THE state of Jammu and Kashmir was a part of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s kingdom of Punjab till as late as 1846. He had wrested Jammu and Kashmir from the declining Durrani empire in Afghanistan in 1819. This brought the state under a non-Muslim ruler for the first time in 455 years.

In 1752, five years before the victory of the British East India Company at Plassey, the Durranis seized Jammu and Kashmir from a weakened Mughal empire. The Mughals had annexed the state from the Sultan dynasty in 1586 and politically incorporated it into their empire where it remained for 166 years.

It was during the reign of the state’s Sultan dynasty from 1339 that Islam overwhelmed the two indigenous religions of Hinduism and Buddhism. This balance had even withstood the barbaric cruelty of Sikandar Butshikan, the iconoclastic 6th Sultan of the Shah Miri dynasty. Sikandar Butshikan who ruled from 1389 to 1413 had attempted to physically sanitize the valley of all non-Muslims and their culture. This was the period when Kashmir’s patron saint, Nund Rishi, realizing that there was no other option, converted to Islam and acquired the persona of Sheikh Nur-ud-Din Wali or the ‘Light of the Faith’. Nund Rishi preached and practised a symbiosis of tolerance and inclusivity called Kashmiriyat. This involved respecting all religious traditions and celebrating each other’s festivals. Both beef and pork were dropped from the Kashmiri diet.

These cultural nuances endured throughout Muslim rule of the state. The minority Hindu community of Kashmiri Pandits or Brahmins was highly educated in the Persian language. This knowledge helped them serve Muslim rulers for centuries as the cornerstone of the ruling bureaucracy. The Muslims in the state were mainly artisans and peasants. There was a clear trade-off. While the minority Pandits accepted the dominant Islamic culture, they controlled all the economic power by virtue of their superior education and mobility.

When Maharaja Ranjit Singh conquered the state in 1819, he recognized the talents of one of his soldiers called Gulab Singh, a Dogra from Jammu. The Maharaja installed him as the ruler of Jammu in 1822 and personally anointed him as his vassal ruler, allowing him complete autonomy in maintaining his own army. This special relationship grew in 1823 when the Maharaja granted Jammu to Gulab Singh as a hereditary principality.

Sikh governors were installed in the Valley of Kashmir to administer the adjoining region. In 1834 Gulab Singh’s forces led by the dynamic General Zorawar Singh captured Ladakh. The ruling Maharaja was exiled to the village of Stok near Leh, with the diminished title of ‘Raja’.

 

After Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s death in 1839, Gulab Singh’s general, Zorawar Singh, conquered Baltistan and Gilgit. In 1841 Zorawar Singh’s armies nominally extended the Sikh empire into Gartok near the source of the Indus and to Lake Mansarovar. However, with the Dogra logistics badly stretched, a combined Tibetan and Chinese force killed Zorawar Singh and 4,000 of his troops near Lake Mansarovar in the Battle of To-Yo in December 1841. A shrine constructed in his memory by his enemies still attracts tourists.

On 17 September 1842, the Qing Emperor of China and the then Dalai Lama signed the Treaty of Chushul with Gulab Singh as a representative of the Sikh empire, restoring the boundaries of the Sikh empire to Aksai Chin, a desert plateau between the Karakoram and Kunlun mountain ranges in Southern Sinkiang. Gulab Singh was also granted a ‘jagir’ of three villages near Mansarovar that had originally belonged to the now deposed Maharaja of Ladakh.

This somewhat ambiguous treaty, as drafted in those heady days, would later become the basis of both Indian and Chinese claims to Aksai Chin in 1949. In the 1950s this dispute resulted in Chinese intrusions into and annexation of this tract of land.

The death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in 1839 had plunged the Sikh empire into instability. It coincided with the untimely deaths of Gulab Singh’s two brothers, Dhyan and Suchet Singh and that of his nephew Hira Singh, all prominent functionaries in the Sikh empire, paving the way for Gulab Singh to consolidate his position within the declining empire. These deaths ran in parallel with the concurrent demise of all of the sons and grandsons of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, save his youngest son Duleep Singh. Gulab Singh struck a deep friendship with Colonel Henry Lawrence of the East India Company in 1842 and decided to gradually wean himself away from the Sikh empire.

