COMMENTARY
with a close eye for details charactised
Balraj Puri (1928-2014)
An Extraordinary Socialist Democrat
Manoranjan Mohanty
For more than half a century,
Balraj Puri was a journalist,
political thinker, federalist,
human rights activist, socialist
democrat and much more. He
spoke for Jammu and Kashmir
and of Jammu and Kashmir to the
rest of the world and was widely
respected in the state. A tribute by
a friend of many decades.
Manoranjan Mohanty (mmohantydu@gmail.
com) earlier taught Politics at the University
of Delhi.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW October 18, 2014
I
ndia lost a political thinker, a social-
ist democrat and a radical federalist
in the passing away of Balraj Puri in
Jammu on 30 August 2014 after a pro-
longed illness. The loss has been mourned
not only in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) cut-
ting across regions and communities, but
all over India among human rights activ-
ists, autonomy movements, socialists and
other left groups and above all by forces
of secularism and communal harmony.
Balraj Puri pursued certain democratic
values of politics and social transforma-
tion for over six decades of activism and
intellectual work that inspired gene-
rations of youth and anticipated many of
the central concerns of the 21st century.
Activist-Intellectual
Like many of the leaders of India’s free-
dom struggle, Puri was both an intellec-
tual and a political activist. Starting off
as the young editor of the Urdu weekly,
Pukar in 1942, he remained a journalist,
among other things, all his life. In fact
he set up the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in
Jammu for the training of competent
journalists. Almost all important dailies
and weeklies of India carried his articles
from time to time. The Economic Weekly
and later the Economic & Political Weekly
carried many of his seminal pieces pro-
viding a valued perspective on crucial
junctures of Indian polity as well as on
the critical points in the history of the
Kashmir question. Policymakers and the
public were equally anxious to get the
Balraj Puri perspective on major political
issues. He set up the Institute of Jammu
and Kashmir Affairs in 1986 to system-
atically promote research and writings
on J&K. In a rare way he combined activ-
ism with scholarship, directly participat-
ing in people’s mobilisation while writ-
ing analytical articles presenting his
critical assessment of the actions and
policies of governments and parties.
Historical depth and a theoretical grasp
vol xlIX no 42
Balraj Puri’s writings which included not
only commentaries but a number of
books. Besides his well-known books on
Kashmir, Puri’s scholarship on Muslims
of the subcontinent set high standards in
objective analysis as was reflected in the
book Muslims of India since Partition
(latest edition in 2007).
Balraj Puri
and the Kashmir Question
From 1947, when he was in the forefront
of the efforts of the Jammu Students
Union to maintain communal harmony
in the wake of the armed conflict, and
until the end of his life he had a clear
perspective on the Kashmir question. He
asserted that full play of freedom and
participatory democracy with regional
autonomy was the only way to address
the aspirations of the people of J&K. He
worked to realise this objective all his
life and confronted ruling parties and
opposition groups with clear democratic
alternatives. That earned him the good-
will and respect from all sections of people
of J&K – something which very few could
claim. He played a key role in the making
of the Delhi Agreement of July 1952 per-
suading Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru
to accept autonomy for J&K under the
popular leadership of Sheikh Abdullah.
He strongly condemned the subsequent
steps taken by the central government to
curb democratic space and erode the au-
tonomy of J&K which was guaranteed
under Article 370 of the Constitution.
In 1964 it was on his initiative
that Sheikh Abdullah was received by
Nehru and a fresh understanding was
in the making when Nehru passed away.
Balraj Puri mediated between Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi and Sheikh
Abdullah, setting up the dialogue between
G Parthasarathi and Mirza Afzal Baig in
1975 that paved the way for democratic
politics in J&K, only to be disrupted once
again a few years later.
Balraj Puri insisted that free and fair
elections must take place in the state
and the three regions – Jammu, Ladakh
and Kashmir – be given adequate auton-
omy to manage their affairs. In his book,
Jammu: A Clue to the Kashmir Tangle
(1966) he spelled out his thesis. When
31
COMMENTARY
Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah consti-
tuted a Committee on Regional Autono-
my with Balraj Puri as chairperson in
1999, he got the opportunity to put his
idea into practice. But to his disappoint-
ment he found that Farooq Abdullah
was not prepared for that line of action,
and so he resigned. His statement on
that occasion is a blueprint for regional
autonomy for J&K providing a frame-
work of relationship not only between
the centre and the J&K but also among
the regions within J&K.
He was consistently critical of the way
the Praja Parishad in Jammu frustrated
all the democratic initiatives that Nehru
and Sheikh Abdullah undertook in the
early years of Independence. Later, the
Jana Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP) persisted in their demand for
scrapping Article 370 and went slow on
it only under the pressure of coalition
partners. Once when L K Advani blamed
Nehru for not allowing the Indian Army to
establish control over the whole of Kash-
mir in 1947 and Indira Gandhi not doing
the same in 1971, Balraj Puri retorted that
much of the present crisis was caused
by the communal politics of the Praja
Parishad and its successors, while Nehru
and Indira and other central leaders did
share the blame for denying the full play of
democratic politics in Kashmir.
In his monumental work, Kashmir:
Towards Insurgency (1993) he gave detailed
reasoning as to how this process took a vio-
lent turn and how the secular foundations
of Kashmir society were ruptured.
