Over the course of lot of these discussions on historical records and their availability - we are talking of 7th C and 10th C stuff here....below is an account of what happened much much nearer..how much do we know about it...
I was reading through the online edition of the hindu couple of weeks ago and chanced on this interesting link - its on the border dispute between india and pakistan ....check out the quality of response from the baroness of belgium
I am reminded of one of my fav books - Freedom at midnight and a few things which we do not get to see in our history books
Freedom at Midnight is a book by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins. It describes the events in the Indian independence movement in 1947-48, beginning with the appointment of Lord Mountbatten as the last viceroy of British India, and ending with the death and funeral of Mahatma Gandhi. this book contains a lot of bare ( gory) facts - and makes you look at a lot of our father figures in new light ( incl the mahatma, nehru, patel). there are also interesting accounts of Jinnah...incidentally this book is banned in pakisthan...
The authors having interviewed many of those who were there, including Lord Mountbatten, the book gives a detailed account of the last year of British India, the princely states' reactions to independence, the partition of India and Pakistan, and the bloodshed that followed. It also covers the events leading to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. The book is a result of deeply scanned and researched events which often are left out by the historians. The maps of India and Pakistan were drawn on religious grounds by a man named Cyril Radcliffe who had never visited India in his life. The book also explains the fury of both Hindus and Muslims, misled by their communal leaders, during the partition and the biggest mass slaughter in the history of India - more people lost their lives in this painful year than the two world wars put together...
why i quote this book is that,the letter of assession and the situation leading to raja Hari singh signing it are clearly outlined in the book...
The Raja did not want to accede either to india or to pakisthan but wanted to remain independant. Pakisthan wanted to get kashmir by force - but couldnt afford an outright war - hence they covertly armed afridis ( mujahideen??)from the north west frontier province and let them a free hand to ran sack kashmir and thereby intimidate the king to accede to pakisthan....they were successful and the band of gun men were just a few miles from the only servicable airport in srinagar ......
Lord mountbatten refused to send troops into kashmir till the king signed the assession - Mr. menon meets with the king takes the signed copy an flies back to delhi late evening( no night flights those days)...the raja goes to sleep telling his aide not to wake him up if indian army doesnt arrive by day break and instead shoot him in his sleep.....
the gunmen are hours away from securing the airport when they come across a christian mission with 13 foreign nuns and spend the night committing .......and fail to reach the airport...
indian air force plane lands in srinagar at 4.45 am and are successfull in beating back the gunmen.....thus kashmir came to india. go back and read the letter from Raja Hari singh now
this happened on 26th Oct 1947. How many of us are aware of these, in this age of advanced information exchange... makes you look back at the copper grants and culverts with new respect...
Pamela Mountbatten on the Jawaharlal-Edwina relationship
...In your book you write: âmy mother had already had lovers, my father was inured to itâ but then you add, âthe relationship with Nehru remained platonic.â Can you be really sure of that?
...Much of this friendship and affection, much of this relationship, actually lived its way in the letters they wrote each other. You reveal in your book that Pandit Nehru wrote to your mother practically every night at 2 oâ clock.
..There is another aspect of this relationship that you refer to in your book. You say that the Edwina-Nehru relationship was also of use to your father as Viceroy. That he often appealed to Panditji through the influence your mother had. And that this was particularly useful handling tricky situations like Kashmir.
...a lure of a simple spice led us into bondage. the deeds of a few great men and millions of unnamed behind them led us out of it. Let not their efforts be in vain, even if you dont remember each and every one of them, you owe them a reward for their efforts, for their supreme sacrifices- hold your head high with pride - march ahead to where we belong...on top of the world... Happy Independance Day.
Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of the nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.
At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her success and her failures. Through good and ill fortune alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength. We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again. The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?
Freedom and power bring responsibility. The responsibility rests upon this Assembly, a sovereign body representing the sovereign people of India. Before the birth of freedom we have endured all the pains of labour and our hearts are heavy with the memory of the sorrow. Some of those pains continue even now. Nevertheless, the past is over and it is the future that beckons to us now.