A master of real politic, Gulab Singh’s probable secret alliance with the British led him to refuse command of the Sikh army. As a result, he stayed away from the first Anglo-Sikh War of 1845-46. Gulab Singh’s decision was a major tactical and strategic boost for the East India Company. This tipped the balance in favour of the British, giving them a tough but assured victory in the battle for Punjab.

 

After bitter fighting, the British defeated the Sikh forces at the end of February 1846. The British enlisted at arm’s length Gulab Singh’s support in rapidly executing the Treaty of Lahore on 9 March 1846. This treaty compelled the vanquished infant ruler of Punjab, Maharaja Duleep Singh to free Gulab Singh to sign a separate treaty with the British. This treaty recognized Gulab Singh’s independent sovereignty in his existing territories and in any territories sold to him by the British. By all accounts this was an extraordinary document and Gulab Singh’s British ally, Colonel Henry Lawrence, was a signatory to it.

The unusual turn of events did not end here. Exactly a week later on 16 March 1846, the British signed a second treaty, the Treaty of Amritsar, with Raja Gulab Singh. By this treaty, the British, who now had conquered the Sikh empire, sliced off the Valley of Kashmir and all territories of the Sikh empire east of the river Indus and west of the river Ravi. They sold this land to Gulab Singh for Rs 75 lakhs in Nanakshahi rupees, the currency of the Sikh empire.

 

The amount of Rs 75 lakhs was the cost to the East India Company of the just concluded Anglo-Sikh War. This was the amount of war reparations to be paid by the defeated Sikh empire to the East India Company. Historians argue that since the Treaty of Lahore specifically mentions Gulab Singh one week before he received Kashmir via the Treaty of Amritsar, this was a pointer to the pre-war arrangement between Gulab Singh and the British over Kashmir. Further, Raja Gulab Singh received the indefensible and sacrosanct title to ‘Jammu and Kashmir’ and was recognized as the Maharaja of this newly created political entity. By virtue of the Treaty of Amritsar, the British obtained paramountcy in relation to defence, foreign affairs and communications over this new state of Jammu and Kashmir.

On 26 October 1947, 101 years after the signing of the Treaty of Amritsar, the great grandson of Maharaja Gulab Singh, Maharaja Hari Singh signed the Instrument of Accession with the Dominion of India which was the successor state to the British Raj. He accepted paramountcy of the Government of India in relation to defence, foreign affairs and communication just as his great grandfather, Maharaja Gulab Singh had earlier accepted British Paramountcy in these matters. Both the Treaty of Amritsar and the Instrument of Accession must be read together as they confirm the parameters of paramountcy under which the ‘House of Gulab Singh’ ruled the state of Jammu and Kashmir, first under British Paramountcy and then under Indian Paramountcy.

In between there was an interregnum of 73 days between the lapse of British Paramountcy on 15 August and the state of Jammu and Kashmir’s acceptance of Indian Paramountcy on 26 October 1947. The Doctrine of Paramountcy implies that where both central and state laws coexist, central laws will prevail through the Doctrine of Supremacy. Further, the Treaty of Chushul too has to be read together with the Treaty of Amritsar to understand the boundaries of Maharaja Gulab Singh’s state. Do these historical documents not stand by themselves? Can all the stakeholders in the state of Jammu and Kashmir afford to ignore the facts enshrined in them?

 

In 1931, a young Kashmiri Muslim by the name of Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah who was an alumnus of Aligarh Muslim University, acquired prominence as part of a group of Kashmiri Muslims agitating for social and political reforms. The agitation was communal in nature and British troops were required to restore law and order. Seeing the success in mobilizing the Muslim masses against the rule of the Maharaja, Sheikh Abdullah and others formed a political party in 1932 called the Muslim Conference. This party renamed itself as the National Conference in 1939 to reflect the secular nature of the political struggle against the rule of the Maharaja. However, in 1941, following the announcement of the Pakistan Resolution in Lahore, many Muslims disgruntled with Abdullah and the secular nature of the National Conference, resurrected the Muslim Conference. Thereafter, both these parties spearheaded the political struggle against the Maharaja’s rule.

In May 1946, the National Conference launched the ‘Quit Kashmir’ campaign against the Maharaja which led to the arrest of Sheikh Abdullah for sedition. Incensed by this Pandit Nehru stormed into the state in June 1946 to defend Abdullah. Nehru was arrested and escorted out of the state. Nehru never forgave this humiliation and became an implacable personal foe of Maharaja Hari Singh.

