Midnight’s Descendants: South Asia from Partition to the Present Day. John Keay
outstanding natural attraction. Moreover, the Nehru family originally hailed from the Kashmir Valley. ‘[It] affects me in a peculiar way,’ the Indian Prime Minister would confess. Like ‘a mild kind of intoxication … the very air of Kashmir has something mysterious and compelling about it’.4 The Nehrus holidayed there, considered the place as peculiarly their own and would make it a point of honour to claim it for India.
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Sardar Patel and V.P. Menon felt just as proprietorial about the princely states in general. What Menon embarrassingly termed ‘the final solution’ to the princely problem was regarded as a purely Indian affair and of no concern to anyone else. Others begged to differ. In particular, the Pakistan government in Karachi would follow events in Hyderabad and Kashmir with mounting alarm. Many in India, including Nehru, still regarded Pakistan as an experiment that could well be doomed to failure. Possibly to them, and certainly to most Pakistanis, India’s speedy absorption of the otherwise independent princely states looked to be the prelude to a bid to reclaim parts, if not all, of Pakistan itself.
The British, too, retained an interest in the matter through the Commonwealth. Mountbatten had assured one reluctant princeling that ‘if you accede now [i.e. before 15 August] you will be joining a Dominion [i.e. India] with the King as Head … [and] if they change the Constitution to a republic and leave the Commonwealth, the Instrument of Accession does not bind you in any way to remain with the republic’.5 By implication, if the Indian government reneged on the terms of princely accession by abolishing hereditary rights, the princes might expect London’s moral support in any bid to reassert their sovereignty.
Other interested parties included those European powers, notably Portugal and France, which still clung to colonial toeholds on the subcontinent, the Portuguese principally in Goa, the French in Pondicherry. The Portuguese had been around since before the Mughals, and the French were entertaining the possibility of supporting Hyderabad’s claim to independence. Both could expect a rough ride from a Congress government that was sworn to eradicate all colonialisms, claimed to represent India’s peoples en masse and insisted on the integration of their territories in toto.
Similar concerns troubled the Himalayan kingdoms of Sikkim, Bhutan and Nepal. Technically sovereign states, none of these had been numbered among the princely states of British India, although each had entered into treaty arrangements with the British. Now feeling exposed by the British withdrawal, their monarchs were wary of New Delhi’s offers to reinstate the treaties and were especially sensitive to the anti-monarchist policies being promoted by India’s democratic and determinedly populist Congress.
Nor were any of these concerned parties much reassured by the tactics on display. In Travancore (Kerala) the state’s respected Dewan (Chief Minister) resisted Mountbatten’s blandishments, asserted his Maharajah’s right to independence, and was waylaid in the street and severely stabbed for doing so. After hospitalisation he survived, though not so his state: Travancore’s cowed Maharajah promptly signed on the dotted line. The Nawab of Bhopal, a personal friend of Mountbatten’s, preferred exile to the ignominy of puppet status. The ruler of Manipur was reportedly locked in a Shillong hotel until such time as he would sign away his inheritance.
Most of these incidents occurred prior to the handover of power. Afterwards, as the blood-letting of Partition subsided in October 1947, attention switched to the fate of the three princely states whose future was still contested. In the case of one, Junagadh in what is now Gujarat, its Nawab had already pronounced in favour of Pakistan; but Junagadh was not contiguous to Pakistan, and New Delhi had objected. In all three cases a much greater anomaly underlay the indecision; for in Junagadh and Hyderabad, a Muslim ruler presided over a largely Hindu population, while in Jammu and Kashmir it was the other way round: a Hindu Maharajah ruled over a Muslim majority. Each was thus impaled on the horns of a dilemma: the ruler’s personal preference was likely to be at variance with that of his subjects, as well as being inconsistent with the twin principles of Partition – the religion of the majority and contiguity to territory of a similar complexion.
All that could be said for sure was that, whatever the requirements for princely accession – whether a decision by the ruler, a preference clearly expressed by his subjects or a combination of both – it stood to reason that the Muslim-ruled states of Junagadh and Hyderabad would join one successor nation, and that Hindu-ruled Jammu and Kashmir would join the other. The possibility that all three might end up in the same successor state could logically be discounted – or so it seemed. With the three coming under pressure at the same time, it could scarcely be argued that circumstances had changed; and likewise, with princely independence having been declared an unacceptable ‘mirage’ by Mountbatten, fudging the issue by going it alone seemed out of the question.
In August all three had signed standstill agreements pending further negotiation. Though Delhi declined signing in respect of Kashmir, it was generally understood that India and Pakistan would refrain from active interference, while the states themselves were supposed to make no unilateral moves. But the standstill quickly broke down in Junagadh. Encouraged by Sardar Patel, two of Junagadh’s subsidiary statelets disavowed the Nawab and opted for India. Although the legality of this move was questionable, the Nawab could hardly be described as popular. ‘At the time an estimated 11 per cent of Junagadh’s revenues were earmarked for the upkeep of the royal kennels, where around 800 canine pensioners lived in a luxury denied to most of Junagadh’s other subjects.’6 In support of Junagadh’s dissident statelets a Junagadh government-in-exile headed by a nephew of Mahatma Gandhi was set up in Bombay. Pro-India troops massed along the state’s uncertain borders and Congress-supported rabble-rousers were busy within. In late October, under considerable pressure, the Nawab took fright. He boarded a plane and fled to Karachi ‘along with four wives and a like number of wagging companions’.
That left his Dewan, one Shah Nawaz Bhutto, to pick up the pieces. Dewan Bhutto had originally encouraged the Nawab to join Pakistan. As one of Sind’s great feudal landowners – and as the founder of Pakistan’s best-known political dynasty – he had nothing against hereditary rule. But as a scion of the Muslim League, Bhutto deferred to Jinnah, who read the situation differently.
For it so happened that just as the Nawab and his entourage were decamping from Junagadh, Jammu and Kashmir’s Maharajah, along with an impressive convoy of motor vehicles, was decamping over the Bannihal Pass from Srinagar. The two crises, hitherto unrelated, had coincided, and therein lay Pakistan’s great opportunity. For like a chessboard pawn, Junagadh might be sacrificed provided that, come the next move, Kashmir could be taken. Jinnah, and now Dewan Bhutto, therefore backtracked. By accepting an Indian proposal that in Junagadh the Nawab’s decision should be contingent on the outcome of a popular vote, they were establishing a precedent of vital relevance to the future of the Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Though not mandatory, the idea that a prince’s accession should be endorsed by his subjects had been urged by both Mountbatten and the Congress leadership. Outside of princely India, referenda on whether to join India or Pakistan had already been held in the North-West Frontier Province and in the Sylhet district of Assam. In both cases the vote had gone in favour of Pakistan. Sylhet had been detached from Indian Assam and awarded to neighbouring East Pakistan; the North-West Frontier Province had been confirmed as a constituent part of West Pakistan. Though the Muslim League, unlike Congress, did not concede the need for popular endorsement, it soon came to recognise its value.
In Junagadh such a plebiscite was sure to overturn the Nawab’s earlier decision in favour of Pakistan – as it overwhelmingly would in February 1948; Bhutto would follow the Nawab and his dogs to Pakistan, and despite further objections from Karachi, the state was taken to have allocated itself to India. But by extension, applying the same principle to Jammu and Kashmir must mean there was every chance that it would fall on Pakistan’s side of the fence. In Kashmir too, the ruler was unpopular, both as a feudal autocrat and as a non-Muslim presiding over a Muslim majority. A plebiscite would therefore probably go against him. Indeed, the mere threat of it should be enough to dissuade him from opting for India. In short,