The Rediff Special/B K Nehru

'Farooq had many weaknesses, but he regarded himself as, and in fact was, a loyal citizen of India'

Once when the prime minister complained to me about the anti-Congress and anti-peoples activities of Farooq which had been reported to her, I said that no such reports had come to me. She said what was the point of people coming to me with their complaints, I never did anything right to them. I said that this charge was not correct. What I did was to investigate the charges and take action only if they were found to be true. On the other hand, they came straight to her now because she had no means of independently checking their veracity and consequently believed them.

The conveyor of the tales to the prime minister was obviously Mufti Sayeed, who had given up coming to see me. What he obviously expected of me was not to be an independent Governor performing his constitutional duties but an agent of the Congress party whose function was to do everything to put that party back in power. When he found that in spite of being the prime minister's cousin, I was not a party hack but a constitutional governor, he had no further use for me. He then took his tales direct to the prime minister who, unlike the governor, swallowed them whole.

I asked G Parthasarthy what exactly it was that Delhi wanted done in Kashmir. What was it that was compelling it to get rid of Farooq through this dirty intrigue and replace him by a known enemy of India. Farooq had weaknesses and they were many but it was evident that he regarded himself as, and in fact was, a loyal citizen of India. He had no hesitation in saying repeatedly and loudly that his country was India and that Kashmir was an integral and inalienable part of it. He was the only popularly elected leader of the Kashmiris who had ever said so; as we knew well Farooq's father had not.

GP did not disagree with me on this point; he himself seemed to have no explanation why it was imperative in the national interest to replace Farooq by Gul Shah. In an answer to my question of what Delhi wanted Farooq to do, he gave me four points. They all related to stronger action being taken against the secessionist elements in the valley, including the Jamait-e-Islami and the Jamait-e-Tulaba.

I said all this was being done already; the effort could and would certainly be intensified without difficulty. Was there anything else Delhi wanted? He though a great deal and then said that Farooq must break off his alliance with the Mirwaiz. I said that also could be done but it would take a little time.

I hung around in Delhi for a full five days without any contact being made with me either by Dhawan or any other official. Around 11.30 pm on January 23, when I was sound asleep, I got a telephone call from GP asking me what I was doing. I said that like all honest citizens I was sleeping in my bed. What else had he expected me to do at that hour? He asked whether 'we' could come along for a few minutes to discuss some matters on Kashmir. This was urgent. I said he was always welcome but who were the 'we'? He said Tikki Kaul would come along with him.

I got up, waited for half a hour and when nobody came, went back to sleep again. GP and Tikki arrived about half past twelve. They informed me that they had come straight from a meeting on Kashmir which had decided that Farooq must immediately take certain actions. A list of those actions was handed over to me. It contained nine points, compliance with which Farooq had to report by the January 26.

The points were a hotchpotch of unrelated demands, one of which read, 'people who have been arrested and whose properties such as orchards have been cut by unruly elements…. Such cases will be looked into immediately, due compensation paid and defaulters arrested.' On my asking who these gentlemen were who had been arrested and whose orchards had been destroyed -- because I had not ever had the faintest hint of any of this happening -- the two emissaries looked at each other and had no more idea of what the demand meant than I had.

Obviously some cock and bull story had been cooked up and served to the prime minister which uncritically become an element of State policy. Yet another irresponsible demand was that Farooq must stop Pakistanis infiltrating into the valley. The minor fact that the border was the responsibility of the Indian army and the Border Security Force, not of the state police had been overlooked!

Excerpted from Nice Guys Finish Second, by B K Nehru, Viking, 1997, Rs 595, with the publisher's permission.

Tell us what you think of this extract