Thank Maharaja Hari Singh for making J&K an integral part of India: Arun Gupta

STATE TIMES NEWS

JAMMU: BJP spokesperson Arun Gupta said here on Friday that Jammu & Kashmir became an integral part of India after Maharaja Hari Singh signed the Instrument of Accession on October 26, 1947. Paying tributes to the visionary Dogra king on the eve of Accession Day, Mr Gupta said the ruler had done so by exercising his right as defined under Indian Independence Act of 1947. We should be eternally grateful towards the Maharaja as his action has made us all citizens of India, he added.

It was not a right meant for people of the Princely states but the rulers themselves were given this choice. Around those days, at the dawn of Independence, over 550 Princely states had joined India. There was only one draft and version of the Instrument of Accession which all these states had signed, Mr Gupta said.
The Dogra Maharaja too had signed the same Instrument of Accession which dozens of others had signed before him. The document that he had signed was in no way different from those who signed it before, and, after him. One of the most famous cases of the Instrument of Accession being signed later than J&K was that of the Princely state of Bhopal, he pointed out. Its hereditary ruler Nawab Hamidullah Khan signed the accession document on April 30, 1949, thus making it an Indian state thereafter.
Incidentally, Bhopal, which was one of the last Princely states to sign the Instrument of Accession, serves as the capital of Madhya Pradesh now. Despite the fact that Bhopal has signed this document over 18 months after J&K, no questions are asked about it. The reason is that it was not mandatory for the Princely states to sign the accession document before Independence Day (August 15, 1947). Further, there was no deadline or last date before which the princely hereditary rulers were to join either of the Dominions, Gupta said.
Maharaja Hari Singh is accused by some uninformed and ignorant people of delaying the signing of the accession document. These people also say that this delay caused trouble in J&K but this is a patent falsehood. As early as in 1930, at a roundtable conference of princes in London, he had clearly demonstrated his Indian-ness. This was the reason he was not liked by the British who conspired against him and helped Pakistan grab a part of the territory ruled by him, Mr Gupta asserted.
It was mainly the contiguity of J&K to both India and Pakistan which created problems for Maharaja Hari Singh. He had signed a Standstill Agreement with the Dominion of Pakistan in August 1947 and offered to sign it with India also. However, there were no takers for his offer of Standstill Agreement in Delhi, as then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was not favourably disposed towards him. There is nothing on record to show that Maharaja Hari Singh was ever in doubt about his joining India, he added.
In its verdict on the bunch of petitions relating to Article 370, the Supreme Court had said in December last year: J&K does not have any ‘internal sovereignty’ distinct from the powers and privileges enjoyed by other States in the country. It had no sovereignty after the signing of the Instrument of Accession (IoA) and Proclamation issued by Yuvraj Karan Singh on November 25, 1949.