[Reader-list] Rethinking Kashmir Politics

[Shivam Vij शिवम् विज्]

Rethinking Kashmir Politics

Yoginder Sikand

Many Kashmiri Muslims vociferously insist that the demand for
independence of Kashmir has nothing to do with religion. Instead, they
argue, that the conflict in and over of Kashmir is essentially
'political'. What is conveniently ignored by those who make this claim
is that religion and politics, particularly in the case of the Kashmir
dispute, involving as it does the rival claims of Muslim-majority
Pakistan and Hindu-dominated India, can hardly be separated.

As the current spate of violence in both the Hindi-dominated Jammu
division and the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley, triggered off by a
controversial decision of the state government to allot a piece of
land to a Hindu temple trust, so starkly indicates, religion and
communal identities defined essentially in religious terms have
everything to do with the basic issue of Jammu and Kashmir and its
still unsettled political status. Kashmiri nationalists, in contrast
to hardcore Islamists and the Hindutva brigade, quickly dismiss this
point, finding it, perhaps, too embarrassing, afraid of being labeled
as religious chauvinists or 'communal'. But, no longer, it seems, can
the crucial role of religion in shaping the contours of the on-going
conflict in and over Kashmir be denied.

That the on-going BJP-inspired agitation in Jammu has marshaled
considerable support among the Hindus of Jammu clearly indicates that
the political project of Kashmiri nationalists—of a separate,
independent state of Jammu and Kashmir—has absolutely no takers among
the Hindus (and other non-Muslims) of the state. Kashmiri nationalists
insist that in the independent Jammu and Kashmir of their dreams,
religious minorities—Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists—who would account for
almost a fourth of the population, would have equal rights and no
cause for complaint. Some even boast, without adducing any evidence,
of commanding the support of the non-Muslims of the state for their
project. At the same time as they roundly berate the Dogra Raj as a
long spell of slavery for the state's Muslims, they insist that the
boundaries of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, as constructed by the
same Dogras, against the will of the Kashmiri Muslims, be considered
as
sacrosanct, as setting the borders of the independent country that
they demand. If, as they argue, Dogra Raj was illegitimate, then
surely there is nothing holy about the state boundaries as laid down
by the Dogras, bringing Jammu and the vastly different Kashmir Valley
in a forced union. If, as they rightly insist, Kashmir was conquered
against its will by the Dogras of Jammu, there is no reason why the
forced union of the two should continue in the independent Jammu and
Kashmir that the Kashmiri nationalists dream of, particularly given
the Jammu Hindus' resentment of alleged Kashmiri hegemony, a sentiment
shared even by many Jammu Muslims.

Kashmiri nationalists, however, would refuse to recognize this basic
contradiction in their argument. The reason is obvious: To do so, to
recognize that the Jammu's Hindus (and Leh's Buddhists) would resist,
even to the point of violence, the agenda of an independent Jammu and
Kashmir would clearly indicate the obvious, but embarrassing fact,
that this agenda represents the aspirations and interests largely of
Kashmiri Muslims, and is a means to legitimize Kashmir Muslim control
over the rest of the state.

The analogy with pre-Partition India is useful. The Muslim League
insisted that because the Hindus of India were in a numerical
majority, a united, independent India, no matter what safeguards it
gave and promises of equality it made to the Muslims, would be
dominated by the Hindus, and would, for all its secular and democratic
claims, be untrammeled Hindu Raj. Hence their demand for a separate
Pakistan. The Hindus of Jammu and the Buddhists of Leh find themselves
in precisely the same position as did supporters of the Muslim League
in pre-Partition India, only now the actors have reversed their roles.
Kashmiri nationalists insist they want an independent, united Jammu
and Kashmir, just as the Congress did when it talked of a united and
free India. And, like the Congress did with the Muslims, they promise
the non-Muslim minorities of Jammu and Leh that their rights would be
fully protected in this state of their dreams. Yet, just as many
Muslims refused
to accept the promises of the Congress, fearing that they would never
be honored, the non-Muslim minorities in Jammu and Kashmir refuse to
buy the arguments of the Kashmiri nationalists, which they rightly see
as a thinly-veiled guise to justify Kashmiri hegemony.

I have heard Kashmiris, including some of my closest friends, come up
with the most ingenious arguments to counter the above point.
'Kashmiriyat, the teachings of love and peace of our Sufis, unite us
all and would ensure that non-Muslim minorities will be safe and
protected in a free Jammu and Kashmir', some of them say. A laughable
claim, unless all Kashmiris suddenly decide to shun the world and trod
the mystical path, an unlikely prospect. Sufism is in a rapid state of
decline in Kashmir and elsewhere, as is the case with all other forms
of mysticism.

Then there is another bizarre argument, which I heard, among others,
from none less than Syed Ali Gilani, chief Islamist ideologue in
Kashmir, and a fervent backer of Kashmir's accession to Pakistan,
which runs like this: Islam lays down the rights of non-Muslims and
insists that Muslims should respect them. The Prophet Muhammad himself
did so. So, if Jammu and Kashmir gets freedom and becomes a truly
Islamic state, the non-Muslim minorities will have full freedom and
equality. The late Sadullah Tantrey, once head of the Jammu branch of
the Jamaat-e Islami, even went on to insist, in all seriousness, that
'Indeed so happy will the non-Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir be in this
independent Islamic state that even Hindus from India would line up to
settle in the state.' I squirmed in my seat as he went on, stunned at
his evident ignorance or hypocrisy or, as seemed more likely, both. I
itched to tell him, as I sat before him in his house in Gath, up in
the mountains of Doda, that the 'Islamic state' hardly outlived the
Prophet Muhammad and has been completely extinct ever since; that the
fate of minorities in scores of Muslim countries, even those like
Saudi Arabia that claim to be 'Islamic', was deplorable, that even
Jinnah had promised full equality to the non-Muslim citizens of
Paksitan but that had not prevented them from being reduced to virtual
second-class citizens, and that, simply put, he was lying or else
living in a fool's paradise. I kept my mouth shut, however. After all,
I was there to learn what his views were, not to convert him.

Clearly, any forced union of the disparate nationalities in Jammu and
Kashmir in the form of a separate, independent state that Kashmiri
nationalists champion (as now do even some Kashmiri Islamists, former
passionate advocates for union with Pakistan, who, flowing with the
tide, have realized that their earlier stance has increasingly few
takers among Kashmiris, given their mounting disenchantment with
Pakistan) would be a sure recipe for civil war. The current agitation
in Jammu is ample evidence of that. It is time, therefore, that
pro-'Azadi' Kashmiri leaders admit this publicly.

This is not, however, to plead the case for the division of the state,
as the RSS has been advocating, for surely that would further harden
communal boundaries and rivalries in just the same way as would the
project of an independent Jammu and Kashmir. Rather, it is to
recognize and publicly acknowledge the very plural character of Jammu
and Kashmir, and the concerns and sensitivities of all its peoples,
Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and others.