Reacting to the Congress accusation that ‘some Bharatiya Janata Party leaders are resorting to distortions of history to mislead the present generations with a view to malign Congress leaders who were responsible for the princely state of J&K to opt for secular India’, Brig Veteran Anil Gupta Spokesperson of the party quoted former US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfield, “As we know there are known knowns. There are things we know. We also know there are known unknowns.” The people deserve to know the known unknowns as well which the Congress has tried to supress and hide from them through manipulated text books and narratives to suit them. Congress has deliberately sold a narrative to promote the belief that the accession of J&K took place only due to the efforts of Nehru and Sheikh underplaying the patriotism and love for India of its Dogra ruler Maharaja Hari Singh.
Congress spokesperson has claimed that at least ten years before the Maharaja signed the Instrument of Accession many Congress leaders had begun the efforts to ensure the accession of Muslim majority state with India and defeat the designs of Jinnah. He probably in his enthusiasm to belittle BJP leaders forgot that Lahore Declaration with Jinnah as one of the signatories calling for a separate Muslim state Pakistan was signed only in 1940, stated Brig Gupta. Maharaja Hari Singh had announced his love for India much earlier at the Round Table Conference in London in 1931 in which Jinnah was also present.
With this he earned the wrath of British and an unsavoury saga of conspiracies unfolded against him upon his return to the state. His statement, “I am an Indian first and then a Maharaja” sent shivers across the British rulers who tasked a British Mr Weikfield, Maharaja’s Prime Minister to weaken the Maharaja. Weikfield then chose Sheikh Abdullah and coaxed him to create a Hindu-Muslim divide to weaken the Maharaja. The role thereafter played by the Sheikh and his bonhomie with Nehru is well documented except for the known unknown fact of his treachery against the Maharaja. Maharaja Hari Singh who ensured that the state of Jammu and Kashmir became a legal and constitutional part of India remains the most understood and wronged ruler as a result of personal politics and machinations of Sheikh and Nehru, rued Brig Gupta.
Another known unknown fact which is deliberately supressed is the offer of Maharaja to accede to India much before 26th October. But it was the insistence of Nehru that reigns of the state should be handed over to Sheikh first which did not allow the accession earlier. Even after the exit of Maharaja when Sheikh started showing his tendency of exclusion and reluctance of complete integration with India, the agitation launched by pro-Indian nationalists of Jammu was condemned by Nehru as communal which emboldened the Sheikh to commit atrocities on theDogras of Jammu protesting, under the banner of PrajaParishad, against his authoritarian rule and anti-national utterances, asserted Brig Gupta. Sheikh was later arrested for anti-national activities.
Thereafter, governments were installed and scrapped at the pleasure of the Congress leaders sitting in Delhi. The masterstroke was the merger of National Conference with Congress in 1965. It was supersededten years later in 1975 when Mir Qasim was divested of his portfolio of CM and Sheikh Abdullah was brought back by the same Congress party stated Brig Gupta.
“Through disclosure of the few of known unknown facts I leave it to the people particularly the present generations to decide for themselves who is responsible for the distortion of history”, appealed Brig Gupta.