Formation of National Conference
Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah founded the Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference in Kashmir in 1932. It was a rabidly anti-Dogra religio-political outfit. Its objective was to get Kashmir separated from the Jammu Kingdom of which Kashmir became part in March 1846 under the Treaty of Amritsar, signed between Raja of Jammu, Gulab Singh, and the British Indian government. The view of Sheikh Abdullah and his group was that the Dogras of Jammu purchased the life, dignity, and honour of Kashmiri Muslims by paying rupees 75 lakh to the British government. They termed the Dogra rule alien and oppressive.
In 1939, Sheikh Abdullah at the behest of Jawaharlal Nehru renamed the Muslim Conference as Jammu and Kashmir National Conference. It was renamed to hoodwink the Hindus of Jammu and Buddhists of Ladakh for creating an impression that it believed in inclusive politics, and not in exclusive politics. Notwithstanding his decision to rename his party, its objective remained the same: Political emancipation of Kashmir and its conversion into a Switzerland-type independent region. The fact of the matter is that Sheikh Abdullah fought relentlessly for years to achieve his objective and also went to jail a number of times. So much so, that he launched the “Quit Kashmir Movement” in 1946, but with no result.
On August 15, 1947, London transferred political power to the Indian National Congress, which it itself had founded in December 1885 in Bombay with a view to puncturing and defeating the then-ongoing freedom struggle in British India. The 1947 development also had its impact on the 560-odd princely states, including Jammu and Kashmir. While the process of integration of most of the princely states into the newly-created Dominion of India was almost smooth, the story of the accession of Jammu and Kashmir was painful and slow. It was painful and slow because Jawaharlal Nehru made Sheikh Abdullah a party to the accession issue completely overlooking the fact that the Indian Independence Act of 1947, which didn’t provide for the third option (independence), had empowered the rulers of the princely states alone to decide the political future of their respective states and join either the Indian Dominion or the Pakistan Dominion taking into consideration the contiguity factor.
Jawaharlal Nehru not only undermined the authority of the ruler of Jammu and Kashmir, Hari Singh by making Sheikh Abdullah a party to the accession, but also forced him to abdicate his authority in favour of Sheikh Abdullah. The result was that Sheikh Abdullah became the Emergency Administrator/ Wazir-e-Azam of Jammu and Kashmir immediately after the accession. Hari Singh yielded to save his State from the Pakistani aggressors, who considered Jammu and Kashmir an “unfinished agenda” of the partition.
It’s a different story that Jawaharlal Nehru allowed Pakistan to grab a big chunk of Jammu and Kashmir territories, called Pakistan-occupied-Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK), by unilaterally announcing and enforcing a ceasefire in December 1948. He enforced ceasefire at a time when the Pakistani troops, both regular and irregular, were on their run and the Indian forces had the upper hand.
The unflinching and unqualified support that Sheikh Abdullah got from Jawaharlal Nehru produced two more results. One was that Sheikh Abdullah abandoned his free-Kashmir-from-Jammu goal. After the accession, he sought to force down the throats of Jammu and Ladakh the Kashmiri will. This further embittered the already rather bitter inter-regional relations, with the Dogras of Jammu and the Buddhists of Ladakh opposing tooth and nail the politics, Sheikh Abdullah-style. The other was that the solitary State of Jammu and Kashmir was granted a separate status through Article 370 on the score of religion. It happened against the wishes of the Jammu Dogras and the Ladakhi Buddhists.
Article 370 was enforced on January 26, 1950, the day the Indian Constitution came into force across Bharat, barring Jammu and Kashmir. Article 370 restricted the jurisdiction of the Central government over Jammu and Kashmir to just three subjects – defence, foreign affairs, and communication. In other words, the Nehru government left everything, barring defence, foreign affairs, and communications, to the care of the Kashmiri Muslim leadership. Not just this, Jawaharlal Nehru also attached Jammu and Kashmir to the foreign ministry which he himself headed as if Jammu and Kashmir was un-Indian.
