User talk:Tyler Durden/Archive 1

1947 Jammu massacres

Hi Vamsee, I am sorry but you addition to the 1947 Jammu massacres page is in the nature of a badly written blog-post. Wikipedia is not the place for engaging in such WP:OR. I am giving you an ARBIPA alert. Repeated POV-pushing of this kind will be grounds for sanctions. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:09, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Please tell me how is mentioning the 'Poonch rebellion' and its occurrings from scholarly sources in the article POV pushing? This is a sincere question, not an argument. Thank you. Vamsee614 (talk) 06:57, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

You need a WP:RS (in this case WP:HISTRS) that makes the connection between the two. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:27, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

ARBIPA sanctions alert

This message contains important information about an administrative situation on Wikipedia. It does not imply any misconduct regarding your own contributions to date.

Please carefully read this information:

The Arbitration Committee has authorised discretionary sanctions to be used for pages regarding India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, a topic which you have edited. The Committee's decision is here.

Discretionary sanctions is a system of conduct regulation designed to minimize disruption to controversial topics. This means uninvolved administrators can impose sanctions for edits relating to the topic that do not adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, our standards of behavior, or relevant policies. Administrators may impose sanctions such as editing restrictions, bans, or blocks. This message is to notify you that sanctions are authorised for the topic you are editing. Before continuing to edit this topic, please familiarise yourself with the discretionary sanctions system. Don't hesitate to contact me or another editor if you have any questions.

Kautilya3 (talk) 22:10, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Ways to improve 1947 Poonch Rebellion

Hi, I'm I.am.a.qwerty. Vamsee614, thanks for creating 1947 Poonch Rebellion!

I've just tagged the page, using our page curation tools, as having some issues to fix. Thanks for creating this article, it looks fairly detailed. But please note, i has been tagged as having no sources. Please add some sources to ensure the article will not be contested for deletion.

The tags can be removed by you or another editor once the issues they mention are addressed. If you have questions, you can leave a comment on my talk page. Or, for more editing help, talk to the volunteers at the Teahouse.

I.am.a.qwerty (talk) 12:12, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

February 2017

Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. It appears that you copied or moved text from one or more pages into another page. While you are welcome to re-use Wikipedia's content, here or elsewhere, Wikipedia's licensing does require that you provide attribution to the original contributor(s). When copying within Wikipedia, this is supplied at minimum in an edit summary at the page into which you've copied content, disclosing the copying and linking to the copied page, e.g., copied content from [[page name]]; see that page's history for attribution. It is good practice, especially if copying is extensive, to also place a properly formatted {{copied}} template on the talk pages of the source and destination. The attribution has been provided for this situation, but if you have copied material between pages before, even if it was a long time ago, please provide attribution for that duplication. You can read more about the procedure and the reasons at Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia. Thank you. Kautilya3 (talk) 12:15, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia and copyright

Hello Vamsee614, and welcome to Wikipedia. All or some of your addition(s) to 1947 Poonch Rebellion have been removed, as it appears to have added copyrighted material without evidence of permission from the copyright holder. While we appreciate your contributing to Wikipedia, there are certain things you must keep in mind about using information from your sources to avoid copyright or plagiarism issues here.

• You can only copy/translate a small amount of a source, and you must mark what you take as a direct quotation with double quotation marks (") and cite the source using an inline citation. You can read about this at Wikipedia:Non-free content in the sections on "text". See also Help:Referencing for beginners, for how to cite sources here.
• Aside from limited quotation, you must put all information in your own words and structure, in proper paraphrase. Following the source's words too closely can create copyright problems, so it is not permitted here; see Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing. (There is a college-level introduction to paraphrase, with examples, hosted by the Online Writing Lab of Purdue.) Even when using your own words, you are still, however, asked to cite your sources to verify information and to demonstrate that the content is not original research.
• Our primary policy on using copyrighted content is Wikipedia:Copyrights. You may also want to review Wikipedia:Copy-paste.
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• In very rare cases (that is, for sources that are public domain or compatibly licensed), it may be possible to include greater portions of a source text. However, please seek help at the help desk before adding such content to the article. 99.9% of sources may not be added in this way, so it is necessary to seek confirmation first. If you do confirm that a source is public domain or compatibly licensed, you will still need to provide full attribution; see Wikipedia:Plagiarism for the steps you need to follow.
• Also note that Wikipedia articles may not be copied or translated without attribution. If you want to copy or translate from another Wikipedia project or article, you can, but please follow the steps in Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia.

It's very important that contributors understand and follow these practices, as policy requires that people who persistently do not must be blocked from editing. If you have any questions about this, you are welcome to leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. Kautilya3 (talk) 12:20, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Okay, thank you. Since I was documenting the same content into a necessary and detailed document, I copy pasted from one article to another. As I can see, one can copy paste within the Wikipedia after giving attribution in the edit summary. You cannot delete the page altogether for that! - Vamsee614 (talk) 13:41, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

You say that it is mostly copied from Azad Kashmir, but there is no separation between what has been copied and what has been added anew. This is a problem. The two sorts of content should have been added separately. Other problems include, incomplete citations (especially when the words from a source have been copied, but the author is not even mentioned!), inadequate attributions (e.g., the Government of Jammu & Kashmir's words used as if they are facts), and no attention to WP:HISTRS requirements for historical information. Worst of all, it is not WP:NPOV, despite the fact that NPOV content exists in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947 page and I have pointed you to it. Can you explain why you didn't use it? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 15:05, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

I have created the article just then. I know it is still in a beginning stage and has to be yet developed a lot. But that doesn't mean a page of considerable importance, instead of having necessary modifications, had to be deleted entirely. That was only the first step. I'll use the NPOV content from that page in the next stages. You can provide your valuable inputs & corrections and help with your suggestions. Thank you. -- Vamsee614 (talk) 16:29, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

I am not sure why it is that important. It is part of the First Kashmir War and it has been covered there. It is not as if we have such a great deal of reliable information about it that it needs a separate article. All that exists is POV, and this qualifies as a WP:POV fork. Your first draft was certainly not ready for public consumption. Such drafts should be created in your sandbox and developed cleanly before being put into the main space. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 19:04, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Notice of restrictions on articles related to the Kashmir conflict

Hi Vamsee614. Please note that there are additional restrictions in place on articles related to the Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan, an area in which you appear to be editing quite a bit. See Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Discretionary_sanctions/Log/2016#India-Pakistan. This is merely FYI and does not imply that your edits are problematic. --regentspark (comment) 14:59, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Problematic editing at 1947 Poonch Rebellion

In this edit, you have attributed the mention of "evilly disposed persons" to Christopher Snedden. However Snedden says:

A press note issued on 12 September by the J&K Government confirms this campaign: ‘Early in August in ... Poonch Jagir, evilly disposed persons launched a violent agitation against the administration of the jagir in favour of civil disobedience and No Tax Campaign’.

Your edit is a misrepresentation of the source.

At the same time, you are very particular about dates and attributions in this edit. And, you claim that this is a "different point of view". It is a first hand assessment by the Assistant British High Commissioner, who had eyes and ears all over Pakistan, which was teeming with British officers and reporters everywhere. What is your justification for calling it a "point of view"?

Thirdly, where is the justification for stating that he said it "as the state was in an unusual quiet"? Is there any causation or explanation given in the source? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:17, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

1st - It was my genuine mistake. I didn't read the source properly. I just tried to resolve the 'according to?' tag. However I wasn't pushing anything, either in the content, or regarding who said it. There is no problem if that content is present or not.

2nd - I was referring to the use of phrase 'On the other hand' in the line, as the previous lines in that para are saying about the violent happenings of the revolt by Muslim Conference and other sources. It seemed odd to me, switching suddenly to this line in the same para, without using that phrase. So I said it is a report that is 'different' from the previous ones. "The state is in an uneasy quiet" is a certain assessment, but "the Poonch affair... was greatly exaggerated" appears like an opinion/viewpoint, though it may be completely valid. Hence I called it so in edit comment. Anyway nothing serious about this also. I was particular about the date in September, because in the next month Hari Singh literally lost control over a portion of the region.

3rd - I felt it is obvious that he said that the affair is exaggerated because he saw that the state was just in an uneasy quiet. Again, I may be wrong. And I am sorry.

In this edit also, I thought, by "chieftains", the author just meant the rebels. So I said it is fine without adding the names of the rebels.

Please don't attack me so much bro! — Vamsee614 (talk) 16:33, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Talk page etiquette

Hi Vamsee, you need to urgently review talk page etiquette described at HELP:Talk and WP:TALK.

Talk page posts should be concise and to the point so that any interested editor can review the discussion and understand what is being discussed. You should also avoid WP:FORUM kind of arguments. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:46, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

What in particular are you referring to? — Vamsee614 (talk) 12:21, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Kashmir constituent assembly

Hi Vamsee, the Kashmir constituent assembly was formed in order to formulate the state's internal constitution. It did not have the power to either confirm or abrogate the accession. Dilip Hiro's wording is wrong. He is a journalist, not a WP:HISTRS. Bakshi might have claimed things, but they have no legal validity. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 19:24, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. I didn't know. "The Constituent assembly of Jammu and Kashmir had unanimously ratified the Maharaja's Instrument of Accession to India and adopted a constitution for the state that called for a perpetual merger of Jammu and Kashmir with the Union of India. India claims that the Constituent assembly lawfully represented wish of Kashmiri people, and that its views were those of the Kashmiri people at the time." — but then, what does these lines in the article mean? Don't they carry any weight? — Vamsee614 (talk) 19:47, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: I'm very much confused here.

"Finally, this Assembly will after full consideration of the three alternatives that I shall state later, declare its reasoned conclusion regarding accession. This will help us to canalize our energies resolutely and with greater zeal in directions in which we have already started moving for the social and economic advancement of our country." - from the speech of Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah when he first addressed the Constituent Assembly, on 31 October 1951.

According to Alastair Lamb (Kashmir a Disputed Legacy, 1846-1990, pg 193), the objective of constituent assembly “to determine the future shape and affiliation of State of J&K” appeared to conflict with the resolutions of Security Council, which was also endeavoring in rather different ways to decide on the future of the State, a question which it considered to be still subjudice. “Jawaharlal Nehru also saw advantage in the constituent assembly, as it would reinforce the argument that Sheikh Abdullah’s National Conference really did represent the Will of the people of J&K and the election to which it gave rise could be presented to the world opinion as a substitute for a plebiscite…,” Lamb says, and adds; “It was evident that the constituent would take its time in the production of a definitive document. Meanwhile given the Indian diplomatic emphasis, which was being placed on its proceedings, Nehru soon concluded that it would be as well to obtain from Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, some interim based definition of the kind of relationship between the Indian Union and the State of J&K that would in due course emerge. Above all it would be extremely useful to have the ambiguities of the interpretation of the word ‘accession’ which we have just noted, clarified….” He also writes that : “It was with the aforesaid objective that Govt. of India requested the then Kashmiri leaders to come to Delhi for discussion. Accordingly a Kashmiri delegation, headed by Mirza Afzal Beg, including D.P.Dhar and Mir Qasim arrived in New Delhi on 17.06.1952 and immediately started discussions with Nehru. A month later on 17th July, Sheikh Abdullah joined in the talks along with Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, G.M. Sadiq and Moulana Syed Masoodi, which also included a number of politicians representing the opposition parties. The result was an agreement between Sheikh Abdullah’s faction and Jawaharlal Nehru, reached on 24th July, often referred to as the ‘Delhi Agreement’, which Sheikh Abdullah outlined in Srinagar to the J&K Constituent Assembly on 11.08.1952.”

— Vamsee614 (talk) 05:59, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

For legal questions, we need to refer to Noorani and Hingorani, both of whom are legal experts. Noorani's "Article 370", published by Oxford University Press, is the best souce for this.

• India accepted the accession "provisionally", subject to determining the will of the people.
• After India took the matter to the UN, determining the will of the people became a UN responsibility.
• India had argued with both the UNCIP and Dixon, that elections to a constituent assembly can be used for determining the will of the people. UNCIP was open to the idea, but Dixon ruled it out saying that the numerous references made by India to a "plebiscite" (including its statements in the White Paper) amount to a firm commitment to a plebiscite. India could not go back on it, in his view. He is a juror, and his position has a lot of weight.
• India agreed to holding a plebiscite in the Valley, and was prepared to lose it. See Noorani's Dixon Plan, which is an excellent commentary.
• When Sheikh Abdullah decided to elect a constituent assembly, the UN made it clear that its decisions would not be binding. Nehru reassured the UN that the constituent assembly would only be empowered to decide the internal constitution, not the matter of accession.
• When Sheikh Abdullah was dismissed, one theory for why he was dismissed is that he was overstepping the remit of the constituent assembly.
• Sheikh Abdullah may have been popular in the Valley, but his democratic credentials are practically zero. The so-called Jammu and Kashmir Constituent Assembly election, 1951 was a complete farce.
• The Constitutent Assembly's words "the State has been and continues to be an integral part of the Indian Union" is an observation of the de facto situation (which would still be regarded as provisional by Noorani and co), but it is not a decision of any kind. After Abdullah's dismissal, the constituent assembly had lost whatever little legitimacy it might have had. No sane person in the world would accept that the rump constituent assembly had any mandate to decide anything.
• Bottom line: Since 1954, India has been delusional. It believes that it can wiggle out of the plebiscite promise. But time will tell that it cannot. Owais Khursheed is right. Since 1953, India knew that it would lose a plebiscite in the Valley. Its continued efforts to hold the Valley by brute force represent an utter hypocrisy. The longer it delays the harder it will get to face the music. "Kashmir is slipping away from India" said an informed commentator [1], long before the present unrest. India refuses to see the writing on the wall. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 11:21, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

I didn't expect to hear these words from you bro. :-) — Vamsee614 (talk) 11:34, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, I fight propaganda of all kinds. And, Indian propaganda is no exception. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:28, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: Why is there no separate article on Dixon Plan (or any others) to elaborate on the proposed solutions to the Kashmir Conflict? Israeli-Palestinian conflict has three such articles (Two-state solution, One-state solution & Three-state solution) while Kashmir conflict has none! — Vamsee614 (talk) 18:44, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Sure, I think Dixon Plan does deserve its own article. Mind you that this whole attention to the Dixon Plan is rather new. Even Victoria Schofield was quite vague about what Dixon had proposed. My section in the Kashmir conflict is the first time this has been written about on Wikipedia. Even otherwise, it appears that there were two Dixon Plans, one proposing a zonal plebiscite and the other a partition-cum-plebiscite. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:19, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Cheers! Thanks to you for that. So let us start building the content for the article. — Vamsee614 (talk) 00:06, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Ratification

@Kautilya3: "Abdullah wanted (in 1951) the Constituent Assembly to decide the State's accession. But this was not agreed to by India, which stated that the matter was being decided by the UN." - This line is present in the Kashmir conflict article citing Raghavan's book pg 190-191 (I don't have access to it). Is this even accurate? — Vamsee614 (talk) 18:30, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Yup, it is accurate. I am not sure why you doubt Nehru. He too is a Gandhian :-)

It has been argued that Nehru aimed at using these elections to do away with a plebiscite unilaterally.[6: Lamb, Kashmir] In fact, it was Abdullah who demanded that the assembly should pronounce on the issue of accession. But Nehru publicly declared that the assembly's work would not prejudice the UN's efforts. As he told Abdullah: "to be accused of a breach of faith with them [the UN] and some kind of underhand dealing would be very bad."[7: Nehru to Abdullah, 20 Dec 1950]

See also Jammu and Kashmir Constituent Assembly election, 1951. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 19:36, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Haha, thanks. Nah, its not like I doubt Nehru or something. Its just that I never heard/read the content in that line before, and I was thinking the other way round. So I was a bit surprised, that's it.

And to be honest, what I generally feel is, Pandit Nehru always had some romantic feeling towards Kashmir. :-P And because of that, he wished Kashmir to be a part of India. That's all. But I never doubt his morals. :-) — Vamsee614 (talk) 19:47, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

I think that is wrong too. Nehru was enough of a politician to keep his personal feelings apart from his policy. This is a cheap shot taken by propagandists, as if Jinnah and Liaquat and myriads of others didn't have personal feelings towards Kashmir. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:14, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Haha. "Nehru was enough of a politician to keep his personal feelings apart from his policy" - this is unquestionable. I just said Nehru had a particular love for Kashmir. I didn't mean that affected his policy in a wrong way. Nobody can deny that (the quote you have added in this thread above is a clear proof of that). Given his record, he is unarguably a very noble person. — Vamsee614 (talk) 20:21, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

The "personal feeling" that made Nehru draw Kashmir into India is secularism. He worked all his life to draw Muslims into Congress, but didn't succeed. Either the Muslims didn't trust the Congress, or the Congressis proved to be untrustworthy. But Sheikh Abdullah, on his own, developed ideas of secularism for his own reasons, which vastly impressed Nehru. (See the Copland article on the 1931 Kashmir agitation and search for "Nehru" and "Congress". But Copland discovers that there was a Punjabi Congressman who was a major influence on Abdullah. So it was still a Congress project, but happened without Nehru's knowledge or involvement.) The Ahrars were also loosely connected to Congress, but they would have fit more into the Muslim League than the Congress. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:43, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

You already suggested me that article. I'm just done reading it. It was really some great analysis, one of the few good ones I came across, that studied religion without the spectrum (moderates-conservatives-extremists). And also it was interesting how Copland sharply presents Sheikh Abdullah as an opportunist in many ways.

Coming to Nehru, I'm very much a fan of him. I understand that the people of Sangh Parivar dislike him for his very secularism. Their position is that his secularism is flawed, it was pro-Muslim and appeasement of Muslims in policy, instead of separation of state and religion. They say, to make Muslims feel secure in India, he comforted them in some ways, fearing another partition. They immediately play a Patel card.

• " Patel clashed with Nehru and Azad over the allocation of houses in Delhi vacated by Muslims leaving for Pakistan; Nehru and Azad desired to allocate them for displaced Muslims, while Patel argued that no government professing secularism must make such exclusions. "

- They refer to things like these.

Do you have any opinion on these arguments? — Vamsee614 (talk) 00:21, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

I agree that Nehru offered too many sops to the religious minorities, which diluted the true secularism. Stuff like subsidies for Haj, subsidies to religious schools etc. shouldn't have been there. On the other hand, reservations for seats in the legislatures would have been a good idea. That is one place where minorities need constitutional help. How else can they get elected?

As for the Sanghi arguments, I think the point is that Hindus, while being a majority, act like a minority. The reason is perhaps history. On the allocation of houses issue, I don't know enough about it, but Patel's argument sounds right. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 04:25, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Reservations for seats in the legislatures for religious minorities is really a great and necessary idea! I always used to think about it. But Sanghis will literally lose their minds if they even hear that. Fringe elements flare up like anything and people will get too polarized. It will become pretty difficult to settle that hue and cry. May be that's why Nehru didn't risk it. — Vamsee614 (talk) 09:07, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Kashmir conspiracy case

By the way, the Kashmir Conspiracy Case did not happen in 1953. Your edits to that effect are wrong. Abdullah was imprisoned under the Public Safety Act, a Maharaja-era Act, which still exists with modifications. Sheikh Abdullah used it to imprison thousands of political opponents (perhaps tens of thousands, according to some accounts). -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:11, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

• Sorry and thanks. Will correct that very soon.
• Also, can you tell me why did Sheikh have so many political opponents? Were they against his undemocratic rule, or his position on State affairs, or both? I'm asking for information. — Vamsee614 (talk) 21:45, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Also, you shouldn't be citing Sheikh Abdullah's autobiography for anything except his views. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:20, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

• Why? Why not for general events and their dates? — Vamsee614 (talk) 20:25, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

If it is purely factual and uncontestable then ok.

You might have checked, I cited it for general facts only. I was writing those three sections from scratch, so I was struggling with gathering content and sources. When I first came to Wikipedia, I saw those 3 sections empty with 'need expansion' tag, and I felt bad that such a highly significant Wikipedia article remained incomplete. That was one of the reasons I started volunteering. (I thought taking on the main article in the very start is too big for me as a beginner, so I started with the other related articles.) — Vamsee614 (talk) 09:24, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Why did Sheikh have opponents? Everybody in politics has opponents. But Abdullah didn't take kindly to any opposition. He was dictatorial. That is another reason. His policies were bulldozers, like land reform acquisition without compensation, nationalisation of various businesses etc. The National Conference was made up of thuggish gangs. Prem Nath Bazaz was shot by NC gangs and he says he was dragged through the streets and thrown into prison in a wounded condition. That is how things operated. His idea of secularism isn't what we call secularism. He was totally pro-Muslim, and upset all the Hindus. He was also totally pro-Kashmiri, which upset all the Jammuites and Ladakhis. Finally, there would have been considerable pro-Pakistan sentiment, which he crushed brutally. Joseph Korbel called it a "totalitarian" state and Dixon called it a "Police state".

In my personal opinion, but drawn from many sources, Abdullah was just trying to maximise his own power in the name of Kashmiri autonomy. Bakshi was also the same. He yielded a bit more than Abdullah, but beyond that he didn't tolerate any dilution of his powers. G. M. Sadiq, a communist, was a good Chief Minister, but he wasn't much of a leader. So, nobody remembers him.

I recently leart about Ajit Bhattacharjea's book on Abdullah, and ordered it. I can tell you more authentic informaton after I read it. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:35, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. One last question. How are you saying he was totally pro-Muslim and upset all Hindus? On what basis? I'm asking because all my life through many sources, I've heard of Sheikh as a fairly secular guy. Rest all other claims, I have good idea, but not this. — Vamsee614 (talk) 22:48, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

The most prominent issue was the language issue that came up in the 40s. The Maharaja declared that both Urdu and Hindi (Nastaliq and Devnagari scripts) will be the official languages in the state. Sheikh Abdullah and all the Muslim colleagues opposed the use of Hindi. Eventually the Hindu members left with disgust, and those that stayed, stayed only for tactical reasons. Chitralekha Zutshi provides a good coverage of this. (And, note that neither Urdu nor Hindi were spoken in the state.) People argue that Abdullah should have really demanded Kashmiri to be the official language. After independence, of course, Urdu became the official language.

People also say that he blocked the army being sent to relieve the beleaguered garrisons in the Azad areas (where Hindus and Sikhs were taking refuge). Nehru left decisions like that to him apparently. People say he used to lose his head if any Muslims got killed. But Hindus getting killed didn't bother him.

What I find the most disappointing is the fact that he dropped Sardar Budh Singh from his ministry. He was a very highly respected Sikh leader. If he was on the team, the problems with Jammu would not have arisen. He shot himself in the foot by doing that. Basically, he didn't have any influential Hindu/Sikh leaders left in the NC.

What you can see from the Copland article is that secularising the Muslim Conference was a political strategy for gaining influence in the Praja Sabha. It wasn't based on any deep conviction. He was certainly opposed to communal violence. But that was the extent of his secularism. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 04:09, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Okay, I understand. Yeah, I saw. That article is saying he was a mere political opportunist. Thanks. — Vamsee614 (talk) 09:24, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Autobiography

We have to assume that any autobiography reflects the individual's own POV, which may not be what is apparent to the outside observers. For example, Mir Qasim's memoirs say this:

Sheikh Abdullah's arrest on August 9, 1953, had been preceded by a whole lot of contributory events. They included a triangular correspondence (Jan-Mar 1953) between him, Nehru and Syama Prasad Mookerjee; agitation and press campaign against him; opposition within the party hierarchy; and the erosion of his popularity in Kashmir because of some of his policies, especially in respect of food and civil liberties. Beseiged by these developments, the Sheikh became more defiant---he openly criticised the Central Government and suspected his colleagues of plotting against him. He began questioning his own wisdom in merging a Muslim majority state with Hindu-majority India. And now he was toying with the idea of an independent State. (emphasis added)

These are not the interpretations you are going to get from Abdullah's autobiography. Mir Qasim also tells you this:

The Parishad, which was merged into Jana Sangh by Dr. Mookerjee, demanded complete implementation of the Delhi Agreement. Its stand was fully reflected in Dr. Mookerjee's letters.

Now, everybody tells you that the Parishad was a Hindu nationalist organisation and they would be right. But they were demanding the implementation of the Delhi Agreement, which was reached between Abdullah and Nehru. No Hindu nationalism there!