 

The Quit Kashmir agitation also had an underlying economic agenda called ‘Naya Kashmir’ which propagated radical land reforms without recourse to compensation. These reforms were conceived to break the trade-off that existed between the majority Muslim community and the minority Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist communities. While the minorities controlled a majority of the land and the state’s economic resources, they accepted Islamic culture as the overriding culture of the state. These land reforms were devised by Sheikh Abdullah to consolidate the Kashmiri language speaking Muslim population as his vote bank.

By 15 August 1947, Maharaja Hari Singh had still not decided on the issue of accession. He signed a standstill agreement with Pakistan. He also had a bitter personal enmity with Pandit Nehru, then prime minister of India. His was a state with a 77% Muslim majority population and the three major rivers that flowed through Jammu and Kashmir, namely Jhelum, Chenab and Indus, were the lifeline of Pakistan. On 17 August 1947 the Radcliffe Boundary Commission awarded India the district of Gurdaspur in Punjab. This gave Jammu and Kashmir a convenient land border with India and greatly improved Maharaja Hari Singh’s options.

Other events were to complicate the situation further. After 15 August 1947, the Pakistan government instigated the recently demobilized soldiers against the Maharaja under the quise of a no-tax campaign. These soldiers belonged to the Muzaffarabad, Mirpur and Poonch areas contiguous to Pakistan in the western part of Jammu district. This transformed into genocide against the minority Hindus and Sikhs living there. As a reaction there was communal violence in September 1947 against Muslims in Jammu province by the majority Hindus and Sikhs. Thousands of people of all communities were slaughtered in the ensuing violence. The Government of India pressurized the Maharaja to release Sheikh Abdullah and he was freed on 29 September 1947.

 

But were these wanton acts of violence or were they part of a larger plan? On 22 October 1947, detachments of armed Pakhtoon tribals controlled by then Brigadier Akbar Khan of the Pakistan Army and a local Punjabi politician, Sardar Shaukat Hayat Khan invaded the Kashmir Valley. However, instead of advancing directly to Srinagar to seize the airport as planned by Brigadier Akbar Khan, the kabailis or invaders got sidetracked into looting, pillaging and rape. This slowed down their advance.

Meanwhile on 24 October 1947, the Muzaffarabad, Mirpur and Poonch rebels declared the formation of a puppet government of so-called Azad Kashmir, known in India as Pakistan occupied Jammu and Kashmir, under the leadership of a lawyer, Sardar Ibrahim.

So, on 24 October 1947, Maharaja Hari Singh faced multiple crises. The Kashmir Valley had been invaded and the invaders were not far from Srinagar. The town of Pallandri was now the seat of a puppet government of so-called Azad Kashmir. The entire province of Jammu was in the grip of genocide. The Government of India was only willing to come to his rescue if he surrendered power to Sheikh Abdullah and signed the Instrument of Accession. India’s Home Minister, Sardar Patel’s Principal Secretary, V.P. Menon had flown to Srinagar and virtually ordered the Maharaja to leave the city for the relative safety of Jammu. With his entire family, the Maharaja left for Jammu that night by road. On 26 October 1947, he signed the Instrument of Accession in Jammu.

 

Meanwhile, there was another crucial side plot which was being secretly hatched by the British to ensure that Pakistan retained a foothold in the state even if the Maharaja opted for India. In 1935, a civil war was raging in China and the Soviet Union acquired de facto control over the province of Sinkiang, which had a long border with Jammu and Kashmir. In order to prepare for a possible invasion sponsored by the Soviet Union, the British leased the Gilgit principality and its vassal states from Maharaja Hari Singh for a period of 60 years.

Gilgit was the last outpost of British India before the landmass of Jammu and Kashmir merged with Sinkiang. To the south of Gilgit flowed the mighty Indus as it meandered westwards towards the Punjab. To the north of Gilgit lay the Karakoram Range watershed and Sinkiang. Of the eight known passes between Central Asia and the subcontinent, six passes lay within a week’s march from Gilgit. From 1935, the leased region was treated as a part of British India, administered by a Political Agent at Gilgit responsible to Delhi. As a result, the Rajas of Chitral, Hunza, Nagar Haveli, Puniyal, Chilas Yasin, Yashkoman and Koh-e-Khizr, all vassals of the Maharaja of Kashmir, had come under direct British rule. The newly leased territory was now called the Gilgit Agency.

