Prof Hari Om
Hari Singh acceded J&K to India on October 26, 1947. The immediate fallout was transfer of state power from Jammu to Sheikh Abdullah of Kashmir and his Valley-based National Conference (NC). The development upset and shocked the Dogras of Jammu. There appear potent reasons for that. One, they had remained at the helm of affairs in J&K since March 1846, when Kashmir became part of the Dogra Kingdom under the Treaty of Amritsar, signed between Raja Gulab Singh of Jammu and British Indian Government. Two, Sheikh Abdullah had consistently opposed the Treaty of Amritsar, demanded independence from what he called the ‘oppressive Dogra rule’ and had even gone to the extent of launching ‘Quit Kashmir Movement’ in 1946. The third fundamental reason was Sheikh’s negative attitude towards Jammu and his well-known ‘communal, separatist and Valley-centric ideology’.
Convinced that the transfer of the state power to Sheikh Abdullah would hurt the nation in J&K, hamper the process of integration and jeopardise the legitimate rights and interests of Dogras, visionary Pt Prem Nath Dogra, who had to retire prematurely in 1932 from the post of Wazir-e-Wazarat Muzaffarabad under pressure from the State Government, and many other concerned citizens founded J&K Praja Parishad on November 17, 1947 at Jammu with Hari Wazir as its president. Balraj Madhok was also behind the initiative. He wanted his associates to name the party as ‘Jammu Praja Parishad’ but his suggestion was not accepted on the ground that Maharaja Hari Singh had acceded the whole of J&K to India, and not just Jammu, and that if they were to provide an effective alternative to the politics, Sheikh-style, Praja Parishad had to be a pan J&K party. Maharaja Hari Singh gave his support to the idea of the Praja Parishad. The two basic objectives of the Praja Parishad were to integrate J&K fully into India and fight for the Jammu cause.
Several factors helped PRAJA PARISHAD leaders, including Sher-e-Duggar Pt Prem Nath Dogra, expand their support-base and spread their ideology. These, inter-alia, included (1) the unilateral ceasefire on December 31, 1948 that enabled Pakistan to swallow J&K’s strategic Gilgit-Baltistan region and what we call Pakistan-occupied-J&K (PoJK); (2) the forced exile of Maharaja Hari Singh on April 23, 1949; (3) the adoption by the Indian Constituent Assembly (ICA) of a motion on September 27, 1949 which read ‘notwithstanding anything contained in paragraph 4 (of the Schedule to the INA rules), all the four seats in the ICA allotted to J&K may be filled by the ruler of J&K on the advice of his PM Sheikh Abdullah’ (paragraph 4 provided for 50 per cent nominated and 50 per cent elected representatives as far as princely states were concerned); (5) adoption by the ICA of Article 306 (Article 370) on October 19, 1949 under which J&K was to get separate status on the ‘score of religion’; (6) lop-sided delimitation and unfair, excessive and preponderant representation to small Kashmir Valley in the assembly (43 out of 75 seats to Kashmir, 30 to Jammu and 2 to Ladakh) and (7) the wholesale rejection of nomination papers of the Praja Parishad candidates for the J&K Constituent-cum-Legislative Assembly elections in 1951.
However, it was the Wazir-e-Azam Sheikh Abdullah’s April 10, 1952 highly ‘seditious’ speech at Jammu’s R S Pura; his insistence on ‘hoisting the NC flag in Science College Jammu’ on January 15, 1952 and the June 14-July 24, 1952 parleys between the Prime Minister Nehru and Sheikh on the political future of J&K vis-a-via India, which provoked political explosions not only across Jammu province but also in others parts of India, especially Delhi and the neighbouring Punjab, leading to the arrest of the Sheikh and collapse of his government on August 9, 1953.
To be more precise, things changed dramatically in Jammu after January 15, 1952, when the Sheikh hoisted the NC flag in the Science College. Students, including girl students, held massive protest demonstrations across Jammu province hoisting national flags and many sat on hunger strike against the NC, which continued for 38 days. Such was the nature and magnitude of the students’ protests that the police and the army swung into action and brutally attacked them between January 15 and February 7. Many were sent to jail. 16 youths lost their lives. Angered by the reign of senseless brutalities unleashed by the administration, integrationists also took the plunge and held massive demonstrations. The state police treated them like they treated innocent protesting students. It didn’t even spare the press. It invoked section 75 of J&K Constitutional Act of 1939, under which the final interpreter of the constitution was the State Council of Ministers, and not the J&K High Court of Judicature, and the Press and Publication Act of 1932, under which the Government could declare any article ‘seditious’ and seize the press which published the article. What provoked the Sheikh Administration to act against the Press was an article ‘Kansa rule and atrocities on children a good omen’, published by The Kashmir Mail on February 5, 1952. The said article was declared seditious. The father of journalism in J&K, Mulkh Raj Saraf, was confronted with a choice between a fine of Rs 1,000 and closure of his Press. The matter went to the Full Bench of the High Court. Disposing of the case, the Bench said, “The court has to construe the Act as it is and it is bound to give effect to the language of the Act as long as it is in existence even though it thinks that the provisions of the Act have not kept pace with the changed time”.
