 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. You are watching Present, Past and the Future. It is paradoxical that although Hindu nationalists defy the nation in its feminine form, love for it, that is nationalism, must be robust, muscular and masculine. In the 70 years since India and Pakistan agreed to cease fire after hostilities for 15 months, much of the Hindutva narrative within the country has centered around demonizing Jawaharlal Nehru. He has been accused of being too soft and accommodative of Islamabad's designs, especially on Kashmir. Nehru is accused of not having the courage to drive back invaders who swamped Jammu and Kashmir in October 1947. He is also held guilty of internationalizing the issue by taking the matter into United Nations on 1 January 1948. This so-called image of Nehru being a weakling is juxtaposed with the decisiveness of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is emphasized that he has propagated a version of nationalism which is muscular and thereby manly. It fits with the publicized image of Modi as the alpha male with a 56 inches chest size. History, however, cannot be oversimplified and framed in black and white terms. Actions of leaders holding crucial offices during watershed moments in the past must be contextualized within the time they lived in and acted. There is no point in theorizing how Modi would have acted if he had been the Prime Minister in 1949 or 1948 for that matter. The way out of this hazy view of the past is to get more facts. Information of what precisely happened, who said what and recommended what. Much of this information in most countries, including India, lie buried and locked in government vaults. Many of these documents and personal papers are time-barred. But even if it is time to make public such documents, government and linked institutions often prevent truth from becoming public knowledge. The state has been known to use its discretionary powers to prevent release of information because it could damage their political interest. A recent such instance has come to light. A researcher wished to get into the heart of accusations against Nehru regarding Kashmir that he did not act firmly. It is not that he held a brief for India's first Prime Minister or any other party. His interest was in unearthing or finding out more information of what transpired in history in the public domain. I am joined by Venkatesh Nayak who has consistently researched the turbulent history of Kashmir in the period following its accession to India. He works with the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. Welcome to the program Venkatesh. Let me not say I decided not to tell the story of your right to information application from my side. I wanted to hear it straight from the horse's mouth in a nutshell, your RTI application, what you sought and what you were given and what you were denied. If you will just permit me a little bit of a background as to why I filed this RTI. Your viewers might be interested, why is it that this gentleman is looking for 70 year old RTI. RTI activates that for somebody who is interested in Kashmir. Absolutely right. You see, I work for the promotion and use of the right to information in Kashmir ever since I have been working there since 2004. We have trained citizens who are part of organizations in the civil society sector, journalists, students and private citizens in the use of right to information and they have used it to fantastic impact. Now, during one such interaction in Jammu and Kashmir, I was asked whether it would be possible to get a copy of the instrument of accession that Jammu and Kashmir, the princely state at that point of time in 1947, signed with the Dominion of India because that document is a disputed document. In fact, the very existence of the document has been called into question by not only Indian scholars but also foreign academics, notably people like the late professor Alastair Lamb. So, I took that as a challenge and filed an RTI with the National Archives, hoping that that is where. And then you finally managed to get it. No, no, no. I'm sorry, I must correct myself. I filed it with the Ministry of Home Affairs because the Jammu and Kashmir department is part of the Ministry of Home Affairs. And then eventually you got it. Eventually I got it from there and then that sort of got me interested in the dates on which. Further examining this particular part of the Indian history. Yes, yes. Because in addition to the existence of the document, there is also doubt about the actual dates on which the accession instrument was signed and accepted. Right. Now, that is also part of the research that is going on. As part of that research, I found out that the Thin Moorthy Library, which is also known as the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library based in Delhi, which is in a big controversy in terms of the membership of the executive board of that. The character also. Exactly. That is going to change very soon and people are going to be. Has already, in fact. Yes. People have been ejected out, unfortunately. So, that is where I found out that there are certain papers which have been microfilmed from the collection of Lord Mountbatten, the last vice-roy and the first governor general of independent India. And while going through that, I came across references to a whole range of documents. One of them was an interview that was done with Sir Roy Buker, who was the second commander in chief of the Indian Army after independence. This was just before, a year before general. And this interview of Roy Buker was done by B.R. Nanda. This was done by B.R. Nanda, the biographer. They noted academic and biographer. When was this interview conducted? This was done sometime in the late 60s or early 70s. The document actually is a typed up transcript of the interview. There are about 25 to 30 pages of that unfortunately. And you managed to see only. I saw the whole document. You saw the whole. But I could only get about three pages out because there is a limit. The three pages which you could get out. Yes. The most important point is that I think you have also written about is that Nehru actually wanted to take military action against what we now call POK to try to get it back. Absolutely right. In fact, it's a longish interview. It's sort of a freewheeling interview about what Sir Roy Buker remembered about his time spent in India and lots of interesting vignettes. Part of that is his conscious recall of what happened during the 