Om Saraf Maharaja Hari Singh relished exercising the divine right of a king and, understandably, desired to be accepted as a progressive ruler, too. He introduced a number of social reforms and also initiated a process of associating the people with the administration. Accordingly, a Praja Sabha (State Assembly) was set up as early as 1934 though on the basis of an extremely limited franchise and many “reserved subjects” obviously more as a consultative body rather than a legislature. On September 7, 1939, within a week of the German invasion of Poland which triggered off the Second War, he promulgated the Jammu and Kashmir Constitution Act which marked an important milestone in the constitutional development of Jammu and Kashmir. Of course, this fell short of the expectations of both the National Conference and the Muslim Conference, two rival political parties, which stood for the establishment of “full-fledged responsible government under the aegis of the Maharaja Bahadur”. It was, however, this Constitution that remained in force till January 26, 1957, when the present Constitution which J&K Constituent Assembly adopted on November 17, 1956, came into force. It appears that the Maharaja’s total identification with the British during the prolonged Second World War against Hitler’s Germany and Mussoline’s Italy had some impact on him. On July 12, 1943, he set up a Royal Commission under the presidentship of Sir Ganga Nath, the Chief Justice of the State High Court, who was then also the Chairman of the Praja Sabha. The Commission which included two youthful National Conference leaders, namely M.A. Beg and G.M. Sadiq, as its members, was asked to ascertain whether the existing constitution had worked well and submit to the Maharaja a well considered report containing practical suggestions for the advancement of life of different communities in various directions. The inaugural meeting of the Commission was held on August 9, 1943. However, the National Conference members of the Commission soon resigned as the Party resolved on February 27, 1944 to produce a draft of the future constitution of the State on its own and submit it to the Maharaja directly. It was this draft that was later to be known as ‘New Kashmir’. The Maharaja had in the meantime left for England where he stayed for three months as one of India’s two representatives in the Churchill’s War Cabinet. He returned home in June 1944 and was taken out in a procession in Srinagar when both political parties also accorded him a warm reception. Sheikh Abdullah personally presented the New Kashmir draft to the Maharaja after garlanding him when the royal procession passed by the Mujahid Manzil. Jinnah had been in Srinagar for about six weeks during which he made a futile bid to sell the two-nation theory to Sheikh Abdullah. Before leaving Srinagar, Jinnah who had been briefly treated as a State guest, desired to see the Maharaja but the Maharaja declined to be available unless Jinnah postponed his departure from the State for a few days, to which Jinnah did not agree. Accordingly he left Srinagar as scheduled. The ‘New Kashmir’ had been duly adopted by the Working Committee of the National Conference. But it was only after submitting it to the Maharaja that it was passed at the plenary session of the party in Srinagar on September 29, 1944, with the huge enthusiastic gathering standing and thunderously applauding, alongwith a declaration reading “We the people of Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh frontier districts and Poonch and Chenani Illaqas, known as the people of Jammu and Kashmir in common parlance, pledge ourselves to endorse and support this constitution with a view…. Meanwhile the Second World War entered the final phase. The British Government appeared to be preparing to share power with the popular national leaders in some form or the other. The Maharaja could not just shut his eyes against the significant developments taking place at home and abroad. Within hours of the plenary adoption of the “New Kashmir” by the National Conference, the Maharaja chose Gandhi Jayanti in 1944 to introduce his historic plan of dyarchy “with a view to giving further effect to my policy of associating my subjects with the administration of the State.” The Praja Sabha was called upon “to nominate a panel of six (three Muslims) of its members, three from Jammu and three from Kashmir (including the Frontier District)” with the official members of the Praja Sabha taking no part in the proceedings. Out of the panel so nominated, the Maharaja was to appoint two persons (one of them a Muslim) as his Ministers. This was clearly the boldest measure of political reform on the part of the Maharaja and marked the highest point of credibility with the people. Both the National Conference and Muslim Conference hailed the royal command. Describing it as “really a step forward,” M.A. Beg on behalf of the National Conference went to the extent of asserting “His Highness Command has come at a time when nobody would deny” that any constitutional reforms would have easily been deferred if he so wished. Speaking on behalf of the Muslim Conference group in the Praja Sabha, Choudhary Hamid Ullah Khan was no less eloquent: “Our