The Kashmir question and the alleged Patel-Nehru rift

Of the many lies the BJP–Sangh repeats ad nauseum to demonise India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, his (misrepresented) role in Jammu & Kashmir’s accession to India and his (misrepresented) differences with Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel on this issue must rank high.

The last notable attempt to stir this pot was made on 31 October at the National Unity Day (Rashtriya Ekta Diwas) celebrations in Gujarat’s Ekta Nagar, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi remarked that “Sardar Patel wanted all of Kashmir to merge with India, but Nehru did not let him”. The point of this propagandist narrative, dear young students of Indian history, is to cast Patel as a decisive nationalist and Nehru as a hesitant idealist.

Let’s see if the historical record — preserved in administrative documents, contemporary correspondences and the meticulous research of some serious historians — bears out this story.

Rajmohan Gandhi, in Patel: A Life, clarifies that Patel’s approach to Kashmir was ‘one of realism, not passion’, pointing out: ‘Patel disliked the Maharaja’s indecision but did not wish to rush into war over it… Patel accepted Nehru’s leadership on Kashmir because the matter involved foreign affairs and the United Nations, within the Prime Minister’s responsibility.’

Gandhi further emphasises: ‘There is no evidence of Patel expressing any frustration about not being allowed to integrate Kashmir fully or of advocating the military conquest of the entire state.’

Ramachandra Guha, in India After Gandhi, notes: ‘Both Nehru and Patel were driven by a shared consensus of nation-building, even if their methods and temperament occasionally diverged… Cabinet deliberations shaped the Kashmir policy as much as individual personalities.’

Guha warns against retroactively creating an ‘ideological chasm’, arguing that ‘the public portrayal of stark opposition between the two leaders greatly exaggerates their actual relationship.’

The historical context of accession

In October 1947, Jammu and Kashmir was one of the 562 princely states confronted with the choice of accession — to India or Pakistan — or remaining independent.

Maharaja Hari Singh was reluctant to choose either dominion immediately. According to V.P. Menon, secretary in the Ministry of States under Sardar Patel and a key negotiator of these integrations, Patel had initially accepted the Maharaja’s decision “to wait and watch” rather than pressuring him.

In The Story of the Integration of the Indian States, Menon records that Patel, until the tribal invasion from Pakistan in late October 1947, had been prepared to let the Maharaja make his own choice ‘even if that choice was independence’.

Menon’s account is unequivocal: Patel’s proactive involvement in J&K began after the Pakistani-sponsored tribal invasion, when the Maharaja sought India’s military help. The crucial meeting in Delhi on 26 October 1947, attended by Mountbatten, Nehru and Patel, decided that India would send troops only after the signing of the Instrument of Accession. It was Menon who flew to Jammu to secure the Maharaja’s signature — and it was Patel, not Nehru, who insisted that military response be immediate.

Nowhere in Menon’s account does Patel advocate a pre-emptive ‘merger of all of Kashmir’ before the invasion or express frustration with Nehru for preventing it. The chain of events shows that Patel’s actions were responsive to a crisis, not the thwarted vision of a unified Kashmir.

Patel’s own statements and correspondence

As recorded in Sardar Patel’s Correspondences, 1945–50 edited by Durga Das, on 3 January 1948, Patel wrote to Nehru: ‘We have to see that nothing is done which will jeopardise our position in Kashmir. You have handled this question and know it far better than I do.’

Patel’s tone is deferential, acknowledging Nehru’s leadership on the Kashmir issue. In several letters between October 1947 and early 1948, Patel appears preoccupied with the accession of Hyderabad, Junagadh, and integrating Sikh princely states in the Punjab — leaving Kashmir largely to Nehru due to the latter’s personal and emotional engagement with the region.

S. Gopal, in Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography (Vol. 2), confirms this division of responsibilities in the Cabinet. Nehru, being of Kashmiri origin and well acquainted with Sheikh Abdullah, naturally led policy in this area. Patel neither contested this arrangement nor expressed regret about it.

What led to ‘divided Kashmir’?

Prime Minister Modi’s assertion that “Kashmir was divided and burned in the fire of Nehru’s mistake” implies that the partition of the region was a direct outcome of Nehru’s decisions. This interpretation is a (motivated) misreading of the geopolitical matrix of 1947–48.

The division of Jammu and Kashmir between India and Pakistan was determined not by any internal policy difference in the Congress, but by the outcome of the First Kashmir War (1947–48) and the subsequent ceasefire supervised by the United Nations in January 1949. By then, Patel and Nehru had jointly signed the government’s acceptance of the ceasefire — a fact Menon, Gopal and Stanley Wolpert (Nehru: A Tryst with Destiny) all confirm.

Further, there is no evidence of Patel opposing the UN intervention or recommending military annexation of ‘all of Kashmir’. Historian Srinath Raghavan, in War and Peace in Modern India, notes that both leaders were pragmatic in recognising the military and diplomatic limitations facing India.

The notion that Patel’s wish to merge all of Kashmir was thwarted by Nehru’s idealism finds no archival support. As Rajmohan Gandhi writes: ‘No evidence exists that Patel privately or publicly advocated the complete military conquest of Kashmir or that he resented Nehru’s stewardship of the crisis.’

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Modi’s false reconstruction of this historical episode is also an attempt to justify the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019, and to project his government’s unilateral decision to do so as a fulfilment of “Patel’s thwarted desire for the complete integration of Kashmir”.

That’s a lie because Patel operated within the framework of constitutional negotiation and princely consent, while the 2019 abrogation was an imposition the Modi government tried to justify through disingenuous reinterpretation of the Constitution.

Hasnain Naqvi is a former member of the history faculty at St Xavier’s College, Mumbai. You will find more of his writing here