The Rediff Special /B K Nehru

'Everybody agreed that Farooq was no good and should be gotten rid of'

From the picture I have been able to reconstruct of what happened at the meeting, it appears that virtually everybody agreed, some vociferously, some less noisily and some by keeping silent, that Farooq was no good and should be gotten rid of. They also agreed that as the only obstacle in getting rid of Farooq was the governor, there was no alternative but to get rid of him also.

The only person who seems to have disagreed, at least openly, was Babboo Haksar who said that as we had a perfectly good governor in Kashmir we should follow his advice. He seemed to have influence over Farooq; the best course would be to permit him to use that influence in the direction in which we wanted Kashmir to move. The only person who had supported Haksar was Rajiv saying that he thought that Haksarji was right. These voices were, however, not heeded.

But hardly had I arrived in Jammu that I was sharply reminded of who was the boss. There was a telephone call from Alex to say that I should take the next plane back along with the chief minister and present myself in Delhi by the evening. The orders were complied with. Next morning GP came along with a draft letter from the home minister to the chief minister. This contained in somewhat less garbled form, and with the elimination of the absurdities, the demands made in the memorandum that had been presented to me the previous morning.

Essentially, what Farooq was being asked to do was to change immediately and forthwith the whole anti-Indian political feeling in the valley which had gradually grown since 1953, probably even earlier. I said the home minister could certainly present this letter to the chief minister and get his acceptance of the demands made in it but it was hardly likely to have any effect on the ground.

In the afternoon the letter was presented to the home minister for signature -- this being the first time, as far as I could make out, that he saw it. He presented it to the chief minister who either gave his consent orally or in writing, accepting the demands made on him.

The chief minister was then presented before the prime minister and we were both sent home in an unheated BSF Avro -- the worst plane ever invented and one of the gifts conferred on us by Krishna Menon's anti-Americanism -- which gave me a cold from which I suffered for a long time thereafter.

I still have not been able to discover why this attempt to hustle me out of Kashmir was made. But I do know that my refusal to be so hustled caused even greater annoyance to Indira Gandhi than my continued refusal to carry out her major wish. She even asked my sister-in-law Sarup to persuade me to leave early.

The name of the new governor, Jagmohan, had been announced. Jagmohan's reputation then, based on the Emergency days, whether deserved or undeserved, was that he was a faithful servant of 1, Safdarjung Road. Nor had the Kashmiris forgotten that the victims of Turkman Gate were Muslims alone. It was clear from that appointment to everybody in Kashmir, except possibly to the easy-going target himself, that Farooq was going to be given a short shift.

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

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