Talk:Ram Chandra Kak

Needs clean up

I have just finished reviewing the article. There are quite a few questionable claims without sources or questionable sources. There was also one major case of source misrepresentation which I corrected. I would request the involved editors to provide sources. Unsourced material may be deleted. - Kautilya3 (talk) 21:04, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Hagiography

This article is way non-critical about someone, who was at the forefront of executing a host of anti-Muslim policies and brutal suppression of the Quit Kashmir agitation. TrangaBellam (talk) 20:09, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

Do you have sources for his anti-Muslim policies? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:44, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

I have source A stating that XYZ policy was implemented to foster a communal divide by privileging the Hindus at the cost of Muslims. I have source B stating Kak to have ordered the implementation of XYZ. TrangaBellam (talk) 06:19, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Against Congress

Link to the edit

This original statement: "Kak was ill-disposed to the Indian National Congress because, in his view, it allied itself with Sheikh Abdullah and lent its "great weight of authority" to his agitation against the State government" is amply supported by both the Rakesh Ankit articles we have, one in Epilogue and one in Himal. I am not sure why you are contesting this, TrangaBellam. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:40, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

Contesting? It is still there in our article! I have reworded the last line. TrangaBellam (talk) 06:06, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Kautilya3,

Kak was writing that note about 9 years since the events. At a time, when at least one local newspaper reports Kak to be aiming at a return to public life. That return never happened but it is not hard to imagine that Kak (who was uniformly hated by a vast spectrum of Kashmiris for various reasons) was trying to clear his name before jumping back into public life. I am speculating but Kak's life, after the banishment, needs serious research. Which can shed light into the context of production of this note.

Kak and Menon provide completely different accounts of what transpired in their meeting. Kak claims to have convinced Menon about Kashmir's ways and even executed some deal about ensuring security affairs of state! In contrast, Menon claims that he failed to understand Kak at all and that Kak kept on giving evasive replies.

I am not suggesting that Kak was making stuff up but Ankit does not bother to explain this dissonance - throughout the article, he uncritically accepts whatever post-facto justification has been provided by Kak. For someone who waxed eloquent on how important decisions of the state must be taken in consultation with the entire population, Kak's tenure as a Prime Minister makes for an interesting study. TrangaBellam (talk) 14:55, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

(ec) In the first place, you are disputing Rakesh Ankit, whom we regard as an RS. In the second place, there is nothing controversial about the princely regimes being opposed to Congress. It is a well-known phenomenon. See for example, Copland.

As for Kak vs. Menon, which is not the issue at hand, I would say Kak is more the reliable. First, Menon was dealing with a hundred things, whereas Kak was dealing with his own state. So, Kak's memory would be more authentic than Menon's. Secondly, Menon was an "official account" and needed to do whatever fudging was required. And, by the way, Menon's account was also written 9 years later.

And, who waxed eloquent about the entire population etc.? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:27, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

In the first place, you are disputing Rakesh Ankit, whom we regard as an RS. - If we are really doing this, I would suggest that Lamb's perspectives be included in every relevant article. You know where that will lead. Or I can say that Epilogue is a local mag etc.

there is nothing controversial about the princely regimes being opposed to Congress. - Who is suggesting otherwise? Or do you believe that all those princely states, who refused to accede to India easily, had nothing but the fear of losing privileges? If so, that is what I am disagreeing with.

Menon wrote the book in '55 but his biographers have detailed its production - how it involved multiple scholars vetting Mennon's recallings with evidence etc. Interestingly, Mountbatten made a similar claim when describing his overall experiences with Kak.

Kak opined that the choice of any practical accession must align with views expressed by the majority of subjects since the partition was designed for such reasons. View of the ruling elites is immaterial etc. So, it was either Pakistan or independence. Hence, he had opposed joining India when the push came to shove. It is interesting how he had implicitly assumed that a majority would support Pakistan — I think that was quite misplaced. TrangaBellam (talk) 18:56, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

In the edit I linked above, you removed/edited the phrase "ill-disposed towards the Indian National Congress", which is stated in both the articles of Ankit. The Himal article is covering both Kak's notes and Scott's notes. Your edit summary says, "remove a key line that stood on a weak source". I don't know which "key line" you meant. If it is the one about Congress's actions, which is now completely gone, all the things mentioned there are quite believable and perhaps other sources too can be found too, including Congress's own documents. So, again, I don't see the point of contesting it.

