A state holiday today, September 23, on account of Maharaja Hari Singh’s birthday, is perhaps the only bequest that was deliberately considered worth being retrieved/salvaged from our 1947-2019 history. Rest all was almost wholly consumed in the aftermath of August 5, 2019.
September 23 was re-fitted into the official frame with unceremonious cancellation of a state holiday on December 5, on account of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s birthday.
The photograph below of SMA is believed to have been taken on his first day in the prime minister’s Shergadi office on March 5, 1948, when the Maharaja announced an interim popular government with SMA as its prime minister.
A set of photographs arranged on the floor, behind him, are those of the Dogra dynasty rulers, presumably pulled from the walls in PM’s office for being preserved as mementoes of a bygone era.
A fateful scene at that; SMA is seen in the photograph in a deeply reflective mood.
Over seven decades or so later, the order changeth, as they say: SMA out and Maharaja back.
Sheikh Saheb used to say ‘We picked up the authority to rule the state from Lal Chowk’—-in the context of Maharaja’s flight from the summer capital in the wake of the tribal invasion from Pakistan on October 22, 1947.
On October 30, 1947, the Maharaja had appointed Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah as the ‘Emergency administrator’ of Jammu and Kashmir.
On March 5, 1948, Sheikh Saheb was appointed by the Maharaja as the prime minister of Jammu & Kashmir.
On June 20, 1949, the Maharaja had to leave the state for ‘health reasons’. He appointed his son, Yuvraj Karan Singh as Regent.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Interestingly, during his first term (1948-53) in office, SMA’s birthday was not included in the official list of state holidays.
Probably, J&K today is the only state or may be among very few out of over 500-odd, pre-1947 Indian states whose ex-ruler’s birthday is a gazetted holiday.
Another state holiday in J&K that got washed out post-Aug 5, 2019 was the July 13 ‘martyrs’ day’. In a way, the two events are interlinked.
Surviving witnesses of this tumultuous period of J&K’s history would be wondering how the future historian would find and assess the post-August 5, 2019 chapter whenever the time comes for it to be historically dissected.
*The author is a veteran journalist from Kashmir.
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