Abdullah and the POV-pushing scholars will tell you that the "party hierarchy" that disagreed with Abdullah were Delhi's "puppets". They will also tell you that the 1954 Presidential order that essentially implemented the Delhi Agreement ("arguably" in Cottrel's words) was a "dilution" of the Article 370. The autobiography is of no use for deciding these issues. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 01:54, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. I don't think, regarding the matters of Delhi agreement or Sheikh's dismissal, POVs are added to the article from the autobiography. If anything appears so or requires additional POV, it needs to be edited.

Also its true that demanding the implementation of Delhi Agreement is not Hindutva. However all arguments that say, there were communal aspects and intentions behind Parishad's agitation cannot be ruled out completely. They were also calling for full integration with total removal of autonomy and were vehemently protesting against raising J&K state's flag along with India's flag, ignoring rest of the concerns and circumstances in the state. Even the neutral sources like Ved Bhasin voiced their opposition towards Parishad's agitation.

One could hardly call Article 31A as 'dilution of autonomy'. It was, in fact, a sound legal step towards Constitutionally establishing and securing the state's autonomy. Ratifying accession was a legal farce and a stunt, Presidential order was not.

By the way I forgot to add 31A in the main article, I'll do it once I develop the sub-article. - Vamsee614 (talk) 08:06, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

1947 Poonch Rebellion

Ok, I am going offline now. Probably won't have much time for the rest of the day. You can work on the problems I flagged. You also need to think about the timeline carefully. Recall the August-September-October activity that I have described previously. Cheers, Kautilya3 (talk) 14:33, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: Thank you. When you come online, please don't forget to reply here. — Vamsee614 (talk) 14:45, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

If you send me an email message via my User page (check the menus at the top), I can send you a copy of the Shuja Nawaz article. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 14:49, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: I did, please check. -- Vamsee614 (talk) 15:06, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

• Indian military sources, such as Bhattacharya, are not WP:HISTRS. They should be used with caution, either for bare facts or for providing additional detail to facts already covered from HISTRS. The same goes for Pakistani military sources and for Muslim Conference sources. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:40, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

• One of your heroes is pulling stunts. Need to check. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 16:45, 21 March 2017 (UTC)
• Haha, seems like a big fan of him, that user. That claim is clearly fake. And how is he my hero? He's not my hero. Check your mail, by the way. - Vamsee614 (talk) 17:13, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Close paraphrasing

Please remember that you are supposed to write Wikipedia content in your own words. WP:Close paraphrasing is disallowed. When a source uses a characteristic turn of phrase, like "snuffed out", you can't use it. Or, if it is being attributed, you can put it in quotes. Snedden's style of citing sources and putting quote marks around phrases is not particularly good. As you know, you have yourself gotten confused about how to interpret them. We have to be explicit about attributions.

Also, words like "Maharaja sent his Dogra army" are not NPOV. They are apparently taken from POV sources that want to attack the Maharaja. If you wrote them yourself, that would be even worse. The right thing to say here is "the State Army". -- Kautilya3 (talk) 11:32, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

1. Thanks, will follow that from next time. I was being too lazy.

2. This I know bro. I thought I changed that line, how did I even miss this! Why didn't you change it? The present version is written directly from the source (Nawaz pg 119). And the words are actually poorer than you saw - "The Maharaja sent his Hindu Dogra forces to quell the unrest." I'm changing it immediately. — Vamsee614 (talk) 14:02, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Edit warring

You shouldn't edit war. Since the other user has initiated a talk page discussion, that is where the action should be. Try citing policies rather than your opinions. Cheers, Kautilya3 (talk) 13:02, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

I did't know that he messaged on talk page. I don't get alerts when someone posts in the talk pages I follow. And did you see his edits? What should I tell him? I already told, that was POV pushing and removal of relevant & well-sourced data. — Vamsee614 (talk) 13:23, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

I think I need your help in there. — Vamsee614 (talk) 16:15, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: Did I utter a word against him in my previous message? And look at the way he's talking today. What can anyone tell to a guy who attacks people personally on Wikipedia? — Vamsee614 (talk) 09:36, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

POV pushing

Hi Vamsee, this kind of edit and edit summary are not on. This is what we call POV pushing on Wikipedia. What do you mean by "let us please be reliable"?

The material you were modifying is sourced to Ian Copland, a far more reliable scholar than Snedden. I have been telling you for almost a month now that Snedden is biased.

And, what exactly are you saying? If somebody agitates about taxes, you give them guns and get them to shoot people? That is the law of your land? You expect Wikipedia to endorse that? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:29, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Oh! So because of that, in the main article, you simply want to hide the fact that Poonchis were agitating against Maharaja and supporting Pakistan since before? And what for? Because Pakistan was unfair? I never denied that. But what if Pakistan was unfair? And what if Snedden was a biased source? All that doesn't alter the truth of the information that I wrote. 'Law of the land' in Jammu during partition? Seriously? And why did the law of my land come into picture? Sincerely, may I please know why? By the way, for your kind information, my government isn't communal, and it doesn't oppress me & use brute force on me if I agitate for taxes. And in my land, the law allows me to bring down the administration with my vote if I have a problem with it. I'm sorry, but contrary to your thinking, that was not the picture in Poonch. Anyway that doesn't matter at all. The present content in the article purely suggests that the Muslim League agents were the reason behind any primary disturbance in Poonch, which is clearly deceiving. All you have in your defense is "Snedden is a biased source". But even Ian Copland tells exactly the same story. There is absolutely no source that even leaves a benefit of doubt that Pakistan encouraged people of Poonch to rebel before the 'No Tax' campaign in June. Poonchis wanted to be out of Hari Singh's kingdom since 1930s for that matter, so, was Pakistan encouraging them during then? And we are not at all presenting/implying that the reason for Pakistan's encouragement was the 'No Tax' campaign or any of Poonchi's troubles. That line - "Faced with the Maharaja's indecision[...]" - perfectly states that Pakistani administration started to conspire - because it saw Hari Singh was not acceding to Pakistan, after its attempts persuade him to do so through several means of lobbying. I can produce you multiple sources which all observe the same regarding the first cause for the rebellion and when it was initiated. You also know that. But sadly, I see you don't want it there because you are just not comfortable with it. But I don't like/expect Wikipedia to hide that information in the main article. And I really wish not to see any people anymore, who say that one side (Indian side) is trying to cover that truth. Also it is against the fundamental values of Wikipedia. I'm very much shocked that you, of all the people, are meaninglessly accusing me of 'POV pushing' and 'endorsing Pakistani deeds', when all I did was merely add relevant and reliable facts. This is outrageous! Can you show me a single endorsement in the words I added? I request you, at least, try not to lose your cool. That information definitely needs to be in there. Think over, calmly and sensibly. — Vamsee614 (talk) 00:10, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

First of all, you need to read and understand WP:DUE, which is a lot harder principle to master than you imagine. And, you also need to keep a certain amount of distance from the subject in order to determine the due weight to be given to issues. In my opinion, Copland is the most neutral scholar on the subject, and his subject isn't just Kashmir, but all princely states. That gives him a breadth of perspective which the other scholars lack. Snedden simply hasn't considered all the evidence that Copland presented. He probably never even read the Copland article. He certainly doesn't cite it.

It is not clear whether you read the Copland article either. So, your accusation that we aren't being "reliable" in writing that paragraph doesn't hold any water. The first thing for you to do is to read the Copland article and check if the paragraph is a faithful summary of it. Please do that first, and then we can discuss it. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 08:50, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Do you agree with the present content in the article, after this edit? — Vamsee614 (talk) 10:23, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

It is sourced to Copland only. — Vamsee614 (talk) 10:27, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

The form of what you have written is better. But it still comes across as a rationalisation of Pakistan's actions (in a section titled "India-Pakistan conflict"). I still have to think about how to balance it properly. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:42, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

• (ec) And notice how Copland cautions against making "snap judgements":

However, the mere fact that the two sides could arrive at such contradictory interpretations of the Kashmiris' behaviour should serve to alert us to the danger of making snap judgements about mass movements, and in truth the little that is known about the origin and spread of these particular movements suggests that they were as much concerned with local grievances (over taxes and prices) and the defence of hearth and family (against the Darbar's Dogras or marauding war-bands) as with the larger constitutional issue of accession.[122: conversation between HC India and Maj. Gen. Scott, dated 8 October 1947, IOR L/P&S/13/1845B]

I notice that Copland had written about the Muslim League in one paper and the Poonch revolt in another, and he doesn't seem to have brought the two together. So, we don't know how he sees the balance of the forces. Based on evidence, we have heard that even the Bagh incident was due to an incitement by 30 Sattis that had infiltrated. So, even that wasn't purely indigenous.

We know that the Poonchis were unhappy with the Maharaja and they were agitating against taxes. This doesn't prove that they were against Kashmir remaining independent. If a political dialogue had happened, they might have been ok with it. Also interesting is the absence of Sardar Ibrahim in all of this. He was their elected representative in the Praja Sabha. It would have been his job to initiate the political dialogue. Yet, he is nowhere in the picture. How do you explain that? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:40, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

• I'm afraid I'm actually losing track of what exactly we are missing in this whole discussion. Nobody is judging or rationalizing anything here. All we are supposed to do is inform things as they are and not hide anything that needs to be informed, and we shall do it without fail. I'm not sure how you're expecting Sardar Ibrahim to initiate a political dialogue with Hari Singh to keep Kashmir independent, when he was openly advocating joining Pakistan. His party officially declared (on 19 July) a resolution in favour of accession to Pakistan with internal autonomy. It drew support from the local folklore and by Independence Day (Aug 15) many people were raising Pakistan flags all over. And this, was purely indigenous. 30 Satti infiltrators came at the end of August. Every source tells that the first people from Pakistan came at the same period (end of August). Also Sardar was clearly a strong supporter of joining Pakistan at the time, he had no interest in any political dialogue for independence. His party and himself had publicly dropped support (if any) they had for independence (with Maharaja as the constitutional head) after people's unhappiness with Hari Singh broke again and agitation began against him for oppressive taxation around June. And the most sensible (and scholarly) assessment is Sardar and his party, who were quite popular among locals, took advantage of the anti Maharaja situation (his forces were literally burning villages by August to suppress opposition) at the time and turned it into a pro Pakistan situation, for their campaign. And many people bought into this urge. Also it is not any new to them, they themselves wanted to get rid of Hari Singh and join Punjab province since 1930s (the cause which also had INC's and NC's support, and there were no any Pakistani agents then). Now Pakistan, facilitated by these happenings in Poonch, accelerated its mischievous plans to liberate Kashmir from Maharaja and take it using force, when they saw diplomacy with Maharaja is failing - I'm not the one who is inventing this, it is observed by neutral and reliable scholarly sources also. Moreover Muslim Conference was writing letters to Pakistan, asking to act immediately, when Hari Singh appointed a pro Indian PM and gave signs to accede to India. The entire Poonch affair did very much provide the excitement for Pakistan's goof-ups. All in all, in my opinion, merely informing that Pakistan's mischievous actions were facilitated by the previous situation of anti Maharaja and pro Pakistan in Poonch, is not at all undue. Any sane person will agree to that. Being a 21 year old and an amateur in Wikipedia, even I understand that. In fact I wonder how no one informed that since so many years, despite the continual propaganda by one side (to justify their deeds) that India is withholding this information. — Vamsee614 (talk) 17:01, 10 March 2017 (UTC)
• Also it seems a bit like you were the one who summarized the content of that para in the article, and so you might be taking it personal. If that's the case, I can tell you I'm sorry, for I didn't know which editor/editors wrote that. And I didn't even think/care, at all, about the editor(s) in particular. — Vamsee614 (talk) 18:59, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

I did write it. But whoever wrote it would have taken offence with an inflammatory edit summary like what you wrote, especially because there was nothing "unreliable" in what existed there.

Now, you have a particularly POV, which wasn't represented. Ok. But you can't be gung-ho about it. Discuss it calmly, and explain why your addition is needed.

Coming back to the point, a 'no-tax' campaign doesn't equate to a rebellion or demanding accession to Pakistan. We know that the Poonchis were generally supportive of the Muslim Conference. But, that again doesn't equate to accession to Pakistan. If there was a straight contest between the MC and the NC, and both of them campaigned on their respective platforms, and the Poonchis still voted for MC, then yes, we can say that the Poonchis were dead set about it. But no such thing happened. All we can say is that there was general unrest about the Maharaja's rule and Pakistan exploited it.

Regarding Sardar Ibrahim's absence, I accept your explanation. He also exploited the unrest.

Regarding the 1930s, what happened then doesn't have much bearing on 1947, but yes then too, Punjabis played a big part in it. See yet another Copland article on that. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 19:24, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Snap judgments?

Multiple sources unanimously agree that NC hardly had any support among Muslims in whole Jammu region compared to MC, let alone the Muslims of Poonch and Mirpur. Ved Bhasin also talks about Sheikh Abdullah complaining that Jammu Muslims never thought of him as their leader. Similarly, multiple scholarly sources observe that many Pakistan flags were raised all over the Poonch region on the Independence Day. This clearly does equate to demanding accession to Pakistan. And there is zero evidence that suggests Pakistan exploited on or before August 15th, only local MC exploitation had taken place before. Pakistan exploited afterwards, when people were already in its support. This well sourced information is so much idea one can have today, regarding the people's allegiance in one region of a Princely State in British India. — Vamsee614 (talk) 20:50, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

I don't know of "multiple scholarly sources" stating this. Snedden does on p.41 and cites Kashmir before Accession, a Pakistani intelligence report. But the report itself says: On the 15th August, "Pakistan Day" was celebrated throughout the State. Pakistan flags were hoisted and resolution passed supporting the Muslim Conference stand on the accession issue. Nothing about Poonch there. Pakistanis can claim whatever they want. It doesn't make it true. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 14:47, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

Ian Copland also stated this while talking specifically about Poonch. So I didn't doubt it. — Vamsee614 (talk) 16:37, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

I don't think Copland seriously researched it. He is just reproducing what he has seen elsewhere.

The Pakistani flags that appeared on 14/15 August were on Post Offices, which were run by British Indian P&T department and now came under the Pakistani P&T department. We also hear that there was a lot of Muslim League infiltration during the Ram Chandra Kak regime. They might have raised some flags too. So, the mere appearance of Pakistani flags doesn't prove ver much.

In the 1938 State elections, Abdullah campaigned on the platform of secularising the Muslim Conference, and won 19 out of 21 Muslim seats. Two other Muslim independents joined the MC after winning, giving MC a clean sweep of the Muslim seats. It was with this strength that Abdullah renamed the MC into National Conference. Ghulam Abbas acquiesced, even though he didn't like it. After 1941, when Ghulam Abbas split off from the NC, I don't think there ever was a straight contest between the two. In 1946, the NC boycotted the elections. So, the opportunity to test the relative strengths of the two parties was lost.

While the Muslims in the eastern districts of Jammu were insecure and wanted the protection of Pakistan, this wasn't the case in Rajouri, Poonch and Mirpur. So, if there was a straight contest between the MC and NC, with NC pitching for independence and MC pitching for Pakistan, the chances were very good that the NC might have won. The senior leaders of the MC probably understood that, and the Working Committee supported independence on 19 July.

As communal tensions spread within the Jammu region and the surrounding Punjab, the loyalty of the Hindus and Muslims began to gravitate to India and Pakistan respectively. On 19 July 1947, the working committee of the State Muslim Conference again drafted a resolution in favour of independence for the approval of the General Council of the party which met in Srinagar. The Council was sharply divided between followers of Chaudhary Ghulam Abbas and Ch. Hameed Ullah, leaders from Jammu region, on the one hand, and Mirwaiz Yusuf Shah of Kashmir on the other. Eventually they agreed on a modified resolution which 'respectfully and fervently appealed to the Maharaja Bahadur to declare internal autonomy of the State... and accede to the Dominion of Pakistan...

The claim of Pakistan rests on this resolution, which was apparently railroaded by Mirwaiz Yousuf Shah, who, by the way, never managed to win any election. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:32, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

I agree with the political picture. Also I acknowledge that there was no any picture of a free democracy then. Here, the then Army Chief sheds some useful light on this issue, this is what Ankit observes:

Scott presents Sheikh Abdullah's National Conference as 'predominantly a Muslim body of the valley of Kashmir. 50% of the Muslims of the valley were members of the NC while its membership was open to Hindus and Sikhs. Outside the valley, however, its support dwindled to 5-15% of the population.[...] It plotted an unsuccessful coup in the summer of 1947 but Abdullah was promptly arrested and nothing happened beyond local disturbances as the Muslim officers and officials of Hari Singh's administration were mostly supportive of the MC. The MC, the state branch of the Moslem League, was bitterly opposed to the NC and to the Congress. Like its rival, it agitated for a more democratic form of government. Scott judges MC's agitation as 'more sincere' and asserts that MC's adherents, throughout the State, probably outnumbered those of the NC while even in the Kashmir valley – until the conduct of the raiders from October 1947 – the supporters of the MC were, probably, about equal in numbers with the supporters of the NC'. Scott says that throughout June-July 1947 the MC was content to sit back and watch the quarrel between Hari Singh and Sheikh Abdullah and the reverses suffered by the latter at the hands of the former which, in Scott's words, 'were by no means displeasing' to the MC. Scott confirms though that the organisation and discipline of the MC were definitely inferior to those of the NC and local leaders were inclined to take a line of their own regardless of the central policy, in particular in Poonch. He argues that it was only after the dismissal of Kak, the subsequent tilt of Hari Singh – under the coterie around him – towards India and the unexpected success of the State Forces against the rebels in Poonch that the Moslem Conference declared for accession to Pakistan and its leaders fled Kashmir. [...] (Dismissal of Kak) was regarded by Pakistan and the Muslim Conference as 'marking a change of policy from friendliness to hostility to Pakistan…if not that then at least a mark of understanding with the Congress'.

What I take from combining what you have presented and what Scott says is, though Poonchis might be definitely more supportive of MC than NC, they might not be so serious about MC's "central policy" of acceding to Pakistan. But then again after the brutal suppression of their 'No Tax' by Hari Singh, there is a sound possibility that might have felt insecure like the Muslims of eastern Jammu districts, and after hearing about Jammu riots (I'm just speculating, as, apparently, that's all one can do now). Ultimately what I see and feel is, generally Muslims in J&K preferred to be independent from day 1, over anything. However, one more interesting and strange thing to note here is, after Azad Kashmir was merged into Pakistan, they did not raise a separatist slogan so strongly, despite their autonomy being diluted, revolts brutally suppressed (than in India), rights completely denied, leaders jailed (including Sardar Ibrahim) and forced into economic underdevelopment under autocratic and unstable Pakistani regimes. Snedden says this is because they always wanted to be a part of Pakistan, but I won't take his opinion as reliable after your many cautions (also why will they care for autonomy if they always wanted to be a part of Pakistan like anybody else?). But still its true that they have been more okay with Pakistan than the Muslims of Kashmir valley have been with India. It may be partly because people of Azad Kashmir accepted a Muslim state of Pakistan, while India doesn't have that psychological advantage with its Kashmiris. Of course, external agents (Pakistan & Al-Qaeda) have been very much in play in Indian Kashmir, unlike on the other side, which is clearly evident from the amount of militancy being generated since 1990s. Even so, no revolt in the world can sustain so well without so good support from local folks. So many stone pelters from common people for so many days, so many thousands of people attending Burhan Wani's funeral - factors like these cannot be externally influenced so much. India doesn't want/like to talk & reconcile with them, at all. It sadly turns a blind eye to the very people who it very much calls its own. — Vamsee614 (talk) 00:15, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

"Religion is the opium of the masses". In South Asia, it appears that Islam serves as a perennial opium (and Hinduism is also getting there). Even in Balochistan, where the most active insurgency has been going on pretty much continuously since 1948, only about 30% of the population support it. The rest seem resigned to the status quo. In Bangladesh, within a year of its liberation, Bhutto was given a hero's welcome and the Indian diplomats's cars were garlanded with chappals. Bhutto was driven to claim, "now you have two Pakistans to deal with."

Coming back to Kashmir, the Kashmir Valley is different. Cocooned in a valley in the midst of Himalayas, and having developed its own indigenous Islam without any invasions, the Kashmiris have a tendency to identify their Islam with Kashmiriyat. Akbar's occupation of Kashmir is regarded by them as an enslavement and loss of independence, whereas in reality it was the best rule they have ever had in history. This aspect of Kashmiri nationalism was never understood (even by the likes of Nehru). However, in the rest of J&K, they are not parochial in the same way. The Poonchis and the Mirpuris are much more closely tied into the Punjabis, who after all control the levers of power in Pakistan. However, some Kashmiriyat did rub off on them. That is why they call themselves "Kashmiris". This is most highly manifest among the British Mirpuris. You should also remember that the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front was originally founded in Azad Kashmir (with a very complicated history), and matured in Britain. Their goal is to liberate the whole of J&K. Even though the Kashmir Valley is their first target, its capture/liberation is expected to galvanise the whole of J&K. The Azad Kashmiris cannot fight Pakistan on their own. They need the Kashmir Valley to join them. The JKLF took tactical help from Pakistan in 1985 or so, but soon got back-stabbed. So, I don't think they have much sympathy for Pakistan any more. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:46, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

• Okay, I get it. Thanks. And I don't find it so difficult to understand that Kashmiriyat. I think its like elsewhere with the people in the world. It is said that being such a top cadre INC leader, Sarojini Naidu mourned for the 'loss of statehood' of her beloved Hyderabad State (also for the violence that occurred during then, of course), when it was annexed into India. Nizam's rule was in no way better than Indian rule. Nor Nizams were of local origin. But the people lived under their rule in one independent (more or less) state, for centuries. And so a distinct Hyderabadi national identity develops. When people start to identify themselves like that, they don't like, at all, to lose their beloved national identity by being integrated into another new state with different national identity(s), though they can live a lot happier with their new status. It appears strange but its normal human nature. The similar tendency appears in extremes in the valley. As you said, "they are cocooned in the midst of Himalayas, and historically developed their own indigenous Islam without any invasions" for long long years. There itself is the answer to the question. No wonder they hate Akbar's occupation and 'enslavement'.

• I beg you to accept that there is no people on Earth who would not prefer their own bad government to the good government of an alien power.

  — Gandhi (1982 film)
• Religion is an 'add-on' to that! — Vamsee614 (talk) 16:11, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

I am not taking issue with Gandhi. But the ideas of "native" and "alien" are not in-born, but constructed. And, the role of propaganda in the construction can't be underestimated. See here for a blatant example that I ran into. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:53, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Haha, I saw that you had nice fun over there. :-P And yes, its true what you said. They're definitely constructed and induced. People are greatly influenced by their life experiences and environments. They consume things accordingly. I always agree to that. — Vamsee614 (talk) 19:13, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

And finally what was the verdict? Did you research further? This article particularly says the elections were rigged by the GoI alone! — Vamsee614 (talk) 19:32, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm asking out of uncontrollable curiosity! — Vamsee614 (talk) 19:33, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Because as per my knowledge (based on what I read about this earlier), till now, I was thinking it was only GoI. — Vamsee614 (talk) 19:36, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

References

Abdullah's dismissal

Why was Abdullah dismissed?

First of all, we have to agree that it wasn't Nehru's doing. It was Karan Singh's decision to dismiss him and Bakshi's decision to arrest him. However, Nehru was aware of both the decisions as and when they happened, but didn't object.

So, the question is, why didn't Nehru object? The common theory is that it was because Abdullah was advocating independence. But this theory is highly problematic in the light of Mahesh Shankar's evidence. Nehru was fully aware that, with Sheikh Abdullah's dismissal, whatever little chance India had of winning a plebiscite would be gone. And, he himself accelerated the proposals for a plebiscite soon after Abdullah's dismissal. So, it seems that Nehru was ready to lose Kashmir. What was it that was so important that it necessitated losing Kashmir?

