Book review: 'Kashmir & Beyond 1966-84'

Kashmir & Beyond 1966-84: Select Correspondence between Indira Gandhi & Karan Singh
Edited by Jawaid Alam
Penguin/Viking
392 pages
Rs699

This is the most boring book I have ever subjected myself to. The title is misleading; I took it up thinking I would get another view on the Kashmir issue. There is little of it. There is little of anything except the deathly-dull Karan Singh, scion of J&K’s former princely family and minister in several Congress governments.

The book promises correspondence between Indira Gandhi and Karan Singh, but there is very little of her and much more of him; obviously these are the letters from his collection, not hers. A sample:

(From New Delhi, 2 August 1969): “…I feel the banquet arrangements at Rashtrapati Bhavan are most unsatisfactory. The food served is a curious nondescript mixture of Western and Indian, with little distinctiveness either in form or content. For example, the banquet for President Nixon started with a very mediocre hors d’ oeuvre with baked beans straight out of a tin, and then went on to a cold consommé which had no definable flavor whatsoever. Instead of serving Indian sweets there was marzipan in the small dishes…”

Well, I admit this was the only part of the book (p 118) where I did not fall into a near-coma state of sleep. The next opportunity came on page 160:

(Note, 28 March 1970): “I would submit the real necessity for a foreign car arises because of the question of air-conditioning. As I mentioned in the Cabinet, in a city like Delhi where the temperature during summer soars unbearably high, an air-conditioned car cannot be considered an avoidable luxury. Ministers have to spend a good deal of time driving between their residence, office and Parliament, and without air-conditioning this would become extremely uncomfortable, particularly for people like myself who have spent the better part of their lives in a cool climate…”

Yes. You would think that the correspondence dealt with the Bangladesh War, or the Shimla Accord, or Sheikh Abdullah’s death, or even about Zulfi Bhutto’s sexiness. But no, it deals with this trivia. I wonder how the Prime Minister put up with this crap.

There is a faintly interesting exchange on p 191-194, where Karan Singh, the Tourism and Civil Aviation minister, proposes that Air India get a new Chairman. His argument: the legendary JRD Tata had crossed 70 and the airline would have had to face new challenges in the 70s. Mrs Gandhi sensibly vetoes the idea of upsetting JRD.

One interesting letter (23 November 1970) comprised Karan Singh’s complaints against the Plebiscite Front, which Sheikh Abdullah’s followers formed after he was jailed in 1953 (he dissolved it in 1975). Karan Singh speaks of the Plebiscite Front in language that uncannily foretells accusations against the Hurriyat Conference. Obviously, political myopia has never recognised that there is a constituency in Kashmir that is slightly beyond the mainstream, and which must be dealt with in a more nuanced way than other dissidents are handled. These letters are proof that we in India just never learn.

Otherwise, there is nothing much to recommend in this collection of 326 letters. The Editor has done a good job of explaining the issues in each letter in lucid footnotes. Yet even scholars will feel asphyxiated by this serial whining posing as primary historical source. Avoid it.