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| Maharaja Hari Singh: A Royal Vignette from the Yore | | | Bhushan Parimoo
"Politicians and journalists
have much in common; both presume to talk too much to deliver homilies, both generally speaking requires no qualification at all for the job". This felicitous observation has been made by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, one of the greatest statesman-cum-writer of our time. It holds true even to the contemporary history of the Suryivanshi Rulers of the Jammu and Kashmir state refereed to generally as the Dogra Rulers. The Dogra Rulers have an envious record to their credit of consolidation of the borders which were once contiguous part; so too to the furtherance of education ,social justice, development and above all for delivering quick, hassle free and impartial administration. With the advent of so called peoples government which started from the very first day of Emergency Administrator under Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah it has mercilessly obliterated the pre-era history with a vengeance without any remorse together, by both politicians as well as journalist .This trend continues to remain a regular feature till date and project the Dogra Rulers in color of tyranny. However, tragically, those who knew facts have remained all along dumb mum and behaved sheepishly . The young readers may not be knowing that there used to be a Last Page column unbroken for more than 40 years by K.A. Abbas under a caption "Yes Daddy" in a weekly tabloid Blitz. Founded by Rustom Khurshedji Karanjia the paper had the focus on investigative journalism in 1941. That is the posture is adopted here.Desire to put things in right prospective is conspicuously found wanting.A self created tragedy.
Readers must have fresh in their memory as a morning dew, the September floods in Kashmir valley of 2014that caused unprecedented devastation . Knowledgeable people inform us that it could have been avoided or minimized through responsible administrative apparatus.
But unfortunately, right from head of the Government Omar Abdullah, his counsel of minister, head of the administration Chief Secretary Iqbal Khandey, Disaster management Authorities did not venture to take stock for fear of their lives. More so their own kith and kin were safe. What makes one wonder is that most Kashmiris are supposed to be a good swimmers. But no one came to take stock. It reflects unconcerned insensitive approach under sham democracy.
On the contrary, the readers may like to know how Survenshi Hari Singh took stock of the situation under emergent situation. Nilla Cram Cook an American born maverick, fortunately, has left an eminent record as an eye witness to the heroic spirit of the Kashmir Maharaja at a time when the lives of his subjects were at peril and all the more in circumstances that could have spelled personal physical doom for the Maharaja himself..
After arriving in Srinagar sometime about in the early summer of 1931, Nilla Cram Cook picked out a dunga for her residence. It anchored on a secluded spot near a ghat below a bridge across the River Jhelum. The accommodation consisted of four rooms, a living room, dining room, two bed rooms and two baths.
Behind it trailed the cook boat with the Muslim boatman who acted as butler. A cook and two other servants were part of the entourage. In those days, according to the royal union regulations, it was mandatory that four servants went with every houseboat. This regulation was promulgated as part of the ancient Indian system. The strict sanitary law of the ancient system kept the water of the canals and lakes crystal clean. The sewage off the boats was carried by sweepers and dumped in special pits on dry land.
With the houseboat moored at the ghat, a connection was made with a nearby power line which provided the electricity. Nilla's idea of houseboat life was to move about everyday to a place one desired to and wake up in a different lake or a river every morning. But the population generally anchored permanently for the power connection. However, when Nilla Cook desired her boatman to move the boat to Dal Lake, he expressed his reluctance as that would involve two electric light bills. The official regulations of the time provided that once a boat stopped and connected the lights, it was presumed that one had rented a ghat for a month. Hence, people in general stayed at one ghat all through the summer to avoid double billing. But Nilla Cram Cook was not a person of that sort and asked the boatman to move to the Dal Lake.
The boatman agreed to do so but delayed it by a day or two and then it began to rain. The initially moderate-looking rain turned into an uninterrupted heavy downpour.
Two days later Nilla woke up in the morning on the tops of the trees. The water channel between the chunth kul and the Dal Lake had risen to an alarming level almost about to overflow its banks.
Accordingly, the Dal Gate was closed by a massive steel gate that had been erected only a year or so earlier to ward off the floods then. With incessant rain, the river rose higher and higher. To monitor the flood situation, the maroon-coloured Rolls Royce of the Maharaja raced back and forth over the bridges. Finally the Maharaja himself came and stood in the mud and slush all through the night to keep a close watch on the worsening situation.
This crucial point was just behind the boat occupied by Nilla Cook. Had the river risen by another two inches it would have poured over the gate to flood the city.
And yet there was no panic. The fact that Maharaja himself was standing at a spot where he would have been the first to be washed away kept every one calm and quiet. No one managing the flood crisis failed to acknowledge the Maharaja's great courage and concern he had for the welfare of his people. Giving an eyewitness account of the situation in her travelogue My Road to India writes Nilla Cram Cook: "All I had ever heard, in connection with Maharajas, was about their sins and eccentricities. I had never heard of one standing in the mud all night, but with my own eyes I saw Maharaja Hari Singh do that a few feet from my houseboat. The chances were two to one that he would be washed away by the torrent. The water had risen an inch and half - when it suddenly stopped raining".
(With inputs by S.N. Pandita, writer, researcher and Secretary, N.S. Kashmir Research Institute, New Delhi) |
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