The Rediff Special/ B K Nehru

'A motley collection of individuals, meeting in the middle of the night, took the decision for the GoI to behave as a bull would in a China shop'

Another point was that the director general of police must be changed and replaced by a nominee of the Centre. The director general, Pir Ghulam Hassan Shah, was one of the most professional, upright, impartial and competent officers I had worked with. His loyalty to the country was unquestionable. It was he who had first discovered in 1965 that Pak agents were coming into Kashmir through the Haji Pir Pass, a piece of information which the Indian army had refused to accept initially. His fault was that he was not partisan; he did not take action on false complaints of the Congress party.

By now I was certainly in a bad temper. I had been sent for and had been kept waiting for five days without any notice having been taken of me. Then a meeting was finally held in the middle of the night without my being invited to it, consisting of all kinds of assorted people who had neither direct connection with nor any responsibility for what was happening in Kashmir.

It was a jamboree of people gathered together at random rather than a meeting of concerned and knowledgeable people. My response to the emissaries was that the points mentioned to me earlier by GP which were all contained in this memorandum in an utterly confused language could be agreed to and put into practice; the others were a mixture of generalities and pure rubbish. In any case, did it not occur to them that it was absurd to ask for compliance of their demands presented to the governor on the morning of 24^th of January by the 26^th of January when they required a wholesale reconstruction of the administration!

GP said I should stay on for another day. I said I would do nothing of the kind. I had to take the salute on the 26^th. He said, 'Calm down, clam down, we will send you by special plane in good time for the parade.' I said I was not going to calm down. I had been hanging around for five days. What was going to happen if I stayed on for a sixth? This was no way to run a government. I would leave at the crack of dawn by the morning plane. This I did.

I was so angry and so upset at the absurd manner in which matters about Kashmir were being handled that I did not bother at that time to inquire who was present in the strange caucus at which the fate of Kashmir was attempted to be decided. Kashmir was clearly the most delicate state in the Indian Union; it had to be handled with great care, with due regard to every nuance of every development. Instead a motley collection of individuals, meeting in the middle of the night without any knowledge of what the Intelligence Bureau or the governor had been reporting, decided the fate of Kashmir and took the decision for the Government of India to behave as a bull would in a China shop.

It is only now that I dictate my memoirs that I have enquired about the composition and proceedings of this meeting. The meeting started at 9.30 pm with the prime minister presiding. The two ministers present were Messrs R Venkataraman and Pranab Mukherjee, the defence and finance ministers respectively. Neither of them had any direct connection with, or knowledge of, the affairs of Kashmir. In addition, there were present Messrs M L Fotedar, G Parathasarthy, Rajiv Gandhi, Tikki Kaul and Babboo Haksar. None of these had any official position in the Government of India except for GP. Who invited these gentlemen to the meeting was also not quite clear. Haksar, who had fallen out of favour ten years earlier, was invited by Tikki Kaul to accompany him.

Not a single person who had any responsibility for Kashmir within the Government of India was present. The governor, the home secretary, the principal secretary to the prime minister, the cabinet secretary, the director of the Intelligence Bureau were the only people who had, or should have had knowledge of day today developments in Kashmir. They were all absent.

Excerpted from Nice Guys Finish Second, by B K Nehru, Viking, 1997, Rs 595, with the publisher's permission.

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