Editorial
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| | Retrospective inconvenience | | Mustafa Kamal’s argument against Kashmir Accord and Congress cuts both ways | | As if to justify the prefix to his organisational designation, additional general secretary-cum-spokesperson of the ruling National Conference Mustafa Kamal has been regularly contributing juicy ‘additional’ background information for the ‘benefit’ of his party’s alliance partner, Congress. Latest instalment—on the Kashmir Accord--though a repetition of his earlier editions contains certain new points of fact as well as interpretation. The thrust of Kamal’s long winding argument, in an interview with a local journal, is that the 1975 Kashmir Accord between his father Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and Indira Gandhi was more a fiction than fact. According to him the Accord did not exist materially as it was neither owned by the two governments (central and state) nor endorsed by the (federal/state) legislature. Leaving aside Kamal’s diatribe against Congress over what he calls ‘betrayal’ of his father as well as the NC, his argument suffers from factual inaccuracies.
The fact is that, both Mrs Gandhi and Sheikh had owned and signed the ‘Agreed Conclusions’ of the Accord, arrived at between their authorised emissaries G Parathasarathy and Mirza Mohammad Afzal Beg. The signed document was duly placed on the table of the Parliament as well as the state legislature and discussed thoroughly. However, the J&K document omitted certain politically inconvenient portions of the centre’s version even as it retained the crux of the matter—6-point Agreed Conclusions formulated by Parathasarathy and Beg.
Dr Kamal’s contention would have, perhaps, been more convincing if he had not sidetracked historical facts: Firstly, in reality the Accord was intended only as a device to make it politically convenient for Sheikh’s return to the ‘national mainstream’ (euphemism for political power) in return for disbanding his Plebiscite Front. Secondly, the Agreed Conclusions were arrived at after a long exchange of letters between Sheikh and Indira Gandhi which ended with Sheikh’s tacit acknowledgement that the ‘hands of the clock cannot be turned back (to 1953 level of centre-state relationship)’. In short, a not-so-decent burial for the PF as well as the autonomy slogan.
To be fair to Sheikh, he had started with the position that he would be prepared to walk back only on the condition that he would take over from where he had left in 1953 when the centre had jurisdiction over only three subjects conceded by Maharaja Hari Singh in the Instrument of Accession in 1947. Dialogue between Parathasarathy and Beg remained suspended and even nearly got derailed over this argument as Sheikh was unrelenting. But eventually he fell in line and conceded that the ‘hands of the clock cannot be turned back’. It did not take long for things to fall in place thereafter.
Syed Mir Qasim of the Congress made way for Sheikh and the PF was born- again as (revived) National Conference. Item No. 4 of the 6-point Agreed Conclusions deals with the question of review of the post-1953 central laws extended to the state. It clearly stipulates that this exercise (if and when undertaken) would remain confined to laws relating to labour, culture and social welfare. Even within that limited scope the Centre’s commitment was restricted to ‘sympathetically consider’ the state’s proposal. There was no mention at all of rescinding any of the post-1953 laws even from the specified (unimportant) category.
On the contrary, the state yielded some of its own powers by conceding that any law pertaining to the composition of state legislative council would have to be endorsed by the President of India.
There is a view that the Kashmir Accord of 1975 in actual terms was an endorsement of the process of ‘erosion’ started with the Delhi Agreement of 1952 between Sheikh’s government and the central government headed by Jawahar Lal Nehru. The Delhi Agreement is retrospectively seen as the proverbial thin end of the wedge driven into the limited arrangement arrived at between the Maharaja and the Government of India conceding only three subjects. Sheikh’s popular government virtually undid all that and rest is history.
Dr Kamal’s repeated recall of this part of the history to bash his party’s ally, Congress is a double-edged weapon. It cuts both ways. If the Congress is guilty of ‘treachery’ the Sheikh is not without his share of blame, at least in making it easy for New Delhi to have its way. |
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