Dr Gurdev Singh
Maharaja Hari Singh was born on September 23 to Amar Singh and Rani Patiyali being a man of strong will and of indomitable courage the Maharaja Hari Singh carried out the development policies and reforms for the amelioration of his subjects in order to relieve them of their woes and sufferings. But these reforms for the betterment of his subjects became unpalatable to the British Indian Government who was averse to the Rulers of Princely States coming into direct contact with their subjects. The British Rulers in India wanted that credit of reforms should go to the British Residents appointed in their respective States. The popularity of Maharaja Hari Singh for implementing the series of reforms became a thorn in their eyes because it was against their norms of rule. The British pursued their diplomacy to secure their interests in the State by using the threat of direct intervention in the internal affairs of the State.
The Political Department of the British Indian Government started hatching new plots to malign the Ruler and to regain the complete control over the strategic areas of Gilgit when Maharaja Hari Singh demanded to abolish the Gilgit Agency and to handover its control to him. It was infact, a miscalculated move on his part and he failed to make headway in his demands. Maharaja Hari Singh got respite from the trouble only when he himself withdrew his administrative machinery from there and handed over the control of Gilgit Wazarat to the British for 60 years lease in 1935.
First Indian Round Table Conference held in London afforded the British an opportunity to avenge the Maharaja for his patriotic speeches. His idea of a United Federal India proved to be a noose for him. As a result, a regular rebellion was organized inside the State taking advantage of the Maharaja’s absence. The British authorities got organized anti-Hindu riots in the State with the sole aim of discrediting the administration. The British employed in the State were in search of a henchman who could carry out their nefarious designs against the Ruler. Sheikh Abdullah proved to be the most suitable choice for their plans as he was a frustrated educated youngman besides being a ‘rank fanatic communalist’. He became a tool in their hands and for that purpose he was paid regularly by Mr. Wakefield who utilized his services for creating unrest inside the State.
Maharaja Hari Singh had to undergo a worst phase of turbulence created by the Political Department of the British Indian Government which functioned under the direct control of the Governor General.
To avenge their humiliation, the British established a Kashmir Muslim Conference with the nexus of leading Muslim leaders of Lahore and started a campaign of vilification against the Dogra Ruler. Kashmir Muslim Conference wanted to submit a memorial of demands to the Maharaja but he refused to meet the Conference Leaders on the ground that the representation had been made by the non-state subjects who had no business to intervene in the internal affairs of the State. Secondly the Muslim Conference had no right to disturb the harmony of the State especially when all State-subjects had free access to represent their grievances to him.
First Round Table Conference:
Maharaja Hari Singh attended the First Round Table Conference in the later part of 1930 in London where he delivered two fiery and bold speeches which sent shivers to the foundation of the British Rule in India. He created flutters when he said that the Indian Princely States would join an “All India Federation” while replying to the inaugural address by His Majesty, the King Emperor, George V, Maharaja Hari Singh pleaded for an equality of status for the Indians in the British Commonwealth of Nations. Maharaja said:
“I must express our deep gratitude to His Most Gracious Majesty for the cordial welcome tendered to us and I pray that providence may grant us the vision and the will to realize the hopes expressed in the inspiring words uttered this morning by our beloved Emperor.”
“This is the first occasion on which the Princes of India meet in person at a Conference Table along with the representatives of British India and His Majesty’s Government to discuss the political future of India.”
“As Indians and loyal to the land where we derive our birth and infant nurture, we stand as solidly as the rest of our countrymen for our land’s enjoyment of a position of honour and equality in the British Common Wealth of Nations”.
” Neither England nor India can afford to see this Conference in failure. The task confronting this Conference is a gigantic one. Two years ago, speaking at a meeting of the Chamber of Princes, I said, with regard to certain activities in British India, that is my view, Federation was a higher ideal than isolation. I feel deeply gratified at the progress which has been made with the scheme of an All-India Federation as worked out in the Report of the Federal Structure Sub-Committee. But ever since the idea of a Federation was taken up in this Conference, some surprise has been expressed in various quarters in India and in England at the willingness of the Princes to join an All-India Federation. It is said that Princes have forced the pace and that in any case they should have opposed a Federation with British India.”
“I have never disguised from my friends, my warm support of the idea of an All-India Federation”.
Taking advantage of Maharaja Hari Singh’s absence from the State, Mr. J. E. C.Wakefield, the Political and Police Minister in Maharaja’s Council of Minister hatched plans to dislodge him when the Dogra Ruler was thrashing them with his rhetoric in their homeland. The Maharaja had been selected as one of the delegation to represent the Native States in the First Indian Round Table Conference which had been boycotted by the Indian National Congress. The British wanted to shatter the clamour for a Federation in India and were fully confident that the representatives of the Princely States would toe their ideology and oppose the independence in any form so vociferously demanded throughout India on January 26,1930.
The British owed the Indian Muslims the gratitude for their support at the First Round Table Conference as it were the Muslims who had bailed out the British from the awkward position that they had found themselves in when the Princes in a surprise move opted for an All-India Federation. Sir Akbar Hyderi, Hyderabad’s delegate to the Conference, suggested forming a Federation with a weak centre which nullified the Greater Federation of India being sought by the nationalists. Hyderi’s suggestion was the brain child of the British themselves which proves that both were working in hand in glove with each other. Quite naturally this concept had the support of Mohd Ali Jinnah of the Indian Muslim League.
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