It was expected that the grant of separate status to Jammu and Kashmir, or grant of unbridled legislative, executive, judicial, and financial powers to the Kashmiri Muslim leadership would create serious problems for the nation and hurt Jammu and Ladakh the most and it did happen. A peep into the political history of Jammu and Kashmir between October 1947 and June 2018 would leave none in any doubt whatsoever that this period not only witnessed anti-Bharat explosions in Kashmir at regular intervals but also witnessed concerted attempts to change the demographic profile of Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh. So much so, Kashmir became over 99.99 percent Hindu-free on January 19, 1990, when chief minister Farooq Abdullah fled away to the UK to save his life, or to escape the terrorists’ wrath.
The most striking aspect of the whole situation was that the National Conference misused the floor of the Assembly umpteen times to further widen the already rather wide gulf between Kashmir and New Delhi and left no stone unturned to achieve for Jammu and Kashmir a semi-independent/semi-sovereign status. The memories of the 1952 Nehru-Abdullah parleys on the political future of Jammu and Kashmir; the manner in which the illegal, unconstitutional, and discriminatory Article 35A was introduced in the State; the 1975 Indira Gandhi-Sheikh Abdullah Accord on the State; the 1986 Rajiv Gandhi-Farooq Abdullah Accord; and the resolution on autonomy for the State, or pre-1953 politico-constitutional status adopted by the Farooq Abdullah-led National Conference government in July 2000 and the promptness with which the Atal Behari Vajpayee government rejected it outright on July 4, 2000, are too fresh to be forgotten; these still linger in our minds.
The National Conference remained at the helm of affairs between 1947 and 1965, 1975 and 1984, 1986 and January 19-1990, 1996 and 2002 and 2009-2014 – almost 42 years.
The situation in Jammu and Kashmir after May 2018 reached such a climax that the Narendra Modi government had to bring down the Mehbooba Mufti-led coalition government on June 18, 2018 and scrap Jammu and Kashmir’s special status, abrogate Article 35A and bifurcate Jammu and Kashmir State into two Union Territories – Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir and Union Territory of Ladakh – on August 5-6, 2019 with the full backing of the Parliament.
It was hoped that the August 2019 reforms would reform the National Conference and its president, Farooq Abdullah, and vice-president and Farooq Abdullah’s son, Omar Abdullah, but it was not to be. Instead, they continued to tread the path they used to tread before 2019. The only difference is that while their slogan before August 2019 was the restoration of the pre-August 1953 politico-constitutional status or withdrawal of all the Central laws and institutions introduced in the State after August 9, 1953, so that the Centre exercised jurisdiction only over defence, foreign affairs and communications, their watchword and battle-cry after August 5-6, 2019 has been the restoration of the pre-August 2019 politico-constitutional status. That they religiously longed for the pre-August 2019 status could be seen from the fact that it approached the Supreme Court against the 2019 reforms immediately after their introduction, addressed many press conferences, and issued innumerable statements after August 2019 against the 2019 landmark decision and made the restoration of the pre-August 2019 status the chief poll plank after the Election Commission of India announced the election schedule for the constitution of the 18th Lok Sabha.
It is pertinent to mention here that the National Conference didn’t field its candidates in the Jammu and Udhampur parliamentary constituencies. It fielded candidates only in Srinagar, Baramulla, and Anantnag-Rajouri parliamentary constituencies, which are almost 100 percent Muslim. It had also not fielded candidates in Jammu and Udhampur in 2009 and 2014 as per the seat-sharing formula reached between it and the Congress.
It is also important to note that during all those days (March 16-May 25) of the election campaign in Jammu and Kashmir, Farooq Abdullah and the party candidates — Omar Abdullah, Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi, and Mian Altaf Ahmad – tried their best in the Srinagar, Baramulla and Anantnag-Rajouri parliamentary constituencies to arouse passions among their co-religionists and seek their mandate assuring and reassuring them that their vote for the National Conference would be a vote for the return of the pre-August 2019 politico-constitutional status. It’s most unfortunate; it’s a matter of grave concern.
Note:
1. Text in Blue points to additional data on the topic.
2. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of PGurus.
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