,
11 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
Add one more fact: Instrument of Accession was a legal provision made applicable through Govt of India Act, 1935. Each of the 562 Princely States signed the same document. All of them later signed an Instrument of Merger, except J&K. That’s why 370. Now, J&K also stands merged.
(2/n) When did the exercise of securing the accession start? After 6 June 1947, when the Partition Plan was announced by Mountbatten in great haste, as he was keen to get Britain out of India.
(3/n) A provision for accession existed in the Govt of India Act, 1947, which was made use of by Patel, who managed to get every Princely State on board by 15th August except Hyderabad and J&K. Junagadh signed accession to Pakistan.
(4/n) Ramchandra Kak, the PM of J&K, was the main roadblock to Jammu and Kashmir’s accession to India. The Poonch Rebellion has started much earlier and Maharaja’s forces were already divided along Muslim-Non-Muslim.
(5/n) Gilgit Agency was on lease to Nritain till 1967. The lease was terminated on 1/8/47 and Gilgit-Baltistan reverted to Maharaja, who appointed Brigadier Ghansara Singh as the Administrator while Major Brown was appointed by British Commander of Maharaja to head Gilgit Scouts
(6/n) I will not labour on the circumstances leading to accession. The major fact is that the Instrument of Accession signed by Maharaja Hari Singh was verbatim the same as those signed by all other Princely States
(7/n) While Xonstituent Assembly was about to complete the task, an Instrument of Merger, another provision from Govt of India Act, 1935 was employed to merge all Princely States with the Union of India. J&K Administrator Sheikh Abdullah manages to avoid this.
(8/n) Without merger, 370 became necessary. That’s why those exceptions were given to J&K. The J&K Reorganisation Act after superseding the 1954 Presidential Order has completed the merger that did not happen in 1947.
(9/n) The litany of errors made by Kak, Hari Singh, Constituent Assembly (though Ambedkar stoutly opposed 370 and did not attend the session in which it was passed), and a perverse secular politics propped up 370, which Islamists later used as an excuse for separate identity
(10/n) In substance, Art 370 was a concession to the 2-nation theory of Jinnah. Later, it was espoused by the KPs more than the KMs. Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad proposed to abolish it in 1956. KP lobby les by KN Katju scuttled it
(11/n) When the Islamists at the goading of Pakistan drove out KPs through rape, murder and plunder - raliv, galiv, chaliv - the epitaph of 370 was finally written. It took 30 years for the formal declaration.
