accept
your o er provided you give me a full basket of apples.” Mountbatten o ered a
basket of 500. (H.V. Hodson; The Great Divide, pages 367-68; “Patel the non-
Bismarck”, Frontline, May 1, 2015.) Patel would not have been so friendly with him if
he thought that the British were out to sow seeds of disintegration in India; nor did
he lay the foundations of a nation state. He was a divisive gure. That credit goes
to Jawaharlal Nehru, whom the likes of Doval dislike because he was secular.
2. “In a nation state, there was one state one law.” Britain has two di erent sets of
criminal law in Scotland and England. Quebec has a distinct identity in Canada.
3. “Sovereignty can never be divided.” The United States of America is a nation
state. Three respected American scholars recall that the Founding Fathers opted for
“divided sovereignty” in the American federation. “Regarding the people as
sovereign, the Convention (at Philadelphia) denied sovereignty to both State and
Federal government. This denial of sovereignty was implicit in the very act of
framing a Government of de ned and hence limited powers”—as all federations do
(Alfred H. Kelley, Winfred A. Harrison, and Herman Belz; The American Constitution:
Its Origins and Development, page 105).
4. “560 States which had di erent laws were merged and had one Constitution”.
The Instrument of Accession of 1947 signed by each ruler explicitly stated in
paragraph 7: “Nothing in this instrument shall be deemed to commit me in any way
to acceptance of any future Constitution of India or to fetter my discretion to enter
into arrangements with the Government of India under any such future
Constitution.”
Each of the covenants signed by the rulers who formed Unions of States—Kathiawar
Saurashtra, Madhya Bharat, Rajasthan, Patiala and East Punjab States Union and
Travancore-Cochin—provided for the formation of a Constituent Assembly “within
the framework of this Covenant and the Constitution of India, and providing for a
Government responsible to the Legislature”, a standard formulation. All this was in
1949. A Constituent Assembly is expensive business. The rulers signed
proclamations on November 26, 1949, to accept “the Constitution of India shortly to
be adopted by the Constituent Assembly of India”. The White Paper on “Indian
States” published in February 1950 mentioned that “steps will be taken for the
purpose of convening a Constituent Assembly” in Kashmir (White Paper on Indian
States-1950, page 113).
Part B States
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Part B States
The Constitution of India originally had provisions for the princely states di erent
from those of the former Provinces of British India in Part B. Granville Austin
recorded in his book The Indian Constitution: “That the units of a federation should
have di erent relationships to the federal government was not thought of as an
innovation by the (Constituent) Assembly members; it was merely a recognition of
the existing situation” (page 251). That situation and that diversity were created by
history. The Constitution (Seventh Amendment) Act, 1956, abolished the category
of Part B States as part of a scheme for the Reorganisation of States.
Indira Gandhi was much more nationalist than Doval or his boss, Prime Minister
Narendra Modi. She went so far as to make Parliament enact the Constitution 35th
Amendment Act, on February 22, 1974, conferring on Sikkim the status of a State
“associated with the Union” as provided by Article 2 of the Constitution. In the
Tenth Schedule, the terms and conditions of association were laid down. However,
on May 16, 1975, the Constitution 36th Amendment was enacted to make Sikkim a
State within the Union like all the others. A fraudulent plebiscite was held to
provide a g leaf of legitimacy to the sordid exercise of a forcible takeover.
Nonetheless, some very special provisions were made in Article 371F for its
Assembly, and for “di erent sections of the population”.
The Constitution of India is a huge umbrella. It sanctions special provisions with
respect to Nagaland (Article 371-A) and Mizoram (Article 371-G). In both cases,
Parliament has no power to legislate on “ownership and transfer of land”. The much
decried Articles 370 and 35A in respect of Kashmir are not unique. Special
provisions are also made in respect to Assam and Karnataka on other matters.
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Britain provides a classic case of an ancient and unitary Constitution being adapted
to modern times to acknowledge and respect diversities among the people. Scotland
was joined to England to constitute Great Britain by the Scotland Act 1706, an
English statute, as well as by a Scottish statute, Union with England Act, 1707,
when the Union was as created, be it noted, by both countries. Scotland retained a
lot, including its criminal law. Advocates of a uniform civil code to note: nationalist
sentiment does not die. No one accuses the Scots who desire secession from the
United Kingdom of treason. It is unnecessary to trace the steps leading to
“devolution”. Scotland has today a Scottish Parliament and a First Minister. Wales
has the Welsh Assembly. Northern Ireland acquired a large degree of autonomy
under the Belfast Agreement of 1998 with Ireland and Catholic separatist leaders of
Northern Ireland.
