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Did Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru contemplate a strike to “save” Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) in 1947? It would seem so if one is to believe senior Right to Information (RTI) activist Venkatesh Nayak, who made an application to the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), popularly Teen Murti Library, to gain access to J&K files of 1947 to 1949 to find out what the truth was.
While Nayak was denied information of the J&K files, the transcripts of an interview historian BR Nanda did with Sir Francis Robert Roy Bucher, 2nd Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army decades later, suggest that there were “multiple references to files and papers related to J&K affairs that were compiled between 1947 and October 1949 by Sir Roy Bucher and handed over to NMML.”
Yet, the index of archival papers shows that the file Sir Roy Bucher had handed over to NMML was catalogued "closed" to the public under instructions of the Ministry of External Affairs, says Nayak, wondering how could the papers “relating to official matters of the Central or State government” escape RTI scrutiny.
In the interview, Sir Bucher has been quoted as saying that he has two letters at home from Nehru, in which the latter had become “very perturbed about the shelling of Akhnur and the Beripattan Bridge by Pakistan heavy artillery from just within Pakistan.”
The file Sir Roy Bucher had handed over to Teen Murti was catalogued "closed" to the public under instructions of the Ministry of External Affairs
Stating that Nehru enjoined him “to do all I could to counteract this”, the interview insists, “There was nothing which one could do except counter-shell.”
Sir Bucher quotes one of the letters as stating, "I do not know what the United Nations are going to propose. They may propose a cease-fire and what the conditions are going to be I do not know. If there isn't going to be a cease-fire, then it seems to me that we may be faced with an advance into Pakistan and for that we must be prepared. I assured my Prime Minister that all steps would be taken to meet any eventuality."
Nayak, who is with the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, demands, “In order to get to the bottom of the truth, the Sir Roy Bucher files and all other related papers, transcripts and microfilms in the NMML holdings as well as archival materials held in the National Archives and the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of External Affairs must be made public without any delay.”
Wonders Nayak in an email alert, “The NDA-II Government promised to declassify papers held in secret for several decades about Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. It is yet to fully deliver on this commitment. Will NDA-III go the whole length of the way to make archival papers about J&K public?”
Sir Bucher quotes one of the letters as stating, "I do not know what the United Nations are going to propose. They may propose a cease-fire and what the conditions are going to be I do not know. If there isn't going to be a cease-fire, then it seems to me that we may be faced with an advance into Pakistan and for that we must be prepared. I assured my Prime Minister that all steps would be taken to meet any eventuality."
Nayak, who is with the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, demands, “In order to get to the bottom of the truth, the Sir Roy Bucher files and all other related papers, transcripts and microfilms in the NMML holdings as well as archival materials held in the National Archives and the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of External Affairs must be made public without any delay.”
Wonders Nayak in an email alert, “The NDA-II Government promised to declassify papers held in secret for several decades about Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. It is yet to fully deliver on this commitment. Will NDA-III go the whole length of the way to make archival papers about J&K public?”
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