[Reader-list] Amaranth Yatra

[Pawan Durani]

Sonia ,

Well officially it was not that only Hindu land was confiscated, But the
Govt did ensure that the way it was done would largely effect the Hindus.


*Land Reforms*  [ Ref : Kashmir Information Network ]

The fact remains that the National Conference leadership could not
back-track from its commitment to relieving the peasantry from the moribund
system of feudalism. Land reforms were a must and a significant component of
a wider socio-economic programme of reconstruction and regeneration. In the
blue-print of 'New Kashmir', the land reforms were envisaged as a key to
freeing the peasantry from the thraldom of feudalism acting as an obstacle
in their onward march to freedom from exploitation and abject poverty.
Designed to create a support-base in the Muslim peasantry of Kashmir, the
National Conference leadership slyly presented the Hindus as the only
section possessing enormous landed property, which was many leagues away
from truth. In the province of Kashmir, if there were some Hindu landlords,
there were equally Muslim landlords who were more ruthless in their
treatment of the Muslim tenants, ever tightening their noose on them only to
reduce them to abysmal depths of want and deprivation. The Muslim cruelty
heaped on the Muslim tenants was never highlighted by the National
Conference leaders, who stoutly opposed the Kisan Sabha organised by Late
Pandit Prem Nath Bazaz under the leadership of Abdul Salam Yatu.3 Reasons
for this might have been political, but the fact remains that the Radical
Humanists working under the overall guidance and leadership of Shree Bazaz
were the first to focus on the problems confronting the Muslim peasantry of
Kashmir. The Muslim leadership of the National Conference aroused hatred
against the Kashmirian Hindus, who, as per them, were the oppressors of the
Muslims. It never focussed on the extraordinary precedent set by Pandit Jia
Lal Tamiri,4 a top freedom fighter known for his proverbial honesty and
Pandit Durga Prashad Dhar,5 a central minister, who had given their
ancestral lands to their tenants much before land reforms were enacted and
implemented in the State. Have the Muslims of Kashmir to offer such a unique
example standing comparison to the one set by two bright sons of the
Kashmirian Hindu community?

The National Conference leaders only to capitalise on the hatred and
ill-will that the Muslims of Kashmir harboured against the Kashmirian Hindus
made frequent references to Bala Kak Dhar and Shyam Sunder Lal Dhar as
oppressors of the Muslims, but they never referred to Ahmad Mir and Musmat
Ashraf Begum, 6 two big land-owners of Kashmir, in the same contemptuous and
derisive terms highlighting their oppression and cruelty unto the Muslim
tenants. It will be pertinent to put that the National Conference as a
political organisaton, despite its radical programme, was essentially rooted
in medieval thought structure lending sanctity to all hues of Muslims, no
matter what their position and status in economic relations were. 'Hail a
person, if he is a Muslim and hate a person, if he is a Hindu' has been the
watch-word of the National Conference politics.

The Government, true to its commitment, appointed a Land Reforms Committee
in April, 1948 with the patent mandate of drafting a plan for the abolition
of big landed estates and transfer of land to the tiller. The ruling clique
representing different political and economic interests got entangled in the
ceiling tussle with Mirza Afzal Beg and Ghulam Mohammad Sadiq opting for a
lower ceiling and non-payment of compensation for the lands wrested from the
land-lords. But, before the Land Reforms Committee, working under various
pulls and pressures, would formulate a plan for land reforms and the same
would be enacted as law, Sheikh Abdullah from the forum of National
Conference divulged the entire scheme resulting in the defeat of the spirit
motivating the said reforms.7

The Muslim landlords having come to learn that they had to surrender their
landed estates exceeding 182 Kanals fixed as the standard ceiling entered
into quick negotiations with their Muslim tenants for sharing the surplus
land. In the process, religious ties and sentiments were exploited and the
revenue hierarchy abetted the subversion of the entire scheme of land
reforms conceived as a radical measure to boost up the lot of the Muslim
peasantry in Kashmir. Critics of Sheikh Abdullah attribute it to his
deliberate attempt to save the Muslim landlords from the thrust of the
reforms. The end-product was that the Hindus of Kashmir especially those
holding not much too big tracts of land were deprived of their large chunks
of land without compensation. Because of religious differences, the Hindu
landlords were at a definite disadvantage.