In the meantime, the Praja Parishad under the effective and skilful leadership of its new president P N Dogra intensified its struggle against the Sheikh and his government. On June 19, 1952, President Rajindra Prasad visited Jammu and the Praja Parishad delegation led by P N Dogra submitted a memorandum against separatist moves of the Sheikh government. On June 26, 1952, the Praja Parishad held a huge demonstration outside the Parliament to urge PM Nehru to reject outright the Sheikh’s divisive demand seeking the creation of ‘J&K republic within the Indian Republic’, but with no result.
Finally, on August 8, 1952, the PRAJA PARISHAD leadership in a convention held at Jammu chalked out its course of action against the ‘policies of separatism which were tending to make J&K an independent state with separate flag, separate constitution and separate head’. The Jan Sangh president Shyama Prasad Mookerjee was present. It was on November 17, 1952 that the Praja Parishad launched Satyagrah with ‘Ek Nishan, Ek Pradhan aur Ek Vidhan’ as its slogan. The Satyagrah continued till July 7, 1953. It was a massive affair all across Jammu province. The women participation was on an unprecedented scale.
As expected, the Sheikh Administration used brutal force to crush the Praja Parishad and its Satyagrah. Section 50 (later changed to section 144) and curfew were imposed again and again to control the situation. About 2,500 Satyagrahis were arrested and put in jails for months. P N Dogra, many other Praja Parishad leaders and about 100 prominent personalities sympathetic towards One Flag, One Constitution and One President movement, were also put behind bars for months without trial. Many, including P N Dogra, were kept in Kashmir jails during winter. The nature of brutal force used by the Sheikh administration could be gauged from the fact that ‘more than 30 Satyagrahis were shot dead’ at different places in Jammu province. Leave aside thousands of others, including women, who got fatal injuries during indiscriminate police firing.
S P Mookerjee, who was in constant touch with the PN Dogra, took up the issues of J&K integration and its political future, the Sheikh’s politics of separatism, discrimination with Jammu and Ladakh and atrocities on the Jammu students and Satyagrahis with PM Nehru and urged him to concede the demands of the Praja Parishad but he came out of all these exercises minus everything. Instead of appreciating the integrationists, Nehru dismissed them as ‘communal’ and anti-Kashmir and remained on side of the Sheikh.
Ultimately, on May 11, 1953, S P Mookerjee, who had virtually made the Praja Parishad movement an all-India one, entered J&K through its gateway, Lakhanpur, breaking the permit system to tell the nation that J&K was legitimately Indian and all had the right to come to J&K. His whole objective was to give further impetus to the ongoing EK Nishan, Ek Vidhan aur Ek Pradhan” movement in Jammu and make the Nehru Government to integrate J&K fully into India by abrogating Article 370. Mookerjee died in Srinagar on June 23 in ‘mysterious’ circumstances. Many say that he was ‘killed by the Sheikh administration’.
The martyrdom of S P Mookerjee in Kashmir for the national cause further aggravated the situation for the Sheikh, who also left no stone unturned to unsettle the settled in Kashmir. His hobnobbing with the US and his ambition to create a ‘Switzerland-type independent Kashmir’ with himself as its ‘Sultan’ all left PM Nehru with no other option but to have him dismissed and arrested on the charge of ‘sedition’ on August 9, 1953.
The fall of the Sheikh led to the virtual collapse of the Praja Parishad movement. Thereafter, the Praja Parishad functioned like the chapter of the Jan Sangh in J&K. P N Dogra, who had become the president of the Jan Sangh in 1953, along with four other Praja Parishad leaders, entered the J&K Assembly as an elected MLA. His interventions and speeches in the assembly were just superb, nation-centric and against the cult of separatism based on religious fanaticism.
In 1964, the Praja Parishad officially merged with the Jan Sangh at an Ekta Sammelan. P N Dogra facilitated the said merger. The last agitation led by PN Dogra was for the removal of regional disparities in the supply of food grains, both in terms of rates and scales. It happened in 1967-68. P N Dogra was the first ever person from J&K to become president of a national party. He died in Jammu on March 21, 1972. Ever since then, the people of Jammu province are struggling to get a leader like PN Dogra so that they could also have a real and effective say in the governance of the state and get political status they and Jammu deserve in the Indian polity. It bears recalling that Kashmiri politicians would invariably visit his residence at Jammu’s Kacchi Chawni to seek his support before the reopening of the durbar move offices in Jammu every November. Such was his leadership.