In early 1943, the British posted a Pushto speaking Indian Army officer, Captain William Brown, to the Gilgit Agency where he spent the next three years. He travelled widely throughout the Gilgit Agency in Hunza, Nagar, Yashkoman, Puniyal, Koh-e-Khizr, gaining experience and invaluable local knowledge. While in the Gilgit Agency during this time, he learnt Shina, the dialect of the region, as well as some Burushaski, the language of Hunza.

As the date for Independence neared, the British wanted to make sure that the Gilgit Agency went lock, stock and barrel to Pakistan so that British strategic interests were secured. However, they wanted to keep their hands clean. On 1 August 1947, only 15 days before the transfer of power, the British rescinded the Gilgit Agency lease and handed Gilgit back to Maharaja Hari Singh. The reason behind this haste was that it was almost a foregone conclusion that the Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Ram Chandra Kak, a Kashmiri Pandit, was pushing the state to accede to Pakistan.

 

Lieutenant Colonel Roger Bacon, the British Political Agent handed over the region to the Maharaja’s newly appointed Governor, Brigadier Ghansara Singh. However, days before the handover, the British installed the newly promoted Major William Brown as Commandant of the Gilgit Scouts which was a unit of the Jammu and Kashmir forces. Major Brown had already spent the last four consecutive years in the region and was extremely familiar with the men under his command and with the local Rajas, all vassals to Maharaja Hari Singh.

Days before Partition, the relations between Jammu and Kashmir’s Prime Minister Kak and the Congress party were frosty. The British Resident in Jammu and Kashmir reported that Kashmir was likely to stay out of the Indian Union. In his autobiography, Sheikh Abdullah revealed that Kak had good relations with the ruling circles in Pakistan. He says that Kak had assessed that being a Muslim majority state, Kashmir was bound to accede to Pakistan and had prepared a path to secure a place for himself in that eventuality. However, palace intrigues in Maharaja Hari Singh’s court and Mahatma Gandhi’s views on Kak resulted in his dismissal from office on 11 August 1947.

 

The scales were now tilted in favour of Jammu and Kashmir remaining independent. British plans for Jammu and Kashmir were in tatters. Mountbatten, probably unaware of a revised British secret agenda being constructed behind his back, decided in a spirit of fair play to lean on the Radcliffe Boundary Commission to award Gurdaspur district in Punjab to India. This provided Jammu and Kashmir with a land link to India.

The British had an alternate plan. On the night of 31 October 1947, only five days after Maharaja Hari Singh signed the Instrument of Accession to India, Brown and his other British junior officer, Captain Mathieson mutinied. They led their overwhelmingly Muslim troops to imprison Governor Ghansara Singh and declare accession of Gilgit and all the vassal states of the area to Pakistan. What was not public knowledge at the time is that both British officers had already switched allegiance to the Government of Pakistan on 26 October 1947 without informing the governor. They were thus Pakistani officers masquerading as officers of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. The coup was successful and on 2 November 1947, the Pakistani flag was raised in Gilgit and all the accompanying vassal states.

Interestingly in July 1948, Major Brown was awarded the MBE (Military) by the British government with an unspecified citation; in 1994, President Leghari of Pakistan posthumously awarded him Sitara-e-Pakistan, one of the nation’s highest awards. Many are convinced that the illegal takeover of Gilgit and the vassal states, following the 22 October 1947 invasion of the state by Pakistani irregulars, was a fallback plan hatched by the British and Pakistanis after both the dismissal of Jammu and Kashmir’s Prime Minister Kak and the Maharaja’s accession to India. Ideally, they would have wanted the entire state to go to Pakistan.

 

By 26 October 1947, when Maharaja Hari Singh signed the Instrument of Accession in favour of India, he was confronted with four major challenges – the invasion by Pakistani irregulars or kabailis, the formation of a puppet government of so-called Azad Kashmir, and genocide against Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims in Jammu province. Further, Maharaja Hari Singh was not only forced to release his archenemy Sheikh Abdullah from prison but to also include him in the Emergency Administration that governed parts of the state still in the Maharaja’s nominal control from 29 October 1947 onwards. A fifth challenge in the form of the Gilgit rebellion was around the corner.

