How Kashmir missed being the ‘Switzerland of the East’. An extract
Harrison Akins
Amid these rising tensions with the Congress leadership, the Maharaja began to warm to the idea of Kashmiri independence under the influence of Kak, as it became increasingly clear the British would soon depart India. With the most strident and popular opposition to his rule so closely associated with Congress, he could not fathom the possibility of acceding to the Indian Union under a Congress-dominated government and retaining his sovereignty. Joining a Congress-ruled India, in his mind, necessarily meant abrogating his vested political authority and interests. Likewise, once the decision to establish Pakistan was made, accession to the Muslim state was not a path the Hindu ruler would consider. Nehru pointed to Kak as influencing the Maharaja’s thinking and contributing to the numerous problems within the state, arguing that he had fomented communal friction to weaken the National Conference and keep Kashmir out of India. In June 1947, he advised Mountbatten that Kak, who had ‘succeeded in antagonizing every decent element in Kashmir and in India as a whole,’ needed to be removed from his position with Abdullah and other political prisoners immediately released.
After announcing Partition, Mountbatten departed for Jammu and Kashmir to assess the political inclinations of the state. During this visit, the Maharaja was ‘very elusive,’ and the only times Mountbatten was able to converse with him at any length were on car rides together. The Viceroy pressured him to decide to accede to either Pakistan or India, which state was a matter of a choice for the Maharaja. Mountbatten assured him that if he ultimately chose Pakistan the State Department would not view this as an ‘unfriendly act’ toward India. In the meantime, the Maharaja should enter into a standstill agreement with both states. Kashmiri independence, Mountbatten counseled, was not a realistic option. On the final day of the visit, Mountbatten hoped to meet once more with the indecisive Hari Singh and urge him to a make a quick decision on accession. However, the Maharaja missed his scheduled meeting with the Viceroy by feigning an illness, even though the Maharaja himself had suggested the timing of their final meeting; he used the same ploy to avoid an earlier meeting with Nehru. After his visit, Mountbatten informed Nehru that it was the Maharaja’s desire that no Congress or Muslim League members should visit Jammu and Kashmir until his final decision had been announced, fearing such a visit could foment unrest among the state’s subjects. Nehru reluctantly agreed. Mountbatten’s visit was followed by a flurry of letters from Indian political leaders pushing for the princely state to accede to India. In early July 1947, Patel wrote to the Maharaja advocating for Abdullah’s release from prison and stressed that he and the other Congress leaders had no quarrel with the princely states. The Congress, he assured Singh, was ‘not only not your enemy, as you happen to believe, but there are in the Congress many strong supporters of your State.’ He stressed that Kashmir’s interests lay ‘in joining in Indian Union and its Constituent Assembly without any delay. Its past history and traditions demand it, and all India looks up to you and expects you to take that decision. On the same day, Patel wrote to Kak pushing the same. Menon, on the other hand, felt that the matter of Kashmir’s accession shouldn’t be pushed by either India or Pakistan. He recognized that it was possible that a majority Muslim state like Kashmir would not be able to be kept out of Pakistan for long and argued that the situation should ‘find its natural solution. Menon was sensitive to the Maharaja’s frustrations with the frequent lobbying of Indian leaders and though that such pressure might backfire.
‘The Switzerland of the East’
With the Maharaja failing to accede to either successor government, Pakistani officials were increasingly worried that India’s States Ministry was doing its utmost to pressure the Maharaja to accede to India. Throughout August 1947, Jinnah and Pakistan’s political leadership in Karachi received frantic letters that Hari Singh was falling under the sway of the National Conference and intended to join India, in addition to reports of increasing violence against the Muslim population. The Pakistani press at the time reported Kashmir’s eventual accession to India as ‘a foregone conclusion.’ Pakistani leaders were also concerned with the new Kashmiri Prime Minister and his relationship with India’s political leadership. Only four days before the transfer of power, Kak was removed from office. Serious differences had emerged between the Maharaja and the Prime Minister over the future direction of the state, and there was increasing pressure from the Congress leadership to have him removed. Kak was placed under house arrest and later sentenced to two years imprisonment on corruption charges. However, after the intervention of Nehru and Patel, his sentence was kept in abeyance, and he was allowed to leave the state. Following Kak’s dismissal, the Maharaja appointed Major General Janak Singh as Prime Minister before replacing him six weeks later with Mehr Chand Mahajan, a former judge of the Punjab High Court who had good relations with Nehru and Patel and whose appointment was welcomed by the Indian leaders.
Nehru, himself a Kashmiri Pandit, was adamant that the Maharaja should accede to India and feared a Pakistani military intervention to force a resolution of the situation should the Maharaja continue to delay making a definitive decision on the future of the state. On 27 September 1947, Nehru wrote to Patel of the ‘dangerous and deteriorating’ conditions within the princely states and that he had caught wind of a potential invasion from Pakistan. He stressed that Kashmir’s government was unequipped to handle the onslaught of an invasion on its own, especially ‘if their own people go against them.’ Nehru argued that the Maharaja should ‘make friends with the National Conference so that there might be this popular support against Pakistan,’ beginning with the release of Abdullah who was ‘very anxious to keep out of Pakistan and relies upon us a great deal for advice.’ This move would have the added benefit of speeding up the princely state’s accession to India, which would make it ‘very difficult for Pakistan to invade it officially or unofficially without coming into conflict with the Indian Union.’ He feared any delays would lead to Pakistani military action ‘without much fear of consequences.’ With pressure from the Pakistani side mounting, Nehru pushed Patel ‘to take some action in this matter to force the pace and to turn events in the right direction.’
Two days later, Kashmir’s government released Abdullah from prison, alongside other jailed National Conference members. While Abdullah had written to the Maharaja a few days before his release expressing his ‘steadfast loyalty,’ he immediately resumed his calls for a representative form of government representing all Kashmiris, whether Muslim, Hindu or Sikh, which would then ‘decide whether the State should join India or Pakistan.’ Despite making concessions to the Indian position by releasing Abdullah, the Maharaja did not budge from his dream of an independent Jammu and Kashmir, convinced that the conditions of the British withdrawal from India afforded him this right. On 12 October 1947, Kahmir’s Deputy Prime Minister stated to Indian officials in New Delhi:
We intend to keep on friendly relations with both Pakistan and the Indian Union. Despite constant rumours we have no intention of joining either India or Pakistan… The only thing that will change this decision 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.
Nevertheless, rumblings from Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province foreshadowed a coming conflict. In early October 1947, the Mehtar of Chitral warned Hari Singh: ‘Chitral and your other neighbouring Frontier State strongly urge you to join Pakistan. Your joining Indian Union in teeth of opposition from vast majority of your Muslim subjects will be deeply resented and force hands of your neighbouring States to take steps to undo the great wrong.’ Amid the Maharaja’s ‘almost fatal indecisivensess,’ Indian authorities were growing concerned that Pakistan would militarily intervene in the princely states. At this point, Patel pushed Defense Minister Baldev Singh to arrange for available supplies of arms and ammunition to be sent to Kashmir to support its state forces. On 17 October, Deputy Prime Minister Batra informed Patel that unfortunately no military supplies had yet arrived, which were needed immediately for ongoing operations in Poonch, and requested that the Defense Minister release stocks of arms and ammunition without delay. It would only be a matter of days before these supplies would be desperately needed.
CONQUERING THE MAHARAJAS: INDIA’S PRINCELY STATES
& THE END OF EMPIRE 1930-50
Harrison Akins
Aleph Book Company, Pg 296, Rs 899