Unfortunately, I don't know of any scholar that either asked this question or answered it. But the answer isn't hard to figure out. Two points stand out:

1. Nehru's drawing of Kashmir into India was to strengthen secularism. But that very secularism was getting endangered with Sheikh Abdullah's antics. Abdullah wanted to brutally suppress the Praja Parishad and, when Delhi blocked those efforts, he started thinking of Delhi itself as being "communal". No doubt Praja Parishad was communal, but their agitation was entirely constitutional. Land acquisition without compensation violated Indian constitution's fundamental rights. The railroading of the Constituent Assembly election violated every principle of liberal democracy. Nehru worked hard to reach the 1952 Delhi Agreement, but Abdullah basically threw it into dustbin. The list goes on and on. Worse, nobody in India thought of the Praja Parishad agitation as communal. They saw Abdullah as trampling on the rights of Hindus. So, basically, a continuation of Abdullah's regime was tearing India to pieces. So, Kashmir's presence in India seemed to be self-defeating.
2. The second point is what Shankar calls "reputational calculus". It is a bit hard for us to imagine now that there were any issues with New Delhi's reputation. But in those days, observers all over the world were predicting India's disintegration. Whether a self-ruling Indian government could hold such a large and diverse country together, without the racial advantages of the kind that British colonial regime enjoyed, was a big question mark. Moreover, India was still in the process of digesting the 560-odd princely states that Britian never directly ruled. Any loss of prestige of the national government would encourage divisive forces in all those states. A close reading of Nehru's writings demonstrates a lot of concern for the prestige of the national government. Abdullah was directly challenging the national government and so endangering its reputation. (Of course, Abdullah's efforts to claim independence for Kashmir were also endangering New Delhi's reputation, but it is how that independence is claimed that makes the difference. If Abdullah had asked for a plebiscite while in power, it wouldn't have been as bad, because that was something New Delhi had already committed to.)

Hence, it seems to me that Nehru decided to let go of Kashmir (the Valley) but keep Jammu and Ladakh. Seen in that light, the dismissal and arrest of Abdullah doesn't look so bad. It looks like a temporary measure, until the plebiscite got arranged. Once a plebiscite happened, Kashmir would be free of India and India would be free of Kashmir. Nehru arranged with Pakistan for a plebiscite administrator to be appointed within six months. No preconditions were attached, such as the withdrawal from Azad Kashmir or the disbandment of the Azad Army. This is an important observation to make and we should be grateful to Shankar for having made it. Nehru wanted it to be settled quickly. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:00, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

• No, I'm sorry to say, but I beg to differ. I still see problem here.
• Firstly, not with the dismissal, but with the arrest. Given his undemocratic and unconstitutional activities, a dismissal is quite justified. But why did Nehru not object to the arrest? He was more or less a popular guy in the region (at least in the valley), and was somewhat seen as a Kashmiris' leader by India and also the international community. His reputation was troublesome, but no other alternate leader existed with a better reputation in the region. So obviously his arrest attracts a lot of criticism and public disapproval. Even to this day it is seen as a blot in the history of Kashmir in India. It even tarnished the Union Government's image for putting a "democratically elected head" in jail. Okay, let us ignore it. As it was Karan Singh who did it, and considering it was not wise to leave Sheikh free, as it may cause a lot of unrest due to his' and Plebiscite Front's mischievous activities, we can safely assume Nehru couldn't object.
• Secondly, why Bakshi in his place? Why didn't Nehru at least take care of this? Bakshi was in no way a better leader than Abdullah, he was rather worse by every means. Elections were being rigged as usual. And in addition, he was very much pro-India, just after Abdullah was arrested after advocating independence. What more can one say? In the eyes of observes, it appeared like Delhi was using its "hand picked politicians" to establish its rule without people's mandate. How does that secure the nation's reputation? Let us even strike this off. Assuming Bakshi was the only choice, as he was next to Sheikh (deputy PM), and Nehru didn't take a note of the rest of the things so seriously.
• Here comes the real question. Fine, Nehru genuinely pushed for a plebiscite very much. He became ready to leave the valley and settle the issue quickly and once for all. But later due to Pakistan-US defence ties and all, India was offended. And so Nehru backed off feeling that the nations's respect cannot be compromised. So he later preferred status quo. Alright, I agree to all of this. But why play with Kashmiris? How can he ignore them? He was the one who had always been promising a plebiscite to the people of Kashmir. This is not simply India vs Pakistan, and it never has been. Also, there always has been a very strong independence factor - why was that not addressed, in addition to 'Pakistan'? Leave plebiscite for the moment. When in 1951, Abdullah wanted the Constituent Assembly of J&K to decide about the accession, he himself rejected saying doing such things is "underhand dealing". Now, most importantly, what was Nehru doing when the same "underhand dealing" was going on through Bakshi? The Assembly ratifying the accession, and adopting a Constitution that says accession is accepted by the people & Kashmir shall be an integral part of India - all this is some serious nonsense (along with rigged elections, as usual). Also Union Home Minister going to Srinagar and declaring there is no more a question of plebiscite. How did Nehru allow all of this? After Sheikh was released also, Nehru was trying to settle things with Pakistan. What about the voice of Kashmiris? Their sense of alienation had started from then itself. And it went on increasing. Today they have a feeling that they've been historically wronged by India since Nehru, and that accusation clearly holds water. Their desire for azadi greatly intensified because of such feelings.
• I'll never say that Nehru was evil, but one has to agree that he has been irresponsible in this regard. And I'm blaming particularly Nehru, only because of my utmost respect for him. According to me, he was the only Indian leader and Prime Minister who had enough conscience and competence to solve the dispute.
• Especially at this stage, it is not with Pakistan India has to make peace with. It is primarily and essentially with the Kashmiris. In some or the other way. Sadly nobody in India realizes this. — Vamsee614 (talk) 23:34, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Gosh the longest messages I have ever written on talk pages

I think you are assuming that Kashmir in 1953 was like any other Indian state, which it wasn't. In fact, the relationship between the Centre and the State were not at all clear.

Some background:

• During the British times, the British claimed paramountcy, i.e., they were the power in the subcontinent, and whatever autonomy they granted to the princely states was at their pleasure. There were no limits to the power they could exercise over the states, except for the limits they had set for themselves.
• Before they departed, the British said that the Paramountcy would end. The explicitly ruled out the Paramountcy being transferred to India/Pakistan. The princely states were, in a legal sense, the equals of the Dominions. Read that again: Equals.
• All the states other than Kashmir and Hyderabad, acceded to India while the British were still around and, so, as far as they were concerned, it appeared as if India was their new Paramount power. But, for Kashmir and Hyderabad, that wasn't the case. We know what happened with Hyderabad. India exercised de facto Paramountcy over it and Hyderabad submitted. But in case of Kashmir that didn't happen.
• The Instrument of Accession only gave India power the three subjects. Other than that, India had no other power in Kashmir. As long as Sheikh Abdullah was around, he didn't let India exercise anything else. Do you know why Syama Prasad Mookerjee was arrested? Because Sheikh decided so. He could at will bar anybody entering the state, and according to the legal position at that time, he could do so. That is what Mookerjee was trying to demonstrate, the ridiculousness of the situation. The Indian Constitution gives any Indian free right to travel to any part of India. But this right didn't apply to Kashmir. (Ok, that isn't directly related to the issue, but it should help you gain the correct perspective of the situation at that time. "Republic within a Republic" is the description one of the Hindu natinalists used.)
• When Sheikh wanted to institute land reforms, Karan Singh consulted Delhi, and told him it wasn't advisable to do so without a legislature. And, his reaction? Abdullah was livid, arguing that the Union had no jurisdiction and no business interfering. The Indian government acquiesced. And, he was right. Legally, Karan Singh wasn't India's representative or appointee. Karan Singh couldn't consult Delhi on an internal matter of the state and India had no right to offer an opinion. That was the state of affairs.
• Even in a normal Indian state, Law and Order is a State function. However, the Centre has power to override the State in the national interest, but it shouldn't do so unreasonably. In the case of Kashmir, there was no such thing. The State was its own power.
• So if Bakshi wanted to arrest Sheikh, he had the full power to do so, just like Sheikh himself had the power to arrest tens of thousands of his own opponents. If that is the culture Sheikh himself had established in Kashmir, how do you expect Bakshi to behave any differently? Has the Sheikh set any standards of democracy? Just like he trampled on everybody's rights, his own rights too got trampled. He has nobody to blame except for himself.
• Likewise, there is no indication that Nehru offered any advice to Karan Singh either. By principle, Karan Singh shouldn't have dismissed Sheikh Abdullah without asking him to prove his majority in the legislature. But there was no law, no consitution, no nothing in Kashmir yet. As far as he was concerned, he was the monarch, and he acted like one. Didn't the Sheikh himself get rid of his father unceremoniously? What goes around comes around. It was really the Wild West out there.

So, that is the background. As far as I can see, it is completely wrong to blame Nehru for whatever happened. It wasn't his doing. He was just a spectator. What amazes me is how some of these scholars, the very ones who argue for the so-called autonomy for Kashmir turn around and blame Nehru for precisely the autonomy that he gave Kashmir. Actually, he didn't "give" it. Kashmiri elites extracted it out of him. Nehru was really powerless. His solution was to try and give up Kashmir, because it simply wasn't working out. (Mahesh Shankar's revelations are quite the key here. Without them, we wouldn't know that Nehru was powerless. On the surface, to "observers" as you say, it just looks as if Nehru was holding on to Kashmir with whatever means possible. But the reality is quite the opposite. He was trying to give up Kashmir.)

Bakshi wasn't his choice. He was Sheikh's own choice. Sheikh picked him as his Deputy. So, that was that. Both Bakshi and GM Sadiq went to Delhi and complained to Nehru about Abdullah. Nehru advised them to talk to Karan Singh, which was entirely the right thing to do and quite constitutional. They talked to him. And, that is how the coup happened. Coup is the correct description of it. It is really no different from how Zia got rid of Bhutto or Musharraf got rid of Nawaz Sharif. It is the Wild West.

As for plebiscite, it is exactly an India vs Pakistan issue. Nehru offered it to Pakistan on 30 September, almost a month before the invasion. See the Timeline. If there was no Pakistan, there would have been no need for any plebiscite. Kashmir would have had no choice but to accede to India. Both Nehru and the world at large saw British India as one country. Pakistan had to happen for one reason or another. But no further fragmentation was contemplated, at least until 1971. Besides, Kashmir is not a viable state. They can hardly make the ends meet. Independence is lunacy. But it is now becoming clear that being part of India is an even bigger lunacy. So, independence may be the best of a bad lot. But not so in 1947 or even in 1953.

Offering a plebiscite to Kashmir, as if it was a gift, was a mistake. Perhaps the liberalism in Nehru made him do it, if at all he was conscious that he was doing it. In his own mind, he seems to have thought that it was a deal with Pakistan. We don't know enough about what was going on in the Kashmiri mind at that time, but my impression is that the Kashmiris didn't particularly clamour for plebiscite. It became an issue later. Sheikh Abdullah himself made plebiscite into an issue after he was imprisoned. An issue that he himself didn't support earlier. He thought his own Constituent Assembly was perfectly competent to decide on accession.

I think you misunderstand the "underhand dealing" remark. The Constituent Assembly that Sheikh engineered into place was completely illegitimate in the eyes of the world, let alone Pakistan. If an Assembly had been elected under UN supervision, it would have been perfectly competent to decide on accession. Nehru would have preferred such a thing to a plebiscite.

What about the voice of the Kashmiris? Well, what about the voice of the Madrasis? Did anybody ask them what they wanted? How are Kashmiris any different? Self-determination is overrated. It is just as stupid as the Brexit. The Brits ask, can we have another chance? The answer is apparently NO.

The "feeling that they have today" is a result of a myriad propagandas and a brutal military occupation. In 1983, they seemed perfectly happy. And, apparently all the "dilution of Article 370" that happened till then didn't matter. We confuse the power games of the elites for the people's wishes. What people want is freedom, not power. Autonomy buys power for the elites, but does nothing for the people. But freedom for Kashmir is not possible as long as there is a Pakistan sitting next door eager to wreck the house. So, even today it is an India vs Pakistan issue, not a Kashmiri issue.

After all this WP:FORUMy debate, let me end with a citation It substantiated what I said in the background bullets. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 03:54, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

• Now I actually see why Dixon objected so much to the presence of Sheikh's administration in the valley during plebiscite. Pakistan's disagreement was not the lone reason.
• What I infer from what you've told me is a) Centre-State relations were very weak. Nehru was very helpless. (this is truly one of the most uncovered aspects!) He didn't have much say in the matters he is blamed for (all the ugly 'Wild West' stuff that happened & also for the granting of 'autonomy'). b) Bakshi did things like ratifying accession, to please India (also due to Karan Singh, may be) in order to ensure & safeguard his power by maintaining good relations with the Centre. Nehru probably didn't ask him to (conditionally or forcefully). c) Plebiscite offer made by Nehru was an unknowing / a miscalculated(going by what you said, he was thinking to give up Kashmir; but for some reason, that didn't happen in the later stages, so I'm calling it miscalculated) mistake. d) Much of the present Kashmiris' resentment originated & aggravated, from India's side (apart from Pakistan's involvement), due to Indira Gandhi's religious polarization campaign ('Muslim invasion' in Jammu) during 1983 elections; rigging in 1987 elections (about this, all I hear is conflicting POVs from various sources, I desperately want to find out who exactly did it; Farooq's NC, or Centre's INC, or both? I already asked you this question in the above section, if you have a clear idea regarding this, please give a brief answer in reply when you have time, I would be very grateful); and Indian military occupation with army excess & atrocities (which is again a byproduct of rigging in 1987 elections).
• Don't worry, we will use this discussion for improvising the content in the main article. Some of these background aspects, which need to be there, are presently missing.
• This discussion really helped me to a great extent. Thanks a lot. :-) — Vamsee614 (talk) 09:59, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

The "plebiscite offer" was a major bilateral concession to Pakistan. It did not require them to withdraw from Azad Kashmir, or disband the Azad forces. In effect, Nehru was trying implement the Dixon Plan. The result of that was going to be the transfer of the Valley to Pakistan. What next? Was it going to buy peace with Pakistan? Or was it going to reinvigorate the Jihadi forces? If the Jihadi forces were strengthened what were its repurcussions for India? Until the US-Pakistan Defence Treaty, these questions were easy to answer. After the Treaty also they were easy enough to answer. Nehru asked them and answered them, even before the Treaty happened. He warned Pakistan ahead of time. Pakistan went into it knowingly. To them weapons were more important than Kashmir. With weapons and the US on their side, they could fight for Kashmir any time.

You shouldn't confuse this with the "plebiscite promise", which Nehru made to Kashmiris (as people describe it now), in radio broadcasts and in Parliament etc. This was part of his effort to educate and prepare the nation to the difficult issues surrounding Kashmir. The best documentation of it is in the White Paper itself, which I had read when I had access to a South Asian library in the US.

The 1987 rigging was obviously done by NC. They had always done it ever since 1951. Why would they be any different in 1987? However, after the passage of the Kashmiri Constitution, India's Election Commission was administering the elections. (But, of course, all the offcials on the ground would be state government employees, who owed their allegiance to the NC). The Election Commission obviously acquiesced (presumably in the "national interest"). The Courts too acquiesced. Widmalm saw with his own eyes, unopened ballot baxes in the Kashmir High Court, which were gathered as evidence after the elections and they are still lying there. The Court never pursued the complaints. So, the whole state machinery rigged the elections, not just the NC. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 11:50, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

It was too foolish on their part to think so - "with weapons and the US on their side, they could fight for Kashmir any time". Things never get settled that way!

Okay, so 1987 was a joint venture. Again, thank you. — Vamsee614 (talk) 16:14, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

• Parity with India/Hindus is the core of Pakistan ideology. Jinnah's strategy of letting the princely states become independent was part of that. It was clear that, without the princely states, India would be half of its size, and Pakistan had a chance of achieving parity. Throughout 1946-47, Jinnah made no attempt to get the accessions of the states within the Pakistan zone, but he tried to acquire the states on the border (Jodhpur, Bikaner, Junagadh etc.) irrespective of their religious composition. He didn't regard Pakistan as a "Muslim state", hard as it might be to believe. And, he thought Hindu princes with Hindu populations would willingly join it if he offered them enough power. (They might have. But then Pakistanis started killing Hindus & Sikhs and driving them away. So it became an absurd idea. The Muslim League made use of Jinnah to get what it wanted but they had no use for his ideas afterwards.)
• After independence, Pakistan realized that it got an army half the size of India's, but its economy could support only a much smaller size, perhaps a fifth of India's, which was a big blow to their vision of parity. They immediately started canvassing the US, asking for astronomical amounts of weaponry. The Americans laughed it off, but they persisted. So, when the US finally agreed, it was a chance of their lifetime. They were not going to pass it up for Kashmir or anything else. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:13, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

References

Arbitrary break

Coming back to Abdullah, neither Abdullah nor Bakshi were particularly pro-India or anti-India. For Abdullah, all three options were viable: independence, accession to India, or accesstion to Pakistan. And, he knew that about half the Kashmiris wanted to join Pakistan. So, his strategy was to maintain distance from India, making the accesion appear as if it was just a marriage of convenience. On the other hand, Bakshi knew that accession to Pakistan was not viable for them. If Kashmir joined Pakistan, the National Conference would have been erased from the map of the earth. So, Bakshi chose to support accession to India without equivocation, but he maintained distance from India just like the Sheikh.

At this point, it looks like Nehru screwed up. Since Bakshi was totally dependent on India for his power, Nehru seems to have started thinking of the National Conference as a wing of the Congress. Asking Bakshi to resign as part of the "Rajaji Plan" was strange. The Rajaji Plan was meant for Congress chief minsiters. How could Bakshi be asked to resign? But, Bakshi did resign, which essentially proved that the NC had become a wing of the Congress. The Kashmiris probably understood this.

Under GM Sadiq, the NC merged into Congress, thereby removing the prior ambiguity. So, what is now called the "Congress" in Kashmir is the erstwhile NC. Some of them probably went back to NC after Sheikh revived it in 1977, but the rest would be people that opposed Abdullah's equivocation. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:31, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

• I see that. Constructivism clearly explains this tendency of Pakistan's 'parity with India' ideology in its populace & governments. Actually it exists in India also (with populace) to some extent, but Indians are mostly content with their situation in that regard, as India is a bigger nation in all means, than Pakistan, and the politics in India has evolved to get over it to a major extent, to concentrate on a lot more other things it has to deal with. But what I fail to grasp is, its been 70 years by now and how Pakistan didn't get over this silly thing, that enough. By the last decade, their US strategy also failed, as US started ignoring them after the Western world's ugly Islamophobia due to global terrorism (especially today, after Trump's presidency, well I don't need to explain). I know that Pakistani governments have been unstable, dictatorial, corrupt & unprogressive and even now there's a diarchy there. But I think a common man in Pakistan also, wants only his rights and growth, more than anything. The two sides of the governments in Pakistan, both military (military governments in Pakistan also have a lot of public connect & support, often more than the other side; no coup has faced a serious people's opposition there) and political leaders, use the anti India sentiments to polarise people for their power games. Here, apparently, Kashmir conflict plays a very big role. If you remember, when Modi, in the beginning stages of his tenure, tried to improve bilateral ties with Pakistan, both Nawaz Sharif's government and Pakistan's populace responded positively, more or less. But after Kashmir erupted after Wani's death, things entirely changed and they started attacking India. And the same gets reflected in India (both with government and populace). These things will further intensify the Kashmir conflict (Pakistan exploiting the situation & funding militants, India increasing its force to suppress and all). So this becomes a vicious cycle. And for this huge reason, the conflict must be somehow solved and ended. Also Pakistan should someday kick its religious branding out in its political setup(sadly, I'm afraid, presently India is tending to go in an opposite direction in this aspect) and become a progressive nation.
• Yes. NC, that too after Sheikh's removal, was not a people's friendly and people's supported government, at all. With zero democratic rights to people, as usual. After Nehru decided to take plebiscite off the table, he tended to encourage integrating Kashmir into India using the NC, without any reasonable attempts to communicate with the people of Kashmir. According to me, this itself is a screw up. And particularly after Nehru's death, things went terribly bad. India completely started to manage things through all means possible, without reconciling/solving anymore. Calling Kashmir as fully an internal issue, rejecting any outside intervention, stressing that Kashmir remains as India's integral part no matter what, declaring all separatists(including the ones from Kashmiri people) as enemies & not encouraging talks with them to listen to their concerns - all these. Even Indian governments are programming their people for all of this, they're selling nationalism in the name of Kashmir (not informing children through school textbooks that the whole J&K state shown in official India's map, has a Pakistan administered and a China administered part in it, is a blatant example for this; when I first came to know about that, I was driven with rage, and it took me years of insight to come out of that madness). This is closing the doors even for any future possibility of a solution. It is really too dangerous. And I'm not calling it dangerous because one day India cannot manage things, I'm afraid it can (in my opinion, India, with its might, can manage Kashmir as long as it wishes, until doesn't use Israeli tactics of changing demographics using settlements and all. In that case, India might face an uncontrollable civil war. But probably India won't resort to such things, given the complexity with things like article 370, India's nature as a country, and its 18 crore non-Kashmiri Muslim population which has well embraced its Indian nationality). I'm calling it highly dangerous because people in Kashmir will hugely continue to suffer and die, due to the occupation of brute force. — Vamsee614 (talk) 19:56, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

You think you got over your rage? I don't think so :-)

• NC, that too after Sheikh's removal, was not a people's friendly and people's supported government, at all. Do you think you can substantiate that, without recourse to Sheikh Abdullah's propaganda? How do you explain the fact that in 1983, 'Almost everywhere the answer was an emphatic no. People said that the past was dead and they were participating in this election as Indians.'
• After Nehru decided to take plebiscite off the table, he tended to encourage integrating Kashmir into India using the NC, without any reasonable attempts to communicate with the people of Kashmir. I don't see what can be wrong with "integrating" Kashmir into India? And what integration has been done which you think is improper? How does it compare with Pakistan's integration of its parts of Kashmir?
• Calling Kashmir as fully an internal issue, rejecting any outside intervention,... What outside intervention is possible? Why should India allow that, when they couldn't enforce the clause 1 if the United Nations Security Council Resolution 47?
• stressing that Kashmir remains as India's integral part no matter what, declaring all separatists(including the ones from Kashmiri people) as enemies & not encouraging talks with them to listen to their concerns. Ok, so, what are their concerns?

Let us talk some substance instead of ranting :-) -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:28, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Haha, sure mate. Actually you got me wrong.

1) Yes, many people, including his critics, opposed the Sheikh's removal (denying him a a chance to prove his majority on the floor) and arrest and called it unlawful. And people participated in what elections? Rigged ones? I was talking about the time period of 1954-64. Not 1983 elections, they were after Sheikh's death.

2) Integrating is not at all wrong, I'm talking about the way it was done. Solely by encouraging/allowing Bakshi and his NC to dilute the autonomy & make legislative changes like ratifying the accession, without any reasonable communication with the people. Somehow some attempts could have been made to fairly involve the people. Like, the Assembly elections of 1957 & 1962 could have been conducted in a free and fair manner, by regulating NC from rigging (Its not impossible, the Union Government could have surely done that, its a pretty good action, and would have got a great people's support). And please no straw-man mate, you know that I did not compare this with Pakistan's integration of its parts of Kashmir. :-)

3) Just tell me why 'Dixon Plan' is regarded as one of the finest and closest solutions to the conflict by many(also you), despite not enforcing the clause 1 of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 47?

4) What are their concerns? Army excess, AFSPA, PSA... And I cannot answer this question completely, one has to talk to many of them to get all answers. I saw ranting panelists on prime-time Indian Television with an army officer, a right-wing politician, a Kashmiri Pandit etc. Do you ever see so many Kashmiri Muslim civilians/victims on TV? I seldom see one. No acknowledgement/representation for their concerns. What I'm trying to say is, it should not be 'my way' or 'highway', there should definitely be a midway for reconciliation. — Vamsee614 (talk) 22:32, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

1) We have talked about rigging before. Sheikh Abdullah-managed election in 1951 itself was 100% rigged. So you can't complain about rigging later while turning a blind eye to his rigging. Moreover, Bakshi does seem to have beaten the Jammu Praja Parishad in its home ground in 1957. He must have done something right?

1a) As for Abdullah's dismissal, his own Cabinet ministers disagreed with his position (4 out of 6, counting GM Sadiq). Surely, there must have been something wrong with it?