The four events of the establishment of the Azad Kashmir provisional government in Pallandri, the invasion of the valley by the kabailis or invaders, the coup by Major Brown in Gilgit and the genocide in Jammu province were not isolated coincidences. History has revealed that they were all part of a Pakistan Army plan called ‘Operation Gulmarg’ executed by Brig. Akbar Khan who ran this operation under the cover name of Col. Tariq. The only reason that this plan did not succeed in its entirety was because the Indian government got a secure intelligence tip-off and made counter preparations. They also simultaneously pressurized the Maharaja to accede to India to complete the legality of the process. Nevertheless, Operation Gulmarg was a partial success. Were the British content to sit on the sidelines while all of this happened or was there more to their role?

 

The British had Field Marshall Auchinleck in place as C-in-C of the Joint Command of the Indian and Pakistani armies and also had General Messervy as Chief of the Pakistan Army and General Butcher as Chief of the Indian Army. Field Marshall Auchinleck’s Joint Command was only wound up in November 1948.

British interest in the state lay in its access to Sinkiang and the rest of Central Asia via Gilgit. Evidence points to the fact that Maj. Brown was assiduously primed for his role in the Gilgit coup of 2 November 1947. Further, the fact that in June 1948 he was awarded the MBE (Military) by the King of England confirms that British Military Intelligence was in the know of Operation Gulmarg and also participated in a support role via the Gilgit rebellion.

When British officers controlled both the Indian and Pakistani armies, how did things work practically when the two Dominions were virtually at war? Why did Operation Gulmarg not succeed in its entirety and why was the Gilgit rebellion a success? What was the nature of the intelligence tip-off received by the Government of India?

On 20 August 1947, only five days after Partition, details pertaining to Operation Gulmarg marked ‘Top Secret’ accidentally fell into the hands of Maj. O.S. Kalkat in far off Bannu in the North West Frontier Province. Major Kalkat was awaiting reassignment to India. The plans had been signed by General Messervy and were a blueprint for the invasion of J&K. They were meant for the Brigade Commander, Brigadier C.P. Murray who was commanding the Bannu Frontier Brigade Group. As his senior officer was away, Major Kalkat, who was the Brigade Major, opened the document and was amazed to have accidentally acquired this information. Placed under house arrest thereafter, he courageously escaped from Pakistan and reached Delhi on 19 October 1947. Despite Major Kalkat revealing this information the next day to then Brigadier Kulwant Singh and Indian Defence Minister Baldev Singh, the latter never acted on this intelligence and a great opportunity to thwart the invasion was lost.

 

The Instrument of Accession signed on 26 October 1947 was the First Accord on Kashmir. It was entered into between the GoI and Maharaja Hari Singh with Sheikh Abdullah as the prime beneficiary as it brought him to power in the state. Within days of signing of the Instrument of Accession, almost 30,000 Indian troops had been airlifted into Srinagar by a fleet of 100 Dakota aircraft. In order to resolve the crisis and prevent war between the two Dominions of India and Pakistan, Lord Mountbatten, India’s Governor General went to Lahore on 1 November 1947 to meet with Pakistan’s Governor General Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan. The talks failed. This was followed by the chain smoking Liaqat Ali Khan’s visit to New Delhi in the first week of December. Thereafter, Nehru and Mountbatten visited Lahore. With the onset of winter, though Srinagar was firmly in Indian control, there was a stalemate on other fronts.

By 4 December 1947, despite the ban on British officers taking active part in the hostilities between the two Dominions under the infamous Standstill Agreement, General Messervy of the Pakistan Army was violating the ban. He was assisting Brig. Akbar Khan from the shadows. This covert assistance rapidly increased and by March 1948, the Pakistan Army under the command of British officers had come out of the closet and was fully involved with the Kashmir war against India. The last two months of 1947 saw bitter fighting in the Kashmir Valley between Pakistan’s proxy warriors and the Indian Army. The entire Gilgit Agency had been lost to Pakistan.

