The Rediff Special /B K Nehru

'Kashmiris were convinced that India would never permit them to rule themselves'

I thought it my duty to brief my successor before I left about the charge he was taking over. Accordingly I invited him, on my next visit to Delhi, to have breakfast with me. I tried to explain to him what I thought was the factual situation in Kashmir which was very different from what Delhi must have told him. What struck me was that he made not one single comment nor asked one single question. It might have been that he accepted the latest Delhi propaganda -- that the governor was senile. Or, which I thought more likely, as he had his order it was no longer for him 'to reason why'.

I do not normally take much interest in what happens in my charge when I have left it. But in Kashmir the stakes were so high that I did try and follow what happened in the next few months.

I was not surprised when Farooq was dismissed and Gul Shah installed. Nor was I surprised, when I learnt later, that the play enacted was one hundred per cent identical with the scenario that had been rehearsed to me over and over again. Although the governor's appointment with them was at seven am, the group arrived before first light; the journey was completed by stealth and in the darkness of the night. None of the defectors left the compound of Raj Bhavan till they were all sworn in as cabinet ministers late in the afternoon.

What I could not explain to myself when I read my successor's book My Frozen Turbulence, was why he was taken by surprise and had to study the Kashmir constitution half the night. If I had four regular informants to keep me abreast of the developments in the Gul Shah camp, how was it that all these sources of information had suddenly dried up for the new governor.

I can understand that Tirath Ram Amla and D D Thakur did not tell him anything because in the short period of two months the trust necessary for the exchange of confidences could not as yet have been developed. But how could the director general of police, a thoroughly professional civil servant, fail in his duties of informing his boss about what was happening around him? And if even he had failed, how could the deputy director of the Intelligence Bureau, who knew well Delhi's vital interest in the dismissal of Farooq, fail to inform the governor of what was happening? And if all these sources of information did suddenly dry up, how did the operation of manufacturing the defection which was public knowledge in Kashmir not come to the notice of the governor?

The seriousness of the long-term damage of the dismissal of Farooq has never really been assessed. My own view is that the Kashmiris, who had recovered considerably from their anti-Indian feelings when their chosen representatives, the Sher-e-Kashmir, and his son, ruled over them, were convinced now at the second dethronement of their elected ruler that India would never permit them to rule themselves.

It was the alien rule of Delhi (which was, additionally, that of the kafirs) under which they would have always to live if they remained part of India. It is my belief that it was this disastrous dismissal which was the last straw that broke the camel's back and to which the intefada, which has already lasted six years, can be traced.

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

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