New Delhi: A set of top secret documents, a British general, and the controversial accession of Kashmir to India — an article that appeared in The Guardian earlier this week has stirred up debate in Indian academic circles.
The 14 February article says that the Indian government is trying to stall the declassification of a collection of documents from 1947, known as the Bucher Papers, over fears that its contents could affect foreign relations. The documents are believed to contain “political and military arguments” related to why India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru decided to grant Kashmir special status under Article 370, it says.
Scholars ThePrint spoke to were all of the opinion that these papers should be made public. However, there is debate over the exact nature of the contents of these documents. While all believe that the papers do not “throw light on the reasoning for Article 370”, some say one cannot “jump to conclusions” regarding the contents when the papers are not accessible.
These papers are also not the only documents that detail the advice that “may have influenced Nehru’s decision to grant Kashmir special status”.
So, what are the Bucher Papers? General Sir Robert Roy Bucher served as the second commander-in-chief of the Indian Army between 1948 and 1949. He visited New Delhi in the 1960s and 1970s and handed over some of his papers to the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) in two installments, in 1965 and 1970.
During one of these visits, he also recorded an oral history with historian B.R. Nanda — the date of the recording is not mentioned on the transcripts of the interview, which ThePrint has accessed.
Excerpts from Bucher’s oral interview indicate he was acutely aware of how important his papers would be for posterity, and his willingness to share them with Indian record-keepers.
“When I get home, I will see if I have any other relevant papers, and if so, they will be sent to the Nehru Memorial Museum,” he says at one point. “What went on in the Indian Cabinet, I do not know, but I have two letters at home (no I think they may even be in the file here; anyway I have copies of them at home if they are not in the file) from Pandit Nehru,” he says at another.
The Bucher Papers, as they have come to be known, are also maintained at the National Army Museum in Chelsea, London, where they are accessible to the public.
The classified documents at the NMML could offer valuable insights into Nehru’s decision-making process — as witnessed by Bucher, who was in close contact with him, as well as defence ministry officials and the then commander-in-chief of Pakistan’s army.
“There is a system when papers are received here,” Nripendra Misra, chairman of the NMML, told ThePrint. “The donor decides if the papers are to be open for research or not.”
“There are no allegations, and we don’t deliberately keep things under wraps,” he added.
The NMML is an autonomous body under the Government of India that holds private collections. These collections are available to the public based on the discretion of the person or family the papers belong to.
According to NMML policy, only 1/4th of some selected private papers are allowed to be scanned or photocopied by scholars. Bucher’s oral transcript is only around 20 pages long — so scholars can photocopy or scan only a selected five pages, though they can read the rest.
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Questions on transparency
Even though Bucher’s oral history shows that he wanted his papers to be housed at the NMML, the donor of the classified papers seems to be the Ministry of External Affairs — according to an RTI filed by activist Venkatesh Nayak.
“Due to instruction of donor of this paper, i.e. Ministry of External Affairs, this paper is not disclosed to the public,” reads an RTI response dated 18 November 2019, seen by ThePrint.
Typically, documents from all Union ministries go to National Archives of India, not the NMML.
There is no confirmation of whether what is available in this collection held by the NMML is consistent with what is publicly available in the UK. Scholars such as Srinath Raghavan, who have studied the papers in London, say that the collection there has a list of the copies that have been handed over to the NMML.
“The Bucher transcripts are different from the snobbish narrative of the British Raj,” said Nayak, the RTI activist and columnist who has been fighting for the papers to be made public, while talking to ThePrint.
“In 2005, the defence ministry published the official account of the military operations conducted in Jammu & Kashmir in 1947-48. So, what is this great need for maintaining secrecy around the Bucher Papers?” he asked.
Bucher’s oral remembrances challenge the dominant narrative that Nehru dragged his feet on the question of Kashmir’s accession, and waited for the United Nations Commision on India and Pakistan to propose a ceasefire before accepting it. This has been documented before — the Nehru Papers, also held by the NMML, make clear that the ceasefire was ordered a few days before the UN Commission.