Alastair Lamb? The guy that publishes his own books with no-holds-barred POV? You are joking!

I don't care for any perspectives by the way. I rather filter them out when I write content here. Sometimes a "perspective" becomes necessary in order to summarise a complicated phenomenon.

The bit about practical accession is not in the Rakesh Ankit article. It says only, "He further points out that 'the only rational course for a state - if it decided to accede - [was] to assure itself first whether its population would support the accession'", which is quite unexceptionable. Whether the majority would have supported joining Pakistan or not, who knows? We are certainly in no better position to judge than he was. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:35, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

And I self-reverted two edits later? I have absolutely nothing against his observation that Kak was ill-disposed towards INC. Noorani and many others repeat it, and it is quite obvious.

What I take a dim view of, is that this ill-disposition was the singular cause behind the '46 rejection.

What line is completely gone?

Lamb might have self-published his works but OUP went on to publish him. Authors can have their own POV.

I am not quoting from Ankit but from Kak's note. Though, I think we are dwelling on the same bits — Once it became a practical reality, however, his objection took on “a fundamental character”.

I think some of our misunderstanding stems from the fact that I chose to note my comments in a section where they did not belong. My issues with Ankit haven't got to do with the particulars of this subsection. TrangaBellam (talk) 04:35, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, the 'fundamental character' issue is quite fine. Nobody expects that the Maharaja could have simply signed on the dotted line and declared, "it is all done". Acceding to either dominion would have involved a lot of ground work. The ground work for acceding to Pakistan was quite in place, documented in The Tribune article and Jha's page 14 ("page 15" seems to have been an inadvertant error). But any ground work in favour of India is nowhere to be seen. Congress's allies were either in prison or operating as fugitives, and the party was all but banned. The conversation with Patel is quite relevant in this context. One can read Patel's demands as seeking some sort of balance, which Kak refused point blank.

Had Sheikh Abdullah been released and the NC allowed to operate freely in January 1947, when the elections to the Praja Sabha were held, the two parties would have fought it out in the political arena and we would have all been in better shape to gauge the situation. That election could have become a "referendum on Pakistan", just as India's 1946 provincial elections.

The 'fundamental character' point does not explain these imbalances. The course that Kak took can only be explained on the basis that an accession to Pakistan is inevitable, and all potential impediments for it had to be removed. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 11:02, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Constitutional dispute removed too

The original content also had: Kak dismissed the advice and rejected the capacity of the Interim Government to advise the Kashmir government. He believed that the authority of the British Government could not be inherited by the Interim Government. ... [Patel] in turn rejected the notion of complete independence for Kashmir. This was clearly a constitutional dispute. Kak was saying that Indendent India could not interfere in Kashmir the way British India did. Patel believed that it could. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 23:08, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

My emphasis on the words authority and jurisdiction. Details added back to a foot-note.

My personal opinion is that we are reading too much into a single statement made in the course of a hostile negotiation. TrangaBellam (talk) 06:16, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

I don't think so. This has been the endemic problem with Jammu and Kashmir, from the day it was established as a princely state till today. Whoever was in power in Kashmir always thought that Delhi had no right to interfere. (And there are vague indications that Emperor Akbar also faced the same problem too.) Kak, being a Kashmiri, played to the same tune. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:02, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Claimed deletion of sourced content

The previous version went,

However, the Maharaja is believed to have already decided, a few weeks earlier, to dismiss Kak and to declare a general amnesty to political prisoners. Scholar Prem Shankar Jha states that it represented the Maharaja's decision sometime at the beginning of July not to accede to Pakistan and so India was his only option if independence proved impossible. He believed Kak to be an impediment to repairing relations with the Indian National Congress.

My version goes,

However, the Maharaja —who was growing increasingly close to India for a variety of reasons, and even negotiating without help from Kak— is believed to have already decided, a few weeks earlier, to dismiss Kak for being an impediment to repairing relations with INC, and to declare a general amnesty to political prisoners.

What sourced content is being removed? TrangaBellam (talk) 10:31, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

You can probably make a point about how my version obfuscates that the Maharaja had decided against Pakistan but else?

