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Chapter 3
Article 370
When Maharaja Hari Singh acceded to India on 26 October 1947,
he ceded to the Dominion Government, powers with regard to the
subjects the other Indian States had also delegated to the Dominion.
The subjects were listed in the Schedule attached to the Instrument of
Accession and included:
Third Alternative
Nehru wrote to Patel on 17th April, and gave the States Minister
a resume of his discussions with Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah. He
wrote to Patel:
Maharaja's Removal
Hari Singh hurried down to Delhi and met Patel on 29 April 1949.
Maharani Tara Devi was also present. Patel disclosed to the
Maharaja that Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah was insisting upon his
addiction. He told the Maharaja that though the Government of
India was not prepared to accept his addiction, they would still
like him to leave the State for some time temporarily and appoint
the Yuvraj, the Regent of the State in his absence Patel told Hari
Singh that his absence from the State would be in the interests
of the State as well as India, particularly in view of the
complications which had arisen from the plebiscite proposals
then being actively pursued in the United Nations. Hari Singh
was stunned.
Posterity alone will judge the Indian leaders for their decision to
remove Maharaja Hari Singh to keep the Conference leaders on
their side. Hari Singh never asked Patel whether India would win
the plebiscite after he had left. If he had asked, the bluff would
have been called off. Patel assured the Maharaja that his stay
outside the State would be "a temporary phase" and he would
return to the State after a settlement with regard to the
plebiscite in the State had been finalized. Of the Congress
leaders, Hari Singh trusted Patel alone, and he put his ship in
Patel's hands. Patel drove him straight to the reefs. In utter
distress Hari Singh wrote to Patel:
Seeking assurances from Patel that his absence from the State
would not be construed as a prelude to his abdication, he wrote
to Patel:
Delhi Conference
Nehru visited Srinagar in the last week of May and had further
discussions with Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and the other
leaders of the National Conference on the special position State
would assume in the constitutional organization of India In fact,
Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah had raised many disquieting issues
in his communication to Nehru particularly about the
administrative control of the State army during the emergency,
the division of powers between the Central Government and the
State and the future Constitution of the State.
I hope that this will be an end to the squabbles that have been
going on in public. This has been impressed upon Sheikh
Abdullah and I am pointing this out to him again in a separate
letter.
I take it that the Maharaja and the Maharani will keep out of the
State, as agreed upon, for some months. The Bombay house will
be at their disposal. It would have been better if they had gone
out of the country for a period, say two or three months, but that
is a matter for them to decide. I do not think any period would be
fixed for the Maharaja's absence from Kashmir. The matter had
better be left vague.
I hope you will explain to the Maharaja and the Maharani as well
as the Yuvraj the agreements arrived at between us and Sheikh
Abdullah and his colleagues. The written agreement rightly does
not say anything about the Maharaja going out of the State. But
this was a private assurance given by us and we have naturally
to stand by it.
Hari Singh had hardly left the State, when the Conference
leaders, who had by now assumed complete control over the
government of the State, began to extricate themselves from the
agreement, which they had reached with the Central leaders at
Delhi in May. The Conference leaders initiated a number of
closed-door meetings in which the terms of the agreement
reached with the Central leaders were subjected to serious
consideration. Most of the meetings were secretly organized and
were confined to the Muslim leaders of the Conference, the Sikhs
and the Hindus being excluded. Prominent and influential
Muslims who had opposed the accession of the State to India,
and senior Muslim officers of the State Government who were
opposed to the National Conference, were specially invited to
attend these meetings. Many among them were in clandestine
contact with the Azad Kashmir authorities on the other side of
the cease-fire line and worked for the intelligence agencies of
Pakistan, which operated in the State. The feelings which were
voiced in these meetings broadly represented:
Ayangar did not possess the acumen to deal with the Conference
leaders. Nehru was away in the United States of America. Over-
weighed by the experience at the Security Council, Ayangar
dreaded to antagonize the Conference leaders. He gave way and
redrafted the provisions of Article 306-A, restricting the
application of the Constitution of India to the State to Article 1,
which defined the territories of the Union, and the provisions
pertaining to Indian citizenship, and making the fateful omission
of deleting the provisions with regard to the fundamental rights
and the related constitutional safeguards. He wrote to Sheikh
Mohammed Abdullah:
Sheikh Abdullah and two colleagues of his had a talk with me for
about an hour and a half this morning. It was a long drawn out
argument, and, as I told you this morning, there was no
substance at all in the objections that they put forward to our
draft. At the end of it all, I told them that I had not expected that,
after having agreed to the substance of our draft both at your
house and at the party meeting, they would let me and Pandit Ji
down in the manner they were attempting to do. In answer,
Sheikh Abdullah said that he felt very grieved that I should think
so but that in the discharge of his duty to his own people he
found it impossible to accept our draft as it was. I told him
thereafter to go back and think over all that I had told them and
hoped that he would come back to me in a better frame of mind
in the course of the day or tomorrow
I have since thought over the matter further and dictated a draft,
which, without giving up the essential stand we have taken in
our original draft, readjusts it, in minor particulars in a way,
which I am hoping Sheikh Abdullah would agree tow
I do not at all like any change after our party had approved of the
whole arrangement in the presence of Sheikh Sahib himself.
Whenever Sheikh Sahib wishes to back out, he always confronts
us with his duty to the people. Of course, he owes a duty to India
or to the Indian Government, or even on a personal basis, to you
and the Prime Minister who have gone all out to accommodate
him.
The Conference leaders were bitter at the turn the events had
taken. Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah wrote a sharp rejoinder to
Ayangar asking him to reconsider the decision the Constituent
Assembly had taken on Article 306-A. He wrote to Ayangar that if
that was not done, he would resign from the Constituent
Assembly along with the other representatives of the Jammu and
Kashmir State. Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah wrote:
Special Status
Article 370 did not vest any constitutive power in the hands of
the President, nor did it vest any such power with the Constituent
Assembly of the State. The President, as well as the Constituent
Assembly, was empowered to order that the operation of the
provisions of Article 370 would cease, or continue with such
amendments and exceptions as they would specify. They were
subject to the limitations which one placed on the other.