2) I don't see any evidence that the "people" objected to the integration, only the elites did, because their power was getting diluted. Abdullah apparently claimed that he was "betrayed" by India. Recent work has examined Abdullah's attitudes at the time and reasons for his arrest.[44] He is reported as saying that he was betrayed by India, that it would have been better if Kashmir had joined Pakistan and Kashmiri youth would be willing to fight for liberation, as had the youth in Algeria.[45] Does he explain this "betrayal" in his autobiography? Did he not himself drag Nehru into Kashmir? If he changes his mind and says it would have been better to join Pakistan after his got his gaddi, is that not "betrayal"? Does he think he would have had opportunity to implement his Naya Kashmir in Pakistan?

2a) Pakistan's integration is no "straw-man". Until 1971, India and Pakistan were the only options available to the people of Kashmir. If India's "integration" has hurt them, what would Pakistan's integration have done?

3) The Dixon Plan was a large concession to Pakistan. It was a way to get over the interminable wrangling and make progress on the settlement. The Noorani article tells us how everybody in India badly wanted a settlement. But, as Nehru says, that settlement was not meant to be at the cost of "India's honour."

4) Separatism has not come about because of AFSPA and PSA. Rather, it is the other way around. These laws came in in an effort to enforce law and order in the face of an armed insurgency. You are inverting the cause and effect. Rubaiya Sayeed was kidnapped, jihadist propaganda was proclaimed from the mosques, Pandits were driven out and all that, before the Indian Army was called in.

Aren't you being totally naive and disingenuous in saying that the separatists are mainly concerned about these brutal Acts? Do you claim that they will give up separatism if these Acts are repealed?

Sorry, I find all these arguments just rhetorical lacking in any substance.

The way to achieve WP:NPOV is not make up opinions and then look for arguments, but rather to look at all the evidence objectively and then assess the situation. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 00:10, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

There is a huge communication-gap going on in this thread.

1&2) Im neither suppotting Abdullah, nor supporting Pakistan. I do know that Abdullah acted like an opportunist and changed his stance & did his propoganda for his own 'absolute power', and that's betrayal. I myself added that POV in the main article. Also, I know that the way Pakistan integrated the regions of Kashmir in its control, was offensive. If the same happened with Kashmir valley, it would have been probably much more horrible. I'm only saying, after Nehru's plebiscite promise to the Kashmiri people, there was clearly no people's involvement later in the legislative steps taken during that period, and that it could've been addressed. However I'll end this past topic now, as we've already discussed a lot about this, and also as you said, this was inconsequential, since all that 'dilution of autonomy' didn't matter until the 1983 elections, when Indira Gandhi aggressively campaigned on communal lines, later fringe elements flared up, and finally the occurrence of rigging in 1987 elections.

3) I agree to this. I was referring to the tendency of trying to manage things after 1964, without finding solutions, and programming Indian people accordingly. Since 1954, India has been delusional. It believes that it can wiggle out of the plebiscite promise. But time will tell that it cannot. Since 1953, India knew that it would lose a plebiscite in the Valley. Its continued efforts to hold the Valley by brute force represent an utter hypocrisy. The longer it delays the harder it will get to face the music. "Kashmir is slipping away from India" said an informed commentator, long before the present unrest. India refuses to see the writing on the wall. - please remember, these were your own words. What I meant was, India cannot solve the problem without making peace with external parties, along with its internal Kashmiris. Today the conflict exists mainly in India. It is the Indian Kashmiris who are agitating predominantly, not the other side ones. Closing doors is not in the best interest of the nation. India has to encourage solutions by making peace with Pakistan, if the solution can be pursued without losing India's honour.

4) You totally misunderstood & misinterpreted my statements. I didn't state it as a cause for that effect. I never said separatism has come out of AFSPA. And by seperatists, I do not mean militants. I mean the common people of Kashmir who support the separation of state from Indian union. There are lakhs of people today in Indian Kashmir, who do not hold a gun in their hand, and want India to get out of their land. Probably, majority of the people in the valley do come under this bracket. Though army excess and AFSPA & PSA contribute somewhat to the rise of separatism (sometimes also militancy) in the valley, I did not propose to repeal those Acts as a solution to tackle separatism. I want them to be repealed because common Kashmiri civilians are suffering & losing their freedom because of them. I was talking about their concerns. They are being alienated more and more, day by day. Since the practical possibility of a plebiscite or partition is now almost zero, the best thing to do at this stage is reconciling with the common people of Kashmir and trying to make them embrace their Indian nationality, by talking to them and addressing their concerns (other than independence). Not turning a blind eye to those citizens. Pandits event was over 10 years ago. And the resulted brutal Acts & heavy military occupation continue to exist to this day. According to official state government reports, the number of active militants in J&K is around 150 in the last year. Since 2008, this number has not crossed 250. Though the Indian army refuses to release the official figure, analytical estimates, suggest that close to 600,000 Indian soldiers present in the region. I don't think, using lakhs of soldiers on streets, with impunity, to tackle those less than 300 militants, is a sane idea. If you're supporting AFSPA, its your opinion. But opposing it is my opinion, and I'm entitled to it. In that case, we'll just agree to disagree.

PS: If you find this discussion lacking in any substance, please feel free to not reply here anymore.

I'll keep that NPOV suggestion in mind, thank you. :-) — Vamsee614 (talk) 23:29, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

To square what I said earlier (very nice of you replay them to me :-) with what is going on in this thread, I would criticise India for a general lack of direction and drift over the years, for its delusion that Kashmir will stop being an issue by magic and nothing needs to be done. But at the micro-level, almost all its decisions and actions are likely to be defensible.

I was pointing out that Nehru's dismissal of Abdullah (or his tacit acceptance of it) is eminently defensible because it was in fact coupled with a long-term solution (the plebiscite offer). The withdrawal of the plebiscite offer is also defensible but it should not have led to drift. Ideally, Nehru should have come back to it after a couple of years, when the passions had cooled down, and renewed the plebiscite offer or done whatever was needed to reach a permanent settlement.

His continued reiteration that the deal was off and nothing more could happen feels like that of a sulking child that got into a fight rather than that of a visionary leader. There were plenty of sane voices that were reminding him of the requirements, most notably Jayaprakash Narayan, but also Rajagopalachari and possibly even V. P. Menon. But he ignored them.

After Nehru, there was no leader that had the vision and courage to approach the problem. Perhaps Rajiv Gandhi could have done something if he had come back for a second term. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:02, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Yeah. Now I agree to this position, most of it. I would like to add that not all of them are defensible. The continuance of AFSPA till today, in particular. — Vamsee614 (talk) 22:54, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

References

Article 370

Hi Vamsee, f you don't have them already, please add Article 370 and Article 35A of Constitution of India to your watch list. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:36, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

And Yogi Adityanath as well, which is kind of "hot" now, but might get hotter. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 15:28, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

This edit is not appropriate. See other politician pages. This is a biography page, not a news report. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:19, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Okay, I changed it now. - Vamsee614 (talk) 11:16, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

• His gurus, Mahant Avaidyanath and Digvijay Nath also need to be worked on. You might try and get hold of the book Ayodhya: The Dark Night. You will thoroughly enjoy reading it (in a manner of speaking). -- Kautilya3 (talk) 08:45, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Why do Avaidyanath and Adityanath both have "Bisht" as their last name? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 08:47, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

• Can you see this page? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:24, 21 March 2017 (UTC)
• I just saw the common surname after you pointed it out. May be its just a coincidence. It seems that 'Bisht' is a native surname, I don't think that there's a known direct family relation between the two persons, or that the common surname has anything to do with how they met.
• No, I'm not able to see that page. Its showing 'page is not part of the preview.' - Vamsee614 (talk) 09:52, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: Once please check your mail when you are free, thank you. - Vamsee614 (talk) 10:14, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

National Conference

the special session of the All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference was held at the Pather Masjid, Srinagar, on 10th and 11th June, 1939. The session was attended by one hundred and seventy-eight delegates... for and against, were heard by the delegates. Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah brought the discussion to an end by asking the delegates to cast their votes. One hundred and seventy-five delegates voted in favour and only three against. Amidst applause and joyful slogans the President of the special session, Khwaja Ghulam Mohammad Sadiq, announced at 1.45 in the...

How can people claims that the Muslim Conference had split into two parties, one being the Muslim Conference and the other National Conference? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 17:51, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Why? Muslim Conference split from National Conference in 1941, right? - Vamsee614 (talk) 18:56, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

That is what I thought. But a good scholarly book says ...All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference (AJKMC), which later split, forming a new AJKMC and the All Jammu and Kashmir National Conference (AJKNC).[33]

On the other hand, the Muslim Conference sources say that Abdullah started a "new party" called National Conference. So where lies the truth?

It looks like the scholar is right. The continuation of the above paragraph says:

... at 1.45 in the night between 11th and 12th June, 1939, that the resolution was a landmark in the history of the freedom movement in Kashmir. It spelled out the dissolution of the All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference after a life of eight years, and at the same time heralded the happy news of the All Jammu and Kashmir National Conference coming into existence.

So, they dissolved the MC and started a new NC. Why did they do that? I had assumed that they just changed the name. That is what we hear from the Indian sources. But the reality seems more complicated. This means that all three views are correct. The MC people can claim that they are the original MC and the NC was a new party. The NC people can claim that they converted the old party into a new one. The Robinson lady's viewpoint is the more balanced one. I am flabbergasted! -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:01, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

This is strange. But I wonder if that made any practical difference. And I'm finding no clue as to why they had done so, instead of simply changing the name. I certainly don't think that there was any specific reason for it. They might have did it just like that, to mark it as a symbolic & secular change by dissolving the previous Muslim named party (speculation). — Vamsee614 (talk) 17:08, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

References

Nizam of Hyderabad

I see you've been removing the giant list of Stuff in Hyderabad from this article. Thanks. It also keeps turning up in Osman Ali Khan, Asaf Jah VII and I'd be grateful to get more eyes on that. Pinkbeast (talk) 12:12, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Sure, I will. Cheers! — Vamsee614 (talk) 12:23, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Constitution of J&K

@Kautilya3: I don't think this edit of yours is appropriate. The content was there with attribution. The above three points in that section are also sourced to op-eds, which are from less popular and non standard newspapers compared to Times of India, and one of them is even a dead link. Moreover, the content you removed is not far from truth. We must not hide that the J&K Constituent Assembly had a very poor democratic credentials, a fact which is also observed by scholarly sources. — Vamsee614 (talk) 19:48, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

How can it be inappropriate when it is according to policy? The cited article is weird because it is not labelled as an op-ed but it is clearly a personal opinion, written in the first person. If Swaminathan Aiyar is important enough for his opinion to be cited, then the attribution should be to him, and the content should be a faithful summary of his article. The election issue is only a minor point in his article and it wouldn't make the cut in writing a 2-sentence summary of the article, if one were to do it. This is what happens when people decide what they want to say and then go dig out some source that says it. That is not an accurate reflection of the source.

The content I have removed is clearly POV. No scholar has claimed that the rigging of the 1951 election produced a pro-India assembly. In fact, the reality might have been the other way. The Kashmiris were clearly standing behind Abdullah, whereas it was pro-India parties like Jammu Praja Parishad that were crushed. If there was no rigging, the elected assembly might have been much more pro-India than it turned out to be. India was letting a pro-Kashmiri Kashmiri railroad an election, while crushing its own partisans. Only the ultimate POV-pusher can claim that this was to the benefit of India. And Swaminathan Aiyar does indeed look like an ultimate POV-pusher looking at his arguments comparing Kashmir with Junagadh. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:14, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

You should have a look at the content which is above the one which you deleted. The above two points were also added with the exact same background that you mentioned - "This is what happens when people decide what they want to say and then go dig out some source that says it." And Ram Jethmalani is the supreme POV-pusher for that matter. He is equating the formulation of J&K Constitution by its Constituent Assembly to the plebiscite. And the point next to Ram Jethmalani is sourced to a dead link that comes from the site Taazi News. God knows where that news-site cane from! I thought to remove that content also, but refrained from doing so, since the section would become too short. Anyways, now I added statements from Ved Bhasin and Noorani, below. So, never mind. Check your mail, by the way. — Vamsee614 (talk) 21:46, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Well, you need to reach consensus before you start making edits. The Constitution of J&K is the best thing they have. No point undermining it. If they had joined Pakistan, they would have had no Constitution, just the Ministry of Kashmir Affairs lording over them.

I am no fan of Ram Jethmalani. But I suppose he is being cited here as a constitutional expert. If Pakistan had withdrawn from its part of Kashmir, then a plebiscite would have been held and no Jethmalani could have objected. As Christine Fair says, Pakistan has no one but itself to blame for the current state of affairs. It twiddled its thumbs as long as secularists were in power and now those times are gone. Since Pakistan never withdrew, the Jethmalanis have their day. Who can stop them? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:20, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

I thought you will be okay with that edit given that it is reliably sourced, I didn't notice that it does not make enough connection with the subject.

Now, Pakistan or J&K having a Constitution is not the point, I'm talking about the POV in the article which is equating the Constituent Assembly & its Constitution to a plebiscite. And that's ridiculous, no matter how big expert it came from. We need to certainly counter it there for a neutral and balanced article. I will find a way to do it, that also abides Wikipedia policies. — Vamsee614 (talk) 22:35, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Irony is that Jethmalani's POV is cited from the very article which is written to criticize that POV throughout. — Vamsee614 (talk) 22:42, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

No, I wasn't ok with that edit. How can I possibly be? Neither Bhasin nor Noorani have undermined the Kashmir Constitution, whereas you are trying to do so saying that the election was rigged. No respectable scholar drew the conclusion that you imply!

The UN resolution is also a red-herring. By 1960, the UN lost interest in Kashmir, according to multiple sources. You can't use that to counter statements made in 2014! Bringing in the UN into the issue once again harks back to all the India-Pakistan debates, which need to be avoided in dealing with the Kashmiri autonomy/independence. The UN never gave "independence" to Kashmir. Neither did they give them "self-determination". They only said that the dispute between India and Pakistan should be settled in accordance with the "wishes of the people".

I agree that the Constituent Assembly in no way equates to a plebiscite. In fact, I doubt if Jethmalani meant it the way it reads. But the rest of Jethmalani's statement is fine. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 07:48, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

First of all, this is not undermining the Kashmir's Constitution. It is about countering Jethmalani's POV His exact words are quoted there as it is, in inverted commas. He definitely meant it the way it reads. He's clearly equating the Constituent Assembly and its actions to a plebiscite. And the content is under the section Problems before the Plebiscite, not autonomy or independence or self-determination to Kashmir. Though the statement is made in 2014, it was being made about the J&K Constituent Assembly and its activities that occurred in 1950s, and is equating them to a plebiscite. UN lost interest in Kashmir by 1960 does not mean, its statements before that, that are very much relevant to the subject(both 'plebiscite' and 'Constituent Assembly') cannot be used.

• Either the invalid POV of equating J&K Constituent Assembly to a plebiscite, in Jethmalani's statements has to be modified/removed, or it has to be certainly countered. — Vamsee614 (talk) 08:23, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Try checking proper sources for Jethmalani views. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 08:50, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

I did. I have no objection to any of his views, except the one which equated J&K Constituent Assembly to a plebiscite. Also since those views were expressed in the context of strong support to Article 370, and admission that "plebiscite is no longer a feasible proposition", one cannot be judgmental on Jethmalani. So, please blame the guy who first put those statements there in a problematic way, not me. — Vamsee614 (talk) 10:25, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Hi Vamsee, please don't use "J&K" as an abbreviation anywhere on Wikipedia articles. I don't see it as being acceptable notation in scholarly sources even though newspapers use it.

Coming back to the article, the entire section called "Problems before plebiscite" is Indian POV. It probably got added to counter the Kashmiri POV. It can disappear when the rest of the article is developed according to the scholarly sources. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 14:07, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

By the way I am going to expand the "Presidential orders" section in the Article 370. So no need for you to add anything there at this time. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 14:08, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Okay, I won't from now. I used it since people generally use and understand it. And fine, I didn't know you are going to expand it. Remove my addition when you expand the section. What is there? I didn't add anything inappropriate. Cheers! — Vamsee614 (talk) 14:22, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

About the article, I think there's already a separate section to discuss Kashmiri, Indian & Pakistani POVs and counter one another. So I'm not sure why it is necessary to keep Indian POV in the Problems before plebiscite section, instead of broadly discussing the political and social problems that make plebiscite quite difficult to take place today practically. — Vamsee614 (talk) 18:10, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

References

Disarming Poonchis

It looks like there is disagreement about the disarming of the Poonch ex-servicement. I had seen July 1947 date in Snedden (p.41) and assumed that it must be right. The citations he gives are History of Jammu and Kashmir Rifles (p.219) and Kashmir before Accession ("various pages").

• As for the Jammu and Kashmir Rifles, no matter what search key I tried (Punch, Bagh, servicemen, arms, disarmed etc.), I couldn't land on page 219. Perhaps you can give it a try.
• The "various pages" of the Kashmir before Accession correspond to the refugee testimonies which give varying dates. There is no specific July 1947 order or event mentioned.

According to M.L. Batra, the deputy PM, large scale disarming was done after the incident in Bagh, i.e., in September. But he said that the people that were disarmed soon acquired other arms from somewhere. In any case, Prem Shankar Jha believes that the systematic disarming was done only in September. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 11:08, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Page 219 of Jammu and Kashmir Rifles is hidden from the preview. We cannot see it. From various pages of "Kashmir before Accession", I see that the first incident of disarming took place in July-August(pg 257) in the region and later it occurred irregularly across, happening at different timings in different places and villages. And many accounts mention the month of September as to when the arms were taken away. So Prem Shankar Jha's belief that the systematic disarming was done only in September, should be quite correct. — Vamsee614 (talk) 12:48, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

I am not sure any more that the soldiers were discharged with arms. I can't find a proper citation for it on Google Books. But I recall reading it in precisely those words in some book or the other. It might or might not have been accurate. If there were 60,000 bren guns in Poonch, things should have hotted up a lot sooner. But they didn't.

If we assume that they were not discharged with arms, but some of them happened to have their own arms or arms acquired on duty, then things begin to make sense. The June order for disarming them is cited to a private interview with Sardar Ibrahim by Schoefield. It is possible that he had private information about it because he was in Srinagar at that time. Snedden seems to have tried to verify it from other sources, and found Brahma Singh. But we don't have access to the page.

Jha went through the fortnightly reports of the British resident in Srinagar and he doesn't seem to have found anything about it. Neither did General Scott mention it. The policy of arming Hindus and Sikhs is not mentioned by them either. No doubt that it happened, but my guess is that it was done informally by the ranks, especially in Poonch. There, the Hindus/Sikhs were only 10% of the population and they were generally town-dwelling business people. Since a lot of Muslims did not surrender their arms and there were raids from across the border, the Hindus/Sikhs were under threat. Jha believes that they must have demanded arms from the forces, and they gave them the surrendered arms that were available in their stores. That is the theory so far. I need to check further. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:14, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

I was believing so much - all the WW2 soldiers of the State were discharges with their arms, that I never even bothered to verify it in sources. I was thinking I strongly remember reading that in many books. But now when I checked, I did not see that in a single book(Snedden/Copland/Raghavan/Ankit/Schoefield), except in the new one by Robin James Moore which you cited there. I am greatly surprised, this appears like magic to me! Anyhow your theory makes sense. I was having this doubt from the beginning - why Poonchis weren't doing anything with 60,000 machine guns till mid-1947, when they always resented Hari Singh's policies. Now I have an idea. — Vamsee614 (talk) 11:20, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

References

The last report of Gen Scott

Henry Lawrence Scott's last report to the Maharaja on 22 September says this.

A survey of recent tendencies and events leaves little doubt that the Muslim Conference leaders intend to push forward their policy of union of the State with Pakistan by force if necessary. It is clear that in this respect they are finding ready support and assistance in the districts of Hazara and Rawalpindi. There can be little doubt that a close alliance is intended if not already formed between Conference leaders and the excited fanatical agitators across the State border to the West. The recent rising in Bagh Tehsil of Punch constitutes the first fruits of this alliance.

On the Southern border of the State the Muslims have massacred, driven out and looted the Sikhs and Hindus. The former having thus acquired a taste for massacre and loot are likely to be ready for fresh adventures. Even more dangerous than these are the many thousands of Muslim refugees that have passed into the districts of Jhelum, Gujrat and Sialkot from the East. These have lost much and no doubt are prepared to recoup themselves at the expense of any one they are in a position to attack. Revenge and fanaticism must be equally strong motives.

There are few indications that the Pakistan authorities are making efforts to restrain their people. In fact, the contrary may be said to be true. There can be little doubt that the Pakistan police and troops are not reliable.[56]

-- Kautilya3 (talk) 03:16, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

The Southern border of the State means the Poonch and Mirpur districts of Azad Kashmir, right? — Vamsee614 (talk) 04:51, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

No I would expect it to be the border lying in between Kathua and Bhimber, the area that the Maharaja and Mahajan travelled to in October. On the Pakistan side, they contained the Jhelum District, Gujrat District and the Sialkot District. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 08:27, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Okay, I get it. And Hindus & Sikhs were mainly massacred and driven away in huge numbers from the other side of the border - i.e., Pakistan's side. Also, Dogra forces were going with the arriving Hindu refugees were attacking the villages on the other side of Sialkot border during this period. I remember from Chattha's thesis report, which shows the FIRs from police records that describe these incidents. Please check your mail once, by the way. — Vamsee614 (talk) 12:07, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

I showed it to you mainly to see his assessment of the Muslim Conference strategies. This report didn't show up in Rakesh Ankit article because Ankit was mainly consulting the India Office Records in London. There must have been more reports of Scott in the State Forces archives. The cycle of partition violence needs no explanation. It feeds back on itself. But the difference here is how Muslim Conference and Liaquat Ali Khan exploited it for their own strategic ends. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 15:44, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I know you were showing me that. And I did take a note. Thanks. — Vamsee614 (talk) 17:16, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

References

Sardar Ibrahim

Does this count as hypocrisy in your book?

As Sardar Mohammad Ibrahim Khan, the president of the first Azad Kashmir Government, announced in November 1947: “Our Government is [a] Government of the people and has behind it a majority of the elected representatives in the Kashmir Assembly. Today the major portion of the State Territory is in our hands and we alone are the real government of Kashmir. . . . On the other hand, the despotic Maharaja has brought foreign aid [and] armies of occupation are pouring in from the Indian Union.”[45: Hafizullah, 1948, p.103-105]

-- Kautilya3 (talk) 02:13, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Hehehe, of course yes. Why mate? I'm not sure why you think of me as a fan of Sardar Ibrahim or any Azad leader. As I already said, I'm very much anti Hari Singh for his harsh dictatorial acts and communal violence. Sardar rebelled against him, and that is the extent to which I like him. Also, as far as I know, he did not encourage or involve in communal violence. If he did, he is no better than Hari Singh to me. And he kept his allegiance to Pakistan despite many ups and downs, unlike Sheikh. Other than that, he's like any other opportunistic politician. More importantly, he's not a Nehru or Gandhi to me, at all!

PS - I called him "one of my heroes" in the other thread just in a funny way repeating your earlier words, and to counter your previous claim that Sardar made up that fact to justify his rebellious activities. :-) Cheers, Vamsee614 (talk) 10:00, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

I am also joking when I call them "your heroes". But...

I don't think this is "opportunism". It is his world view; his belief system. In order to rationalise your own actions, you have to demonise the others. That is how propaganda comes about. We are trying to wade through this propaganda to find the miniscule bits of facts that lie around somewhere.

When Richard Symonds writes ‘Every cow, buffalo and sheep was taxed, and even every wife’, that is what is going on. There is no evidence that the Maharaja was applying any taxes to Poonch that he wasn't applying to the rest of Kashmir, and there is no evidence that any of his ministers or the British Resident or other British advisers objected to any of it. But Symonds has to write that. That is how you justify the rebellion. (I was just checking last night your original edit, which called them "punitive taxes". No doubt you were using the phraseology from some reliable source.)

