Schofield Victoria. Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War
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political climate’. People were able to express their political views freely,
hooliganism was dying down and corruption decreased.
22
At the same time
Bazaz felt that it was necessary to maintain the momentum of liberalisation.
‘I found that after restoring the civil liberties of the Kashmiris, the Sadiq
government was inclined to rest on its oars, thinking that the people should
remain beholden for what had already been done for them.’
23
The accession issue, however, was still unresolved in people’s minds. In
addition, Abdullah’s conspiracy case had dragged on for nearly six years and
his continuing detention was proving embarrassing to the Government of
India. ‘Sheikh Abdullah on Trial but India in the Dock’ was just one of
many newspaper headlines at the time.
24
On April Abdullah was
honourably acquitted and released from Jammu Central jail. ‘Falsehood has
a rotten core. Their vile accusations were fully exposed before the public and
the case became a joke,’ wrote Abdullah.
25
He immediately went on the
offensive: ‘We have to win hearts and if we fail in this regard we cannot be
ruled by force,’ he said two days after his release.
26
But the Indian government
continued to maintain that the accession of the state of Jammu and Kashmir
to India was ‘full final and complete.’
27
‘Whatever be the grandiose delusions
and dreams Abdullah now nourishes, New Delhi must leave him and his
supporters in no doubt that accession is an accomplished fact and that only
some of the processes of integration remain to be completed,’ stated an
editorial in the Indian Express.’
28
‘Sheikh Abdullah is now a demagogue at
large, and he is plainly engaged in secessionist political activity,’ said The
Times of India, Bombay.
29
At the highest level, however, the ailing prime minister of India, Jawaharlal
Nehru, was no longer prepared to share these misgivings about his old
friend. ‘His attitude to Abdullah at this time was a blend of guilt at having
allowed him to have been kept so long in detention and of concern at the
consequences of his activities,’ writes Sarvepalli Gopal.
30
After his release,
Abdullah went to stay with Nehru in Delhi:
Panditji expressed his deep anguish and sorrow at the past incidents. I also
became very emotional and told him that I was glad to have convinced him that
I was not disloyal to him personally or to India . . . I implored him to take the
initiative in resolving the Kashmir problem. Panditji agreed and asked me to
visit Pakistan and try to persuade the President, Ayub Khan, to enter into
negotiations with his Indian counterpart.
31
For the first and last time in his life, Sheikh Abdullah went to Pakistan. Before
he left he issued a press statement: ‘We are faced with an alarming situation. If
we fail to remedy it our future generations will never pardon us
. . . The Kashmiri problem is a long-standing bone of contention.’
32
When Abdullah arrived in Rawalpindi, he received an enthusiastic welcome
from a crowd estimated to be half a million. ‘There was much excitement in
Pakistan about the first ever visit of Sheikh Abdullah – the Lion of Kashmir,’
writes Altaf Gauhar, Ayub Khan’s minister for information. ‘His critics
