Sat Parkash Suri and
Dr. Gurdev Singh
This is an extract from a forthcoming
Book ‘Dream and Reality- The Dogra
Rule in Jammu and Kashmir’)
On 20th February, 1947, British Prime Minister Lord Clement Attlee announced in the House of Commons that Britain had decided to transfer power to the Indians not later than June 1948. The Congress Working Committee asked the British Government to recognize the Interim Government formed on 2nd September, 1946, as the dominion Government of India and emphasized the need to speed up the work of Constituent Assembly so that the Constitution for the Indian Union be drafted. Mohd. Ali Jinnah reacted sharply and announced that League would not yield in its demand for Pakistan. Liaquat Ali Khan spoke in the same sharp tone on 26th February, 1947 that League would not accept any transfer of power unless the Muslim demand for Pakistan was fulfilled by the British.
Viceroy Lord Wavell did not agree with the British Government’s decision to withdraw from India within a period of one year and suggested a phased withdrawal of the British from India. Lord Attlee rejected the proposal put forward by Lord Wavell and appointed Mountbatten as the next Governor General of India who assumed his office on 24 March, 1947. After the oath ceremony which was held in the Durbar Hall of the Viceroy’s House, he declared that the solution of the Indian problem was to be settled in the near future. For this purpose, Mountbatten held separate talks with different political leaders including those with Pt. Nehru and Liaquat Ali Khan.
In May 1947, the Congress President, Acharya Kriplani, visited Srinagar to assess the political situation and tried to persuade Maharaja Hari Singh to adopt a policy of conciliation towards the National Conference Party as the communal frenzy had gripped many parts of India. As a result of the discussion held with the Maharaja and his Prime Minister Pt. Ramchander Kak, Acharya Kriplani got convinced that the ‘Quit Kashmir Movement’ needed to be officially withdrawn by the Kashmir National Conference before any compromise could be reached between the State Government and the National Conference. Acharya Kriplani denounced the ‘Quit Kashmir’ movement and maintained that Maharaja Hari Singh was a son of the State itself as such it was foolish for Sheikh Abdulla or for anybody else to ask him to quit the State. By comparing the ‘Quit Kashmir Agitation’ with ‘Quit India Movement’ of August 1942, the Congress President Acharya Kriplani explained while in the former case, the Maharaja was not an alien and in the latter the British were foreigners as such they had been rightly asked to quit the Indian soil.
After his return from England towards the end of May 1947, Lord Mountbatten announced his plan for the division of India on June 03, 1947. ‘Mountbatten’s plan of June 3, 1947 for the partition of the sub-continent allowed only 73 days to divide a sub-continent which was the size of Europe minus Russia and consisted of eleven provinces directly ruled by the British and 565 Princely States. The problems that had to be ironed out were numerous and complex. He accelerated the time table for division and transfer of power contributed to confusion’.
Lord Mountbatten ‘had delivered to 10 Downing Street a plan that offered Britain an honorable exit from India and to the Indians a solution ,however, painful to their impasse.’
Punjab Boundary Commission was announced on 30th June, 1947, to be headed by the British Jurist, Sir Cyril Radcliffe, to decide the new boundaries of the two provinces of the undivided India, Punjab in the northwest and Bengal in the northeast which were to be divided between India and Pakistan. The formation of the commission was accepted by the top leadership of both the political parties of India, the Muslim League and the Indian National Congress and hence the Commission’s jurisdiction did not apply to the Jammu & Kashmir State.
‘Faced with Mountbatten’s last minute decision to speed up the timetable for Britain’s departure from India, Radcliffe moved swiftly to complete his complicated and delicate mission before appointed 15th August deadline for the transfer of power and he submitted the awards to Mountbatten on 12th August after he left India on 15th August never to return. Mountbatten revealed the details of the awards to Pt. Nehru, Mohd. Ali Jinnah and other political leaders on 16th August, 1947, the day following the transfer of power but which were received coolly and with bitter criticism.’
Mountbatten visits Srinagar
The British had established the Gilgit Agency in 1889 under the control of the Kashmir Resident to counter the Czar’s growing influence in Central Asia. In 1935, Soviet Russia took over the control of Sinkiang and to counter balance this, the British took a sixty years lease of the Gilgit Wazarat from the Maharaja. At the time of partition, Gilgit Agency had become vitally important for them because of their military bases. The British Rulers in India knew that if Jammu & Kashmir State got acceded to the Indian Dominion, their military base in Gilgit would not be allowed to continue for long by an independent India. Keeping in view this, Lord Mountbatten under the pretext of long standing invitation from the Maharaja Hari Singh paid a visit to the State from June 18 to 23, 1947, to prevail upon the Ruler to accede to Pakistan.
Allen Campbell-Johnson in “Mission with Mountbatten” has recorded Maharaja Hari Singh’s indecisive approach to accession in this way:
‘Mountbatten has also seen for himself the paralysis of Princely uncertainty during his visit to Kashmir from which he has only just returned today-June 23, 1947. Both Nehru and Gandhi have been very anxious that the Maharaja of Kashmir should make no declaration of Independence. And Nehru himself descended from Kashmiri Brahmin’s has been pressing to visit the State himself to seek the release from prison of his friend, Sheikh Abdulla, now President of the State’s Congress. Mountbatten had a long–standing invitation from the Maharaja and would like to see him first.
‘When I got there, he found the Maharaja politically very elusive and the only conversation that took place were during their various car drives together. Mountbatten, on these occasions urged him and his Prime Minister, Pt. Kak, not to make any declaration of Independence, but to find out in one way or another the will of the people of Kashmir as soon as possible and to announce their intention by 14 August to send representatives, accordingly, to one Constituent Assembly or the other’.
Lord Mountbatten told them that the newly created States Department was prepared to give an assurance that if Kashmir went to Pakistan, this would not be regarded as an unfriendly act by the Government of India. He went on to stress the dangerous situation in which Kashmir would find itself if it lacked the support of one of the two Dominions by the date of transfer of power. His intention was to give this advice privately to the Maharaja alone, and then to repeat it in presence of his Prime Minister, with George Abell and the Kashmir Resident, Colonel Webb, in attendance, at a small meeting where minutes could be kept.
Maharaja Hari Singh suggested that the meeting should take place on the last day of the visit to which Mountbatten agreed, feeling that this would allow him the maximum chance to make up his mind, but, when the time came, the Maharaja sent a message that he was in bed with colic and would be unable to attend the meeting. It seemed that this was his usual illness when he wished to avoid difficult discussions.
‘Needless to say, Mountbatten is very disappointed at this turn of events’. Lord Mountbatten’s mounted pressure on Maharaja Hari Singh proved ineffective. To be more specific for remaining non-committal, the Ruler had the complete support of his Prime-Minister who was pro-Pakistani and anti-Indian.
Dr. Karan Singh records Mountbatten’s meeting with his father, Maharaja Hari Singh, in ‘Heir Apparent’, page 48:
‘To be fair to him, of course, the situation he faced was a complex one, and there was no easy option. If he acceded to Pakistan, a large chunk of his people, including his entire Dogra base, would have been outraged. If he accedes to India, he risked alienating a large section of his Muslim subjects. Independence could perhaps have been an attractive proposition but to carry that off would have required careful preparation and prolonged negotiations with the parties concerned, as well as tremendous political and diplomatic ability. Mountbatten, in fact, had come to persuade my father to make up his mind well before 15th August and had brought an assurance from the Indian leaders that they would not take objection to his decision in whatever way he thought fit, even if it was accession to Pakistan’.
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