Big Landed Estates Abolition Act, 1952, did not prove of great benefit to
the peasants, who were really landless.8 Instead it led to the creation of a
new class of Muslim landlords, who as tenants had their own tracts of land,
and were allotted large tracts from the surplus land acquired by government
from the landlords by virtue of the Act.9 The Act was not scientifically
conceived and drafted, as all available models worked out in America and the
Soviet Union based on huge proprietory farms and co-operative and collective
farms with no private ownership were neither cognised nor thoroughly
studied. Even the Brazilian models and the Chinese experiment stressing the
stakes of the farmers m the farm-land on a permanent basis were also simply
ignored. The National Conference leadership got the reforms implemented
through the bureaucratic machine ignoring the suggestion by the radicals
that they be implemented by the peasant committees.l0

"What appeared highly irrational was that the ceiling was fixed in relation
to an individual, as a unit of cultivation and not a family. This meant
allowing to a family as many times the amount of ceiling land as the number
of sons in a family and their father. They could possess as many times the
portions of exempted land also. It could mean that a family could own a big
landed estate,"11 records D. N. Dhar. The fact remains that the loop was not
there by mistake but it was not plugged with the deliberate intention of
providing an opportunity and escape route to the Muslims to distribute the
surplus land among the sons and relations of the family only to save them
from the scissors of the Act.

The Big Landed Estates Abolition Act did not touch Bedzars, Safedzars,
Kahikrisham and orchards and could be possessed beyond any limit. This sly
measure of keeping such lands beyond the purview of the Act was resorted to
only to safeguard the Muslim interests and was a pointer to the growing
political and economic power of the orchardist lobby within the government.
Records D. N. Dhar, "What made things worse was that a tiller, after the
land reform, had assumed two capacities, one as an owner and the other as a
tenant. As owner he could possess the land within the ceiling limit and as
tenant, he could hold as much as he wished because no ceiling was fixed for
the tiller as tenant.''12

Despite many perceptible flaws and sectarian tilt, the Big Estates Abolition
Act did not by and large erode the rural base of the Kashmirian Hindus, who
grumbled, yet took it in a stride and their intellectuals characterising it
as a necessary measure to rejuvenate the entire economic structure leading
to the prosperity of the rural masses. The said Act evoked the worst-ever
reaction from the Muslim landlords of Kashmir in definite laison with the
landlords hailing from the region of Jammu. The rich peasants aligning with
the National Conference sharply reacted against the measure and there was a
revolt against the leadership only to be quelled by showering of many more
concessions on them.

The Agrarian Reforms Act of 1972 and the Agrarian Reforms Art of 1976
drafted and enacted during the regimes headed by G. M. Sadiq and Mir Qasim
(Congress) and Sheikh Abdullah (National Conference) offer the following
features:

(a) All the apple-Sheikhs and saffron-sharks are beyond the purview of the
Acts.

(b) The compensation as per the schedule II, Part A of the Act, 1972 varies
from Rs. 7.50 to Rs. 500/- per kanal. It is not at the market rates of land
ranging from 10,000 to 5 lac per kanal.

(c) Compensatiun paid for acquiring a portion of land in the public interest
is not to benefit the owner, but the tenant, who is a Muslim.

(d) The Hindu widows, orphans, blind and disabled depending solely on land
are left in wilderness, unprotected and uncared tor, languishing in utter
poverty.

(e) The Hindus under the provisions of the Acts could resume land for
tilling, but were never alloweded to resume land by issuance of decrees upon
decrees, blocking all possibilities for such resumption. As 90% applicants
for resumption are Hindus, the government has simply ignored them.

(f) The revenue records of the Kashmirian Hindus have been grossly tampered
with and erased with the result their cases eat dust and have never been
settled.

