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Journalism of Courage
A conversation with Karan Singh is like walking through a history museum — filing past signposts and scanning through artifacts that link current events to a long and troubled past. Of course, there is a disclaimer — his history perhaps tells only one side, a significant side nevertheless, of Jammu and Kashmir’s story of hope and despair, turmoil and transition. It’s a fabled story, yet not yet fully told.
History never looks like history for Singh, the 92-year-old son and successor of Maharaja Hari Singh, the last Dogra ruler of Jammu and Kashmir, as he has lived through it and is now witnessing a new chapter unfold from a distance. His life, in many ways, is deeply intertwined with the tumultuous journey of Jammu and Kashmir since 1947.
Looking back, one realises that Singh was born days after Lord Irwin inaugurated New Delhi as the new capital of India (the Delhi which always evoked mixed emotions in an average Kashmiri) in March 1931 and two days before revolutionaries Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were hanged. And we meet on a day history perhaps repeated as a farce — two men with smoke cans had earlier in the day jumped into the Lok Sabha chamber.
The Supreme Court judgment on Article 370 some days ago had transported him back to the events that unfolded after Independence — years that shaped and perhaps transformed his life. Kept on top of a stack of papers arranged neatly on his study table was a copy of the Proclamation, the document which he had issued as an 18-year-old yuvaraj in 1949 and which the Supreme Court earlier this week said reflected the full and final surrender of J&K’s sovereignty to India.
There is a glimmer in his eyes as he picks up the document. He was, in fact, more excited when, a while later, he switched on the ‘Saregama Carvaan’ kept on his table and the room was filled with the familiar voice of Ameen Sayani. An aristocrat, Singh has a refined taste in art, music and literature and deep knowledge of Hinduism, Bhagavad Gita and the Vedas. He is nonchalant as he recounts the sequence of events post 1947.
The Maharaja exiled and a princely proclamation
“My father signed the Instrument of Accession on October, 26, 1947. All of 1948, I was in America in a hospital. I came back in 1949. My father was persuaded to leave the state. That was a very painful thing for him,” Singh recalls. He links it to India taking the Kashmir issue to the United Nations.
“We had gone to the United Nations. I think we need not have gone. It wasn’t necessary. We should have settled it ourselves. I think it was Lord Mountbatten who persuaded (Jawaharlal) Nehru to go there saying that you are now the leader of the new postcolonial societies and you should make an example of how peaceful resolutions are done… not realising that once you went to the UN, you get bogged down…we are still bogged down 75 years later,” he says.
A Congressman, Singh, however, gives Nehru the benefit of the doubt. “It is not fair to demonise Nehru…for this because he went to the United Nations in good faith.”
And squarely lays the blame at Sheikh Abdullah’s door.
“In the course of the UN negotiations, we had agreed to a plebiscite. Now who was going to win the plebiscite for us? Sheikh Abdullah, who was the leader of the National Conference, which led the anti-Dogra, anti-our-family movement in the state. The result was that Abdullah was able to call the shots. He, because of his great antipathy to my father, told Nehru that he cannot win the plebiscite as long as Maharaja Hari Singh was in the state. He must leave and the Maharani must leave too,” Singh recounts.
Singh says he was in the US for treatment when history took this dramatic turn in his state. “I came back (from the US) in February 1949. We were summoned to Delhi in April of that year. That is where Sardar Patel requested my father: ‘Maharaj saab, will you please stay out of the state for six months or a year?’ In fact, it became a life-long exile. He never came back…only his ashes returned, which I brought when he passed away in 1961.”
‘Yuvraj’ Karan Singh was just 18 when his father was exiled. Hari Singh agreed to leave but said his son should be appointed the Reagent of the state. “And I stayed back. The Proclamation, which in a way supplemented the Instrument of Accession, was signed by Karan Singh in November 1949 as the Reagent,” he says.
Who wrote the proclamation? “I didn’t write it. It must have been legally drafted. My hunch is that it was drafted by somebody in the Government of India. It came to me from the state government,” he says. Abdullah was in charge of the state as Head of the Emergency Administration. Singh says he was not forced to issue the proclamation.
“I was also an Indian nationalist. I wanted very much to be part of the mainstream. We grew up reading Nehru’s books. Those were the books that inspired us. As a young man, I was very keen to try and help, whatever I could do. It was a privilege and an extraordinary situation when I was appointed Reagent at the age of 18,” he says.
A year later, at 19, Singh married Yasho Rajya Lakshmi, 13, and the couple would spend six months in Srinagar and the remaining in Jammu.
On May 1, 1951, Singh issued a second Proclamation, convening a Constituent Assembly for framing a Constitution for the state. “Abdullah was so anti-Dogra. He made a big song and dance about abolishing the monarchy… and the Constituent Assembly met. It was to decide who is going to be the head of the state. The head of the state was to be elected by the state Assembly. They elected me the Sadr-i-Riyasat (President),” he says.
“That put me in an awkward position. On one hand, Abdullah had forced my father into exile and here I was, accepting a position which he had created. I accepted nonetheless because Nehru wanted me to accept it and I wanted to be part of the new India,” he says. Nehru, he says, was very fond of Singh and used to call him ‘Tiger’.
Singh recalls that his taking over as the Sadr-i-Riyasat had angered his Dogra community. Even his father was apprehensive. “He was apprehensive that they would throw me out at some point of time. There was a risk. I thought the risk was worth taking,” he says.