The first letter that Sardar Patel wrote to the Maharaja (3 July), he asked for Sheikh Abdullah to be released. The first time Maharaja sent an emissary to Nehru (19 September), he demanded Sheikh Abdullah's release. There is no indication that any Pakistani leader asked anybody to be released. "Pakistan would not touch even a strand of His Highness's hair", said Jinnah's emissary. Yet for the Sardar, it is the Pakistan that is the jigri dost and the Indian Union is the "foreign" country. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:55, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Ah! I too had doubts on that "even every wife" thing. But when you're questioning the remaining also, you're raising serious doubts here, that need to be given a careful attention. Its not the question of whether Poonchis suffered more taxes than the rest of the Kashmir. Its whether the taxes were heavy and unfair or not, and irrespective of the rest of Kashmir, whether Poonchis themselves got frustrated with them or not. In the whole story, we're going by the assumption(according to RS) that Poonchis were resentful towards the Hindu dominated administrative & police staff, unfair taxes and lack of employment prospects. If the entire version of 'No Tax campaign' and Poonchi's economic grievances is farce, and MC & Pakistan provoked people from scratch, then we're dealing with utter and authentic nonsense here. In that case, I'll very much regret creating that page. But to make that leap, we need proofs which we do not have now. All we have now is mere doubts.

And to Sardar, Pakistan is obviously jigri dost. He was in favour of acceding to Pakistan since 19 July. Later it gave him 4000 guns and helped his rebellion. What do you think? Why would Sardar give a damn about releasing anyone, that too his political rival Sheikh Abdullah? He's not any saint, he just had his interests. Not to mentiion again, religion is always there as an add-on. About calling India as a foreign country, once he took the side of Pakistan, he had to play by its rules and he did. But sadly, that's what he was compelled to do all his life later. — Vamsee614 (talk) 17:31, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

• I am not sure what you think I am "questioning". I wrote This resulted in loss of autonomy for Poonch and subjected its people to the increased taxation of the Kashmir state, both of which were resented by the people. This is factual and, I believe, the correct interpretation.
• Rather, I am questioning Richard Symonds, whom I now regard as a propagandist. He also fed his propaganda to his fellow Quaker, Philip Noel-Baker. Both of them together managed to poison the entire world opinion against the Maharaja's regime as well as India's intervention. An astonishing achievement! They also kept on appeasing Pakistan and its jihadism. The Kashmir problem exists today, mainly because of these two men.
• As for India and Pakistan, the provisional government treated them as being equal:

On the matter of political rights, the Azad Kashmir Government addressed India and Pakistan, not the Maharaja, whom it considered already deposed: “The Azad Government hopes that both Dominions [India and Pakistan] will sympathize with the people of Jammu and Kashmir in their efforts to exercise their birthright of political freedom. . . .

No native country and foreign country here!

• I was not expecting that Sardar Ibrahim or Pakistan should fight for Sheikh Abdullah. But they could fight for their own leaders like Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas. But they didn't. Herein lies the difference between the strategies of India and Pakistan. India was genuinely fighting for polical freedom, and trying to do it peacefully. Pakistan was wanting to inflame the passions and getting people to pick up guns. Its interest was not political freedom. It was Islam and power. Abbas behind bars had greater propaganda value than Abbas out of bars. So, there was no point in getting him freed. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 23:18, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes. Now I understand what you are saying exactly. I agree, that is factual and the correct interpretation. However I am confused as to why the Englishmen Richard Symonds and Philip Noel-Baker had to work for the Pakistan's propaganda to poison the world opinion against the Hari Singh's regime and India's intervention. Both of them wrote and said extensively, especially against the "punitive" taxation. I mean I am unable to identify their motivations in doing so. And true, I completely agree to that difference between the strategies of India and Pakistan. — Vamsee614 (talk) 06:53, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

The motivations are a very long story, but the upshot is that, during the 20th century, vast numbers of Britishers felt more at home with Muslims than Hindus. This is perhaps best illustrated by Winston Chuchill's outburst against Lord Mountbatten, "Muslims are Britain's friends and you, despite being the cousin of the King, sent the army against them". In the struggle for power in the Indian subcontinent, the Muslims were the underdog and Britain had to support them. Britain saw its role in the Indian subcontinent as protecting the minorities. So, the entire official culture in British India was pro-Muslim. (In the 19th century, it was quitie the other way. Then, Britain saw its role as liberating Hindus from the Muslim tyranny and "bigotry".) So, in both the cases, Britian's role in India ended up distorting the Hindu-Muslim relations.

The British quakers were (and are) puritans, peace-lovers. But they also agreed with the idea of "fighting for freedom". During the second world war, they worked as relief-workers, running the ambulance service. To them, India's partition and the Kashmir war were sort of a continuation of the second world war, where the Muslims were fighting for freedom against Hindu tyranny and dominance. Symonds himself tells us that 269,000 non-Muslims "left" the NWFP, but there is no ranting and raving of the kind he does with the Muslims of Jammu. They were obviously driven out by the Muslim League National Guard, which was the covert arm of the party state of Pakistan. The situation was symmetric to that of Kashmir. Why this discrimination?

In all this discussion, the Maharaja's case has not been examined. His position, viz., that he should try and remain independent, or accede to India if that is not possible, is eminently justifiable. (Independence was acceptable to all groups in the State, whereas accession to India was acceptable to at least the National Conference. In India, the Muslims would be safe. But in Pakistan, the Hindus would be killed and driven away.) All the groups in Kashmir supported independence, including the Mirs of Gilgit Agency. Muslim Conference Working Committee also supported it, but in the last minute Sardar Ibrahim and Mirwaiz Yousuf Shah rail roaded a resolution against it. Why? My belief is that they did it because they were losing against the National Conference. So, they generated the talk that the Maharaja was trying to accede to India, which found easy takers in Poonch & Mirpur as well in Pakistan, and then raised an armed revolt which they claimed would force him to accede to Pakistan. Jinnah was not consulted. Jinnah would have known that doing stupid stuff would throw the Maharaja into the camp of India. Liaquat Ali Khan, whose intellectual powers seem quite limited, bought into the plan. Apparently, he lied to Jinnah, telling him that the revolt was all indigenous and spontaneous, which Jinnah then repeated on the world stage. Now, Noel-Baker bought into the story and told the world that Jinnah was right and India was wrong.

The Maharaja, for his part, tried to keep his State out of the communal violence that was raging in Punjab and the NWFP, i.e., in his entire surroundings. How many non-Muslims ended up in J&K? The UNCIP figures given in the Kashmir conflict page give a number of 226,000 refugees. There weren't that many non-Muslims in Azad Kashmir areas, and vast numbers got killed in Mirpur, Rajouri, Muzaffarabad and Baramulla. I would think about 60,000-80,000 of them might be AJK refugees, and the rest were West Punjab and NWFP refugees. The Maharaja absorbed all of them, without any communal violence till the end of September. Only after the Poonch Rebellion started in October did he lose his head. So, Sardar Ibrahim caused all this violence, despite all his intelligence as a UCL-educated Barrister. Why? Because he couldn't fight the National Conference politically. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 11:43, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Excellent! Your theory, apparently, is a great analysis explaining one of the major origins of the Kashmir conflict. But I'm afraid it has just one weak point - How did Sardar Ibrahim and his MC, who were 'generating' the talk that the Maharaja was trying to accede to India, at the same time, claim that raising an armed revolt would force Hari Singh to accede to Pakistan? I mean how would anyone buy into that? Any sane person would expect in that stage, by doing so, Hari Singh, after realizing that he could no longer remain independent, would side with India, either by acceding to her or at least taking her aid. That too when tribal invaders come from Pakistan. So, I think, its better to assess this part, this way - they must have claimed/expected that Pakistan would anyway succeed in taking Kashmir by force, after raising an armed revolt. However, this is just my take on it.

And going by this theory, Sardar Ibrahim did not just cause the 1947 violence through his actions. In a way, he himself started the conflict, because of which 3 civilians & 1 militant were killed and 63 Indian soldiers were injured, yesterday itself. — Vamsee614 (talk) 15:27, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Any sane person would expect in that stage, by doing so, Hari Singh, after realizing that he could no longer remain independent, would side with India, either by acceding to her or at least taking her aid. That is what you say. Apparently nobody at that time was "sane" in your sense. There were more than half-a-dozen people attending the meeting with Liaquat Ali Khan on 12 September. There is no record of anybody raising the concern that you raise. Akbar Khan knew, but apparently didn't say anything in the meeting, and his plan was ignored.

Sardar Ibrahim didn't have anything to do with the tribal invasion. That seems to have been the doing of Khurshid Anwar, who was apparently taking orders from Liaquat Ali Khan.

Ibrahim thought he could accomplish his goal with just 500 guns from Akbar Khan. He seems to have thought that, with these guns, the Poonchis could go all the way to Srinagar and force the Maharaja's hand. It seems naive, but it wasn't that far-fetched. Maharaja had 9,000 men in his army of which apparently 3,000 were Muslims (mostly Poonchis). According to General Scott, all the Muslims in the army as well as the Muslim officials in the State were supporters of the Muslim Conference. So, if all the Muslims rebelled at the same time, they could easily neutralise the remaining 6,000 non-Muslims. (This did happen at Domel-Muzaffarabad as well as at Gilgit.) Moreover, the army was stretched wafer thin, spread out all along the border. If Ibrahim could take the Poonch town, there was nothing standing between him and Srinagar. Srinagar itself was undefended. That is why the Maharaja went and borrowed a battalion from Patiala, which Ibrahim might or might not have known about.

But, on 12 September, Liaquat took charge and it was out of Ibrahim's hands. Ibrahim could only focus on Poonch and Mirpur. The rest went above his head.

And, the Poonchis were nowhere as successful as he imagined. By 22 October, they couldn't take any major garrison of the State Forces. Even Mirpur (a relatively easy target) was taken afterwards, that too with the help of Pashtuns and the Pakistan Army, which sent it armoured cars. So, Ibrahim badly miscalculated. He was a lawyer, not an army commander. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:18, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

This military miscalculation is a minor thing when compared to the aspect - all of them collectively missed that this nonsense might easily bring India into the picture. That means they were all smoking something very precious. --- Vamsee614 (talk) 18:50, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

My dear Vamsee, you underestimate the madness of religious fanaticism:

On 18 October, before the invasion had even taken place, Abdul Qayum told Cunningham that 'direct action against Kashmir now would tend to make the Maharaja join Pakistan than otherwise'. Yet by the end of the month Cunningham believed that Jinnah now saw clearly that the intervention had failed, and had produced exactly the opposite result to its intention. Cunningham, confiding in his diary, believed that 'Jinnah is conscious of having made a blunder (having assume that tribal intervention would not at once--as seemed obvious to me--throw Kashmir into the arms of India).'[14]

He was now 'desperate to find a way out'.[87]

Cunningham was wrong on both counts. Jinnah neither realized the "blunder" nor tried to find a "way out". -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:58, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

And, to close this circle, Jinnah refused to find a 'way out' because Noel-Baker told him not to. The day before Mountbatten went to Lahore on 1 November, he sent a cable in Attlee's name which suggested that there was no need to pull out the tribes until a satisfactory settlement is reached. So Jinnah demanded that the Indian forces had to be withdrawn and that Sheikh Abdullah should be removed. The tribes would not leave until these things happened. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:23, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Haha, I see. Jinnah wanted Kashmir so desperately from the beginning (might be for parity with India, as you have said earlier). He was giving his best to persuade Hari Singh towards Pakistan, his only little problem was Sheikh Abdullah and NC who were popular among the people of the valley and not interested in Pakistan in any way. So he didn't ask for the release of Sheikh, and didn't want to transfer power to the people, he thought to deal only with the ruler. Also he was kind of okay with Kashmir not acceding to Pakistan as long as it, at least, does not fall into the hands of India (me too writing from memory; you might have known this, Jinnah expressed this to Kak at some point of time, as far as I remember). But once things went all messy, he has taken that position which you mentioned, and also Pakistan raised many objections to UNSCR 47. They became afraid that Pakistan might even lose the part of Kashmir which it is was holding then. Tribal invasion brought a lot of negativity towards Pakistan in the valley, their violent atrocities affected both Hindus and Muslims equally. Sheikh Abdullah and the NC were so angry with Pakistan like never before. Anyway my point is, Jinnah would have surely kicked off the foolish plans of armed revolt in western districts, and especially the tribal invasion, expecting such nonsense could easily bring India into picture, on the Hari Singh's side. Jinnah would have prevented all this stupidity, had he known about it from the beginning. --- Vamsee614 (talk) 06:50, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

No, I think Jinnah would have been ok with indigenous uprising, as well as with Pakistan's covert support for it. But he might have seen danger signs in the tribal invasion. Cunningham saw it clearly:

Oct 22nd. "Heard this morning that several thousand armed people, tribesmen and otherwise, had gone over from Hazara into Kashmir and had seized Muzaffarabad and Domel. We shall soon see what the reaction of Kashmir and India is going to be to this. I fear it may be very serious. My own position is not too easy: if I give my support to the movement, thousands more will flock to it, and there may be a big invasion; if I resist it, I have to bear the brunt if the movement fails through lack of support."

But things moved slowly both in Kashmir as well as New Delhi. The Maharaja took two full days to inform New Delhi, and Delhi took two full days to send troops. But the tribes were supposed to have taken Srinagar by then. Cunningham records that they were expected to reach Srinagar by 26th evening (the day before India sent the troops). The only reason history turned out otherwise is that the tribesmen got stuck in Baramulla looting.

Once Jinnah heard that Kashmir had acceded, his natural reaction was to contest it. (Nothing surprising there. India did the same thing with Junagadh. But the problem for Jinnah was that he had always supported the Maharaja's right to accede. He was a constitutionalist. So, on what grounds could he contest it?)

But what is surprising is that Jinnah didn't accept the plebiscite that India was offering. Why didn't he? Two explanations have been offered. According to Cunningham, Jinnah thought the tribes were succeeding. So he could hold out a little bit longer and see what happens. A second explanation is that Jinnah could sense that a plebiscite under the circumstances would go against Pakistan. Jinnah's own words were that "with Indian army in Kashmir and Sheikh Abdullah in power, the Kashmiris would not have the courage to vote for Pakistan." (writing from memory) So, he needed to neutralise those two factors before he could agree to a plebiscite. In this, Noel-Baker supported him. Noel-Baker believed the propaganda that Richard Symonds fed him. He probably believed it till the day he died.

Now Noel-Baker was left with the task of convincing the world that Jinnah's conditions were reasonable, and he largely succeeded. This is where the "237,000 Muslims killed in Jammu, unless they escaped to Pakistan" kind of propaganda comes in. Pakistan happily used its own Deputy Secretary's anonymous news report in the United Nations to justify itself. The long arm of propaganda, or should I say, "lies, lies, and more lies!" -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:38, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Frederick Mainprice had a three-week "holiday" in Kashmir during July-August 1948, while there was a war going on. Sheikh Abdullah expelled him. We can imagine what he must have done to deserve that. But, he was working for Karachi, 1948-49, "specialising on the Kashmir problem". A Deputy Secretary specialising on the Kashmir problem would have been handling Pakistan's UN submission. So, when Pakistan quoted The Times article in the UN, he was basically quoting himself! Do you think he was really holidaying in Kashmir, or was he gathering data for Pakistan? He evidently paid for his sins:

FREDERICK PAUL MAINPRICE. The early death of Mr. F. P. Mainprice at the age of 35 from a sudden attack of poliomyelitis, which occurred at Rawal Pindi on October 28, 1950, is a great loss to all interested in the North-west Frontier of India...

You might guess why he was in Rawalpindi in 1950. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 00:47, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Hehe, in fact they were extremely successful even to this day. Actually, though that Times report was written in a sensational way, it also had a safe extension saying - unless they escaped to Pakistan along the border. Obviously a lot of people, a majority of the mentioned figure, would escape to Pakistan, instead of getting killed there. So I wonder how so many people, including scholars like Chattha missed this and concluded that over 200,000 got killed! After all this, I'm also beginning to doubt the estimates of two Englishmen, Alexander and Symonds(especially), who were "jointly commissioned by India and Pakistan and investigated seven incidents". Both of them were ultra peace lovers and might have got sympathized with the victims(like I did :-P). I also remember you telling me that their estimation method was similarly flawed as they did not take into account, the people who escaped.

Yeah, I too read that second factor as to why Jinnah rejected the plebiscite. He wanted Sheikh Abdullah and Indian Army to leave.

By the way, don't be too hard on Mainprice. He just worked as a spy for one nation, which many people across the world do, for many nations. He might have worked for his own benefits, lied and all, but he did not directly or intentionally instigate any violence. So I feel we shouldn't say that he deserved his early death at 35 years. Just saying. :-) — Vamsee614 (talk) 05:54, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

References

Source misrepresentation

This edit is wrong. The source carries an explicit disclaimer stating they are not Al Jazeera's views! A newspaper op-ed should not be used for writing history, in the first place. An op-ed that calls Sheikh Abdullah "Indian state" is far off the deep end! -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:28, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Oh, sorry! I changed my misinterpretation that they're Al Jazeera's views. And I'm not the one who added that content. In fact I modified the previous claim that called Sheikh as "Indian state". And this is also written in that op-ed: From 1948 to 1953, the National Conference government in Indian-controlled Kashmir, which was led by Sheikh Abdullah and backed by India's federal government, either arrested or exiled the leadership of pro-Pakistan parties. The op-ed is clearly unreliable and is making baseless claims. I didn't remove the whole content since I thought the rest of the stuff is okay. — Vamsee614 (talk) 20:43, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Overlinking

Hi Vamsee, please read the page on WP:OVERLINKing. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:00, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

You also need to look up "doubtful" in a dictionary. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:13, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

I saw now, not known with certainty & not established as genuine or acceptable are there among the meanings. So I think the word is appropriate, is it not? — Vamsee614 (talk) 12:35, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

"Doubtfulness" generally refers to people carrying doubt, not to facts that are in doubt. "Dubious" is the term for that. "Figure is doubtful" is certainly wrong English. I will check OED later and see if it agrees with me. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:51, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

I changed it now. You could've edited it, I never objected to using the word "dubious". No big deal for me, cheers! :-) — Vamsee614 (talk) 13:04, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

The pro-Pakistan myth

Most westerners think that the Muslims of India "strongly wanted" Pakistan and wanted to join Pakistan. The Britishers especially think that it is a natural and justifiable inclination. If so, I don't know how they would explain the fact that the vast majority of the Indian Muslims stayed behind in India. Today, I learnt:

As Khan (1963) summed up the situation, Pakistan inherited a "paper army of 150,000 offices and men. It consisted of 508 units of various sizes. On August 14, 1947, 40 percent of these units were stationed outside Pakistan" (42). Indeed, many of the units with large Muslim representation were located in areas that would become part of India. Some of these Muslims could have chosen to move to Pakistan, but many remained in India. In contrast, virtually no Sikh or Hindu officers within Pakistan's territory elected to stay in the Pakistan Army.

In fact one of the Muslim officers that fought your Poonchi heroes and died was Brigadier Mohammad Usman commanding Naushera. How much Pakistan might have loved to have him! They had only two brigadiers whereas they needed 40.

The Muslims that went to Pakistan were of two kinds: (a) they were killed and driven away, mostly in East Punjab, or (b) they were upper class or upper-middle class Muslims that needed access to power and patronage. The rest of the Muslims stayed back in India. This is beyond the comprehension of the armchair scholars who know their Crusades and try to deduce the laws of the world from them.

Given that background, when a westerner and Britisher who has his ear to the ground tells you this, you better believe it:

Should Kashmir accede to India, trouble will come not from immediately within the state, but [from] the fanatical tribesmen of Hazara and the Black Mountain, and the Muslims in Jhelum and Rawalpindi. The vast majority of the Kashmiris have no strong bias for either India or Pakistan...but they realize that a hostile Pakistan could seriously disrupt Kashmir's economy. There is no well organized body in Kashmir advocating accession to Pakistan... on the other hand the muslim National Conference has been pro-Congress and anti-Pakistan. Although Sheikh too realizes the economic difficulties and certainty of war between India and Pakistan.

-- Kautilya3 (talk) 23:22, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

More information:

He argues that it was only after the dismissal of Kak, the subsequent tilt of Hari Singh - under the influence of the coterie around him - towards India and the unexpected success of the State Forces against the rebels in Poonch that the Moslem Conference declared for accession to Pakistan and its leaders fled Kashmir.

This would mean that the 19 July resolution of the MC was not the end of it. Even though they requested the Maharaja to accede to Pakistan (with autonomy), that was part of trying to pressure the Maharaja to go one way instead of the other before the 15 August deadline. I don't know which event Scott had in mind in saying "declared for accession to Pakistan", but this was after the dismissal of Kak. I think the Maharaja dismissed Kak merely because he was anti-Congress and he needed to build better relations with the Congress, but this did not mean that he wanted accede to India. Sardar Patel was also trying to convince him to acceded to India before 15 August. But he didn't. Then Patel backed off. Patel changed his mind only after Pakistan accepted the accession of Junagadh. (Remember, he was a Gujarati.)

The leaders fled Kashmir. We know that Sardar Ibrahim went to Murree at the end of August. But the others, supposedly the entire Working Committee of the MC, were in Pakistan by the beginning of October when a provisional government was declared. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:43, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes. I too read, vast majority of Kashmiris did not have a strong bias for either India or Pakistan, and MC is not a well organized body in Kashmir. The more I study about these things, the more I feel Kashmir should have been independent from day one, in that case Kashmiris would have lived in peace. And unless Pakistan did some mischief even then, there would have been overall peace also. One more point to be noted here is that, even after Sardar Patel decided to accept Hari Singh's accession after Junagadh's accession, Nehru did not want to send forces, unless he was sure people endorsed the accession. He agreed only after Sheikh Abdullah insisted him to do so (may be because Sheikh knew how NC activists and common people suffered in the hands of tribal invaders; all of this is there in Kashmir Conflict page as foot notes with citations). Nehru never stood for anything but peace and political liberty. But unfortunately today, it is in the Indian Administered Kashmir there is the major internal conflict!

And true, MC wanted power and it realized it cannot independently fight against Hari Singh and survive after Poonch rebellion. Also it cannot politically win against NC in the state. So it completely turned towards Pakistan (I think mainly due to the former reason). The role of coterie around Hari Singh is greatly ignored in the history of Kashmir conflict. It played a very big role in the origination of the issue.

Regarding the background, for that matter, I'm not sure how much majorly even the Pakistani Muslims favoured partition. Of course, a large majority of them did. But Congress did win a majority in NWFP and showed it had a considerable support in Indian provincial elections, 1946. And obviously, the violence-unaffected middle & lower middle class Indian Muslims did not want to move to Pakistan. Its easily understood economically, they would have unnecessarily lost everything they had by doing so.

In my opinion, only because all the big leaders of Congress like Gandhi and Nehru were jailed in Quit India Movement, and due to the riots that occured in 1945-46, the Muslim League gained so much mileage among Muslims. Or else, the history would have been otherwise. Partition was a really bad idea! Not just because the subcontinent was divided and lot of violence occurred during the process. If the people of that land wanted their own separate nation, even on religious lines, they could have it and they had it, no problem. But firstly, it did not occur any peacefully, at all, and for the long-run damage, it hugely brought back the Hindu-Muslim divide among people in many ways. Before that, the two communities were getting united in their common fight against the Britishers. And that's how leaders like Gandhi & Nehru envisioned to establish unity and thereby derive a secular nationality & nationalism. The partition had again taken the things to the darkness. That darkness still clearly prevails till this day! — Vamsee614 (talk) 12:32, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

I believe that, if a plebiscite had been held in August-September 1947 with three options, independence would have won hands down, despite how many Muslisms professed allegiance to Pakistan. Poonch could have gone to Pakistan. That is about it.

Sheikh Abdullah's stance has been misunderstood. Abdullah merely wanted to use India to curtail the Maharaja's power. As soon as Kashmir was secured, he insisted on full autonomy on all internal matters. That included imposing customs duties on Indian goods (as if Kashmir was a separate country), the ability to deny entry to Indian citizens (like Shyama Prasad Mookerjee), and total freedom to crush the Praja Parishad. If the Maharaja had allowed full democracy, he would never have uttered the word "accession".

