Were Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah related?

Was there a blood relationship? I wonder.

It did not require meticulous research, but just some serious reading, to know that Jammu’s troubles had begun soon after the monarch of J & K, Maharaja Hari Singh, from the Dogra community of Jammu, chose to sign his princely state’s accession to India, rather than to Pakistan, in October 1947 under the British Parliament’s Indian Independence Act, 1947. The troubles emanated from Sheikh Abdullah, the towering National Conference leader from the predominantly Muslim populated Kashmir Valley, who, for reasons as yet unclear, was the pet of Jawaharlal Nehru, our first Prime Minster among several Congress ones who believed that the Hindu community was a danger to free India. It was just a matter of time therefore that Nehru coerced Maharaja Hari Singh to hand over the reins of the J&K state to the interim government of Sheikh Abdullah and his National Conference Party — the first time that Muslims, not Hindus, became the rulers in J&K.

That is from Arvind Lavakare’s article “It’s Jammu vs Kashmir — finally“. Here’s the full article below the fold, for the record. It is a must read if one wants to understand how the dead hand of the Nabob of Cluelessness continues to strangle India and squeeze the life out of the nation.

Pragati — Kashmir Concerns Us

The September issue of Pragati is ready for the taking. Download (pdf).