Forgotten men of Kashmir

Among all the important men associated with Jammu & Kashmir in 1947, Rai Bahadur Pandit Ramchandra Kak and Brigadier Henry Lawrence Scott remain perhaps the least known. This is surprising, given that Kak was Maharaja Hari Singh's minister-in-waiting from 1942 to 1945 and prime minister from June 1945 to 11 August 1947. Scott, meanwhile, was Kak's chief of staff from 1936 until 29 September 1947. Both men held similar views on the conflict that engulfed Kashmir soon after they left, and both later wrote these opinions down. Scott's The Options in 1947 and Kak's Jammu and Kashmir State in 1946-47: Dilemma of accession, the missing link in the story both offer relatively unknown windows onto the 'alternatives on accession'.

The question of accession was first posed to Hari Singh in late 1946, when Partition was still a remote contingency and accession was envisaged only with reference to united India. By the time it arose for a second time, in 1947, Partition had become a reality; the question then was whether to accede to India or to Pakistan. On both occasions, the maharaja's answer was the same: he did not want to accede, but would be willing to enter into a standstill agreement. This would enable the continuation of existing arrangements with the outgoing British India government with India and Pakistan on issues such as trade, travel and communication until new administrative arrangements were made.