Adv Rameshwar Singh Jamwal
Now that the euphoria of birthday celebrations of Maharaja Hari Singh has ebbed down and we are back to the same uncertainties of life in this troubled UT of J&K, it’s the time to introspect and foresee as to what lies ahead for our future generations in these troubled times and whether our fight for justice should end here, when the same marauding forces that worked against him from 1927, when he assumed the ruler ship of the state, till his demise and thereafter as well, are working overtime to achieve the unfulfilled agenda of 1947. We also have to analyze as to whether we have achieved the targets of social and societal reforms, initiated by him, which were unheard of in those times, their impact on the life of the citizens of J&K and whether we have dithered and floundered on them or have carried on the legacy with the same zeal, with which he worked for them, or we need to take mid course corrective measures so that we achieve the targets set out by him and carried out by many others in the corridors of power, who have ruled us for the last about seventy five years, after the invent of democratic set up in India and the then state and now UT of J&K. It’s beyond doubt that it is only because of the pressure built up by Yuva Rajput Sabha that the Government of J&K, after nod from the central government and political leadership of the ruling dispensation relented and agreed for declaring 23rd September as holiday. Amit Shah’s meeting with the representatives of YRS on 3rd October is not without political connotations. They were also justified in celebrating it but there have been questions about the display of weapons and confining it to one particular caste. Of course, there has been overwhelming support from many sections of society but the way it should have been celebrated by the people of the UT, irrespective of their religion or caste, was missing and this participation could have made huge difference in projecting the true thinking of the man, vilified by the shortsighted political dispensations that have ruled us for decades. But all has not been lost as yet and we can still change our future’s discourse and achieve the twin targets of projecting the achievements of this great modern thinker and social reformer and also help in building a better society and country, which he envisioned and laid the roadmap for it. For this we need to go beyond the revealed history of the man and need to know the real Hari Singh, even when he no longer remained the Maharaja of J&K and spent his last years, with that lingering wound of having been treated most unjusfiably by many in the country and the then state of J&K. The author has some ideas about the inner framework of his mind from 1952 till his death as the father of the author was perhaps the closest person to him, with whom he shared his inner thoughts in a period of about seven-eight years, from 1952 till 1957, when the palace intrigues made the father of the author to depart from Mumbai, little realizing that misfortune that befell him was still at work.
As, the critics of the present celebrations and of Hari Singh are still trying to project the present picture with something like the advent of Rajput or Dogra hegemony, we need to dive deep to find out as what Dogra Rule signified and what can be the meaning of present success in our future thinking and its likely impact on the events which will unfold in coming decades. For interpreting and understanding as to what Hari Singh represented, we need to go little bit into the brief history of J&K and understand as to what Dogra Rule meant in those days.
Dogra Rule-1846-1947: Year 1339 had witnessed the emergence of the Mir Dynasty in Kashmir, led by Shah Mir who became the first Muslim ruler of Kashmir. For the next five centuries, Muslim monarchs ruled Kashmir, and this period includes the Mughal rule, from 1586 until 1751, and there was rule of Afghans as well, called the Durrani Rule, which dynasty ruled from 1747 to 1819. Then came the Sikh rule, as Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Punjab had annexed Kashmir. In 1846, after the Sikh defeat in the Anglo Sikh war, the Treaty of Lahore was signed and Raja Gulab Singh, the Dogra ruler (Dogras are a martial ethnic race, inhabiting Jammu, parts of Punjab and Himachal Pradesh) from Jammu purchased the region from the British under the Treaty of Amritsar, and who then became the new ruler of Kashmir. This was the start of Dogra rule in Jammu and Kashmir and the rule of Gulab Singh’s descendants, continued till 1947, when he signed the Instrument of accession with India, which was not accepted by Pakistan and since then the dispute is continuing and four wars have been fought between the two countries and which dispute threatens the lives of millions in the two nuclear armed countries. Pakistan has continued the proxy war, through its Jihadi war machine, created by General Zia-Ul-Haq, former ruler of Pakistan to bleed India. His doctrine of a “Thousand Cuts” is still being religiously followed by the so called modern dispensations, which have ruled Pakistan for the last few decades.
(to be continued…..).