(g) The levy collected from the 'prospective tenants' for the  'prospective
owners' by way of compensation stands mis-appropriated by the revenue
officials, mostly Muslims.

(h) The interests of MLAs, MPs, IAS officers, secretaries (under, deputy and
additional) to government departments, judges, Tehsildars and other
political and economic heavy-weights, all Muslims, owning huge tracts of
land stand well protected by manipulating and tampering the records.

(i) As per the stipulations of the Big Landed Estates Abolition Act, the
land-owners deprived of their landed property had to be provided employment
at least to one member of their families, but in case of the Kashmirian
Hindus, it was simply ignored.

There are instances galore pinpointing the unscientific character and sheer
worthlessness of the entire exercise of land reforms.

(a) A Hindu land-owner is a petty pensioner, whose land goes to a Muslim
millionaire.

(b) Land belonging to a Hindu widow with no other means of sustenance is
transferred to an apple-Sheikh.

(c) A Hindu land-owner is a petty school teacher whose land is grabbed only
to be transferred to a Muslim gazetted officer holding enormous assets.

(d) The lands belonging to the (Hindu) deaf and dumb, mentally retarded and
disabled with nothing to fall back upon are snatched and transferred to
apple-Sheikhs and businessmen rolling in wealth and riches unlimited.

(e) The tenants benefitted under the Acts have emerged as the Kulaks at the
site of land l3 never tilling their huge tracts of land, but hiring the
Bihari labourers on payment of Rs. 30/- per day and two square meals a day.

(f) The Muslims emboldened by the government patronage chopped off the
orchards of the Hindus and the Sikhs only to show the lands under their
tenancy and the revenue hierarchy legalising the whole brutality by
registering mutations in the names of the plunderers.

(g) As the orchards have been placed beyond the purview of the ceiling
limits, the cultivators taking law into their own hands and the Muslim
authorities conniving at transforming thc agricultural lands into orchards.
This practice has been resorted to on a large scale, initially started by
the politically influential and affluent sections of the Muslim peasantry.

(h) Even a petty- land-holder among the Hindus was not spared from the
thrust of the land reforms.

Be it said that the land reforms enacted with vengefulness motivated by the
utmost prejudice against the Kashmirian Hindus sticking to their faith
completely eroded their rural base, reducing them to the status of aliens in
their own environs and pushing them out of the rural scenario, which they
were accused of polluting by chanting a mantra, tolling a bell, blowing a
conch and tending a temple or a shrine. At village level the reforms
generated a fury of hatred and a storm of religious strife resulting in the
harassment and intimidation of the Hindus ever in tight-straits. 'Occupy the
lands of the Kashmirian Hindus' was the clarioncall of the top leaders of
National Conference to the peasants, who took law into their own hands,
beat, abused and heaped all manner of humiliation on them and the government
machinery especially law-enforcing and revenue agencies aiding the whole
process of loot, plunder and forcible occupation. Depriving them of
sustenance by snatching away small holdings of land, the Kashmirian Hindus
had two options, either to march out or get converted to Islam only to win
sympathies for a relief from the Islamised bureaucracy. The Kashmirian
Hindus being a fragile minority with no weapons to wield could not retaliate
in the same manner as men of other communities wielding weapons retaliated
by shooting dead the tenants trying to forcibly occupy their ancestral
lands. It is worth to be recorded that the Hindu landlords though very few
in number, were highly compassionate and considerate to their Muslim tenants
and no assiduous probing of records can establish a single case where a
Kashmirian Hindu landlord might have tortured or slaughtered his tenants
while feudal history elsewhere is bristling with such horrendous examples.

The land reforms proved practically a war waged on the Kashmirian Hindus and
the war was not finished in one swoop. In fact, it was planned phase-wise.
The big landed estates were abolished in 1952 and whatsoever small holdings
were left in the possession of the Hindus were grabbed in 1972 and 1976.
With the sole design of exerting sustained pressure on them, adding to their
insecurity and instability and fear psychosis and finally leading to their
exodus or liquidation, thus finishing the incomplete pogram of extirpating
and decimating infidelity (kufur) from the land of Kashmir.