So all the parties in Kashmir favoured independence. The only exception was the Muslim Conference, and they declared for Pakistan because that was the only way they could see of beating the National Conference. Did the people side with them and ask for Pakistan? There is no evidence of it.. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 13:26, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Did the Gilgitis favour accession to Pakistan? Again the evidence says no. As soon as Gilgit got liberated, thy declared an independent republic. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 13:29, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

I completely agree... — Vamsee614 (talk) 13:56, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

References

Scott, Lamb and Snedden

Until recently, Alastair Lamb was the only one who looked up the India Office Records, and he wrote several versions of a book under different titles. In one of them, he says:

The Chief of Staff of the Jammu & Kashmir State Forces, Major General Scott, advised his master the Maharaja to take serious note of what was going on. On 22 September, in what was to be his final report before retirement, Major-General Scott made it clear to the Maharaja that on their own the Jammu & Kashmir State Forces could not hope to contain the situation.

Neither Ankit nor Jha talk about "taking serious note". They are clear that Scott was seeing danger from external forces, not internal rebellions. Losing control was because of raids from "fanatical Muslims" along a long border and the State Forces being stretched too thin. Lamb has either misinterpreted what he read (he doesn't seem to cite the IOR documents he is using) or he is generating propaganda, which has found hundreds of takers all over Kashmir and Pakistan.

Now, Snedden says:

By 22 September 1947, the Azad Army's military structure was functioning so well that Major-General Scott reported that the Maharaja's armed forces were losing control over large parts of J&K.[78: Lamb, Disputed Legacy, p.129] The Maharaja's opponents were doing well, despite 'miserably lack[ing] a regular line of communication, a regular supply of arms and ammunition'.[79: Ibrahim Khan, The Kashmir Saga, p.74]

This is complete OR as far as I can see. Lamb has never claimed anything as drastic as this. And, Scott himself has said the exact opposite. He said that law and order was under control when he left.

I am telling you these things because I think you have added a lot of Lamb-Snedden propaganda to articles. This does not represent the scholarly consensus, and is most likely false. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 13:13, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Oh my God! I have been editing the related content only in the Poonch Rebellion article and nowhere else (In the Kashmir conflict article, I was only majorly editing the internal conflict in Indian Administered Kashmir part which is after the 15th August). I have been adding content from what I read and gathered, after I genuinely thought it was appropriate. And you have been reviewing all my edits and additions, so its unfair to accuse me now, of adding a lot of false propaganda. :-P

Anyway I'll check again if there's anything still dubious in the content of Poonch rebellion article. Also it would be helpful if you point out the specific content which carry such propaganda, cheers! :-) — Vamsee614 (talk) 13:50, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Poonch unrest again

It looks like the actions taken by the Maharaja's administration agasint the Poonch unrest are as follows:

• The following the 'no-tax' campaign, gatherings larger than 5 people were prohibited. Probably the garrisons were strengthened. The State Forces tried to break up any gatherings that formed.
• At Nila But, around August 25, a gathering did form, and speeches were given. There was probably an attempt to break them up and to shoot into the crowd for that purpose. But some in the crowd fired back. (We only have Muslim sources for this because Scott didn't talk about it.) We don't know what happened in the end.
• A police station was attacked next. (This makes it likely that it was the police that tried to break up the crowd, rather than the State Forces, which would explain why Scott doesn't cover it.) But Scott does tell us that 30 Sattis from Pakistan came over and incited the locals. Cunningham corroborates this. "I first heard on Sept. 30th that some of our villagers from Hazara had gone across into Poonch to help the Muslims and were attacking a Police Thana."
• A crowd of 10,000 gathered near Bagh and there was a major incident, when 20 protestors got killed. According to Jha, those that got killed had refused to surrender their arms. So, some of them were armed and there was an effort to negotiate with them to get them to surrender their arms. The incident was major enough that the State Government put out a press release on 12 September.
• According to R. L. Batra, "after the September 9 disturbances (Jha gets this date wrong for some reason), the state government decided to disarm all those people in the border area who it felt could not be trusted. This operation went off smoothly, but by September 24, the government found that many of those whom it had disarmed had managed to re-arm themselves with 'every kind'..." It looks like the Sikhs from Hazara who had settled in Poonch by this time helped the State Forces to do this, by identifying the people that had arms. In the eye witness testimonies the Sikhs are mentioned along with the State Forces. No doubt some "atrocities" happened in this process. But Scott says exaggerated reports of them got circulated in the Hazara district.
• In a report dated 4 September Scott says that 500 hostile tribesmen in green and khaki uniforms [Muslim League National Guard?] had entered Poonch from Pakistan. They had been joined by 200 to 300 Sattis from Kahuta and Murree. The purpose, according to his report, was not invasion but loot. Scott protested to the British O/C Pakistan's 7th infantry division against the complete absence of any efforts by the Pakistan army to prevent these incursions. Scott also requested that the Government of Pakistan be asked by urgent telegram to force the return of these raiders to the west bank of the Jhelum river. Cunningham corroborates, About five hundred villagers from Hazara or Punjab had invaded Kashmir and looted five hundred rifles. .
• After this, nothing seems to have happened till the beginning of October. By then, the Pashtuns had arrived and they were attacking the entire border. "By the middle of October, the raids from across the border had spread across the entire length of the border with Pakistan. In his autobiography, written in 1968, Karan Singh..remembers..My father occasionally handed some of these reports to me and asked me to explain them in Dogri to my mother".
• Cunningham says, "On Oct. 13th there was common talk in Hazara of 'Jehad' against Kashmir. I learnt that some of our trans border tribes Afridi Mohmand & Mahsud had been asked to come & help in it." "Pakistan was militarily weak, in both men and materials, but winked at 'very dangerous activities on the Kashmir border' that might provoke war." "There is little doubt that at the time when the north-western offensive began, Pathans were active further south in raids all along the Punjab border, from the Indus to the Ravi". The Maharaja and his PM complained of raiding, looting, and burning from Kathua to Kotli.[74: Mahajan to Patel, 23 Oct. 1947, Das, i.64-6].

The only evidence of a "Poonch uprising" in all this is the incident at Bagh, which is claimed to have been instigated by 30 Sattis from across the border. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 15:36, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

I have only one question: After the 'No Tax' campaign, Nila Bat event, Bagh incident and whatever, did the Dogra forces of Hari Singh (police or army) burn villages and commit atrocities to a considerable scale? Or was that all propaganda? — Vamsee614 (talk) 17:09, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

In Poonch? No, I don't think they did. They were trying to enforce order on a rebellious armed community full of ex-soldiers. That kind of thing can't be pleasant. But I don't think there was vengeance stuff of the kind that happened in Jammu later. Henry Scott wrote, "Situation in Hazara and Rawalpindi areas very unsatisfactory. There is little doubt that the recent disturbance in Bagh Tehsil were led by armed gangs from Pakistan. Exaggerated reports of events in Poonch circulated in these Pakistan districts in which State troops are cited as the aggressors. Possibility, even probability, of further intervention in much greater force must be provided against." This suggests something like 90% propaganda and 10% truth. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:45, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Then the 'Commentary' section the Poonch rebellion article has this propaganda POV. I admit, I only added it at the very early stages. — Vamsee614 (talk) 05:44, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

That POV content is based on Richard Symonds' accounts. Should we remove it? — Vamsee614 (talk) 05:47, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: What do you say about this? --- TylerDurden10 (talk) 16:43, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

No, Symonds cannot be removed. He has to be countered. You can leave it to me. Meanwhile, you can try researching what is Symonds' role in this? How did he know anything about Poonch? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 16:56, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Henry Scott wrote, "Situation in Hazara and Rawalpindi areas very unsatisfactory. There is little doubt that the recent disturbance in Bagh Tehsil were led by armed gangs from Pakistan. Exaggerated reports of events in Poonch circulated in these Pakistan districts in which State troops are cited as the aggressors. Possibility, even probability, of further intervention in much greater force must be provided against." — Please add the content summarizing this report in the 'Commentary' section of the article, with date (of the report) and citation. --- Tyler Durden (talk) 20:54, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Found an Online version of Kashmir Saga. It took a while to download but then worked ok. (I had to kill the side bars, and disable pop-ups.) Please see pages 57-58. Interesting. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:11, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

I read those pages. Yeah, its interesting. He's partly telling the truth and partly lying. And its hard to say now, which part is true and which is not. --- Tyler Durden (talk) 04:54, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

We don't need to tell that. The scholars do it for us. However, we can note what has been corroborated and what has been contradicted from other sources. I was interested in stuff like this:

In the meantime, while I was still at Rawalakot, one night some wandering people appeared in the villages of Rawalakot area from the Punjab. This alarmed the Dogra troops stationed there. The Commander of these troops, in desperation, attacked some of these villages in order to arrest those people. During this incident Dogra troops arrested and beat innocent Mussalmans, and molested women in a village very near to Rawalakot town. The next day I called a very big meeting of the whole area, and twenty thousand people collected to hear my speech, which I delivered in most 'seditious' terms. I emphasized upon the people that Pakistan--a Muslim State--was going to be established along the border of the State of Jammu and Kashmir and in any case the Mussalmans of Jammu and Kashmir cannot remain unaffected by this great event. They, therefore, should take courage and meet all insults from the Dogra troops with courage. From that day a strange atmosphere took the place of the usually peaceful life in these parts.

Punjabis came to incite. Then Sardar Ibrahim took over. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:18, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

By the way, this was in June or earlier. We haven't seen Henry Lawrence Scott's reaction to these incidents. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:29, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

That I noticed. But he does not mention that those "wandering people" came to incite Poonchis during then. (Of course, I know that he wouldn't obviously say so, even if they came for inciting. But I'm just pointing out that we have no evidence.) Yes, Scott doesn't say anything about these events. — Tyler Durden (talk) 09:57, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Obviously he wouldn't say so. Therefore, whether he says or not makes no difference. That is not the kind of corroboration we look for.

But he doesn't mention any 'no-tax' campaign occurring when he was in Poonch. He also doesn't give the date of his 'seditious' speech. We know that, on 22 June, the MC met in his "Srinagar home". By the end of June, he was given restrictive orders not to leave Srinagar. So, perhaps we should assume that the 'seditious' speech occurred in May, before the no-tax campaign. And, "wandering people" from Punjab were already there! -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:00, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

On the whole, he does seem to be admitting that he was the architect of the Poonch uprising, apparently in response to a "conspiracy" between the RSSS and the Dogra troops. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:06, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes. And that "conspiracy" is presumably the partition violence, the later occurred Jammu massacres.

I'm beginning to doubt if that No-Tax campaign really occurred. Snedden says it did. Since you have access to his book, can you look into that and check from what reference he wrote that a No Tax campaign started in June? — Tyler Durden (talk) 19:33, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Here is the passage (p.41-42):

Motivated by these various factors, disgruntled Poonchis engaged in actions against the Maharaja to protect themselves. Anti-Maharaja activity possibly commenced as early as February 1947,[28: Abdul Qayyum Khan, The Kashmir Case, p.2] and almost certainly was occurring in June 1947,[29: Ibrahim Khan, Kashmir Saga, p.45; Lamb; Birdwood] when Poonchis mounted a 'no tax' campaign.[30: Kashmir before Accession, p.12; Ibrahim Khan, p.45]

It is funny that he doesn't cite Richard Symonds; I was expecting he would. Symonds' information is also mostly from Qayyum Khan. So, there is no loss.

I don't doubt that there was a 'no tax' campaign in June. The Poonchis certainly resented the taxation. But it was hardly spontaneous. The leaders used the taxes as an issue on which they could rally people and then present it as evidence of support for Pakistan. The real issue that bothered the people at this time is likely to be militarization, not taxes, not Pakistan. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 00:54, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Should we not add content in the article from the Kashmir Saga, that Sardar Ibrahim had been the architect of Poonch rebellion from the very beginning, in response to a "conspiracy" between the RSSS and the Dogra troops? — Tyler Durden (talk) 05:27, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

We should, in the long run. But we need to investigate the overall context of these movements and suspicions. Note that March 1947 is when the Unionist government in Punjab was overthrown by the Muslim League National Guard. That same month, there was discussion in the Kashmir Legislative Assembly that RSSS was infiltrating into the state and it posed a danger to Muslims. The young, first time MLA, Sardar Ibrahim, decided that nothing would happen in the State government because it was in cahoots with the RSSS and so he needed to organise his own mini-revolt to "protect" his Muslims. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:41, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Are you suggesting, that narrative appears fake? Because I don't see anything so suspicious in that story! — Tyler Durden (talk) 14:48, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

It is bad enough when communal violence happens in retaliation for other communal violence. Now, you want to condone violence that happens in apprehension of an imagined violence that you believe will happen in future? You are out of your mind! -- Kautilya3 (talk) 19:01, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Wait a minute! I'm not sure why its being assumed here that I want to condone violence. Ibrahim is justifying his rebellion using that logic. He wrote that he staged the rebellion to protect his people from an upcoming larger communal violence. Anyway I'm only concerned with the extent of truth in his narrative, and looking if its partly made up. And that was what I clearly asked. — Tyler Durden (talk) 20:51, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Maybe you didn't mean it. But that is how it came across. Sardar Ibrahim is a primary source who has been amply covered in secondary sources. We can't reproduce his self-serving rationalisations unless the secondary sources do.

The point I was noting here is he was inciting the Poonchis before the no-tax campaign, in April-May, even before the Partition got decided and even before the Muslim Conference decided in favour of Pakistan. He had no mandate from the Muslim Conference to do this. The Muslim Conference was in shambles, with apparent in-fighting. He was trying to polarise it.

He is alleging that conspiracies occurred when the pro-Muslim League Ram Chandra Kak was the prime minister, Henry Lawrence Scott was the army chief, and Richard Powell was the police chief, and at a time when the newspapers tell us that "Jinnah caps were seen everywhere" in Kashmir. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 11:04, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

That is why I asked. I opened a discussion on whether something can be added to the article from Sardar Ibrahim's book or not. I did not say we have to add. I did not notice those elements, he might have initiated the polarising himself. So, based on what what you said, I think its better to write from his book that he started inciting people from April-May and leave his "self-serving rationalisations" aside.

One more confusing thing here is, his April-May timeline of starting to give speeches also seems doubtful. I'm not sure about it, because no secondary source covered that also. He might be producing all that narrative to justify his rebellion completely from the people's side. I mean, may be he didn't want to expose that he exploited people's economic grievances. See his narrative, he doesn't focus on people's economic concerns. He wants to establish that he was saving his people from an upcoming danger, and people always shared his interests and supported him. This doubt occurred to me, as Srinath Raghavan(who might have certainly read Sardar's book) says the "gathering head of steam" was used by Sardar Ibrahim, while accordiing to our theory, the steam itself was generated by Ibrahim. And Korbel says, Sardar started arousing passions from June, where Sardar himself, on the other hand, is narrating that he was doing it since April-May. I think, this is something we have to definitely consider. --- Tyler Durden (talk) 14:19, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: You said its better not to add this content in the article since it is not observed by secondary RS, no? — Tyler Durden (talk) 02:29, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

No, I said, We should, in the long run. But we need to investigate the overall context of these movements and suspicions. That is exactly what I am doing now. I have a secondary source, A. H. Suharwardy, who retired as the Chief Secretary of Azad Kashmir Government, and he seems quite knowledgedgeable about what happened. Once I strip out all the propaganda and vitriole, it is a minefield of information, information we didn't get from all the scholars. Suharwardy is a WP:SECONDARY source, even though he isn't a scholarly source. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 07:25, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Richard Symonds

The popularly known version is, he was a British Quaker and a social worker who was working nearby the region in Punjab when these incidents were happening, and he claims, he talked to considerable people in this regard, "Substantial men" in his own words.

I don't know if there's some other unknown and hidden version! --- TylerDurden10 (talk) 17:23, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

So he was working in West Punjab. In November he went to Azad Kashmir, officially to investigate the condition of non-Muslim refugees, but he was also "regaled with first-hand accounts of risings". By December, he was back in Lahore, and, along with Horace Alexander, met Liaquat Ali Khan, then went to Delhi. He caught Typhoid and he was nursed by Gandhi. Gandhi was killed at the end of January. And, he published his article in The Statesman in February.

He personally didn't witness anything, even though he did run into some burnt houses/mosques here and there. What did he know about Mirpur? Can you check? That page in his memoirs isn't showing for me on Google Books. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:02, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Symonds had described the conditions in Poonch, where the inhabitants had revolted against the Maharaja of Kashmir back in September or October, apparently before the Pathan raiders invaded. Nehru was furious, for the existence of a prior revolt would strengthen Pakistan’s argument that the raiders had responded to a cry for help from oppressed Kashmiri Muslims. ‘I don’t care a damn what happens to Poonch,’ he shouted. ‘They can go to Pakistan or Hell for all I care.’ Symonds and Alexander passed on suggestions made to them by Liaquat – that all non-Kashmiri troops should be removed from Kashmir, and replaced by a temporary United Nations government, pending a plebiscite. This made matters worse. ‘These people do not deserve to be listened to. They have behaved disgustingly and I will not have’...

I think I can understand Nehru's frustration with the Poonchis. They have made the Kashmir issue infinitely intractable. Without their rebellion, India and Pakistan would have meddled in Kashmir to their heart's content, but the State would have still remained independent. I don't know if Nehru saw that far, but he was irritated with their lawlessness, the readiness to take up arms, and the dragging in of Pakistan. Pakistan would have also left Kashmir alone if not for them. In that sense, Snedden is right. It is they that created the Kashmir problem.

But, coming to Symonds, perhaps he wrote the article to get back at Nehru? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:39, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Firstly, as you asked about Symonds' observation about Mirpur, this is all he noted, as far as I could find in his memoirs: The non-Muslim population suffered severely in the course of these events. That's all he said about it.

And this new analysis seems good to some extent. That would've certainly been a fair contributing factor. But there is a lot of confusion in all this. Did he really write the article just to get back at Nehru? I'm not sure. I have never been so convinced to doubt his version as much as you do. May be the things like Nehru's reaction & his pro-Muslim sympathy have made him intensify his accounts, but I honestly don't see a genuine reason to believe he lied things altogether, when he said, Substantial men told me that they would never have joined such a rash enterprise but for the folly of the Dogras who burnt whole villages where only a single family was involved in the revolt. And I agree, that single line has been the sole basis for giving an impression to the world that, it was the Hari Singh and his Dogra army who first started acting brutally towards all Muslims in the region in the process of suppressing a local revolt. So, it definitely has to be cross examined to a great deal. Also, I would like you to have a look at this research perspective, by the way. --- TylerDurden10 (talk) 00:16, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

• If Symonds 'lying' or 'self propaganda-generation' is ruled out — However, I very much agree, there's also a strong possibility that the Symonds' "Substantial men" had bought into and reproduced him the accounts of circulated "exaggerated reports of events" which Scott had mentioned about earlier. The Assistant British High Commissioner in northern Pakistan, H. S. Stephenson was also mentioning the same in early September! --- TylerDurden10 (talk) 00:51, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

He is part of the narrative. So I will add it to the narrative. I am still in the process of cleaning and cross-checking your addiitons :-) -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:27, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Okay, but don't forget to add Scott's report in the end. --- Tyler Durden (talk) 05:03, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

But coming back to Symonds, he goes to Azad Kashmir in the midst of the war to find out how the minorities are being treated, and comes back with a one-liner? 20,000 Hindus murdered in Mirpur and 30,000 murdered in Rajouri have gone unnoticed, or he simply wasn't interested? Meanwhile, he writes loads of stuff about "every hearth and every widow" based on hearsay? What kind of scholars do we have that cite him? For Nehru, Richard Symonds has always ben pro-Pakistan -- Kautilya3 (talk) 23:20, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Snedden cites him. And, to him, accounts like 'Kalkat' and at least 'Akbar Khan' are fiction, he doesn't consider them to possess any historical value. But even if I now say that Poonch rebellion was totally an indigenous affair and that itself started the Kashmir conflict alone, Snedden will cite me also and write a book today with a title "Untold story continued" or "Unwritten History returns" or whatever. — Tyler Durden (talk) 05:03, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

References

Turtuk

Perhaps you can help this "local villager" do something reasonable? The villagers "celebrated liberation with dance and music"? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:31, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Hehehe... You are not allowing a "native villager" to give his sincere and honest testimony! :-P --- TylerDurden10 (talk) 15:59, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Pseudo-secularism

This discussion [2] might interest you. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 13:12, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Partition violence

The partition violence in general was of two kinds, at least on the Indian side: (1) Stabbings and murders of Muslims to "instill fear", so that they flee (2) vengeance-killings, which were carried out on Muslims already on their way to Pakistan. It is the second kind that is said to have happened on a large scale in the Jammu district. (This is where most of the 70,000 deaths reported by the Englishmen come from.) Muslims were being escorted to Pakistan by State troops, when they were stopped on the way and killed by RSS and Akali mobs. The survivors say that the State troops allowed it to happen. But it is hard to imagine why the State troops would do that. The only possible explanation is that they were ordered by the superiors to escort the Muslims, but instead they might have been in cahoots with the mobs. That would mean that it was not the State's plan to do these killings, but the disaffected/compromised troops.

Note that Christopher Snedden is not believing the Englishmen. His low number for the number killed is 20,000. Perhaps between 20,000 and 100,000 Muslims were killed in Jammu Province in 1947... This accords with my assessment based on the census data. But I also find it quite hard to understand how the Englishmen could get it so badly wrong. Perhaps they believed the testimonies that gave exaggerated numbers and wrote them down. Perhaps the local Muslims believed that all the Muslims that disappeared were killed. But a large number of them made it to Pakistan. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:55, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

it is hard to imagine why the State troops would do that. — it was obviously because the State administration, in all its capacity, had encouraged the massacre of Muslims.

You know the Ved Bhasin's testimony about Mahajan. The Prime Minister was indirectly calling for people to eliminate Muslims. And according to refugees accounts, the Maharaja himself toured about the villages with truck-loads of arms and ammunition following him, and personally held consultations with the local officials, distributed and in some cases fired the first shot. Now what can you expect the State troops to do?

And your second assessment seems correct, the local villagers might have got mistaken as you said. --- TylerDurden10 (talk) 17:04, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

I don't hate Hari Singh so much for no reason. :-P --- TylerDurden10 (talk) 17:07, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

The State troops don't gain anything by killing Muslims that were already on their way to Pakistan. Surely, it was an act of vengeance? Either vengeance for the rebellion in Poonch or in retaliaiton for the Muslim officers and soldiers that became pro-Pakistan.

I would still give the benefit of the doubt to Mahajan. He started on 15 October stating that he wanted to make Kashmir a "Switzerland of the east". His inaugural speech was quite sensible and the press reacted to it quite favourably too. But Kashmir was already under attack and both of them were reacting to the attack. If you are going to read the Pakistani propaganda then you have to read Mahajan's propaganda too because the truth will be somewhere in the middle. And you cannot forget the kalima-reading soldiers killing boys either. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:47, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Gain? It was not about gaining anything. That was partition violence. There was religious fanaticism all over. The Hindu and Sikh refugees from West Punjab were arriving from March. The Dogra troops, who were also common Hindus & Sikhs, got sympathized with them and became communal. Along with the arrived refugees, the troops were attacking the Muslim houses, across the Sialkot border, during September (Chattha's thesis pg 186-189). The same way they helped RSS and other Hindu extremists during riots. Moreover the administration was also encouraging them very much to do the same (partly for diff reasons also, like revenge for Poonch rebellion & retaliaiton for the Muslim officers and soldiers that became pro-Pakistan). The Muslims on the other side of the border killed and drove away the Hindus and Sikhs. So it was freaking payback time, for troopers !

There might be some amount of truth in bits and pieces of Mahajan's propaganda. But almost undoubtedly, he encouraged communal violence. He wouldn't have exposed his mischief in his inaugural speech in front of press. I believe Ved Bhasin's testimony completely. He has no reason to lie about it at all. Absolutely none. The only slightest possibility is, Bhasin mis-remembered it. That's so much benefit of doubt I can give to Mahajan. — TylerDurden10 (talk) 19:31, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Partition violence does not mean communal violence. The Kashmiri Muslims weren't touched. The East Punjab refugees, probably a lot of them from the sister states Alwar and Bharatpur, were safely escorted by the Jammu troops themselves! Yes, in September, some troops were attacking the territory inside Pakistan, from where the refugees themselves were driven away. You can't characterise this as just attacking "Muslims" at large. Even inside the Jammu province, the Muslims in Udhampur and all those other districts were not touched. You are thinking too uni-dimensionally, I am afraid.

