There is a growing trend in the Indian socio-political landscape, especially in the media, which looks for highlighting the 'blunders' of freedom fighters like Nehru and Gandhi. It begs the question, has history really been just propaganda, or are these just out of context cherrypicked biases?
Who was Jawaharlal Nehru?
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. born Nov 14 1889, was the son of prominent freedom fighter and lawyer Motilal Nehru, known most popularly for his 'Nehru Report' of 1928 which ensured Indian parties' cooperation against the British beyond the religious and caste divide. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (hereby referred to as Nehru) walked on his father's line and joined the Indian National Movement as early as 1912. A few Interesting points about his Freedom-fighter life are below (many major struggles like HRM not included, only 'interesting' points relevant to modern debates):
Through his 35 years of struggle, he was jailed and beaten up multiple times by the British
He was the first of the few 'radicals' who demanded complete independence and not just a dominion status (1929 Lahore Session)
He, together with Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose was the face of the leftist fraction of the Indian National Congress
He was the one who introduced the final nail in the coffin, the Quit India Movement (QIM) Resolution in 1942 in AICC's Bombay session
After coming out of jail in 1945 (jailed in 1942 for QIM), he immediately went on to arrange legal and social support for soldiers of the Indian National Army (INA)
What exactly happened in Kashmir?
The following is an excerpt from Pandit Nehru's letter to Sardar Patel on September 27, a month before the Pakistan-assisted invasion of Kashmir:
“The Muslim League in Punjab and the NWFP are making preparations to enter Kashmir in considerable numbers. The approach of winter is going to cut off Kashmir from the rest of India,” he wrote. “I understand that the Pakistan strategy is to infiltrate into Kashmir now and to take some major action as soon as Kashmir is more or less isolated because of the coming winter. I rather doubt if the Maharaja and the State forces can meet the situation by themselves without some popular help… Obviously, the only major group that can side with them is the National Conference under Sheikh Abdullah’s leadership.”
So what does this letter mean? Simply, Pandit Nehru had commendable foresight long before the actual trouble. A detailed examination of the issue with proper historical context will make it more obvious:
Maharaja Hari Singh of Jammu and Kashmir was one of the few princely rulers who had held out against accession to either India or Pakistan before the partition. A couple of months prior to the partition, the Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, visited Srinagar in an attempt to persuade the Maharaja to opt for one or the other of the two states, offering him an assurance from Sardar Patel that India would raise no objection if the ruler were to opt for Pakistan. The Maharaja entertained his guest in regal style but evaded any discussion on the political issue, pleading a stomach ailment. Hari Singh evidently hoped that, with the lapse of British paramountcy, he would become the ruler of an independent and sovereign state
However, unlike Nehru, Hari Singh had underestimated just how treacherous the state of Pakistan had been. His hopes came crashing down when Pakistan launched the invasion of Poonch and coupled it with economic sanctions on Hari Singh's J&K still largely dependent on Pakistan for trade
Soon afterwards, Maharaja asked Justice Mehr Chand Mahajan, his prime minister-designate, to convey to Nehru the terms on which he was prepared to accede to India. However, his 'terms' were anything but democratic. Sheikh Abdullah (this is where it gets even more interesting) had popular support in J&K at the time. If any sort of a democratic institution was to be established there, like it or not, he was going to be the face of it. As such, Nehru emphasized the need to kill two birds with a stone and asked Hari Singh to integrate Sheikh Abdullah in the terms of the accession, which the Raja was not willing to do (in September, when Sheikh Abdullah was still in jail)
But why exactly did Nehru insist on Abdullah?
Not friendship or religious conspiracy theories, but simply good competence of governance is the answer.
Nehru had already anticipated the armed rebellion by tribals assisted and funded by Pakistan. As such, to fight what appeared to be a rising from tribals instead of an actual army (i.e. the Pakistani army), popular support was beyond a doubt absolutely necessary. If autocracy or forced 'democracy' was to be imposed, the entire populace was easily susceptible to joining the other side. It really wouldn't have been an Indo-Pak conflict then, it would have become a British-style army-civilian genocidal campaign. Nehru's apparent closeness with the Sheikh reassured the civilians that the conflict was a cross-border one and not a civil war. This remarkable letter to Sardar Patel and Nehru's subsequent competence in governance, of course, has no legitimate place in today's mass hysteria masquerading as political discourse.
The dangers of an uncontextualized, false history
So whose fault was Kashmir? Simply, Pakistan's. Just like China's betrayal of the Panchsheel too was completely their own fault. But we have a tendency to pretend we are clairvoyant. We love to pretend we always know exactly how history would unfold just because we are living in its consequences. Couple that with mass rhetoric and politicians in power who see no objection in blurring the very struggle that made their existence a reality, with media that is correctly internationally recognized as nothing but a propaganda machine, and we have the perfect recipe for a national disaster in cooking.
This is not an Indian criticism, but a historical observation. The Nazis did this when they murdered the WWI veteran Jewish people on lewd conspiracies, or when the "mentally unstable" Mao Zedong (called so by Khrushchev) is revered for his 'revolution' that led China to become a dictatorship, or how the majority of Britishers are still clueless of the ruthless oppressive Raj in India. An ucontextualized, false, and propaganda-driven history piles on the shoulders of the young generation as a threat to their very identity, the same young that are to make the future. And if the piling on continues, the end result cannot be expected to be more than the said future's premature collapse.
Comments