A year later, Singh dismissed Abdullah’s government and put him in jail, which, Singh says, gladdened his community. “Then all those people said yeh acha hua. I told them that you showed black flags wherever I went…I told them had I not accepted (the post), there was nobody who could have reined in Abdullah.”
Abdullah, of course, had a different version. And somewhere in between is history.
A ringside view of politics
Singh remained the Sadr-i-Riyasat till 1965, when the post was abolished and Singh took over as the first Governor of the state, a position he continued in till 1967. “By then, I was getting bored with J&K. I said I am not going to spend the rest of my life here. I pressed Indira Gandhi, who I knew very well…because Panditji used to come to Srinagar quite often. I was a house guest at Teen Murti…” At 36, Singh was inducted into the Indira Cabinet as a Cabinet minister. But since he was not an MP, he stood for election and won from Udampur.
The wheels turned again after the Congress split post Emergency. Singh, who stood with Indira and was among a few Congress leaders who won from North India in 1977, was on the other side a few years later. In the 1980 elections, which saw the return of Indira Gandhi, Singh fought on a ticket of the Devaraj Urs-led Congress(U) from Udhampur. “It was a tough election. By that time, Sheikh Abdullah and Indira Gandhi were on one side, but I won,” he said.
What would count as a regret for someone who served as Reagent, Sadr-i-Riyasat and Governor in Jammu and Kashmir and then served as an MP for 40 years (four terms each in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha)? “The only regret I have is we have not been able to sort out the J&K problem internationally after so many years. But that was not in my hands.”
Singh refrains from getting drawn into questions about Delhi’s handling of Jammu and Kashmir post Independence.
In 1967, Singh moved to Delhi though he goes to Jammu and Kashmir quite often.
He usually spends all of June and some 15 days in September in Srinagar every year. He has a palace in Jammu too where he goes on shorter visits. His elder son Vikramaditya and daughter-in-law Chitrangada, the daughter of Madhavrao Scindia, look after the property in Kashmir while his younger son Ajatshatru is in charge of the Jammu property. Ajatshatru joined the BJP in 2014 while Vikramaditya left the Congress last year. “He lost interest in politics,” Singh says of his elder son.
His daughter Jyotsna is Director of the family-run Amar Mahal Museum and Library in Jammu and helps him with his cultural activities, something that keeps Singh busy these days. His house in Chanakyapuri is a piece of history in itself, filled with antique statues, paintings and artifacts. He built the house in the early 1960s, even before he moved to Delhi in 1967. “Panditji (Nehru) had come for the housewarming…When I built this house, this area was a jungle. Now it is a posh locality. I was always interested in national politics, so I wanted a permanent house here,” he says with a gleam in his eyes.
There are no photographs of the Congress pantheon in his study. There is, however, a photograph of him with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “I haven’t met him very often. But on my 90th birthday, I had written to him requesting him to release a special edition of the Bhagavad Gita. He agreed. He invited us to his house and we had a function there… I hardly ever met him when he was the Gujarat chief minister.”
‘I am still in the Congress’
Singh has welcomed the Supreme Court verdict upholding the Centre’s 2019 decision to repeal J&K’s special status under Article 370. But it was his father who, in 1927, issued two proclamations giving only residents the right to government jobs and barring non-residents of J&K from buying land or property.
“Kashmir was very poor. (Outsiders) would have come and bought up the whole of Kashmir and we would have been landless labourers if he had not reserved the services. Where would the people of Jammu and Kashmir go? (The proclamations) ultimately became Article 370. It wasn’t a malign act; it was a step taken to save the people from being overrun by much richer neighbours.”
He, however, sees no contradiction in welcoming the verdict now. “I welcomed it because there is no point trying to aim for something which is not possible. It is a done deal now. Why keep hitting your head against the wall?”
It is a pragmatic view. After all, Singh is 92 and has been part of J&K’s journey over the last 76 years.
At 92, Singh is a keen follower of national and international politics. “Divine grace. People ask me what is your secret weapon. I say this is my secret weapon,” he says, displaying his kada (bracelet) with ‘Om Namashivaya’ inscribed in Hindi. “I gave one of these kadas to Rahul Gandhi…some time ago,” he adds.
Although he is still in the Congress, he is not active politically. He was dropped from the Congress Working Committee in 2018 and was also not renominated to Rajya Sabha.
“I am still in the Congress. Rahul Gandhi was here the other day to shoot a video of his talk with me on Hinduism. All the posts that I have held are because of the Congress. I don’t feel like leaving the Congress. Nehru was my mentor, Indira took me in her Cabinet and kept me for 10 years at a stretch. Rajiv sent me to the US as Ambassador. Sonia Gandhi gave me three consecutive terms in Rajya Sabha after I took on (A B) Vajpayee from Lucknow in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections. They have been good to me,” he says.
So life moves on for Singh, a journey whose arc is intertwined with that of independent India and Jammu & Kashmir. An anecdote he offers at the end of our conversation, about his birth in a Cannes hotel, illustrates just how.
“Hotel Martinez, Rooms 318, 319 and 320. I was a famous baby. My father was then attending the first Round Table Conference (in London) as a representative of the Indian princes. When (my parents) sailed from here, I was already in my mother’s womb. My father took the whole third floor of the Martinez.” Years later, Singh and his wife went back and stayed in the suite where he was born.
