[Reader-list] Rethinking Kashmir Politics

[inder salim]

A very important point with regard to the future of kashmir. Religion
is one way looking at it, but  I will being with language :

 I think of Khalistan movement, which had a huge Hindu Sikh mix, and
how unralisitic would have been to  carve out a sikh state out of that
mix. Fortunately that did not happen. Times proved that that was
proveked by Sang parivar when they launched Hindi Version of punjab
kesari , and next it was the same Congress party who played the dirty
game of politics and are therefore,  responsible for the thounsand of
killings in punjab. But i think common language between the two played
a great role in brining the two togeather.

In  J&K the situation is entirely different. Urdu is the main link
language, but no one is really a original  urdu speaker in J&K .   I
know Geelani sahib always brushes aside the imperative of kashmiri
language as the basic sound of kashmiris, but he is an old man. After
all this urdu thing did not work in Bangla desh even, i guess it does
not work in Pakistan's  punjab even let alone Karachi. Urdu is
certainly a love child between two civilazation, which should not have
been used for politics. but....

Lot of non-kashmiri muslims speak kashmiri in J&K but the
valley-kashmiri  certainly dominates. Even kashmiri in Srinagar is
seen as superior form of the kashmiri anguage in comparison to
Anathnag's kashmiri. Kupwara and Uri is really backward in that sense.
I dont know many kashmiri speaking families are living in
Muzaffarabad.

so far Kashmiri politics has also worked its plans on these lines .

So, Jammu which has not a single kashmiri speaking individual, if you
exclude the recent Pandit settelments in the city, and geographically
too it looks quite different, so it can not be part of a free J&K.
Rajouri and Poonch too dont speak kashmiri language, so they too dont
fit the united J&K. Buddhist Leh and  Shia Kargil are already not a
part of kashmir movment. So it is the valley and its nearby hilly
areas which can be part of the   independant kashmir, if kashmir
chooses not to merge with pakistan.

Hurriyat leaders know all this complexity, and that is why they cant
talk about the division of state on the lines of religion. But the
fact is that kashmir needs some more self confidence to declare that
they want fFreedom without the non-kashmiri speaking people.

the situation in that sense is quite complex.

i would like to hear more from others on the list,

love
is


On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 9:25 PM, Shivam Vij शिवम् विज्
<mail at shivamvij.com> wrote:
> 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.
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