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| October 26 is historic day | | Celebrating accession - 1 | | Early Times Report
JAMMU, Oct 25: It was on October 26 seventy years ago that Jammu & Kashmir acceded to India as per the constitutional law on the subject. It could have acceded to India earlier had Nehru accepted Maharaja Hari Singh's accession proposal.
There are people who say that it was for the first time on October 26, 1947 that Maharaja Hari Singh proposed his state's accession to India. It is a wrong assertion. The fact of the matter is that Maharaja Hari Singh had tried his best to accede his state to India after Pakistan invaded Jammu & Kashmir on October 20, 1947 to grab the princely state, but Nehru didn't pay any heed to his proposal.
Prime Minister of Jammu & Kashmir Mehr Chand Mahajan's autobiography, Looking Back, clears all the confusion and establishes that Hari Singh's requests for the state's accession with India made before October 26 were rejected and that it was only after Hari Singh agreed to hand over the state to Sheikh Abdullah of National Conference on a platter that Nehru accepted the accession proposal.
What did Mehr Chand Mahajan write in this context? He wrote: "Pakistan invasion was an unprovoked act of aggression. The Maharaja had not done anything to invite it. Its objective was to take possession of the state by force. What did India do on the other hand? When we got the news of the raid, we sent our Deputy Prime Minister with a letter from His Highness to the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of India. I also sent personal letters, asking help on humanitarian grounds to save us from this unprovoked act of aggression. We also sent a letter proposing accession. The British Prime Minister was approached by cable but no response came from him. October 24 and 25, the two most anxious and most exciting days passed but no reply came from anywhere. The whole of Srinagar and the State were in danger and everyone was running for his life. Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad and his party (National Conference) had organised groups of their party men to stop people from leaving the state, not realising that they would all be killed if raiders reached Srinagar and everything would be destroyed. Sheikh Abdullah had quietly taken a plane to Delhi on the 25th evening".
To be more precise, he wrote: "These coercive and aggressive acts on the part of Pakistan between the 20th of October and the 27th of October form conclusive evidence for branding it an aggressor. They afford sufficient and ample proof - if proof was needed - to hold that Pakistan had no locus standi before the Tribunal of Nations, if it has any sense of fairness and justice left in it. See in contrast India's attitude - hesitating to sign standstill agreement, giving small help here and there by air on humanitarian grounds, indifferent to accession, no response and no reply on 24th and 25th even when armed attacks on innocent people were on and loot, arson and butchery were going on…"
It was on October 26 that Mehr Chand Mahajan went to Delhi to discuss with Nehru the question of accession. He met with him and urged him to send army to the state to save it from Pakistan but with no result. Nehru didn't agree even after Mahajan told him that he had the instructions from the Maharaja to go to Lahore and discuss the issue of accession with M A Jinnah. In fact, Nehru told Mahajan to get out. It was only after Sheikh Abdullah sent a slip of paper to Nehru that he accepted the proposal. Mahajan agreed to the suggestion that Maharaja Hari Singh would hand over the state power to Sheikh Abdullah. (to be continued) |
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