Then what about Muslim majority states, Nawab destroys India’s logic on Junagarh

Nawab of Junagarh delivered a lecture on ‘Junagarh is Pakistan today’, at the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad wherein he threw light on the past and present of the once Muslim-ruled state, which is now under India’s illegal occupation.

Nawab Jahangir Khanji in his lecture said that his ancestors along with Babar’s son Humayun defeated Sher Shah Suri and later when the Mughal emperors became weak, they awarded jagirs to their faithfuls. In 1739, he said, one of his ancestors was rewarded with Junagarh as an independent state. The State remained an independent entity till 1947.

On September 15, 1947, he said, his grandfather the then governor of Junagarh, Nawab Mohabat Khanji, reached an agreement with Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Governor General of Pakistan, and signed the ‘Instrument of Accession’. Junagarh became the first princely state to accede to Pakistan on 15 September 1947.

However, on 9 November 1947, he said that India in violation of all international norms and agreements assaulted Junagarh and illegally annexed it on the pretext that the state had Hindu majority population.

The Nawab contended the India’s claim asking why New Delhi is not applying the same rule to those states which had Muslim majority population but were ruled by a non-Muslim ruler, and Jammu and Kashmir is one of them. He added that the-then ruler of the state took the case to the United Nations, where it is still awaiting solution. He said that India was not justified in its claim on Junagarh.

Nawab Jahangir Khanji said that he had been sensitizing public on the issue for the past 25 years and by the grace of All, Junagarh has been restored to the map of Islamic Republic of Pakistan, which is a good thing.

It is worth mentioning here that after the culmination of the agreement of accession, when the Nawab of Junagarh visited Karachi, capital of Pakistan at that time, to discuss procedural details, India behind his back, through an act of brazen aggression transgressed upon the Muslim-ruled princely state and occupied it by force on November 09, 1947.

Juanagrh had the unique dispensation of being the second largest among Muslim states and a rich one as it was ranked 5th in terms of revenue generation among 561 British India.