PM’s Vision of Naya Kashmir
K.N. Pandita
In his opening speech at the 3rd Round Table Conference on Kashmir in New Delhi on April 24, 2007, Prime Minster Manmohan Singh said that he was repeating the vision of Sheikh Abdullah’s Naya Kashmir.
Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah released Naya Kashmir, the manifesto of National Conference, in Sopor convention in 1944, which Pandit Nehru had also attended. It set forth the political philosophy of NC and its roadmap of governance after assuming state power. Officially drafted by a leftist ideologue, namely B.P.L.Bedi and his wife Freda, it was the brainchild of the left wing in NC. Well informed sources have confirmed that the draft was actually written by Niranjan Nath Raina, a staunch Kashmiri Pandit leftist who, during his studentship at Allahabad Unviversity, had picked up communist ideology from Ashraf Ali, the head of the Minority Group of Congress housed at that time in Anand Bhavan, Allahabad. Raina was the Srinagar District Secretary of NC at the time of drafting Naya Kashmir. The Manifesto was oriented along leftist ideology. Its activists received solid patronage from the Sheikh.