'Could it be asked why the applications from the Kashmirian Hindus for
resumption of land provided under the Acts have been put under the carpet?
Is it because the applicants are mostly Hindus'? Why have decrees upon
decrees been issued, one contradicting the other, for throttling the
processes of resumption?

Is it because the Hindus as a matter of state policy are not to be allowed
to resume land? Why have not the orchards and saffron fields stretching over
miles been put to the sharp scissors of land reforms acts? Is it because
they are owned by apple-Sheikhs and saffron-sharks?

The Central Government under the hegemony of Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru went
on watching passively how death and destruction was being wrought on the
Kashmirian Hindus. It could have intervened if not by stopping the entire
drama of destruction, but by the issuance of specific guidelines founded on
sound expertise to the Government of Jammu and Kashmir. Even the Planning
Commission could have been commissioned for drafting a fool-proof reforms
programme in an impartial manner. The state government acted hastily only to
transfer land from one set of people to the other ensuring the economic
precedence of the Muslims over other ethnic groups which led to ominous
developments destabilising the entire state.

Bereft of small holdings of land with no hopeful prospects of
rehabilitation, the Kashmirian Hindus as hapless victims to a tyrannical
order devising each measure for their utter ruination were driven to the
wall and in their sheer frustration and despair repaired to various parts of
the country in quest of a meagre living. That they were migrating for
greener pastures is a sheer myth manufactured by politicians like
Saif-ud-din Soz, come from nowhere, only to smoke screen the unjust and
inequitous treatment meted out to them by the Muslim rulers masquerading as
nationalists and Congressites. Without undertaking an indepth and detailed
analysis of their problems with clinical precision, the Central Government
in its sheer callousness issued directions to various central departments
not to recruit the migrating Kashmirian Hindus.14

Despite it, the trickle of exodus went on unabated attracting the attention
of men in corridors of power in the central capital. It is generally
believed that the Central Government took strong exception to the harassment
and intimidation of the Kashmirian Hindus. Minding signals from the Centre,
Sheikh Abdullah chose to attend a function at Sheetalnath, Srinagar
organised to celebrate Lord Krishna's birth anniversary. Only as an eyewash,
he had an interaction with the leadership of the Hindu community, who
articulated their views on the entire gamut of issues that had cropped up
for the community in the wake of post-1947 political and economic
developments. The Sheikh promised redressal of their problems and
grievances, but the government of the day communally tilted continued with
its policy of hammer and tongs against the Hindus designed to eliminate them
from all walks of life.

The Hindus forming 2 percent minority in Kashmir were totally ignored by the
state government out to appease the Muslims and also by the Central
Government out to ingratiate itself with the Muslims. The minority of
Kashmir has never been a mute minority. It has effectively highlighted its
vital problems with the Central and state governments apropos economic
distress, blatant discrimination on communal grounds and encroachment on
religious places finally leading to their forcible occupation. The state
government of any complexion openly espoused the Muslim cause, protecting
Muslim interests by legislation and manipulation, not caring two hoots for
the secular ideals, democratic values and constitutional tenets
safe-guarding rights of all, no matter what faith and religion they
harboured. The apathy and neglect exhibited by the central leaders unto the
Hindu minority of Kashmir have been both amazing and mind-boggling. Aware of
the captive state of the Hindu minority, they never thought of their
survival against the massive onslaught of the Muslim majority communalism,
which is highly aggressive and frenzied. Any attempt in the direction of
eliminating the Kashmirian Hindus was a pointer to the establishment of an
Islamic state in Kashmir replete with the potential of blasting the entire
Indian edifice put on the pedestal of secularism, tolerance and
co-existence.