Radical Federalist
Balraj Puri was respected by all the po-
litical forces of J&K, including the vari-
ous Hurriyat factions because he pointed
out the root cause of alienation of the
Kashmiri people, namely, lack of access
to political power. His famous formula-
tion that “development is no substitute
for political aspirations of people” was
true of not only J&K, but for all autono-
my movements in the country. He was
extremely critical of the way the United
Progressive Alliance government wavered
for long on the issue of the formation of
Telangana State.
Puri’s notion of federalism was one of
multilayered structuration of power, right
32
down to the panchayat level. He be-
lieved that the regional level of demo-
cratic funtioning would guarantee pro-
tection of minority rights at every level.
All regions had diversities which needed
to be respected. That was possible by de-
centralised self-governance. He suc-
ceeded in the campaign for the forma-
tion of the Ladakh Autonomous Hill De-
velopment Council that the central gov-
ernment under the prime ministership
of P V Narasimha Rao granted in 1993.
Balraj Puri was upset by the fact that
J&K took a long time to amend the 1989
J&K Panchayat Act to adopt the statutory
provisions of the 73rd amendment of the
Constitution. When it finally did in 2011,
the law turned out to be a disappoint-
ing framework that placed nominated
members at the district and block levels
while allowing direct election of ward
members only at the lowest level of
the halqa panchayat. In contrast to the
73rd amendment which provided elec-
tion of not less than 33% women the
J&K law stipulated the nomination of
only two women to the rural councils.
Puri strongly criticised the whole exer-
cise as another form of continuing
centralisation of governance rather
than promoting decentralised partici-
patory democracy.
Debates over systems of federalism in
the contemporary world veer around
types of distribution of power. For Balraj
Puri, however, the key question was
whether the central leaders devolved
power as a management strategy to se-
cure conformity in implementation of
the central policies at local levels or
sharing of substantive power at every
level which made them interdependent.
The radical federalist in Balraj Puri did
not accept the regional unit as a subordi-
nate agent but as an agency of self-deter-
mination with decisive power over local
resources and having a right to plan its
own development. That is what makes
Balraj Puri such a relevant thinker in the
21st century.
Socialist Democrat-Human
Rights Advocate
Balraj Puri remained a socialist through-
out his life. He was an activist and an
office-bearer of Praja Socialist Party and
October 18, 2014
stayed as such, refusing to follow Ashok
Mehta and others and merge the party
with the Congress. For Puri the essence
of socialism was the pursuit of equality
and human rights through a democratic
polity. He was not attracted to either JP’s
partyless democracy or M N Roy’s radi-
cal humanism which were the centre of
much debates in the 1960s. Freedom of
expression, competitive party politics
and independence of judiciary – the ba-
sic postulates of liberal politics were
dear to him. But at the same time he was
a sharp critic of capitalism and was
therefore critical of policies of the Con-
gress Party which according to him fa-
voured big business in India.
The human rights agenda formed the
mainstay of Balraj Puri’s political and
intellectual outlook. He was one of the
founding-members of the PUCL (People’s
Union for Civil Liberties) along with
V M Tarkunde and remained active in
the organisation till his very end. He
published a human rights journal – first
as occasional papers from the mid-1990s
and later regulaly as the J&K Human
Rights Perspective till 2012 where he co-
piously documented the human rights
violations in J&K by the security forces.
He did not spare the militants either and
condemned the atrocities committed by
them. This journal remained for a long
time as one of the rare sources of docu-
mentation of the field reports on the
conditions of the common people in the
long years of militancy in J&K. The bul-
letin also reported on the human rights
situation in the rest of India. It also took
note of the findings of various human
rights organisations in India and abroad,
thus making it a comprehensive source
of information on human rights in the
subcontinent. In 1995 Balraj Puri was
awarded the coveted M M Thomas
Award for his contribution to the human
rights movement in India.
In 1963 when a crisis situation broke
out when the Holy Relic was stolen from
the Hazratbal Shrine, Balraj Puri was in
the Committee for the Recovery illus-
trating the trust that he enjoyed among
all sections of people in J&K. He contin-
ued his work for social harmony without
interruption. In 1993 in the aftermath of
the demolition of the Babri Mosque he
vol xlIX no 42 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

was very active in the Forum for Democ-
racy and Communal Amity working for
peace throughout the country. He was
an active member of the Pakistan-India
People’s Forum for Peace and Democra-
cy right from its founding in 1994, as he
realised how important it was to address
the political issues involved in order to
promote peace and understanding in the
subcontinent.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW October 18, 2014
Balraj Puri enjoyed as much goodwill
and respect in Pakistan as in India. Gov-
ernment awards can hardly capture the
full import of the contribution of such a
human rights activist. He was awarded
the Padma Bhushan in 2005 and the
Indira Gandhi National Integration
Award in 2009.
For me personally he was Balraj Bhai,
my friend and classmate Yogesh Puri’s
vol xlIX no 42
COMMENTARY
elder brother whom I first met in 1962
and was captivated by his intellect.
When he took a few of us to meet
Sheikh Abdullah in Nehru’s Teen Murti
house in April 1964 to give our sugges-
tions on what should be done on Kash-
mir I saw glimpses of the daring demo-
crat early in my life. Since then the ex-
traordinary socialist democrat never
ceased to inspire me.
33