These are modern developments. The trend is towards shedding of power. London
has been honest on Scotland. New Delhi has been consistently dishonest and
repressive on Kashmir from the days of Jawaharlal Nehru to Narendra Modi. India
pledged to hold a plebiscite. It outed this pledge. It violated every accord—the
Instrument of Accession, the Delhi Agreement and even the Accord of 1975 forged
under duress.
There was disagreement between the Sheikh and Nehru on whether the State’s
Constituent Assembly could decide on its accession to India. The National
Conference Resolution envisaged decision on “the future shape and a liations of
the State”. The Ruler’s Proclamation of May 1, 1951, convening the Constituent
Assembly restricted its scope of “framing a Constitution”. Abdullah stuck to his
stand, nonetheless.
In February 1950, Patel’s Ministry of States published a White Paper on Indian
States, which authoritatively stated: “Steps will be taken for convening a
Constituent Assembly which will go into these matters in detail and when it comes
to a decision on them, it will make a recommendation to the President....” (page
113).
Thus, a separate Constitution for the State of Jammu and Kashmir was envisaged
even by Patel right from the very beginning as part of its future set-up. Two steps
taken by Nehru wrecked the agreed arrangement. One was the arrest and
imprisonment for 11 years of Sheikh Abdullah on August 9, 1953, immediately after
his dismissal from the o ce of Premier of the State. It was a midnight coup. Also
arrested were a host of people including Mirza Muhammad Afzal Beg, whom the
Sheikh treated disgracefully 30 years later. A large number of members of the
Assembly were arrested, robbing it of its legitimacy to frame the Constitution that
it did in 1956.
In K. Anandan Nambiar (AIR 1952 Madras 117), the Madras High Court rejected the
detained Member of Constituent Assembly K. Anandan Nambiar’s plea to attend the
House. Justice Somasundaram’s observations are pertinent to the arrests in Kashmir
in 1953 and in the rest of India during the Emergency in 1975: “We, however, readily
concede the contention of Mr. S. Mohan Kumaramangalam that if a party in power
detains a political opponent or continues his detention with the mala de object of
sti ing opposition and prejudicing the party to which he belongs in a forthcoming
election, there would be an undermining of the basis of the Constitution, putting in
jeopardy the second pillar to which we have adverted (‘honesty, character and
integrity in the component organs of the Constitution’)” (Para 7 of Judgment
Appadurai, page 1,219). Gone also was its authority to ratify the Centre’s
amassment of power until its dissolution in 1956.
Throughout the negotiations in 1951-1952, Abdullah insisted and Nehru agreed that
Jammu and Kashmir would have an elective head of State. On October 3, 1963,
former Premier of the State Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed revealed that a directive had
been issued (by the Government of India) “to bring Kashmir closer to the rest of
India”—by abolishing its special status. For this, the entire record of the past had to
be wiped out.
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The Interim Report of Jammu and Kashmir’s Constituent Assembly (June 10, 1952)
recommended abolition of the monarchy. The report was signed not only by
Abdullah, Afzal Beg and others but also by the conspirators of the 1953 coup,
Bakshi, D.P. Dhar, Mir Qasim, G.L. Dogra, S.L. Saraf and others. G.M. Sadiq could not,
as he was President of the Assembly. The Assembly accepted the report’s
recommendation on June 12, 1952. Nehru agreed, provided that the election of the
Head of State by Kashmir’s Assembly was subject to approval by the President, that
is, by himself as the Prime Minister. Worse, though elected, he would hold o ce
“during the pleasure of the President”; have the same security of tenure as a daily
wage earner. It was adopted in the Delhi Agreement in July 1952.
This was carried out in the Constitution of Jammu and Kashmir as adopted in
November 1956. But on April 10, 1965, the Sadiq government got enacted the
Constitution of Jammu & Kashmir 6th Amendment, 1965, replacing the elected
Sadar-i-Riyasat with a Governor nominated by the Centre.
The consequences for the State’s autonomy have been calamitous. During
President’s rule or Governor’s rule it is the Governor who has acted as “the
Government of the State”, himself nominated by the Centre to give his masters the
desired concurrence to amass power; all in breach of Article 370.
It is not Article 35A but the amendment of 1965 which violates “the basic structure”
of J&K’s Constitution. For it sets at naught its republican character as well as the
federal structure, two of its essential features.
Doval’s lament on September 4 that the continuation of Kashmir’s Constitution “is
an aberration” reveals a lot. That Constitution and Article 370 have hollowed out in
breach of all the accords. An “aberration” is an unwelcome departure from the
normal. There was nothing abnormal in conceding Kashmir’s right to have its own
Constitution. Its deprivation accounts for the people’s revolt today.
Ninety-four of the 97 entries in the Union list were extended to Kashmir, and so
were 260 of the 395 Articles of India’s Constitution. Article 370 is a wreck which
Mufti’s accord with the Centre sancti ed. All this and more had been fully
documented in the State Autonomy Report, which the A.B. Vajpayee Cabinet
summarily rejected on July 4, 2000. Read Jammu & Kashmir Assembly’s excellent
compilation of debates on that report on April 8 and 10 and June 20-26, 1990, and
the contrast between the opinions in New Delhi and Srinagar emerges starkly. Even
pro-Union leaders demanded autonomy.
Articles 370 and 35A are shaped by a history which none in New Delhi dares to
recall today. Read the minutes of the Defence Committee of the Nehru Cabinet on
October 26, 1947. V.P. Menon reported after his visit to Kashmir that Maharaja Hari
Singh “had gone to pieces completely—if not gone o his head”. His Prime Minister
Mehr Chand Mahajan’s “pet obsession had been how the minority of the population
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hand man. He could not have said what he did in his reply to Sapru on May 8, 1948,
unless it expressed his Prime Minister’s view also: “We cannot a ord to let Kashmir
secede from India” (page 497). Nothing had happened in the three months since he
spoke to the Security Council to induce change of mind. The conclusion is
inescapable. When speaking to the Security Council he had lied through his teeth.
Scores of pledges by Nehru were as insincere.
He was to do worse. On August 9, 1953, he had the State’s Premier Sheikh Abdullah
dismissed from o ce through Karan Singh and other conspirators (Bakshi Ghulam
Mohammed, G.M. Sadiq and Mir Qasim) and put in prison for 11 years on a false
charge of conspiracy with Pakistan, for which there was not a tittle of evidence.
Apologists blamed Maulana Azad and Ra Ahmed Kidwai for bad advice. Archival
evidence revealed that Nehru had given written instruction to his private Secretary,
M.O. Mathai, on July 31, 1953. Coups there have been since Independence for the
ouster of Chief Ministers at the Centre’s behest, but never was the Army’s help
sought. In this instance, it was, plus a bag full of currency notes. Nehru personally
selected Major-General Hiralal Atal, Commander of 21 Communication Zone, now XV
Corps, for “all assistance that you can give”, Atal wrote in his memoirs. Also
involved was the family’s favourite in the army, B.M. Kaul, who distinguished
himself in the war with China in 1962. Atal also described a Director of
Organisation, “selected by Army Headquarters for an assignment which militarily
was not within his sphere ... he mentioned that he was carrying with him a largish
sum of money” for purposes which were no secret.
To the President on August 9, and in Parliament on August 10, Nehru falsely denied
that he had interfered. Indira Gandhi was not spared. Nehru retailed the lie to her on
August 9 when she was in Zurich. “It is a heart-breaking thing to happen,” she
replied. On her return she tried to meet Abdullah in prison. Mathai prevented that,
as his Note reveals.
These lies ceased to be Nehru’s alone. They were immediately owned by the entire
political class, the media and academia. Nehru’s biographer Sarvepalli Gopal had
access to all the papers, especially the instruction to Mathai. He had no qualms in
asserting in his biography of Nehru: “All the documents so far available indicate
that Nehru did not interfere or even hint at his preferences” (Volume 2; pages 131-
32). This was published in 1979; Atal’s memoirs in 1972. Gopal was Nehru’s o cial
biographer as well as editor of his Selected Works.
Do not exonerate Nehru. But the Sangh Parivar’s denunciations centre on his legacy
of secularism. It was Nehru who secured Kashmir for India, but at a price which India
still continues to pay. The nation is indoctrinated and in denial based on lies; the
Kashmiris, more secessionist and rebellious. The march of history did not stop in
1953. Pakistan went to war against India in 1965. It cannot achieve at the
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conference table what it lost at its own chosen forum, the battle eld. Kashmir
cannot be independent either. While India cannot permit its secession, Kashmiris
cannot and do not accept the Union. The Mushara -Manmohan Singh formula
reconciled the two, the Union’s needs and Kashmiris’ rights.
On October 30, 1948, Deputy Prime Minister Vallabhbhai Patel said: “The moment
we realise that the people of Kashmir do not want to be there, we shall not be there
even for a minute” (Hindustan Times, October 31, 1948).
He did not make India’s withdrawal conditional on the result of a referendum or
plebiscite. A clear demonstration of the people’s wishes would su ce to make New
Delhi “realise” that. A fair solution is urgently required. Neither time nor force is a
solution.
It is much more than moral blindness, historical ignorance and constitutional
illiteracy which drive the Dovals of this world to question Kashmir’s separate
Constitution. It is the fascist communal mindset of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak
Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Its election manifesto of 1991 was
based on V.D. Savarkar’s Hindutva. “From the Himalayas to Kanya Kumari, this
country has always been one” on Bharat Mata. It cannot tolerate India’s rich regional
cultural and religious diversity. Kashmir’s Constitution embodies all three. Spies and
policemen should stick to their jobs.
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