That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we might fulfil the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.
And so we have to labour and to work, and work hard to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart. Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also a disaster in this One World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.
To the people of India, whose representatives we are, we make an appeal to join us with faith and confidence in this great adventure. This is no time for petty and destructive criticism, no time for ill will or blaming others. We have to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell.
I beg to move, Sir, that it be resolved that:
(I) After the last stroke of midnight, all members of the Constituent Assembly present on this occasion do take the following pledge: 'At this solemn moment when the people of India, through suffering and sacrifice, have secured freedom, I, ..., a member of the Constituent Assembly of India, do dedicate myself in all humility to the service of India and her people to the end that this ancient land attain her rightful place in the world and make her full and willing contribution to the promotion of world peace and the welfare of mankind';
(2) Members who are not present on this occasion do take the pledge (with such verbal changes as the President may prescribe) at the time they next attend a session of the Assembly.
Hi I visited the Roja muthiah library today to do some research on pudukottai. there was this book called "The Pudukkottai State Manual " published by the brihadamba state press of kingdom of pudukottai.
to my great joy i discovered that the book had been presented to K.A. Nilakanta sastri by the author and Sastri himself had written his name in the first page. perhaps it came to RMRL from sastri's private collection
Do you know why we got freedom at midnight? 15th August alright, but why did it have to be the stroke of midnight? It never stuck me as odd - but after all, Pakistan got its freedom during daylight! why should our independence be gotten at midnight?
I didnt realize the difference until I got a gleaning from today's 'The Hindu'
The British Government had decided that the transfer of power to India, as represented by the Constituent Assembly should take place on the 15th of August. The British do not consult astrologers when they take political decisions, but there were quite a few eminent personages in Delhi who believed (many of them still do) in the effect of stellar combinations on human affairs and some of them began consulting astrologers as to whether the 15th was an auspicious day for the occasion. The advice was that it was not; a far more auspicious day was the 14th. But this was the day fixed for the renunciation of British authority over Pakistan and in fact, Lord Mountbatten, the Viceroy, was in Karachi that morning formally to announce the transfer of power to that country and he flew back to Delhi the same afternoon. A solution for the problem was discovered, to the best of my recollection, by the agile brain of Sardar K. M. Panikkar, a brilliant writer of history in the English language, a scholar in Malayalam, also a deep student of the more recondite features of Hindu religion, and withal a great wit. He said he had discovered a formula which would appease the stars as well as make it unnecessary for the British government to change the date which had been announced in Parliament. The members of the Constituent Assembly would meet on the 14th, about half-an-hour or so before midnight; this would propitiate the stars. They would, however, take the oath of allegiance to Free India after the stroke of midnight which, according to British recognition, would be the 15th. Everybody seemed satisfied and arrangements were made accordingly.
This is true - this is also the reason why Pakistan got theirs on 14th - a day ahead of us.
You can read more on these and why the exact date was picked by Mountbatten in the book Freedom at midnight - when the viceroy took charge with a specific agenda by the crown to go ahead with the release of india, he got questioned on when he would handover charge ...and he gave the first date that came to his mind - the day where he scored his major success against the invading japanese forces - during his tenure as the commander of the british forces in the far east - which he thought was his favorite month/day.
There is speculation to this day as to if the viceroy did this is haste - the famous Mountbatten Plan was drafted and the actual division between the two new dominions was taken on 3rd June.The border between India and Pakistan was determined by Sir Cyril Radcliffe, who had very little time to survey the actual land border to assess the physical boundries - dykes, lakes and canals etc. He had to depend on outdated land records and instead of the clinical strike of a surgeons scalpel - he used a butchers strike to cut through...
But more startling facts are revealed in the book, that Md Jinnah was ailing from acute TB ( having very little time left to live) and this information was kept secret even from the british secret service...Mountbatten himself stated later that had he known of this,he might have delayed the partition and ......
More startling facts the assassination of mahatma and how the investigations preceeding the actual shooting and the laxity of the government/police machinery and dealt with in graphical detail in this book - a must read. not for the faint hearted.