beloved Ruler taking this definite progressive step, of which any Indian State may well feel proud, has given two representatives of this House an opportunity of participation in his administration, thereby graciously bestowing a great honour to all the other members of the House.” The great excitement witnessed in and around Praja Sabha hall (a medium size room which is still there in what is now called the Old Secretariat, Srinagar) at the time of the nomination of the panel still comes to my mind vividly. This was on October 7, 1944. With the appointment of Beg and Wazir Ganga Ram as sort of popular Ministers with effect from October 21, 1944, the Maharaja had ensured for himself a smooth sailing. It, however, proved too short-lived. For, the spectacle of the National Conference nominee sitting on the Treasury benches soon made the Muslim Conference somewhat jittery and in order to overcome its dilemma it started accusing the National Conference of a sell-out. Since the Muslim Conference had by then completely aligned itself with the Indian Muslim League it could play up the Hindu-Muslim differences as well. The end of the World War was in sight and it ended in Europe on May 8, 1945. The Congress leaders arrested during Quit India Movement were released. Even before the eventual surrender by Japan on August 15, 1945, in the wake of the first-ever Atom Bomb having been thrown on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, the Viceroy invited the Congress and the Muslim League leaders for talks at Shimla which nevertheless failed to make any headway. The time and tide now seemed turning against the Maharaja. The British Government, the real power behind his throne and his dynasty, left nobody in doubt that it was determined to leave India which was being swept by a bitter communal wave: it was to subsequently affect the solidarity of the State Army itself the mainstay of the Dogra Ruling House. Relations between Beg and the then Prime Minister, R.C. Kak, worsened and the National Conference nominee resigned as Minister. Four reasons were actually advanced for the parting of ways: first, that Beg had not been given the right to speak and vote in the Praja Sabha independently of the Government; secondly, he had not been given a separate Secretariat of his own; thirdly, his proposal for delegation of powers under the Municipal Act had not been pursued; and fourthly, he had not been consulted on matters relating to law and order even when restrictions had been imposed under the Defence Rules at a number places including his own constituency. To each of the four complaints by Beg, the Prime Minister replied thus: first, there was no question of a Minister being given the option to vote or speak independently of the decision of the government; secondly, Beg’s position was exactly that of his colleagues with reference to Secretariat as a whole and while he had a P.A. of his choice, the other Ministers had not; thirdly, his proposal regarding delegation of powers had not been accepted by the Law Department and, it was being submitted to the Council of Ministers for the discussion of the objections raised by the Law Department; and fourthly, “discretion to endorse emergency laws rested with the District Magistrates and it was necessary that they should be able to discharge their primary responsibility without being objected in each case and on each occasion to ask for instructions.” In March 1946, the death-knell was thus sounded of the great experiment of dyarchy which the Maharaja had launched with high hopes but which evidently provided too feeble an answer to the requirement of the complex situation unfolding itself rather rapidly on the political horizon. The National Conference was further offended when Prime Minister Kak filled the vacancy caused by Beg’s resignation with the induction of Mian Ahmad Yar. The Mian was actually the leader of the National Conference group in the Praja Sabha. Normally, he and not Beg should have been originally nominated as the party representative in the Council of Ministers. But he was ignored as he was a non-Kashmiri speaking Muslim. A curious argument was advanced to satisfy him-that Beg had been chosen for the high post so that in his (Mian’s) presence Beg would always feel that his real leader was not the Prime Minister Kak but his own boss (Mian) sitting in the House before him. The Mian though aggrieved chose to keep mum. No wonder, as soon as Beg had resigned, Prime Minister Kak got Mian Ahmad Yar sworn-in as a Minister. The National Conference took it as an insult added to injury. Thenceforward, there was no meeting ground between the Government and Sheikh Abdullah till after the tribal invasion when the Maharaja was forced by the circumstances to accede to India and virtually hand over the State Administration to Sheikh Abdullah, leaving the Muslim Conference as a dominant force on the other side of the fence. In restrospect, it is possible to see that all of us in Jammu and Kashmir, from Maharaja Hari Singh and Sheikh Abdullah downwards whether on this side of the Line of Control or the other, have proved no better than pawns on the chess-board of TIME well beyond our control.
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