1947-48 up to 49 period. And there in a couple of places he refers to a file that he had handed over before he or just around the time when he retired in January 1949 for safekeeping at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. I'll tell you just something which I read from some other source regarding his retirement in January 1949. So that set of papers were also mentioned in the index of transcripts maintained by the Nehru Memorial Library. And next to that entry in the catalog in that index, it said closed. Now I was not sure as to why archival papers should be closed for public scrutiny. Now this is without having applied under RTI. This is generally you take a membership. You take a membership of Nehru Memorial Library, you get access to the books that are there in the library and you also get access to the holdings. The microfilms that typed up transcripts of interviews, papers, Nehru's copies of his correspondence, they were all lying there. So ordinarily one should be able to access them with of course completing necessary permissions. They have this curious procedure where you take the director's permission for papers prior to 1947 and you take the chairperson's permission for accessing papers after 1947. This is Government of India papers. So this was part of that. So I went through that whole process, got access to the interview of Sir Roy Bukka and there I found out that he had given a file. I looked up that file. It said it's closed. And then I made enquiries with the senior officers in the Nehru Memorial Library and they said there are two grounds on which certain kinds of papers are closed. Now these are closed under the instructions of the Ministry of External Affairs. So there are two reasons. One is if a government agency says they must be closed or if the donor of the papers say they must be closed. But here in this case the government says so. Here we didn't know. The catalogue merely said closed. Do you know now? Now we know that's the reason why I filed the RTI. I said A, tell me which are all the papers that are available in your holdings that are closed from public scrutiny. Then I specifically asked those given by the central government, those given by the state government. Without getting caught in the technicalities, what your paper, what you were able to see? That includes that transcript of that interview with B. R. Nanda. Does it also include some personal papers of Bukka? No, no. It is just a purely typed out transcript of the interview. And this is Bukka's version of the interview. Bukka's version. No, no. This is Nanda's version of the interview, what he has typed out. And there there is a reference to that Kashmir file. So I said I want to look at that. Right. And what Bukka may have said somewhere else is not there in. No, no. This is exclusively the contents of his interview. So they are part of the closed papers, which we have not, no one has ever given. Yes, yes. Whatever he has given as official documents are closed. Venkatesh, I want to just share something with you which I learned. First thing is that you referred to the retirement of General Bukka in January 1949. Very peculiarly. I, while after deciding that I am going to be talking to you on this very important matter of public interest, I was doing my own reading and I stumbled on a blog written by Mr. Lal Krishna Advani in 2013, where he also talks that he has also been pursuing what General Bukka may have written at various places. And he says that he came across a website, there is no mention as to which particular website it is, that he came across a website where General Bukka's statements and his views are available on various matters related to the history of Kashmir at that point. Now the first thing is that we do not know whether what Mr. Advani is writing is correct or not, but nonetheless what he says is very significant because most of the observations which Mr. Advani presents as a correct observation requiring further study end up exonerating Nehru from the charges that have been leveled against him by the same organization and the party which Mr. Advani has been part of right from the time when he was a youngster. Now he says very interestingly is that General Bukka advised Nehru that militarily it is not possible to establish control and I am quoting parts of it entire Jammu and Kashmir because the British are supporting Pakistan. Bukka also says that Nehru wanted an Indian commander in chief which was Bukka himself in the middle of 1948 about six, seven, eight months before Bukka actually retired and General Karyappa became the first Indian commander in chief. But Bukka said told Mr. Nehru that this is not possible. Let me just make a slide mention that this is also a time when peculiarly the Pakistani counterpart is also British. General Douglas Gracie, he is on the other side. One of the arguments which General Bukka makes in his conversations with Jawaharlal Nehru is that it is going to be very problematic because British are there on both sides. So we cannot end up fighting one another. You know here is the CNC here and on the other side is also a British CNC. Then Bukka also told Nehru that the British did not want an Indo-Pac war and that he says that we feared that there would be hostilities that it would break out thereby we issued secret orders to all British officers to stand down in the event of war. He is very emphatic in his assertion that British did not want India to get the whole of Jammu and Kashmir because then Pakistan would feel very threatened and would eventually get overrun which the British did not want. Now the widespread feeling in London, this is again a direct quote was that if India was in control of areas contiguous to Pakistan the latter would not survive. Top secret cables exchanged between British missions in India, Pakistan and Whitehall tell the true story. He also says that the CNC was receiving instructions from the British High Commission in New Delhi. Now tell me that if this be the case where was Nehru at fault and why this campaign against him? Well, I think again like you quite rightly said in the beginning I hold no brief for any individual and that would apply to Mr. Advani as well. But at the same time I have not seen the source of information that he is making a mention. Ideally it would have been proper for him to mention. Let us leave it at that because it is pointless to comment on something that one hasn't read or seen but the interview that Mr. Nanda had with Sir Roy Buker portrays a very