 

There was already a puppet government of the so-called Azad Kashmir, known in India as Pakistan Occupied Jammu and Kashmir. This was in place in the Muzaffarabad-Poonch belt, challenging the Government of India. It was in this murky atmosphere and probably on the advice of Lord Mountbatten that Prime Minister Nehru decided to approach the United Nations on 1 January 1948. By 21 April 1948 after many resolutions of the UN Security Council, a new resolution appeared that asked Pakistan to withdraw all state and non-state actors from Jammu and Kashmir. India was urged to reduce its forces to a minimum to maintain law and order; an interim Jammu and Kashmir Government comprising a grand coalition of all stakeholders should be put in power and thereafter the UN would appoint a Plebiscite Administrator with adequate powers to ascertain the wishes of the people of the state.

Meanwhile in March 1948, an interim government was established in Jammu and Kashmir to administer all of the areas of the state under Indian control. Sheikh Abdullah finally fulfilled his ambition of becoming the prime minister, while Maharaja Hari Singh became the titular constitutional head of state. Nehru’s robbing of the Maharaja of his political power was because of the former’s anxiety to tie down Sheikh Abdullah to the Indian cause to ensure victory in any possible future plebiscite.

 

The Ides of March made the situation in Jammu and Kashmir highly fluid. Pakistan’s proxy war was in full swing. British Major General Robert Cawthome, who was to later found the ISI in Pakistan and serve as its longest tenured chief, was busy keeping the state in flux. British Intelligence through MI5 had a security liaison officer posted in New Delhi to daily coordinate intelligence sharing with London. Both India and Pakistan were still Dominions of the British empire though all British officers were officially banned from taking part in Inter Dominion hostilities. Meanwhile the resourceful Major Brown had wrested the entire northern part of the state for Pakistan to ensure Britain’s continuing access to Central Asia.

Sheikh Abdullah had privately warned Nehru that his writ only extended to the Kashmiri speaking geographical parts of Jammu and Kashmir. In the shadow of Partition, Jammu and Kashmir was communally super charged. There was no guarantee that even if the Indian Army was able to win back all the lost territories of the state, given a probable plebiscite, the non-Kashmiri speaking Muslim population would vote for India.

London had the whole matrix before it and in the emerging Cold War world, her interests did not appear to coincide with those of her Indian Dominion. What were the choices before Nehru? By 1948, Nehru understood that by betting only on Sheikh Abdullah he had failed to respond to the changed realities. Partition had unleashed vicious communal violence. The western part of Jammu province comprising Mirpur, Muzaffarabad and Poonch districts had been ethnically cleansed of both Hindus and Sikhs. Moreover, it had declared itself independent. Likewise, the eastern part of Jammu province had been largely cleansed of Muslims.

The coup in Gilgit and the vassal states had ensured their accession to Pakistan. The remaining part of Ladakh, still the largest territorial unit of Jammu and Kashmir, was overwhelmingly Buddhist. This came under India. So, the complexion of Jammu and Kashmir would be a Hindu and Sikh Jammu province, a Buddhist Ladakh and a Kashmir Valley with over 90% Muslim majority. For the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India to be completed, the popular yet politically ambivalent leader, Sheikh Abdullah, would have to be convinced to support it.

 

The Sheikh’s party, the National Conference, had not yet completely agreed for Kashmir to be a part of India. Nehru was a realist and a shrewd politician. He knew that to appease Sheikh Abdullah, the Maharaja would have to be absolutely deposed. The parameters of autonomy promised under the Instrument of Accession would have to be maintained so that it could be accepted by Sheikh Abdullah.

The emerging Cold War dynamic required India to play along so as to consolidate its position. For Nehru, there seemed to be some logic in Mountbatten’s advice to go to the United Nations and work towards a plebiscite. Nehru was looking for the United Nations to admonish or censure Pakistan for orchestrating the violent events in Jammu and Kashmir. That did not happen. The Pakistanis were also disappointed with the United Nations because they could not digest having a plebiscite throughout Jammu and Kashmir, influenced one way or the other by Sheikh Abdullah under the protection of the Indian Army. The result thus was a stalemate.

Meanwhile, on the ground, Pakistan had occupied Skardu by September 1948. India counter-attacked and stopped the advancing Pakistanis at the Zoji La pass. Next the Indian Army took Dras and Kargil in November. The strategically important Srinagar-Kargil-Leh road was now secured. The Indian Army did not move any further. Why?

