accession to India as the result of ‘fraud and violence’ – had wanted to send
regular Pakistan army troops into Kashmir, but was dissuaded by army
sources. British officers in both armies were bound to resign in the event
of a war between the two dominions – constitutionally, India was a
Dominion from 1947 to April 1949 and Pakistan remained a dominion
until 1956 – and the Pakistan army was far more dependent on British
personnel than the Indian and had a much more British-dominated officer
corps.
For Nehru, there was much personal prestige associated with his own
Kashmiri origins and Kashmir was a test case for his understanding
of a secular India: if a Muslim-majority state could accede to India,
the legitimacy and rationale of Pakistan would be undermined, at the
same time as strengthening Nehru’s vision of India as a non-sectarian
society rather than a ‘Hindu’ nation. But there was of course another point
of principle raised by the maharaja’s accession. If the monarch alone
could decide the question of accession to India or Pakistan, Junagadh or
Hyderabad might have had equally good claims to make up their own
minds. Patel’s negotiations with other states had tended to ignore the
question of popular will. Nehru, on the other hand, wished to base the
accession of Kashmir to India on democratic principles. Therefore, a
popular and democratic government would also need to be installed, and
the maharaja’s accession could not be accepted without a plebiscite: Nehru
believed that the Maharaja alone could not carry through accession to
India. The plebiscite could of course only occur if peaceful conditions were
restored – which meant the withdrawal of the ‘tribesmen’.
In Kashmir, the logical political organisation that presented itself
as the defender of democratic principles was the National Conference
led by Sheikh Abdullah. Abdullah’s National Conference was built up
during a successful movement for political rights against Hari Singh
in the 1930s, associated with the Indian National Congress through
the States Peoples’ Movement that Nehru had coordinated in his days
on the Congress left (the Congress had always restricted its support for
movements inside the princely states to agitational and moral support
rather than active participation). The National Conference was the only
political organisation in Kashmir that had a credible mass base and was
also a secular, non-sectarian organisation – although, in a mirror-image
situation to that of the Congress, it was dominated by Muslims (in a
Muslim-majority state). Nehru’s policy was therefore to get the maharaja178 CONSOLIDATING THE STATE, c. 1947–55