resolute Nehru but in words that certainly do him a lot of, give him a lot of credit. First of all in those extracts of the interview which I have actually made public on our organization's website Sir Roy Buker is reported to have said that he was amazed at the fantastic grasp of military issues that Pandit Nehru had at that point of time particularly in Kashmir that's number one. And number two the extract also mentions that he's got two letters from Pandit Nehru about the possibility of taking the battle into Pakistan. And he says, Sir Roy Buker says he can't quite remember whether those letters are lying with him at home or they are in the file which he has handed over to Nehru Memorial Library and he said he will check up and if they are not there in the library then he will give copies of those letters and he says that it was indicated to him at that point of time that Nehru was contemplating that if the UN mission on Pakistan, Jammu and Kashmir had failed or had not given any sensible solution for cessation of hostilities then he said that the Indian army would have to be prepared to invade Pakistan to enter into Pakistan, go into Pakistan, those are the words that are used. So it is not as if Nehru was somebody who was completely foreclosed all options because of the Panjshila or the peaceful coexistence philosophy that he later on pursued. Panjshila came several years later. Several years later. You talk about 48, 49. Exactly, I mean less than a decade. Panjshila is in the middle of 1950s. 1950s, 1955. The Bandum Conference and all of that. The Bandum Conference and all of that. In 1955. Exactly, so as a leader, as a statesman and as somebody not simply because of the fact that he hailed from Kashmir but because of the strategic importance of that region too newly independent. I think there is another thing which is very clear that what we read about the papers which Mr. Advani quoted. It appears that he also quotes an interview, lengthy interview given by General Sam Manik Shah to an Indian journalist, former editor of Mind Prem Shankar Jha where from those accounts is also clear that as far as Kashmir is concerned there really was not much of a difference of opinion between Nehru and Sadar Patel. One was a more mild mannered person Nehru. Sadar Patel was much more emphatic about saying everything on which both of them may have had the same position. That's the only thing which comes across. There is also a very interesting point which comes across in what Bucher is reported to have said from the website which Mr. Advani quoted is that Nehru had decided to strike at the basis of the raiders in Pakistan but Lord Mountbatten opposed this. Which means that the entire story which has been created that it was Nehru the weakling who just did not do anything and he allowed Pakistan to walk away with so many kilometers of our land and then ended up internationalizing the issue and creating problems for India which can only be solved by a very robust and a masculine Prime Minister representing a Hindu Nationalist School of Thought. In fact, this comes out in another part of the interview of Sir Roy Bucher with Biyarnanda where he says that Nehru was extremely concerned by the fact that there was cross-border shelling happening in the Akhnoor and nearby centers and that shelling couldn't necessarily happen through invaders who are simply armed with small arms. It would have to come from those who are each other. Tribal invaders would not be getting that kind of heavy artillery manpower. So a response to that would necessarily have involved the option of military action into Pakistan. Right. And of course good sense prevailed. We may today wonder whether it was good sense at all or not. There are different views on that. But the question is Sir Roy Bucher says that he was not privy to how the decision making process in the Indian cabinet happened at that point of time. So basically as we get towards the concluding part of our discussion I think there is a very strong case that not just your RTI application but whatever material is there especially on this very important chapter of Indian politics should be made available so that everything is there in the public domain and then we can know whose narrative is correct. Whether the demonization of Nehru is correct or it is not. Yes. In fact that would again all that is being mentioned is a set of papers that are part of one file. Now I wouldn't really say that the entire mystery would be clarified by that but the fact of the matter is this. Nehru Memorial Library is a public authority under the Right to Information Act. It is sitting on a set of papers that have been closed. And which must be made public. More than 70 years. Yes. The issue is this. The RTI Act says that in certain circumstances information can be withheld from public disclosure but there must be a justification. There is no justification. That justification must still be based on the RTI Act. The only justification at this stage is that if we do not release this paper we can continue a false narrative on Nehru and help our present political movement. Quite possibly. Quite possibly. In fact when the government has taken the steps to make a lot of information about Netaji Subash Chandra Bose's disappearance. Public. There is no reason why. There are still some documents which are yet to be made public. Yes. The PA was still sitting on a whole lot of documents. I think it's high time that the government actually reviewed not only the Kashmir papers but practically all the papers that are in the Nehru Memorial Museums and libraries. Not anything which is related to the National Movement. Absolutely. It constitutes affairs of the government of India. Exactly. That must be in the public. I think that's well said. Thank you very much for coming and joining me on this discussion. Yes. History has been crucial weapon for Hindu nationalists in their rise to power. The history of India has been depicted as a period when Muslim rulers subjugated Hindus and the country. It has followed from this argument that Hindus must correct this wrong and this can be done by enlisting behind Hindutva forces. While medieval history is all about interpretation, modern history has gaps which can be filled by more information. Effort to prevent this must be opposed. The labors of historians and researchers to bring out more information in the public domain must be supported and disseminated. Thank you for watching this episode and please do share with friends, family and colleagues.