 

India also knew that the Muslim populations of Muzaffarabad, Poonch, Mirpur and Gilgit were now virulently anti-Indian. Even if these areas could be militarily secured, how would they ever be governed with a hostile population? Moreover, as 1948 came to an end, India felt that the war could not be indefinitely continued. Plans for the rest of the country could not be put on hold. Hyderabad had just been absorbed. A constitution was to be decided upon. Nation building had to proceed and India had to emerge out of the mayhem of Partition. Nehru took the practical way out and agreed to a ceasefire on 1 January 1949.

The next item on the agenda was the future of the Maharaja as India had to politically secure the valley in the event that a plebiscite actually took place. On 28 April 1949 the Maharaja, Maharani and Yuvaraj of Jammu and Kashmir had lunch with Nehru at his house in New Delhi. This was followed by a dinner at Sardar Patel’s home the next day. It was over dinner that the Sardar told a startled Maharaja that he would have to abdicate and physically leave the state along with the Maharani. This was in the national interest in view of the UN plebiscite proposals. The Maharaja would have to be sacrificed for the greater good.

The next day Nehru invited the young Yuvaraj Karan Singh over to the first of several breakfast meetings to nudge him into becoming the new Regent of the state. Thereafter, Sardar Patel also met the by now amenable Yuvaraj one final time and secured his consent to becoming the Regent at the tender age of eighteen. The die was cast. The Maharaja had been deposed by deft political intrigue. The young Karan Singh journeyed to Srinagar where he was met by Sheikh Abdullah and his entire cabinet at the airport. The Sheikh thought he had a puppet on a chain. Events were to prove otherwise.

 

But other winds were blowing westwards from Jammu and Kashmir’s eastern neighbours Sinkiang, now known as Xinjiang and Tibet, in 1949. With the Communist Party succeeding in winning the civil war in China by October 1950, it annexed Xinjiang and Tibet in rapid succession. Now the Chinese Commissars turned their attention to Ladakh. The region of Aksai Chin in Ladakh is a high altitude desert inhabited sparsely by Muslim Gujar tribals from India. Traders used to travel through this region between Ladakh and Tibet. Disregarding the Treaty of Chushul of 1842 and earlier treaties that demarcated the border between India and Tibet, the Chinese encroached into Aksai Chin, annexed it and started survey work to construct a road linking Xinjiang and Tibet.

The plebiscite proposed by the United Nations was not popular with either India or Pakistan. The UN began to look at other options. The most significant of these was the Dixon Plan of 1950 authored by Sir Owen Dixon, an important Australian jurist. He rejected the plebiscite as being impractical. His argument was that the former state of Jammu and Kashmir was an artificial construct of five regions under the political power of the Maharaja. Sir Dixon felt that a consolidated plebiscite would ignore the regional aspirations of the state. Since Jammu and Ladakh were primarily Hindu and Buddhist, they should remain with India. Likewise, the regions of Gilgit and the vassal states and the Muzaffarabad-Poonch-Mirpur belt would remain with Pakistan. The valley could be subject to a regional plebiscite since it had an overwhelming Muslim majority population but was under Indian control.

 

However, Pakistan was cool to this idea because it squarely placed Ladakh with India. Ladakh was the key to Pakistan’s lifeline, the Indus River, which flowed from Tibet through Ladakh into Baltistan, now under Pakistani control. Pakistan did not want to give up its claim to the entire trajectory of the Indus River through Indian territory as without control over the flow of the Indus, Pakistan’s strategic security was in jeopardy.

While Pakistan had water security concerns, Sheikh Abdullah was sending ambiguous messages about accession. Unable to deliver on the plebiscite, he was anxious to neutralize new politicians who could challenge his centralized power. Nehru meanwhile was worried about the demonstrated aggressiveness of China’s new communist rulers who were by now encroaching into more areas in Ladakh. Stray intelligence on the subject began to assume an uncomfortable regularity.

There were by now too many variables in play. On 13 July 1950, Sheikh Abdullah enacted the Big Landed Estates Abolition Act. This populist measure effectively attacked the economic power of Jammu Hindus and the Kashmiri Pandit community which collectively held an overwhelming majority of the 2.2 million acres of cultivable land in Jammu and Kashmir.

 

On 5 November 1951, the newly elected Jammu and Kashmir Constituent Assembly met. The main opposition party, the Praja Parishad, had boycotted the elections. As a result, 72 out of the 75 members of the National Conference were elected to it unopposed. In his opening address, Abdullah declared that the assembly would declare its conclusions regarding accession, land reforms and the future of the royal family. Tactfully, while he attacked the Maharaja, he invited Yuvaraj Karan Singh to be the Sadar-e-Riyasat or first Head of State. The Constituent Assembly elected Karan Singh as the new constitutional head of the state and abolished the position of Regent. With Yuvaraj Karan Singh becoming the first Sadar-e-Riyasat of Jammu and Kashmir on 15 November 1952, within only five years of signing of the Instrument of Accession, the final link with Maharaja Hari Singh was terminated.

On the same day, the Revenue Minister Mirza Afzal Beg declared in the assembly that no compensation would be given to the landlords whose lands had been taken away. This act of popular appeasement of the majority Muslim population by Sheikh Abdullah resulted in a violent agitation by the Praja Parishad in Jammu. Nehru now had a crisis on his hands. He knew that Sheikh Abdullah’s growing autocracy had to be controlled.

New Delhi began negotiations with the National Conference. The result was an Agreement on 24 July 1952, often referred to as the Delhi Agreement. This was the Second Accord on Kashmir, but only between the Government of India represented by Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah. It was presented to the Jammu and Kashmir Constituent Assembly on 11 August 1952. Sheikh Abdullah himself declared that while the state was an integral part of the Indian Union, it enjoyed certain unique privileges within that Union, including having its own flag concurrent with the Indian tricolour. The state chief minister was to be known as prime minister.

All the princely states that acceded to India had accepted the Constitution of India as their own constitution. While the position of all the states thus became equivalent to that of regular Indian provinces, in the case of Jammu and Kashmir the representatives to its Constituent Assembly requested that only those provisions of the Indian Constitution that corresponded to the original Instrument of Accession should be applied to the state.

 

Accordingly, Article 370 was incorporated into the Indian Constitution, which stipulated that the other articles of the Constitution that gave powers to the central government would be applied to Jammu and Kashmir only with the concurrence of the state’s Constituent Assembly. This was a ‘temporary provision’ in that its applicability was intended to last till the formulation and adoption of the state’s constitution. However, in years to come, the state’s Constituent Assembly would dissolve itself on 25 January 1957 without recommending either abrogation or amendment of the Article 370. Consequently, Article 370 was to become a permanent feature of the Indian Constitution.

Bharatiya Jana Sangh leader Syama Prasad Mookerjee was strongly opposed to Article 370, seeing it as a threat to national unity. In May 1953, Mookerjee wanted to go to the state to support the Praja Parishad’s agitation. But, he failed to do so as the authorities refused him an entry permit. He was arrested on 11 May while illegally crossing the border into Jammu and Kashmir. Thereafter, he died in custody on 23 June 1953 under mysterious circumstances. Mookerjee’s death was followed by the dismissal of Sheikh Abdullah from the post of Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir and his subsequent arrest on 8 August 1953. Nehru had had enough.

The state had four prime ministers or later chief ministers over the following 22 years. These were Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed, Khawaja Shamsuddin, G.M. Sadiq and Syed Mir Qasim.

The state transitioned from autonomy to integration with India as a result of the ill-fated Sheikh Abdullah tenure. This began in February 1954 with the very same Constituent Assembly reaffirming the state’s accession to India and the assembly requesting closer formal links with India. The riot act had been read to them by Nehru.

 

In May 1954, the state was placed under the jurisdiction of the President of India. From 1954 until 1974, over 138 central acts were made applicable to Jammu and Kashmir. Between 1956 and 1977, 28 presidential ordinances were applied to the state. Consequently, despite Article 370, Jammu and Kashmir had been integrated into India.

During 1964-65, Articles 249, 356 and 357 of the Indian Constitution were made applicable to J&K. Further, in 1965, the Sadar-e-Riyasat became governor and the prime minister became chief minister. The governor was now to be appointed by the President of India. Clearly if Sheikh Abdullah had not belligerently rocked the boat, Nehru would never have tampered with his autonomy. The state having been integrated into India there was now no going back.