In the domain of politics many miles on the high-way of accession to India
were traversed. Documents were signed and history was made. But, in the wake
of it, the political mind of Sheikh Abdullah suffered a quick reversal and
the issues, which were practically shelved, got opened up giving currency to
'plebiscite' and 'independent Kashmir' with their mesmeric impact on the
mass mind. The new options being pleaded and propagated by the Sheikh had
less of political cogency and more of personal ego impelling him to invite a
head-on clash with the central power. His visions of maintaining Kashmir as
his personal fiefdom got revived and his yellings against the very leaders,
who had firmly propped him up in his struggle against an autocratic ruler,
proved disastrous. There were many vigorous minds, who sensed his illusions
of keeping Kashmir away from the mainstream and by spilling blood and
suffering martyrdom, they blasted the separatist barrier of 'Permit System',
thus bringing the State of Jammu and Kashmir closer to India to share the
currents and cross-currents of mainstream life. The Sheikh had no firm
convictions and was given to double talk and duplicity. He objectively
carried the Kashmirian Muslims to India, but fortified them against the
currents and cross-currents of Indian life with all what it means.

In the back-drop of ominous political developments, the role of the
Kashmirian Hindus became suspect. With their profound commitment to the
forces of unity and integrity of India, they could not support a wayward
thesis of independence or plebiscite, actually serving as a facade for
pro-Pak forces to close up their ranks for achieving the objective of
annexing Kashmir to Pakistan, which had not abandoned its policy of
interference and subversion in Kashmir. Threats subduing the Hindus were
openly doled out. Even surveillance was mounted on them. A close watch was
mounted on the Hindu officers in the Department of Police. The activities of
the Hindu leaders already a part of the governmental machine were monitored.
Scandals of theft and corruption were hurled at them only to tarnish their
image and lower their stock in the public eye.l5 The Kashmirian Hindus
irrespective of their station and status in life were openly branded as the
spies of India. As per the fiat of a top Muslim theologian responsible for
the genocide of the Kashmirian Hindus, no Hindu could operate as a spy in
the Muslim land, which Kashmir was by and by emerging as ethnic cleansing
and econonomic and political strangulation of the minorities had been
consistently and unflinchingly resorted to. The process of suspecting the
bonafides of the Hindus finally touched its culmination when Sheikh Abdullah
dubbed them as 'fifth column' with their gaze set at the Central Capital l6
and not joining the mainstream politics of Kashmir, which had discernible
currents of separatism, secessionism and communal hatred.

It is pertinent to put that the accusations levelled against the Kashmirian
Hindus and also against the tall sons of the country form a part of the
Sheikh's auto-biography, Aatish-e-Chinar, alleged to have heen written by a
ghost writer. The said-book earning recognition from the Sahitya Academy
virtually put the seal of approval on all the irrelevant and spurious
observations littered over the book.

The Sheikh's remarks never posed him in brighter colours, but exposed his
secular credentials, which were always infirm. The ranks of communalists
openly maligning the Kashmirian Hindus as the spies of lndia had already set
a trend and the Sheikh did not deem it fit to counter it even
half-heartedly. Instead, without offering resistance, he set his boat in the
same direction. As things were shaping, the Hindus were deemed to have
outlived their utility unto the Muslim cause. The end-product of the
Sheikh's utterances in the book was that a wave of unprecedented hatred
against the Kashmirian Hindus got generated, their bonafides became suspect,
their relations with the Muslim neighbours suffered a sudden break and
cumulatively the Muslim rationalily developed a vertical crack.

The Sheikh had thrown ample indications that he was a part of the whole
campaign for Islamisation of Kashmir. After 1975 takeover he is said to have
gone to the extent of addressing the Muslim officers in the secretariat
exhorting them to weed out all traces of the Hindus in the power structure,
though the Islamised bureaucracy had already completed the task. In tune
with the Iocal Muslim officialdom, the Sheikh pursued the policy of
side-lining and detracting the outsiders belonging to the IPS and IAS
cadres, taking and treating them as unwanted elements being thrust on
Kashmir by a colonial power.

The Muslim communalists operating under the cover of the Sheikh's calumny
and slander against the Kashmirian Hindus found a fertile ground for the
Muslim mobilisation for subversion, secessionism and Hindu-baiting. Since
the dawn of independence, systematic efforts were made to liquidate the
patriotic and peace-loving community of the Hindus. It was done under the
garb of secular facade and national reconstruction. The Hindus everywhere
whether in street, educational institutions or government offices were
subjected to all manner of harassment and intimidation. Not only that they
were reviled and a barrage of provocative invective let loose on them but
what the campaign managers under the state patronage meant to achieve was
polarisation of the two communities on religious grounds with all
communication channels cut off or dried up.

