Nehru's Kashmir Policy And Its Consequences, Told Through The Experience of The Dogras

This book is basically a biography of Dr Karan Singh, the son of Maharaja Hari Singh and the last head of the State of Jammu and Kashmir, its Sadr-e-Riyasat during its transition from being a princely kingdom that had acceded to India in 1947, and his own transition into a distinguished and highly respected politician who retained his reputation for independence and integrity throughout the turmoil that followed the forced final integration of the state into the Union of India by the Modi government, in August 2019.

To describe the book as merely a biography would be to do less than justice to it. For this reviewer, its importance rests as much, if not more, on the flood of light it has thrown on the internal struggle that erupted between the Dogra aristocracy and landed gentry that had ruled Kashmir for almost a century before India gained its independence, and the rising, mainly Kashmiri Muslim proletariat, whom Sheikh Abdullah had marshalled into a powerful political force by 1945, well before February 1947, when Britain’s Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee announced his government’s decision to give India its independence.

A Statesman and a Seeker: The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Dr Karan Singh, Harbans Singh, Speaking Tiger Books, 2026.

The ire of the Dogra aristocracy arose from Pandit Nehru’s insistence upon a conditional accession that had to be backed by a plebiscite carried out in Jammu and Kashmir to ratify the Maharaja’s decision. There was never any doubt in Nehru’s mind that such a plebiscite would be won heavily by Sheikh Abdullah and the J&K National Conference because, unlike many other states in the rest of princely India, Kashmir and Jammu had so far been protected from the Hindutva-obsessed Hindu Mahasabha as well as the extreme Islamism of the Jamaat-e-Islami. So he was convinced that such a plebiscite would be won handsomely by Sheikh Abdullah and the National Conference, which had long ago made up its collective mind to be a part of India.

Nehru did not know it at the time, and probably never came to know, that this was also the conclusion that the British High Commissioner to Pakistan, Sir Lawrence Grafftey-Smith, had reported in a long despatch to London in October 1947. Grafftey-Smith was referring not to the truncated Jammu and Kashmir state that is a part of India today but to the entire princely state that had existed in 1947 (excluding Gilgit), including what is now ‘Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir’.

The reason why Nehru insisted upon a ratification by plebiscite was that throughout the first nine months of 1947, when Maharaja Hari Singh was making one effort after another to accede to India and being stonewalled by Nehru – until the maharaja agreed to release Sheikh Abdullah from jail first – Jinnah and Liaquat Ali were sparing no effort and offering inducement after inducement to the Nizam of Hyderabad, to make him opt for Pakistan in spite of ruling over a 63% Hindu population.

In fact, to greatly shorten the ‘Hindu gap’ between Hyderabad state and Pakistan, Jinnah was simultaneously offering every conceivable inducement to the Maharaja of Jodhpur, to induce him to opt for Pakistan instead of India. Fortunately, the Maharaja was not taken in.

Hyderabad state had a 63% Hindu and 2–3% Christian population against Princely Kashmir’s 77% Muslim population. So the Nizam was repeatedly told that if Kashmir could accede to India, Hyderabad could accede to Pakistan. Nehru therefore knew that India might one day have to send in the army to make Hyderabad a part of India. It was of the utmost importance for him that not only the Maharaja, but the ‘Muslim’ Kashmiri people had voluntarily acceded to India.

Also read: Kiren Rijiju on Nehru's 'Blunders' in Kashmir: The Dubious Benefit of Hindsight

Nehru’s profound foresight was vindicated when despite entreaties by almost every one of the Nizam’s closest advisers, including Sir Akbar Hydari, his prime minister for five years till 1941, and Sir Ismail Mirza, one of his closest advisers, the Nizam began to listen increasingly to other members of the nobility, like the Nawab of Chhatari (Hydari’s successor) and Mir Laik Ali, who urged him relentlessly to insist upon independence, and to join Pakistan if that bid failed.

Since the Nawab of Chhatari and Laik Ali were the Nizam’s last dewans, Nehru knew that India would most probably have to invade Hyderabad in the near future. He therefore needed to make Kashmir’s voluntary accession to India as different from the forced assimilation of Hyderabad looming on the horizon. So, for him, Sheikh Abdullah’s commitment to Kashmir joining India was essential as a justification for breaking the commitment to let the princes decide which dominion they would accede to.

