Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah's remark that there will either be the continuance of Article 370 or the State's secession from India has drawn widespread condemnation from even sections that are in favour of the provision.
But Omar's rabble-rousing will not surprise those who have held the belief that the Abdullah family's commitment to the complete integration of J&K with India has always remained doubtful. They will point to the fact that not just Omar, who has in recent months given disturbing statements on the State's accession to the Union of India, but even his grandfather and first Chief Minister of the State after its merger with India, the redoubtable Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah, had flip-flopped on the issue and pursued policies that bordered on sedition. This created the foundation for the discontent that we see today in and outside the Kashmir valley in the State, in regions of Jammu and ladakh, and among the minorities in the valley.
In his recent book, Mission R & AW, former senior Research & Analysis Wing official RK Yadav has explained Sheikh Abdullah's questionable conduct and policies that alienated large sections of the population. Yadav writes, “In January 1949, Intelligence Bureau sent a report to the Government that Sheikh Abdullah had given an interview to two foreign correspondents wherein he professed the philosophy of an independent status for Kashmir.” Sheikh Abdullah demanded that the IB official posted there be recalled. He was called back since, according to the author, the Sheikh had threatened to otherwise incarcerate him.
Jawaharlal Nehru, who enjoyed a personal rapport with Sheikh Abdullah, had great faith in his friend. Towards mid-1949, he circulated a report drawn from certain intelligence officials and politicians of the State that Sheikh Abdullah's ‘commitment’ to India could not be questioned and that the Sheikh's intent was honourable. Yadav observes, “When this report was sent to Sardar Patel, the Indian Home Minister, he countered it by cautioning that Sheikh Abdullah would let down India…” He was prescient. Barely four years later, Nehru was to dismiss the Abdullah Government and arrest the Sheikh on charges of treason.
The author says that Sheikh Abdullah was always looking for ways to dilute the ‘full accession' of J&K to India. Yadav refers to the agitation by the Praja Parishad in 1952-53 for complete integration of the State with the Indian Union on the basis of one Constitution. He writes, “Sheikh Abdullah tried to use this agitation as an excuse to stall his previous commitment of accession to India in all fairness. He openly challenged India's secularism on this incident and put forward an argument that the integration of Jammu and Kashmir and particularly of the Kashmir valley and certain adjoining parts which had Muslim majority with Hindu India would not be in the interest of the Muslims of Kashmir.” In other words, what the ‘lion of Kashmir' was seeking was separation of communities on religious grounds.
Yadav further reveals that, while things were turning against Sheikh Abdullah, with the Nehru Government moving to dismiss and arrest him, the Sheikh had “tried to get help from the pro-Pakistani elements. IS Hassanwalia, IB in-charge of Jammu and Kashmir got the information that Pir Maqbool Gilani, a confidant of Sheikh, had established contacts with Pakistan to help Sheikh and that an emissary from Pakistan was coming to meet Sheikh…” It was after this that the Sheikh's Government was dismissed and he was arrested.
It is relevant to note here that Nehru had made one last attempt to make Sheikh Abdullah see reason and stop his rabble-rousing against India. According to Yadav, he sent the highly respected Maulana Abul Kalam Azad to Srinagar “to convince him (the Sheikh) not to betray the aspirations of the Kashmiri people, but he too was ignored by the Sheikh who even insulted him at the Id meeting. On his return to Delhi, Maulana advised Nehru to dismiss Sheikh before he indulged in any offence against the Indian Union.”
The removal of the Sheikh from the political scene brought about perceptible differences in the State. The author notes that “a decade of comparative peace lasted in the valley during which the State made a phenomenal progress in all spheres of its economy and education.”
Yadav believes that the release of the Sheikh in January 1958 “for some unknown reasons” hampered the “investigation against him because he was the main conspirator and if he was not made accused, it would facilitate in weakening the case against other accused persons also.” One of the first things Sheikh Abdullah did on being released was, in the author's words, to spew venom against New Delhi. He “even challenged the authority of the Government of India to decide the future of Kashmir.” At a meeting in Hazratbal, he “asked the people to boycott the Republic Day functions…”
If anybody had believed that Sheikh Abdullah had changed after his long years in prison on charges of treason — charges that eventually did not get pressed, not because they were frivolous but because authorities in New Delhi did not want to pursue them — they were in for a shock. Yadav writes that “Sheikh Abdullah was secretly planning to demand a plebiscite for merger of Kashmir with Pakistan with the help of large-scale recruitment of Razakars… The IB was keeping a tab on all his activities.” The Nehru regime had to re-arrest him in April 1958, and the process to prepare a water-tight case against him began once more. According to the author, Nehru was inclined some three years later to withdraw the case, but was persuaded by senior leaders including Karan Singh from doing so. Karan Singh said the Government could pardon the Sheikh but only after the trial reached its logical end. Nevertheless, and despite strong reservations the IB Director expressed, Sheikh Abdullah was released in 1964, months before Nehru's death. The author strongly believes that, had the trial been allowed to run its full course, Sheikh Abdullah would certainly have been convicted in what came to be known as the Kashmir Conspiracy case.
After Nehru's death, Sheikh Abdullah got more virulent. Yadav observes that the “Sheikh did not change his past stance and soon thereafter treacherously resumed his anti-Indian propaganda in Kashmir. Rest is history and Kashmir is still raked day in and day out even by petty Kashmiri leaders for their own political aims and cheap publicity.” How right: Omar’s intemperate remark is a reminder of that — and of the fact that nothing has changed in the Abdullah family's thinking since the Sheikh's time.