The contents of Bucher’s Papers and correspondences could, however, shed some light around the exact timeline of how Kashmir came to join the Indian Union.
Nayak has been fighting for transparency around the papers for years. He was first interested in the Instrument of Accession signed by the state of Jammu and Kashmir, and tried to access it from the National Archives of India in 2014. This led him to the Bucher Papers, recorded at the NMML in microfilm.
But the NMML lists Bucher’s papers and several others as “closed” in the index, according to Nayak. He filed the first of four RTIs in 2019 — the answer revealed that the Ministry of External Affairs seemed to have a say on the papers, and preferred them to be confidential.
Nayak challenged the refusal and filed a second appeal, which went to the Central Information Commission (CIC) in September 2021. The order, which ThePrint has accessed, observed Nayak’s appeal as being in “national interest”, and directed the Central Public Information Officer to “secure the necessary permission” before sharing the information with Nayak.
This never happened. In December 2021, Nayak filed an RTI with the CIC to inspect his own case file. The response in January 2022 was that he could not access it — the CIC granted the NMML privacy protection as a third party.
Nayak filed his fourth RTI with the NMML in December 2022, asking for the action the library has taken, and what correspondence it has had with the MEA. The RTI is still pending.
“The egregious thing is that the papers are embargoed in India and available abroad,” said Srinath Raghavan, historian of military and strategic history. “This is a private paper collection given to the NMML by the individual concerned. The Ministry of External Affairs has no jurisdiction in this matter.”
NMML chairman Misra told ThePrint that the institution follows the process and judgements of the CIC. ThePrint has reached Information Commissioner Uday Mahurkar seeking comment, but is yet to receive a response. This report will be updated when a response is received.
‘Unfair to Indian scholars’
“To the best of my knowledge, the Bucher papers that the NMML holds have not been accessible to any scholar, so how do we know it’s a copy of what exists in London? As a student of history, I can’t jump to make these conclusions,” said Nayak.
Not having seen the papers, one cannot make a wholesome judgement that these papers are so sensitive that continued secrecy is justified, he added.
“The idea that there’s something in the Bucher Papers at the NMML that’s not available in the original set is fallacious,” said Srinath Raghavan. Raghavan’s Twitter thread on The Guardian article points out that a copy of the papers are held in the United Kingdom.
Short thread. Headline: the Bucher Papers have been available in the National Army Museum in London for years. The Guardian should know better. Several scholars, including me, have used them and written about Kashmir operations of 1947-48 (1/4) https://t.co/YQ4L8PCr6H
— Srinath Raghavan (@srinathraghava3) February 14, 2023
But saying that “the Guardian should know better” is “intellectual snobbery,” said Nayak.
Scholars at the NMML have accessed parts of the transcript of Bucher’s oral history. However, they have also faced issues when trying to access sensitive material related to Kashmir.
But this is nothing new. Besides the Bucher papers, documents related to pre-Independent India and nascent India — between the years 1947 and 1949 — are freely available in archives like the National Archives in Kew and the British Library, but difficult to access in Indian archives. Indian scholars therefore often need to travel abroad to research Indian military and strategic history.
“An example is that certain sections of the Nehru Papers have been clearly redacted from the collection at the NMML — when asked, the library staff said that they are not accessible,” said one scholar who researches Indian foreign policy. “A lot of files are stuck due to red tape. Many times, they’re either redacted or unsorted, and one requires special permission to be able to access them. The government seems to be generally paranoid on material between 1947 and 1948.”
The Guardian article also quotes excerpts from a letter written by NMML chairman Misra to the Indian foreign secretary arguing that the Bucher Papers “are very important for scholarly research” and requesting declassification.
“This puts Indian scholars in an unfair way. The chairman of the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library is right — they should declassify it,” said Raghavan.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
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