The Kashmirian Hindus known for their patience and tough fibre pocketed all
the insults hurled on them and patiently bore the humiliation they were
subjected to. Normally such situations have led to an out-break of communal
violence in various parts of the country. The majoritarian communalism
generated and perpetuated by the powers that be in connivance with the
vicious communal forces operating at every level in Kashmir was directed to
single-point objective of silencing, sidelining and finally liquidating the
Kashmirian minority of the Hindus, who are soft, sophisticated and highly
educated. From Sheikh Abdullah, Mirza Afzal Beg, G. M. Sadiq and Mir Qasim
all down the line, everyone in the governmental apparatus and political
frame worked with single-minded concentration to weed out the Kashmirian
Hindus, who were projected as the spies of India operating on the soil of
Kashmir. What had angered Sheikh Abdullah most was that the Kashmirian
Hindus did not stand by him when he was deposed in 1953 for having fallen
into the dragnet of a conspiracy of outside origin. Instead the Hindus had
the cheek to oppose his somersaults in politics and also keep away from the
politics of Plebiscite Front operating with his blessings.

Following the foot-prints of that great tormentor of the Kashmirian Hindus,
Sikandar, the iconoclast, Sheikh did not fight shy of repeating his decree,
'get converted or flee or get perished'. In fact, the blue-print for
Islamisation of Kashmir was laid down by him only and all others succeeding
him as the helmsmen of Kashmir pursued the same policy of tightening the
noose on the Hindus till they got strangulated and snuffed out. All
government fiats, legislations and directives were the missives hurled on
them only to put them in strait jackets. All norms were violated, new norms
smacked of blatant communalism and, in fact, governments of any political
persuasion resorted to the norm of violating all norms only to favour and
foster the Muslim interests.

Quantity, mediocrity and academic poverty gained precedence over quality,
brilliance and academic richness. Only to benefit the Kashmirian Muslims all
constitutional guarantees were thrown to the winds and ruthlessly subverted.
The Hindus, the Sikhs and the Buddhists of Laddakh were totally ignored in
matters of recruitment, educational programmes and allotment of financial
resources for developmental activities. In contravention of the
constitutional tenets, the Muslims of the Valley were as a matter of state
policy declared as backward and the Kashmirian Hindus as a creamy layer.
Highly astounding was the categorisation of the posh Muslim localities
inhabited by the corrupt engineers, fraudulent businessmen, drug peddlars
and highly affluent people as the backward pockets and stinking slum areas
inhabited by the Kashmirian Hindus as the posh and affluent localities.
Fraudulent manipulation, irrational measures, communally motivated
directives and partisan considerations were resorted to as devices to boost
up the Muslim interests at the cost of other population segments estabishing
their hegemony over the politico-economic fabric of the state. Communal
representation on the basis of population was the standard policy devised to
regulate recruitment in services, admissions in colleges and other training
institutions.

The economic devastation of the Kashmirian Hindus coupled with an onslaught
on their right to live resulted in consigning them to the backwaters of the
Kashmirian scenario. But, the Kashmirian Hindus never reconciled to the
status of third degree citizens assigned to them by the Muslim rulers. They
took their battle against the rulers to the constitutional and legal fora
set up for the purpose under law. What has come their way is the feeling
that the institutions established in the country have lost their strength
and vitality and have failed the people of the country. The entire pyramid
of courts dispensing justice has grown obese and inflexible with no muscles
to meet the relevant requirements of a nation developing new dynamics. The
judicial processes involving cases of economic deprivation, restoration of
justiciable rights and ercroachments on the religious properties of the
Kashmirian Hindus have been dilatory and time-consuming. In most of the
cases the executive has shown scant respect for the court judgments and
strained every nerve to subvert them reducing them almost to nullity.