Surprisingly, there is not a single mention of Nehru’s dilemma in Harbans Singh’s book. Hyderabad is not even mentioned in it. The central focus of its entire first half is on the humiliation being felt by the Dogras, the erstwhile rulers of Kashmir for a hundred years, at their abrupt disempowerment by Sheikh Abdullah and their “betrayal” by Nehru and the Indian National Congress.

The Sheikh’s clarion calls of ‘Democracy’, ‘Land to the Tiller’ and ‘Down with Dogra Rule’ had become swords hanging over their heads, because they had appropriated most of the land in the valley and had enjoyed more or less unfettered political and economic power in the state for four generations. In 1947, Dogras and a small number of other Hindu landowners held 60% to 70% of the cultivable and revenue-yielding land in Kashmir Valley. The Muslim majority were the tillers of their land. Only around 25% of it was owned by Kashmiri Muslims.

Understandably, the Dogra elite wanted to hold on to their land and status in the valley and Jammu. This would have happened if Nehru had accepted Kashmir’s accession on the same terms as India had accepted all the others, i.e., taken over only defence, foreign policy, currency and communications, and left the remainder of the decision-making to the ruler and his government (to be absorbed into the national administration in stages). But precisely because Kashmir was a ‘Muslim’ state acceding to ‘Hindu’ India, Nehru, and even more urgently, Sheikh Abdullah, needed a clear endorsement by the people of their decision. That endorsement would come, they believed, if Sheikh Abdullah fulfilled his two key promises to the people. And that would in turn require the complete disinheritance of the Dogra elite.

Statue of Maharaja Hari Singh at Jammu, 11 September 2022. Credit: Sumbria Vikramaditya, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Given the life-and-death issue involved, it is gratifying to find an enlightening and sympathetic description of the Dogras’ fight to at least divest themselves of power gradually and not in the chopping-block manner that the Sheikh’s promises to his people required of him. Hence, one of the most enlightening descriptions in the first half of the book is of the no-holds-barred struggle of the Dogra elite to discredit Sheikh Abdullah in the eyes of Nehru and simultaneously develop a second rung of National Conference leaders to make him no longer indispensable for winning the plebiscite (which was still on the table) for completing Kashmir’s accession to India.

If this first part of Harbans Singh’s book is political, its second part is touchingly personal. It describes the trauma that Maharaja Hari Singh and his Maharani experienced as a result of their sudden and complete disempowerment and forced departure from Kashmir. It describes the maturity of their son, Karan Singh, his readiness to listen to advice and his extraordinarily mature reports and advice to Pandit Nehru, when forced to become the rajpramukh (sadr-e-riyasat) of Kashmir, because the Sheikh felt that he could not fulfil his promise to his people if Kashmir remained even in nominal control of Maharaja Hari Singh and the Dogra elite, and demanded his virtual exile from Kashmir.

All of the above is a part of Kashmir’s history – much of it published and heavily commented upon. What Harbans Singh gives us in addition to his understanding of the unfolding of events is a glimpse of the personal tragedy that these events imposed upon a royal family that had not only ruled Jammu and Kashmir wisely, but well. Lack of space prevents me from dwelling upon it, but readers will find tears gathering in their eyes when they read of some of its most poignant moments.

I shall end with one compliment paid to Maharaja Hari Singh by the last but one viceroy of India, Lord A.P. Wavell, the penultimate viceroy of India. It is a short, handwritten note written to someone – perhaps Attlee – as a coda to a report from his office to London – of his impression of Hari Singh after their first and possibly only meeting: “Maharaja Hari Singh struck me as one of two of the wisest and most sagacious rulers in the country [After a few more lines of praise the note concludes:] If there is a fault in him, it is a tendency to keep too much to himself and not seek the advice of others, except one or two who are closest to him.” The original is in the British Library in London and is readily available to those who ask for it.

Prem Shankar Jha is an economist, author and Visiting Professor at Harvard University. He was formerly editor of Hindustan Times and The Financial Express and Information Adviser to Prime Minister V.P. Singh. His books include Crouching Dragon, Hidden Tiger: Can China and India Dominate the West?, and The Dismantling of India’s Democracy 1947 to 2025.

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