The violence was only in the districts along the border (Jammu, Kathua, Mirpur) and Reasi, which was adjoining Poonch. The troops probably believed, rightly or wrongly, that the Muslims in these districts were siding with Pakistan and supporting Pakistani raids. It was a political conflict, not communal conflict. Ved Bhasin doesn't really know much about the political conflict here. He was just a college student at that time. Neither does he seems to have learnt much about the conflict through the rest of his life. Jammu was a target for Sardar Ibrahim's rebels. This was a state at war. You don't seem to see the full picture.

And, guess what, Reasi was ineed a target. Rajouri fell before any other town did. And, it was taken by local Muslims, not by Pashtun tribes. 30,000 Hindus & Sikhs got killed there. Do you get the picture? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:41, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Here is some reality check for you:

As early as 13 September, armed Pathans had drifted into Lahore and Rawalpindi, and some Swatis had crossed into the Vale. About a week later, according to a deputy commissioner of Dera Ismail Khan, a scheme was launched to send tribesmen from Malakand to Sialkot, in lorries provided by the Pakistan Government.[71: Stephens, Pakistan, 1967, p.200] The report also referred to preparations in early October by Swat, Dir, and Chitral to attack Kashmir from the north-west. The Wali of Swat, a developed state, was an ambitious man. He had sought the governorship of the NWFP. It was now believed that he had been promised Kashmir if he could seize it. Cunningham knew that he 'had put up a lot of money for expenses of the Kashmir campaign'.[72: Cunningham's Diary, 26 Oct. 1947] He noted, too, that the Pir of Wana had personally recruited thousands of Mahsuds.[73: Cunningham's Diary, 26 and 30 Oct. 1947] There is little doubt that at the time when the north-western offensive began, Pathans were active further south in raids all along the Punjab border, from the Indus to the Ravi. The Maharaja and his PM complained of raiding, looting, and burning from Kathua to Kotli.[74: Mahajan to Patel, 23 Oct. 1947, Das, i.64-6]. Beside the clashes between rebels and the State forces, and the incursions of the raiders, Punjabi refugees in Kashmir heightened the communal temperature.

RJ Moore believes Mahajan, even if you don't. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 23:44, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I get the picture. I agree that the Poonch rebellion and tribal invasion led to the Jammu massacres. I see the war dimension. TBH I wanted to develop the article in this dimension, but unfortunately didn't find enough sources that discussed regarding the same, actually connecting the war and Jammu violence. Anyway there was also a significant communal dimension to the conflict(in Jammu massacres). It is the vengeance of the RSS and Akalis. This brings us back to the same question again. Why did the RSS and Akalis have to kill the Muslims who were already leaving to Pakistan in trucks? Certainly not as a revenge for Poonch rebellion, or 'pro-Pakistani suspicion' anger, or to merely instill fear during partition, or anything as such. No political motive here. Only communal vengeance. And as to why the Dogra troops helped these RSS and Akalis to do so, I assume that many among the average troopers were not only encouraged by the administration due to political reasons, but also communally influenced by the Hindu extremists.

RJ Moore is believing Mahajan's report regarding Pathan attacks during that time period. That I too believe, I never said I don't. But if anyone tells me, he's a genuine/neutral person, I would not believe it. Its not Ved Bhasin's POV or understanding of things, he was giving a testimony of an incident in which Mahajan was indirectly giving a call to kill common Muslims. Unless that's untrue(which can happen in the only case where Bhasin mis-remembered), Mahajan had a lot of blood on his hands, and it clearly cannot be justified in any dimension. — TylerDurden10 (talk) 00:25, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Mahajan wasn't giving a "call". He was giving political guidance. He was acting something like the lawyer of a maafia boss, to give a bad analogy that comes to mind.

The Maharaja decided that Kashmir was gone, but he should try and keep Jammu for himself. So, all the Muslims that remained loyal to him could stay and the pro-Pakistan Muslims should go away. That is ethnic cleansing, no doubt about that. But that is what Pakistan had been doing too, and a lot worse. So, he was asking the Hindus, through Mahajan, to demand parity. It is a brain-damaged idea, but that is what it was. But, then again, if Jinnah could demand parity for Muslims in the Government of India, why not the Jammu Hindus in the Government of J&K?

Mahajan wasn't acting like a true-blooded Prime Minister. He was an outsider and the Maharaja was a strong-willed man. So, he saw himself more as a political advisor and guide rather than as a real minister. That is how Hindu monarchies worked. To tell you the truth, if he had come in as the Prime Minister in May (when he was first asked), Kashmir might never have become a problem. He was smooth enough to work things out. But Kak wasn't a politician and Janak Singh was just a stop-gap. So, Kashmir just drifted. It lacked a real political minister when it really needed one. (In comparison, the Khan of Kalat hired Jinnah as his lawyer and got his independence, for whatever it was worth.)

Coming back to the massacres of departing Muslims, yes, it was the private initiative of the troopers. But note that their orders were to escort the Muslims to Pakistan. So we can't put it all on the head of the Maharaja. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 01:36, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Another thing worth noting from RJ Moore's timeline. Action was happening already on 13 September. Until recently, we were led to believe that Liaquat Ali Khan ordered an invasion on 12 September, and that he was reacting to appeals from the Muslim Conference. I am now beginning to think this meeting was a decoy. Akbar Khan got fooled and so did we. The invasion got ordered much earlier. The 12 September meeting was just for organising the Poonch rebellion. More on that later. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 01:46, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you're being so soft cornered on Mahajan. A political advisor asking to "demand parity for the Jammu Hindus in the Government of J&K" — through what means? Pointing to the Ramnagar rakh below, where some bodies of Muslims were still lying he said “the population ratio too can change”. Irrespective of Pakistan's behaviour, this very learned man knew exactly what he was doing and that it's encouraging ethinic cleansing, also through mass murder. Regarding Hari Singh, he also had been encouraging the same, mainly for political reasons (one can argue, also he came under the influence of RSS and other communalists). I agree that that the massacre of departing Muslims can't be put completely on his head. But for the previous violence, he was highly responsible.

Yes, I too noticed, the action happening already on 12 September in Moore's timeline. And got confused a lot. So I kept quiet, expecting you'd elaborate more on it anyway, once further clarity is reached. :-P --- TylerDurden10 (talk) 05:49, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

References

Jammu massacres: Sardar Ibrahim's POV

All these happenings were taking place in full view of the Indian Army which had by then entered the State. The responsibility of killings squarely lay on the Shoulders Of Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru, then Prime Minister Of India, who was duly informed about all this beforehand. It must be said, to the credit Of Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru, that he candidly admitted his responsibility. Sheikh Abdullah himself had taken over the administration of the State. Therefore, he also cannot be morally absolved of the responsibility of these heinous crimes committed on innocent women and children.

— p 54, Kashmir Saga.

@Kautilya3: Do these arguments hold water? --- Tyler Durden (talk) 04:41, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

No, they are wrong, because the Indian Army was in the Valley, not in Jammu. When Nehru came to know about it (probably through the 'Englishmen'), he clamped down. And, the Maharaja got severely reprimanded and eventually exiled.

And, here is something else that Ibrahim doesn't pay attention to it, and nobody else does either. The Jammu Muslims did not go as refugees to the Kashmir Valley, which was their own "country" and it was quite safe and peaceful. Rather they went to Pakistani Punjab. Why did they do that? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 07:14, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

General guesses are: 1) During the partition violence, typically all Muslims were migrating to Pakistan. So Jammu Muslims followed that. 2) When massacres started in the 1947 Jammu district(today's Jammu and Samba districts), it was easy for the victims to escape to the neighbouring West Punjab which is quite nearer and convenient to travel, compared to the valley. 3) They want to stay away from the presence of Dogra troops. 4) Tribal invaders and Azad forces were attacking the valley beginning from around 22 Oct, so many atrocities and loots were happening there and its like another war zone. Hence Pakistan is far safe.

Please correct me if I'm wrong anywhere, and add if I missed something. --- Tyler Durden (talk) 09:29, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Also 5) Today's Azad Kashmiris(Poonchis, Mirpuris and others) were fighting against the Dogra troops and defeated them by the end of October, so there will be more security if moved towards their side, unlike to the Kashmir valley. 6) J&K State administration was also encouraging them to go to Pakistan, for obvious reasons. Pakistan and MC were also offering help for the same, providing defence support by giving arms, sending trucks and all. --- Tyler Durden (talk) 09:49, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: Do you have other explanation(s)? --- Tyler Durden (talk) 19:21, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

My answers are:

(a) Sialkot is next door to Jammu, only 34km away. So it is the closest place to go to.

(b) By the end of September, the entire Muslim Conference leadership was in Pakistan, and they were spewing out propaganda through Radio Pakistan. So Pakistan would have been the natural place to go to if you were a Muslim Conference supporter.

(c) They expected Jammu and Kashmir to become part of Pakistan, either through accession or invasion. So they thought it was a temporary excursion. In fact, most of the notable Muslims in Jammu voluntarily sent their families to Pakistan before any massacres. Everybody would have known that.

(d) The most worrisome: Jammu and Kashmir wasn't a "country". It was a state in wider India (which had now split into India and Pakistan). So, they didn't really think they were going to a "foreign country" by going to Pakistan. Neither did they feel any particular affinity to Kashmiris, who spoke neither Urdu nor Punjabi.

(e) It is also possible that the State forces blocked them from going to Kashmir.

Some people did go to Kashmir, I find, looking at snippets of Amanullah Khan's book But they would have been a minority. The pity is that they could have returned to homes later, had they gone to Kashmir. But now they are forever stuck.

I think your answers are pretty close to mine, and some of them are correct too. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 19:55, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Tariq Hameed Karra

He is Ghulam Mohiuddin Karra's grandson, apparently. The senior Karra broke with Abdullah in 1953. Balraj Puri had nice words for him. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 17:38, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

See this article, also the comments section.[1] --- Tyler Durden (talk) 19:27, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Dismissals

You want to complain about the dismissal of Sheikh Abdullah in 1953? It took Jinnah a week to dismiss Dr. Khan Sahib!

Khan Abdul Qayyum Khan formed a minority government. Of course, Khan Sahib was imprisoned and Qayyum Khan bought enough legislators to sustain himself. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 19:29, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

And, Iftikhar Mamdot dismissed in two years. No Congress here! -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:26, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

LOL! And I thought, at least Jinnah wanted to make Pakistan, a fair democracy. But anyway, India is not Pakistan. It chose not to be. --- Tyler Durden (talk) 06:00, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

References

Babri Masjid

New recommendations for your watchlist:

• Ayodhya dispute
• Babri Masjid
• Demolition of Babri Masjid

-- Kautilya3 (talk) 19:04, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

No-tax campaign

Previously:

I'm beginning to doubt if that No-Tax campaign really occurred. Snedden says it did. Since you have access to his book, can you look into that and check from what reference he wrote that a No Tax campaign started in June? — Tyler Durden (talk) 19:33, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Here is the passage (p.41-42):

Motivated by these various factors, disgruntled Poonchis engaged in actions against the Maharaja to protect themselves. Anti-Maharaja activity possibly commenced as early as February 1947,[28: Abdul Qayyum Khan, The Kashmir Case, p.2] and almost certainly was occurring in June 1947,[29: Ibrahim Khan, Kashmir Saga, p.45; Lamb; Birdwood] when Poonchis mounted a 'no tax' campaign.[30: Kashmir before Accession, p.12; Ibrahim Khan, p.45]

It is funny that he doesn't cite Richard Symonds; I was expecting he would. Symonds' information is also mostly from Qayyum Khan. So, there is no loss.

I don't doubt that there was a 'no tax' campaign in June. The Poonchis certainly resented the taxation. But it was hardly spontaneous. The leaders used the taxes as an issue on which they could rally people and then present it as evidence of support for Pakistan. The real issue that bothered the people at this time is likely to be militarization, not taxes, not Pakistan. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 00:54, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Continuing:

The so-called 'no-tax campaign' seems to be a non-event. The first mention of this campaign was in the State Government's press release around 12 September:

Early in August in Bagh Tehsil and northern part of Sudh Nutti Tehsil of Poonch Jagir, evilly disposed persons launched a violent agitation against the administration of the jagir and in favour of civil disobedience and No Tax Campaign.

Then Richard Symonds blew it out of all proportion and then all the scholars followed suit.

According to Suharwardy,

Col. Baldev Singh Pathania, Revenue Minister and a relative of the Maharaja, was entrusted with the task of exterminating the Muslims, although officially he was to work behind the smoke-screen of recovering arrears of state taxes, which the people had, since some time, refused to pay.

This occurred some time in June-July after the State Government slapped Section 144 and ordered the Poonchis to surrender arms. Evidently, it was a stick the State was using to beat the Poonchis with. But they were already not paying "since some time". How they decided not to pay or when they did so is not described by anybody. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:08, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Note also that the State Government mentioned Bagh and Sudhnoti specifically, and omitted Haveli and Mendhar tehsils. Do we suppose that the Haveli and Mendhar people were paying the taxes and only Bagh and Sudhnoti people refused? Or, was it just a cover the Government was using to mask the real causes of the rebellion? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:43, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

The Kashmir case book says:

It was on his prompting that the people refused to pay the excessive taxes to the government and this way it brought the people and Hindu Government mentally at war with each other. This was recorded by the Dogra rulers in official records as an act of sedition by Sardar Mohammad Abdul Qayyum Khan.

He did this supposedly in February 1947, as Snedden records. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 11:08, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

See pages 92, 93 of Kashmir Saga. Ian Stephens writes in his book 'Pakistan' that Sudh Nutti Tehsil is where it all started. (Ibrahim writes a whole chapter on this: "Sudhan Revolt", p 77.) And 40,000 people from there served in WW2 in British Indian Army. As you said, citing Symonds, Ian Stephens says the anti-tax revolt which started there only, later became the 'Azad Kashmir' movement.

And this is what Sardar Ibrahim (p 52), in his own words, has to say about No Tax campaign:

Earlier in June, 1947, the people Of Poonch started a 'no-tax' campaign. This arose from the fact that as soon as the Maharaja secured direct control over Poonch, as a result of his successful suit against the Jagirdars of Poonch, the Maharaja imposed on this district all the numerous taxes enforced in the rest of the State. The people Of Poonch resented this heavy imposition of taxes and Started an agitation which the Maharaja tried to put down by force.

A Press note issued by the Maharaja's Government on September 12, 1947, said- "On August 24,1947, a large and highly excited mob collected in the west of Bagh Tehsil, and on the 25th, disregarding all efforts to persuade them to disperse, carried on to Bagh town when they reached the number of some five thousand, which swelled considerably during the next two days. These mobs were armed with weapons of various patterns, such as axes and spears and a variety of others."

On August 26,1947, these mobs clashed with the State Forces. Dogra armies started bren-gun firing on this huge crowd of 5000 and more with the result that hundreds of were either killed and/or wounded. The reports of these brutalities reached Pakistan and were extensively published in the Pakistan Press.

If its just a cover by the State Government to mask the real causes of the rebellion, why would Ibrahim focus so much on it? So I'm not sure if 'No-Tax campaign' is a non-event! — Tyler Durden (talk) 13:57, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes, but surprisingly, there is nothing about it in Suharwardy's book, which is otherwise quite comprehensive, giving all the minute details of the rebellion!

As I said before, the problem that occurred was militarisation, not taxes. The state government presented it as a rebellion against taxes, becase obviously they couldn't admit that the militarisation was the problem. Everybody since then copied their propaganda.

Remember what the people said, that the military burned entire villages on suspicion of one family carrying arms or sympathising with Pakistanis? That is what angered the people. The state government misleadingly connected it with the taxes because the man that led the march to Bagh was the same man that instigated 'no tax', Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan (the "evilly disposed person").

Perhaps, Qayyum was worked up about taxes, being a hot-headed zamindar that he was. But the people were worried about militarisation and high prices. This is how we get double talk. Richard Symonds also ate up everything that Qayyum told him. And all the scholars took his column as gospel. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 16:19, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

The State government had much bigger problems to worry about than tax arrears from two puny tehsils. The taxes were there since 1939, and the people had been paying. Nothing suddenly cropped up in June 1947.

Bagh and Sudhnoti were a problem because they were border districts full of ex-soldiers with Pakistani sympathies. Taxes were a stick to beat them with, just like today's governments also do tax raids when they want to put you in line. That is a standard tactic.

The sequence of events that Suharwardy describes is pretty clear. By the end of June, the troops ran out of rations. They asked the locals to provide them with supplies. Eventually the locals got tired of this. Then the government said, pay the tax arrears. It was pretty stupid. The right thing to do would have been to be generous to people so that they side with you. But governments are rarely known to be that enlightened. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 16:31, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Why isn't even Sardar Ibrahim, who led the revolt, clear about what people were significantly angered about? He doesn't point out particularly the militarisation, enough. In his accounts, he says more about the "Dogra-RSSS conspiracy theory", the state atrocities and the taxes.

And I remember from memory that Muhammad Abdul Qayyum Khan became the President of Azad Kashmir in 1951 after Sardar Ibrahim was dismissed. But his page says he started serving as President in 1956. So I changed. As u changed it again, are u sure that he became in 1951? --- Tyler Durden (talk) 16:55, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Ibrahim talks about it too quite a bit, but in his own style: Dogra brutalities, RSSS conspiracy etc. He wants to tell you "what was really going on is ...", whereas we want plain facts. What he says about the 'no tax' is a tiny paragraph, mostly second-hand info. He never met anybody refusing pay taxes, or discussed it with anybody.

As for 1956, I probably overwrote it without noticing. You can change it back. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 17:21, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Like you described in the article now, as much of the stuff was happening since well before August, i.e. from June-July, is it possible that the Poonch stuff influenced the formulation of 20 August 'Operation Gulmarg' plan (assuming it is true)? — Tyler Durden (talk) 19:18, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

^@Kautilya3: Any comments here? — Tyler Durden (talk) 10:10, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

No, I don't think so. Akbar Khan's motivations are well-explained in his book, which I will dig up some time. They all had to do with security, viability of Pakistan, the connection with NWFP and the geostrategic importance of Kashmir to Pakistan. These were considerations that the British officers agreed with. They had nothing to do with politics. Politics were understood by Mian Iftikharuddin and he probably orchestrated them after Sardar Ibrahim got to him in Lahore towards the end of August. Until then, the politicians were following Jinnah, who had decided that Kashmir should be left alone. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 11:09, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

A quick summary of Jha

You have asked me about Jha. Here is a quick summary.

• It was not india that was trying to acquire Kashmir, but rather it was Maharaja that was trying to accede to India. He was doing so since mid-September, at the latest, and possibly earlier.
• He was trying to accede to India because he decided that (a) he did not want to accede to Pakistan, and (b) it was not possible to stay independent. I.e., accession to India was the last of his options.

So the real questions to ask are (a) why he didn't want to accede to Pakistan and (b) why it wasn't possible for him to stay independent. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:40, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

• a) Poonch happened; he was a Dogra; he was influenced by the RSS and the 'coterie' around him; non Muslim population of the state would suffer greatly in Pakistan; answer b).
• b) he was attacked by Pakistanis. — Tyler Durden (talk) 19:01, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

• The answer to (b) is correct.
• But your answer to (a) is not correct, according to Jha. In fact, he treats Poonch as entirely part of the Pakistani attack. Rather, his answer to (a) is the partition context that I added to the article, viz., the pograms against Hindus-Sikhs, which convinced the Maharaja what fate lay ahead for him and his community were he to accede to Pakistan.
• He does admit the influence of the coterie, but only up to a point. We don't have enough information about what the coterie did and we never will. But inferring from the Maharaja's actions, e.g., the fact that he didn't accede to India before 15 August, despite some pressure from Patel, we can see that he wasn't simply playing to the tune of the coterie. He certainly recognized the problems that would be caused by acceding to India. In fact, we don't have to guess. Plenty of warnings were issued to him. Hence, India was the last option. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 19:24, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Jha thinks that the Hazara district was worse than Punjab in early 1947.

But perhaps the worse atrocities took place in the Hazara district, a Muslim League stronghold where the party had won eight out of nine seats in the 1946 election. From November 1946 to January 1947 refugees poured into Kashmir from Hazara till 2,500 were being looked after by the state at Muzaffarabad. (emphasis added)

Even if it wasn't worse than Punjab, it had far greater impact on Maharaja's thinking, because he was in Srinagar in the summer, and the Maharani personally took charge of looking after the refugees in Muzaffarabad. So, she would have heard their horror stories and relayed them to the Maharaja.

All said and done, it wasn't a communal Maharaja that turned away from Pakistan. Rather it was a secular Maharaja (don't laugh) who turned away from a communal Pakistan. And, this happened before June, when the Maharaja had to face Moutbatten's pressure. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:08, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

I agree. But as you might have known, to imagine a secular aspect in Hari Singh is too difficult for me. Leave even Jammu massacres, he clearly had been partial towards the Dogra Rajputs since the beginning of his reign. He wanted to save the Hindus & Sikhs of his state, by staying away from Pakistan. That's all I can see from it. — Tyler Durden (talk) 20:37, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Jha also thinks that Liaquat's planning was in response to the Maharaja's decision to accede to India. Apparently, on 26 September, Pakistan Times ran a story from Srinagar that the Maharaja made up his mind to accede to India two weeks earlier, i.e., around 10 September. Jha believes the source for the story was K. H. Khurshid and, so, Pakistan knew by then that it was time to act. Liaquat's meeting happened soon after that. (This doesn't quite work for me. If Khurshid knew, then Jinnah should have known too. But Jinnah did nothing.) But in any case, by 26 September, it was public knowledge. Pakistan Army called up Scott soon afterwards and asked him if he wanted British families evacuated. And Nehru had enough intelligence by 27 September to predict a Pakistani incursion. But the Pakistan Army stuck to its timetable of attacking on 22 October. How did they know that the Maharaja wouldn't accede before then? Did they do something to slow him down? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:13, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps, no. May be Hari Singh did not want to accede to India either, until he was 100% sure that he cannot remain independent. I mean, he might have taken a final chance, deciding to accede to India only if the invasion starts taking place with full force. I'm guessing this. Hari Singh's letter to Mountbatten on Oct 26, written with the correspondence of Indian Government, throws some light in this regard (if the source is authentic). --- Tyler Durden (talk) 10:06, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

We have to distinguish between public statements and private calculations. We do know that he wanted to accede to India only if independence was not viable. Jha believes that that point was reached in mid-September, when he sent Mahajan to Delhi. Mahajan was asked to tell Nehru and Patel that the Maharaja wanted to accede to India but wanted to delay political reforms. Raghavan agrees with this. Most scholars ignored Mahajan's testimony, but there is corroborating evidence from Henry Scott and Richard Powell, not to mention the anonymous source of the Pakistan Times. (The public statements on the other hand would continue to maintain neutrality until the road map for accession became clear. But that road map never became clear.)

However, the Maharaja did not believe that Pakistan would launch an invasion, even though he had solid intelligence about it. (Mahajan covers this, but vaguely.) He expected raids, propaganda, incitement etc., but not an invasion. Despite the apparently self-confident press release on 12 September, he probably thought that 10,000 people trying to attack Bagh meant serious trouble. He knew that there were 40,000 ex-soldiers there, who could be quickly armed.

If he believed the possibility of an invasion (and he was acting rationally), he should have brought Sheikh Abdullah into government around 4 October, when the first provisional government of Azad Kashmir was announced. But he didn't. He continued to move slowly. One possibility is just lethargy and trying to hold on to power. But I see that the serious alarm that an impending invasion should have caused, did not exist. Nehru knew that an invasion would occur, but he expected it in winter, and he also underestimated its scale. So, despite everybody having enough information, they chose not get alarmed.

But the Pakistan Army could not have known this. They should have expected that the Maharaja would try to accede to India well before the launch date of 22 October and moved their own schedule forward. The possibilities are speeding up the arming the Poonchis, speeding up the Pashtuns etc. The Pashtun mobiliation was rather too slow for some reason or the other. Only 4,000 Pashtuns came with Khurshid Anwar on 22 October, even though something like 12,000 made their way in slowly. So there are still unanswered questions. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 11:51, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

A vague guess I can take on this is, the Pakistan Army could not speed up things. May be they were unable to reschedule their plans to an earlier date and gather more Pashtuns than 4,000 by 22 October. Apparently, that's the only possible explanation I can arrive at. --- Tyler Durden (talk) 20:58, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Secular Maharaja?

