Nehru with the full backing of Gandhi was meddling in the affairs of J&K. With no thought to the grave danger and the imminent instability that he was causing to the shape of the emerging post-independence India, Nehru convened the State People’s Conference in the first week of June 1947. Nehru convened this conference of the people of the princely states, thus pitting the people against their rulers at a time when the support of the Hindu rulers would have been critical for the shape of the emerging independent India.
Unmindful of the consequences of antagonizing the rulers and encouraging a peoples’ uprising in the princely states against the rulers, particularly in J&K where the so-called peoples’ movement was only a Sunni Muslim movement led by Sheikh Abdullah and his All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference (later National Conference) against the Hindu king, Nehru declared, on June 8, 1947, “Sovereignty must reside in the people and not in any individual. The State people’s claim to represent for themselves is justified and will see to it that they are heard. And certainly their rulers cannot speak for them,” before the delegates of the State People's Conference.