I removed the attribution because this view is widely held. TrangaBellam (talk) 10:32, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, the idea that the Maharaja was growing "close to India" is WP:OR and factually wrong. He very well knew that the Congress policies meant that his power would quickly evaporate. But, he was against joining Pakistan. Jha also explains why. The communal massacres in the Hazara district had started way back in December 1946 (four months before Punjab), and those refugees had flooded into Kashmir. You need to know the timeline of events before you start interpreting actions of people.

Neither can you claim that he was "negotiating" with India. He happened to confide in somebody, who reported it to Patel, and Patel wrote to him. Patel's letter, which is available, makes it clear that nobody in Congress had contacts with the Maharaja prior to this opening.

I am afraid your text is a serious distortion of facts. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 11:51, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

That he was growing "close to India" is a line from Scott, whose observations Jha support. You seem to argue that since Hari Singh was never an enthusiastic supporter of acceding to India and thought of it as the lesser of two evils (with the third option increasingly a distant prospect, and practically eliminated by mid-August), we cannot claim that he was growing close to India. Such extensive lawyering does not make sense to me. Such details can go into a footnote.

I agree that my claims about him negotiating with India are wrong - my apologies. TrangaBellam (talk) 12:05, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

My proposed version is, However, the Maharaja —who was increasingly against Pakistan due to a variety of reasons, and trying to strengthen relationships with India in the eventuality of giving up his independence— is believed to have already decided, a few weeks earlier, to dismiss Kak for being an impediment to repairing relations with INC, and declare a general amnesty to political prisoners.

TrangaBellam (talk) 12:25, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

We can't use Scott's opinions as if they were fact. And, even Scott knew only that there were people in Maharaja's inner circle who were pushing him towards India. There is a lot that can change between the cup and the lip. The probem for the Maharaja was that Kak had foreclosed the India option. Kak's riff with Patel can be seen as a complete break. So, the Maharaja needed to replace him with somebody more amenable to Congress. His choice was Mahajan. But Mahajan wasn't available in July. He was on the Punjab Boundary Commission. So things dragged on. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:20, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

I agree on everything except on using Scott's opinion. Anyways, do you oppose the above rephrasing? TrangaBellam (talk) 12:30, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Obviously, I prefer my own wording which is perfectly factual and neutral. But if something like your wording needs to go in, at least the following corrections would be needed.

However, the Maharaja —who was increasingly against joining Pakistan due to a variety of reasons, and trying to strengthen repair relationships with India the Indian National Congress in the eventuality of giving up his independence— is believed to have already decided, a few weeks earlier, to dismiss Kak for being an impediment to repairing relations with INC, and declare a general amnesty to political prisoners.

We are talking about early August, when there were no "India" and "Pakistan" yet. By the way Pampori, Kashmir in Chains (1992, p. 121) gives the date of 14 July for the decision to replace Kak. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:48, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

And "repairing relationship with Congress" does not automatically imply "joining India". Even if Kashmir remained independent, it would have needed friendly relationships with both the dominions. On 12 August, a request for standstill agreement was sent to both the dominions. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:52, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

V. P. Menon's notes on Mountbatten's address to the Chamber of Princes:

He advised the rulers to accede to the appropriate Dominion in regard to the three subjeets of ‘defenee ’, ‘external affairs and 'communications'. He pointed out that ‘defence’ was a matter which a State could not conduct for itself; ‘external affairs’ was something that no State had dealt with before. The continuity of communications necessitated their accession on this subject also. Lord Mountbatten said that accession on these three subjects left the rulers with all the practical independence that they could possibly use and made them free of those subjects which they could not possibly manage on their own.

This is what accession meant at that time. Standstill also meant essentially the same thing, except that it was time-limited, and perhaps psychologically, it didn't imply any form of subordination. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 19:07, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

References

Attributions

Why is there an attribution at every alternate line?

Scholar Prem Shankar Jha states that he returned to the Maharaja's service a few weeks later is poor drafting. These are objective facts, not subjective opinions - Kak either did or did not. Scholars -irrespective of their ideological slants- can be trusted by us to assert their claims, about such cases, in wiki-voice. Unless contradicted by other scholars. TrangaBellam (talk) 10:44, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

This is not a question of "trust". Scholars might investigate some and not others. The full timeline of what happened to Kak after his dismissal is not yet available. -- Kautilya3 (talk)

What does his 22 page long note say? TrangaBellam (talk) 13:47, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

I have no idea. I don't have access to it. Do you? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 14:37, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Court cases

Kak was convicted of some (still unknown to me) offense and given the equivalent of a dishonorary discharge - I will be glad if you can find some sources to the effect. TrangaBellam (talk) 17:47, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Among the legal scholarship held by JKHC Library, the only relevant database about the conviction is J&K Law Reports (1940 - 1953). I am not seeing any database that will be applicable for getting information on a court-case of 1959. TrangaBellam (talk) 19:30, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Met. See above thread. TrangaBellam (talk) 20:24, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

House Arrest

When Nehru tried to enter Kashmir, he was stopped at the frontier (Kohala) and asked to not violate a ban on his entry. On defiance he was arrested (versions vary on this part. aspect) and escorted to a guest-house. Kak said that Nehru cannot go inside Kashmir but he was always free to go back to Delhi or wherever else, as long as it was outside Kashmir. Nehru pressed for about two days that he be allowed to enter Kashmir but to little results. Eventually, he made it back to Delhi and nobody reported that Kak had any objections etc.

What is the opposition about? TrangaBellam (talk) 09:16, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

The Hindu, 21 June 1946, Srinagar, p. 1 TrangaBellam (talk) 09:25, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

The Indian Express. The API correspondents' reporting continue to p. 5 — it indeed appears that Nehru was not arrested and simply escorted to Domhel. That is, the version of the state (p. 1) was correct.

Indian Express Coverage of 22 June - Nothing about arrest. Nehru was shifted to another bungalow, and Abdullah's trial postponed. [Hindu reports this to be the result of backroom negotiations.] Hari Singh and Kak emphasize that Nehru can go back to Delhi/Rawalpindi as soon as he desires. TrangaBellam (talk) 09:27, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Your version had Nehru was arrested on 22 June and kept at the dak bungalow in Domel ... On a review of sources, I do not think it to be an accurate representation of the chain of events that transpired - there are issues with the dates and (implied) chronology. TrangaBellam (talk) 09:48, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

The major part of the story is not about whether Nehru was arrested or not. Rather, it is about Nehru being prevented from entering into Kashmir — this is the reason why I shifted such details to a footnote. As Nehru said: ... I am a son of soil and have every right to visit Kashmir. They don't know me, yet. ... TrangaBellam (talk) 10:17, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

I also suspect that your note, which I carried through, about Nehru return[ing] to Delhi after two days following a summon from Gandhi is inaccurate. All contemporary newspapers report that Nehru came back after being summoned by Azad. TrangaBellam (talk) 10:29, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi TB, I didn't object to the edit. I only asked for the citation to be included in the content. Leaving things unsourced means that somebody will feel free to modify it tomorrow.

But, in any case, since you have dug up the sources, I think something like "arrested" or "detained" needs be there to do justice the trembling fingers of Mr. Dar. ;-) -- Kautilya3 (talk) 13:25, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Sanjay Kak

It appears that the two Kaks are relative. Vinayak Razdan—who can be usually trusted for the facts minus the bile—writes,

there are a handful [pro-Pak Pandits] working under various international universities…these folks continue to hold the belief that all will be fine once Kashmir becomes Pakistan. We have Mona Bhan…who is grand-daughter of Rughonath Vaishnavi…who was another "Pro-Pak" KP from the 50s. [more on him later] We have Nitasha Kaul…Suvir Kaul…Sanjay Kak (family ties to R.C. Kak)…all serving the same purpose…through their ethinic identity…portray murderous Tahreek as real peaceniks and Pandits talking about their own rights as Sanghi stooges.

TrangaBellam (talk) 12:41, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

If you believe geni.com. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 23:34, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Nice website - so, R. C. Kak is the paternal uncle of Sanjay Kak. I will check RSN if Geni can be used. One of R. C. Kak's son was a PC supporter and got jailed for speaking against accession to India but I cannot recall his name. TrangaBellam (talk) 05:35, 10 January 2022 (UTC)