Being partial to one's own community has hardly anything to do with secularism. But, still, I would like to see what evidence you have his partiality. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:00, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Holy God! Why this argument? He was an autocratic and repressive Dogra ruler who later even killed Muslims, allegedly with his own hands in some occasions, and now I have to prove his partiality to say that he is not secular! Fine, I'll do. I have the sources which you yourself provided me earlier.

Under the Jammu and Kashmir Arms Act of 1940, the possession of all fire arms was prohibited in the state. The Dogra Rajputs were however exempted from this restriction.

...the invidious position of Muslims in Kashmir society. Though they comprised 53 per cent of the population in the southern, or Jammu province, and upwards of 93 per cent in the more populous northern, or Kashmir province, the Muslims were a community without wealth or influence. At the policy-making level, power was shared between the dynastic ruler Maharaja Hari Singh and a four-man executive council, which in 1931 consisted of the Maharaja's brother, two British officers loaned by the Government of India, and a Sikh. In the bureaucracy, Hindus and Sikhs held 78 per cent of gazetted appointments compared to the Muslims' 22 per cent."' At the local government level the disparity was less marked overall but non-Muslims still dominated, especially in Jammu: for instance, the Tehsildars of Kotli and Rajouri, the Naib Tehsildars of Bhimber, Naoshera, Kotli and Rajouri, the Superin tendent and Deputy-Superintendent of Police at Kotli and "nearly all the Magistrates" were either Sikhs or Hindus, while in Mirpur Tehsil it was estimated that 94 per cent of patwaris (village record keepers) were Kashmiri Brahmins. Dismissed by the Darbar as a mere clamour for jobs, the Muslim agitation against the lopsidedness of the bureaucracy was grounded in the belief that the Hindu and Sikh officials were biassed in favour of their co-religionists. As one British observer commented, "The Muslims believe that all the small advantages which minor officials can grant or withhold at will are within the reach of the Hindu com munity, but unattainable to themselves." Were they right? First impressions are that Kashmir, like most princely states, paid little attention to the welfare of any of its subjects. There was a high land tax, further increased in 1930 by up to 14.4 per cent in several southern tehsils; less money was spent on education, sanitation and other public services than on the maintenance of the court; newspapers were heavily censored; and political parties banned. As one probes deeper, however, it becomes clear that Muslims were the prime sufferers. Press censorship was focussed on Urdu papers printed in Lahore which were read mostly by Muslims; under a new dispensation of 1927, the legal definition of State subjecthood was altered in a way that excluded all Kashmiri Muslims domiciled outside the State from entering the Public Service or holding immovable property in Kashmir; and the Muslims' share of State scholarships and places in government schools was the smallest of the three communities. In addition, Muslims suffered a variety of religious disabilities. Under Kashmiri law, cow-killing was totally forbidden on pain of up to ten years' imprisonment, and goat-killing was banned on all but a few specified days of the year. Apostasy was permitted, but persons who changed their religion forfeited all ancestral property-a ruling which penalised Muslims rather than Hindus, because Hinduism is not by and large a proselytising religion. There were complaints, later verified by a commission of enquiry, that mosques and other religious buildings in some small towns had been commandeered by the Darbar for public use. In Jammu, especially, the azan-or call to prayer-was sometimes prohibited. And there was at least one case, in the spring of 1931, where the police prevented the reading of the Khutba. When a former Foreign Minister of Kashmir, Sir Albion Banerjea, declared that Kashmiri Muslims were treated like "dumb driven cattle", he was not exaggerating. Having said this, one must admit that the overall position of the Muslim community was no worse in 1931 than it had been at the beginning of Hari Singh's reign.

— Islam and Political Mobilization in Kashmir, 1931-34; by Ian Copland. pp 233-235.

Don't tell me Hari Singh allowed all this from the beginning of his reign, out of his ignorance. --- Tyler Durden (talk) 21:33, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Analyses which focus on a unidimensional difference don't prove a whole lot. One has to also look at caste/class/social background distinctions as well as educational qualifications. Until Fazl-i-Husain became the education minister in Punjab and did social engineering in 1920s, the job distribution in Punjab too was equally bad, even though it was Muslim majority and British-ruled. Sikhs owned the majority of land near Lahore, and Sikhs+Hindus owned the majority of the businesses and factories throughout Punjab and NWFP. And, when these Sikhs+Hindus were kicked out during the Partition, the Pakistani economy essentially collapsed.

Even in secular India today, let alone in British India, there are wide disparities in job participation and income levels between Hindus and Muslims, and between different castes within Hindus. The very fact that disparities exist doesn't prove one's secularity or otherwise. Copland himself says that the position of Muslims was no better when Hari Singh started. So you can't put it all on his head.

Secondly, in a monarchy, loyalty counts for a lot. Without loyalty, the monarchy falls apart within a day. So, before passing judgement on Kashmir, you have to also look at all the other princely states and see what were the norms. Let us look at one of them:

But quite the reverse applied in the nawabi raj of Bhopal. Although they comprised only a small fraction of the Bhopal population, Muslims filled over 90 per cent of all gazetted public service positions, all the top jobs in the police force, and all but one cabinet post. In 1931 just 97.8 per cent of the state budgetary allocation of 2.7 lakhs for religious charities went to Islamic institutions, mainly to pay the salaries of some 300 imams and muezzins attached to the state-owned mosques. As well, Bhopali Muslims benefited from laws that banned ‘processions, religious or otherwise’ from using roads near mosques and allowed converts to Islam to inherit ancestral property, and from the ascendancy of Urdu, which was the sole medium of instruction in schools.[89] It says a great deal of the sagacity and flair for public relations of the Bhopal government under Nawab Hamidullah that, notwithstanding these palpable inequalities, the state was generally regarded in British India, especially in imperial circles, as a well-managed one in which there was no preferential treatment ‘of one community at the expense of the other’.[90]

And, your friend, Nizam of Hyderabad, who always appointed Muslim Dewans from outside the state, hesitated to appoint the Dewan from Mysore for, having served in Mysore, he was deemed to have gotten 'Hinduised'. And, he banned Hyderabad State Congress even before it got started and there were no elections and no representation of Hindus in his government. (He appointed some Hindus, zamindars or businessmen, to second level positions, and claimed that he was "secular"). The majority of the schools were Persian or Urdu, and the Andhra Academy that wanted to promote Telugu education was shut down and forced to move to Madras Presidency.

As far as I can see, compared to a lot of these states, Kashmir was a lot better. It had a Legislative Assembly, regular elections since 1934, with Muslim representation, even Muslim ministers (Mirza Afzal Beg was a minister before Sheikh Abdullah pulled him out and declared "Quit Kashmir"). I see that the position of Muslims got better during his rule. Even his army, which you are fond of calling a "Dogra army" parroting the Pakistani propagandists, was one-third Muslim. And almost all these Muslims rebelled when the time came.

Yes, he supported the RSS. But the RSS was thought of by vast numbers of Hindus at that time as a necessary militia for defending Hindus. Given a state that was 80% Muslim, where vast numbers of Muslims were armed, militant, rebellious and even treacherous, he could have thought of it as a necessary civil defence unit. And, even the violence that occurred, due to rebellion and attack, not partition, was far less compared to the neighbouring states, even British-ruled ones. The Poonch district that remained is still 90% Muslim. Show me what Hindus exist on the other side. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 23:36, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Since you're taking about violence, Hari Singh is no match to anyone in that regard. He has huge blood on his hands than any other ruler. The Poonch district that remained is still 90% Muslim. — Because he couldn't kill or drive away Muslims in Poonch given the situation during the rebellion, and later he even lost control over the region, by the time Jammu massacres had escalated. It was impossible for him to eliminate considerable number of Muslims in Poonch. I repeat what I had once said earlier: During Jammu massacres, according to refugees accounts, the Maharaja himself toured about the villages with truck-loads of arms and ammunition following him, and personally held consultations with the local officials, distributed weapons, and in some cases fired the first shot. (S. R. Bakshi, Kashmir Through Ages (5 Vol). Sarup & Sons. pp. 270, 271: read those two pages, its an Indian book, before you call it all Pakistani propoganda.) Even "my friend", Nizam of Hyderabad, got nowhere near these feats. Yes, he was quite partial and has been communal, he allowed Razakars to function in a brutal way. But he supported them and used them to suppress the revolts that came during his final years, not to exclusively kill people for communal reasons. For that, he is demonised in India's history 10 times more than Hari Singh. Out of propaganda, many think Nizam was a Hitler. While people hardly know about your secular hero, Hari Singh's achievements, despite the significant focus on Kashmir conflict and its history. To remind you, I'm not claiming that Nizam was secular, its only about attaching relative DUE weight of the communal element, to both of their images. Nizam too had "loyalty issues", though he was not directly involved in the killings or burning villages, or ordered any of them for revenge or to instill fear. Now since we're assuming that 1947's revenge-violence of our great 'Maharaja' was just the secular Hari Singh suddenly gone mad after partition before losing power, I'm once again pointing out the pre-1947 condition in Kashmir. You haven't said anything about the content from Ian Copland, which I put in bold. I'm posting it here again:

As one probes deeper, however, it becomes clear that Muslims were the prime sufferers. Press censorship was focussed on Urdu papers printed in Lahore which were read mostly by Muslims; under a new dispensation of 1927, the legal definition of State subjecthood was altered in a way that excluded all Kashmiri Muslims domiciled outside the State from entering the Public Service or holding immovable property in Kashmir; and the Muslims' share of State scholarships and places in government schools was the smallest of the three communities. In addition, Muslims suffered a variety of religious disabilities. Under Kashmiri law, cow-killing was totally forbidden on pain of up to ten years' imprisonment, and goat-killing was banned on all but a few specified days of the year. Apostasy was permitted, but persons who changed their religion forfeited all ancestral property-a ruling which penalised Muslims rather than Hindus, because Hinduism is not by and large a proselytising religion. There were complaints, later verified by a commission of enquiry, that mosques and other religious buildings in some small towns had been commandeered by the Darbar for public use. In Jammu, especially, the azan-or call to prayer-was sometimes prohibited. And there was at least one case, in the spring of 1931, where the police prevented the reading of the Khutba. When a former Foreign Minister of Kashmir, Sir Albion Banerjea, declared that Kashmiri Muslims were treated like "dumb driven cattle", he was not exaggerating. Having said this, one must admit that the overall position of the Muslim community was no worse in 1931 than it had been at the beginning of Hari Singh's reign.

Leave job distribution & economic inequalities, if you can argue that these things are still "relatively secular" factors, I would like to say, you really deserve a 'Saviour of Hari Singh's legacy' award! :-P — Tyler Durden (talk) 06:41, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes, as I have said before, you can't generalise the 1947 happenings to make the case that his entire rule was governed by prejudice, because in 1947, it was a state at war and the Maharaja believed that the Muslims had turned against him. And, mind you, we don't have any sources that tell us anything about the attitudes of the Jammu Muslims at that time, except an occasional mention here and there. So, we can't make judgements without know both the sides of the picture.

As for the policies before 1947, your question is answered by Copland himself when he wrote, Having said this, one must admit that the overall position of the Muslim community was no worse in 1931 than it had been at the beginning of Hari Singh's reign, i.e., the situation was not created by Hari Singh. You are conveniently ignoring that. All these policies were probably pre-existing, they weren't created by Hari Singh. If you want to fault him for not making things better, then you need to look at all the ways in which he did make it better. Copland hasn't told you that; he wasn't investigating Hari Singh. He was describing the general situation in Kashmir in 1931. So you are using analysis done for one purpose for a different purpose. The analysis you need for your conclusions is not there. This is unfortunately a standard fallcy in these kinds of arguments.

In contrast, the evidence that I gave for the Nizam of Hyderabad was his own doing. He personally banned the Hyderabad State Congress, presumably because he didn't want to let elected Hindus into his Assembly. In contrast, Hari Singh was letting elected Muslims function as ministers. So, I am making the case that Hari Singh went beyond his peers in secularising his government. (He won't match up to Mysore, Travancore and Cochin, but that is about it. In contrast, Nizam was way his below his next door neighbour, the Maharaja of Mysore. Mysore had employed a Muslim Dewan. The Nizam was hesitating to employ the same Muslim Dewan, saying he had gotten "Hinduised". The contrast there is glaring!) -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:54, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Okay, so justifying violence again. Let me take on that first:

• because in 1947, it was a state at war and the Maharaja believed that the Muslims had turned against him. — so you don't go out on a killing spree eliminating every non-combatant — innocent civilians including women and children, out of revenge and to instill fear. That's called terrorism by universal definition.
• mind you, we don't have any sources that tell us anything about the attitudes of the Jammu Muslims at that time — This is a non-argument. What attitudes? They were not in power and less in number than Hindus and Sikhs, and clearly did not start attacking state troops or non Muslims, except for self-defence, after the massacres had started. If Jammu Muslims were rebelling or killing people, there certainly would have been sources that told us about it. The fact itself, that there are no such accounts in any sources, clearly says that the violence was one-sided, which came as a reaction to Hindu & Sikh partition refugees from Pakistan, and later the Poonch rebellion. Also, in any case, the 'terrorism' element does not disappear.
• Yes, the Nizam of Hyderabad was biased, I never rejected that. He wanted to selectively please the Muslim community in the region. As you're pointing out, he himself admitted to it. Now my position is based on the communal violence. Apparently, the Nizam was clearly quite less communal compared to Hari Singh in that regard. He did not go mad like Hari Singh did, by distributing arms to one community and ordering the state soldiers to kill common Hindus, even when he realised that he was gonna lose his kingdom. No revenge terrorism.
• Coming to your case that "Hari Singh went beyond his peers in secularising his government", I wonder why the Muslim majority across the state always resented him and his rule saying it was Hindu dominant! Alright, lets just assume that they did not like a Hindu king. You're presenting that he allowed some elected Muslims to function in his administration, fine. But I see that more of an act of benevolence rather than secularism. (Anyway he jailed them whenever they acted against him, like in the case of Sheikh Abdullah.) Remember that the Representative Assembly (whose powers were quite limited) was formed and those Muslim officials were allowed to function, as a conciliatory measure, after 1931 Kashmir agitation against "Dogra brutalities", for Muslim rights. That was not secular Hari Singh, acting out of his self-conscience. There were political reasons.
• Having said this, one must admit that the overall position of the Muslim community was no worse in 1931 than it had been at the beginning of Hari Singh's reign - I did not ignore this. If I did, I wouldn't have quoted it at all in the first place, I could've ended the quote before this line. Now as you're saying that I need to look at all the ways in which he tried to make things better, show me one straight 'policy change' he implemented to better any of the "pre-existing" anti-Muslim schemes that I listed in this thread above. Then I'll agree that he really considered trying secularism during his reign before 1947. (Having typed all this, I cannot help but say that using 'secularism' and 'Hari Singh' in a single sentence this many times is honestly very funny! :-D ) — Tyler Durden (talk) 20:43, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

That is a wrong comparison in my opinion. Nizam was sitting in a safe zone of South India where there was no partition violence worth talking about, no Pakistan trying to promote internal rebellions, no powder-keg neighbours like Punjab and NWFP, no streams of refugees passing through and bringing their horror stories and so on. So there is no point talking about 1947, and, as I say, without solid sources, there is no point talking about it anyway. You can't prove or disprove anything. You can form prejudices, which I think you are prone to doing. But you can't do any proper evaluation.

Regarding 1930s, the Nizam too had agitations on his hands. He happily suppressed them and forgot all about them. There was no attempt at reform whatsoever.

I am not doing this to compare X with Y, but I am trying to see what are the norms against which you can evaluate Hari Singh to judge whether he was secular or not. The kinds of factors that you cited from the Copland article, ostensiblly to prove that Hari Singh wasn't secular, have to be measured against the norms that were operative at that time, in princely states as well as in British India. I don't see any effort on your part to do that. Without that, you are just throwing shots in the dark hoping they will hit something.

As to how things got better during Hari Singh's time, I can point to the progress of democracy itself. Hari Singh held elections before any other state and even British India. Most other states never held elections at all. Moreover, the democracy was improving. In 1934, the elected representatives were a minority, in 1938 they became a majority and towards the end of 1940s there were two ministers from the elected representatives. Introducing elections by itself doesn't mean secularism, but in his context, it does, because it meant devolving power to Muslims. Our prejudiced friend Nizam never wanted to do anything like that.

Education too, seems to have improved. A lot of the people whose names we see, studied at Srinagar, and then went on to Lahore and Aligarh. Some of them were privileged, but a lot of them studied through scholarships. A. H. Suharwardy, whose book I am reading, is one of those. I will keep looking for more. It won't be a "clean" record, there are certain to be false steps, but on the whole it was a movement to the better, a movement faster than all other princely states (except Mysore, Travancore and Cochin). -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:22, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

there is no point talking about 1947, and, as I say, without solid sources, there is no point talking about it anyway. You can't prove or disprove anything. I have several strong sources that prove Hari Singh's direct complicity in killing thousands of innocents. In my book, that's terrorism. And you, I, or anyone has zero sources that say, such terrorism started happening in the region from victim side at that time. To my sane mind, this is enough to evaluate Hari Singh as communalist.

You can form prejudices, which I think you are prone to doing. Nothing is lost if today I form prejudices against Hari Singh. Nobody will get affected.

...have to be measured against the norms that were operative at that time, in princely states as well as in British India. I don't see any effort on your part to do that. Without that, you are just throwing shots in the dark hoping they will hit something. I agree. :-P

But even you, still, haven't produced any sound points in support of your arguments. As I asked, please give one explicit and straight secular policy-change Hari Singh implemented in his reign to better any of the pre-existing anti-Muslim schemes. Then that would actually count as secularizing governance. You're only presenting those semi-democratic reforms, though, as you opine, it meant devolving some power to Muslims, this alone cannot be taken as secularism itself, according to me. I cannot take the intentions of Hari Singh for doing that as secular, I take his intentions in this context, only as more benevolent compared to others like Nizam. Education is again a quite weak point to call it secularism. Even Nizam encouraged people to get educated in Hyderabad(city), and he also had a scholarship scheme. Sarojini Naidu was one of the recipients of his scholarships. C. V. Raman was also benefited from Nizam's benevolence.(I do not endorse the POVs represented in the source.) With these factors, I cannot claim that Nizam was unbiased. — Tyler Durden (talk) 16:54, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

References

Gandhi

Around the 1st of August 1947, Gandhi visited Kashmir, at the instigation of Mountbatten (because Nehru was threatening to go himself). He met the Maharaja and Maharani as well as Ram Chandra Kak. Then he spent a night in Jammu and then went to Wah, 30km northwest of Rawalpindi. The report of what he said is available:

He was sorry that he was not able to see Sheikh Abdullah who was undoubtedly the leader of the Kashmiris. He had not gone there to see the Sheikh Saheb. He was able, however, to hold pubic prayers for two days in Kashmir and one day in Jammu. These were attended by thousands. He could say that on August 15, all being well, legally the State of Kashmir and Jammu would be independent. But he was sure that the State would not remain in that condition for long after August 15. It had to join either the Union or Pakistan.

... The Hindus and the Sikhs who discussed the question with him said that they were afraid of the approach of August 15... Jinnah Saheb and other Muslim leaders had given assurances that non-Muslims were as safe in Pakistan as Muslims... accept the assurance. Supposing that the assurance proved untrue and the worst fears of the refugees proved true, it would be the beginning of the ruin of Islam. He refused to believe that Muslim leaders would be guilty of such a suicidal act. He asked the refugees, men and women, to dispel all fear. If he could put off his departure for Noakhali, he would gladly pass August 15 in the midst of the refugees at Wah. He proposed however to do the next best thing.

A lady called Sushila Nayyar took down notes of what he said:

During the two interviews with the Prime Minister I told him about his unpopularity among the people... He wrote to the Maharaja... that on a sign from him he would gladly resign... The Maharaja had sent me a message... that the Maharaja and the Maharani were anxious to see me. I met them... The heir-apparent with his leg in plaster was also present... Both admitted that, with the lapse of British paramountcy the true Paramountcy of the people of Kashmir would commence. However much they might wish to join the Union, they would have to make the choice in accordance with the wishes of the people.

He also wrote a letter to Patel, which had some more details:

Bakshi (Ghulam Mohammed) was most sanguine that the result of the free vote of the people, whether on the adult franchise or on the existing register, would be in favour Kashmir joining the Union provided of course that Sheikh Abdullah and his co-prisoners were released, all bans removed and the present Prime Minister was not in power. Probably he echoed the general sentiment. I studied the Amritsar Treaty, properly called 'Sales Deed'. I presume it lapsed on the 15th instant. To whom does the State revert? Does it not go to the people?

He [Maharaja] agreed that only what the subjects desire should be done, but said nothing about his next move. He therefore sent his private secretary to express his regrets. The thing is he wants to get rid of Kak. He is now only considering how. Sir Jailal was almost sure to succeed Kak. You should do something in the matter. In my opinion the situation in Kashmir can be improved.

So, this is what has been called "intruiging" by Gandhi. The last two sentences are hopelessly unclear. I doubt if Patel understood what was meant by them either.

Both the Maharaja and the Maharani seem to be saying that they could not accede to India!

It is not known if "Sir Jailal" (Justice Jai Lal) was ever approached. Prem Shankar Jha says the Kashmir PM post was such a big hotseat that nobody was willing to take it. Even Mahajan had to be pressured and armtwisted.

But Gandhi does exhibit the same blind spot that Nehru does. He is oblivious of the Muslim Conference. He needed to have spent more time in Jammu than in Srinagar. Did any of the Jammu secularists meet him? Did anybody tell him anything about Poonch? It is not clear if the complexity of the Kashmir problem had dawned on Gandhi. He was seeing it mainly as a fight between the NC and the Maharaja. It was an opportunity missed. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:14, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

It was an opportunity missed. I didn't get you. What do you think Gandhi could've done had he known about the situation in Jammu — MC, Poonch stuff and all? --- Tyler Durden (talk) 12:34, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

I don't know what he could have done. I am not Gandhi.

But if he was instrumental in the dismissal of Kak in some way, as it appears from this report, then it was certainly non-Gandhian, because Kak was only inimical to NC, Congress's ally. But Gandhi was identitying the NC with "the people", unmindful that there were other "people". So, while his principles are fine, his tactics weren't. They were one-sided, self-serving, and detrimental to peace. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 13:48, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

Apparently Gandhi was unaware of all the existing aspects of the princely state. His knowledge was poor in that regard. And perhaps, hence were his tactics.

With all the partition violence happening across the nation and hundreds of other independent princely states in the middle of the new India to deal with, Kashmir was probably at the bottom of his priority list at that time (even to the other leaders like Patel & Nehru for that matter; in the aftermath of independence, among princely rulers, our guy Nizam of Hyderabad was of top priority for them; after Pakistan's acceptance of Junnagadh's accession & tribal invasion, their stand on Kashmir got hardened). Once after Patel recognised initially that Hari Singh was not interested in acceding to India, till Junnagadh's drama started in September and later tribal invasion occurred, India hardly intervened in Kashmir affairs. Kak's dismissal was also not India's doing in any way, it was only Hari Singh's doing for his own reasons.

So, on the whole, my point is, Gandhi's tactics were inconsequential. Whether they were good or bad, they brought very little change. — Tyler Durden (talk) 14:48, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

On the contrary, Ram Chandra Kak's dismissall was hugely important. It was because of this dismissal that the Muslim Conference decided that the Maharaja was tring to accede to India. Gandhi's intervention convinced them that India was meddling in Kashmir and instigated them to seek support from Pakistan (on 25 August). So, Gandhi in his own innocuous way, precipitated a crisis. (This is notwithstanding the Poonch rebellion.) -- Kautilya3 (talk) 15:45, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

Are you assessing this yourself, or you have any source? That MC knew and took serious note of Gandhi's intervention in Kashmir, and hence was instigated to seek help from Pakistan? — Tyler Durden (talk) 16:10, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

I am sure I can dig up tons of sources. But I am not intending to put in any article just yet. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 19:22, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

References