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Skin-deep intellect on J&K autonomy - Part II
by Arvind Lavakare |
India Today once boasted of having the clout to build public opinion strong enough to oust a government in New Delhi. But in this, its silver jubilee year, that intelligent man's weekly has committed quite a few blunders in its two recent cover stories on J&K, thereby exposing once again how some so-called intellectuals have not yet got their history right on what has for 53 years now been an extremely critical, sensitive subject for the entire nation.
Thus, the magazine's issue of August 14 would have us believe that J&K acceded to India in 1947 in return for Nehru's promise of plebiscite and Article 370's nomenclature of "prime minister" of J&K was changed to "chief minister" in 1964. The Centre extended jurisdiction over J&K in 1953. Sheikh Abdullah died in 1983 and his son Farooq, became J&K's chief minister in that year.
All the above statements are fiction, pure fiction.
Firstly, J&K's accession to India had nothing to do with the promise of plebiscite by Nehru or anyone else. It was instead directly linked to the tribal invasion from Pakistan that threatened the very survival of Srinagar city, forcing its ruler to ask India's military help and offer accession for that purpose. And Nehru's promise of plebiscite was made in his All India Radio broadcast of December 23, 1949. (It is a different matter that according to a former chief justice of India, M C Mahajan, the Instrument of Accession, designed by the British and the Indian Independence Act, 1947, of the British Parliament gave no legal or constitutional authority to Nehru or Mountbatten, the then governor general, to make that promise).
rest of the article is at http://www.rediff.com/news/2000/aug/22arvind.htm
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