Among all the important men associated with Jammu & Kashmir in 1947, Rai Bahadur Pandit Ramchandra Kak and Brigadier Henry Lawrence Scott remain perhaps the least known. This is surprising, given that Kak was Maharaja Hari Singh's minister-in-waiting from 1942 to 1945 and prime minister from June 1945 to 11 August 1947. Scott, meanwhile, was Kak's chief of staff from 1936 until 29 September 1947. Both men held similar views on the conflict that engulfed Kashmir soon after they left, and both later wrote these opinions down. Scott's The Options in 1947 and Kak's Jammu and Kashmir State in 1946-47: Dilemma of accession, the missing link in the story both offer relatively unknown windows onto the 'alternatives on accession'.
The question of accession was first posed to Hari Singh in late 1946, when Partition was still a remote contingency and accession was envisaged only with reference to united India. By the time it arose for a second time, in 1947, Partition had become a reality; the question then was whether to accede to India or to Pakistan. On both occasions, the maharaja's answer was the same: he did not want to accede, but would be willing to enter into a standstill agreement. This would enable the continuation of existing arrangements with the outgoing British India government with India and Pakistan on issues such as trade, travel and communication until new administrative arrangements were made.
During the five years that he served under Kak, Scott enjoyed close relations with his senior. He has stated that he agreed "entirely" with Kak's view "that Kashmir should remain on friendly terms with both India and Pakistan and must, for economic reasons and because 76% of the population if Muslim, have close relations with Pakistan." He also reasoned that Hari Singh opted for the standstill agreement because it gave him the comparative autonomy of the 'state laws' against any form of closer integration with India or Pakistan. It also saved his state from the horror of post-Partition migration and massacre in Punjab, which saw hundreds of thousands of people pass through Jammu towards either side.
It was "the attitude of the Indian National Congress" and its "identification with Sheikh Abdullah" that influenced Kak against accession in 1946. Scott listed additional reasons for Kak's lack of enthusiasm on the issue: