[Reader-list] The Wonder That Is Kashmir

[Pawan Durani]

The Wonder That Is Kashmir : Where Minorities Become Majorities And
Majorities Become Minorities And Then
Nonexistent<http://dikgaj.wordpress.com/2008/08/17/the-wonder-that-is-kashmir-where-minorities-become-majorities-and-majorities-become-minorities-and-then-nonexistent/>
http://dikgaj.wordpress.com/2008/08/17/the-wonder-that-is-kashmir-where-minorities-become-majorities-and-majorities-become-minorities-and-then-nonexistent/

While speaking in the Rajaya Sabha on 17-08-2006 Dr. Farooq Abdullah had
questioned the Government of India on the steps being taken by it after
Pakistan refused to grant permission to Kashmiri Pandits for visiting Hindu
Shrines or places of religious importance in Muzaffarabad. Dr. Man Mohan
Singh appreciated Farooq Abdullah for raising the question and said that he
would surely raise this question with Pakistan. Carvan e Aman Bus had first
left for Muzaffarabad on 7 April 2005. Lt. General ( Retd ) S. K. Sinha had
said in an an interview that the Bus will also carry the historical and
spiritual message of Sheikh Noor-ud-Din Noorani and Lala Ded. After 60 years
of accession of Jammu and Kashmir with India, spiritual message of
Noor-ud-Din and Lala are still awaiting to be transported from one part of
Kashmir to another, and the Kashmiri Pundits are still "Migrants" from
Kashmir Valley.

For Marxists, or Thaparite Hindu historians, all terrorism in Kashmir or by
Muslims stem from exploitation and economic hardship or enforced
displacement. Why the Pandits did not become terrorists? Many lost
everything they had and finally settled down in Jammu and not all were top
bureaucrats or rich businessmen or professionals as they have been
represented by historians, politicians and the media. They did not become
militants because they were Indians, and they were not brought up in a
religion whose fundamental principle is relentless "physical" warfare
against "unbelievers" until they "submit".

The regime dependent and supported political analysts, historians as well as
sections of the media treated Kashmir as an "Islamic state" and therefore
its "Islamic features" to be "protected" at all costs. This recognition and
acceptance of "Islam" as the sole claimant of "Kashmir" immensely played
into the hands of Islamic revivalists based in religious centres in India
and Pakistan who had been carefully nurtured under the culture of "tolerance
of minorities". Islams agenda in Kashmir succeeded in confusing the common
Kashmiri Muslim and their religious sentiments which contain early exposure
and brainwashing with not only an inveterate hatred of all non-Muslims, but
sanctions and exhortations of violence against them in opportune moments as
natural and "Allah" ordered (thereby any personal human regret or conscience
can be bypassed) together with a blatant falsification of Kashmir's
pre-Islamic past [in this their greatest allies were of course the Thaparite
school of Indian history, who did everything possible to suppress the real
role and mechanism of spreading of Islam, and paint pre-Islamic or
non-Islamic cultures of India in the worst possible comparison with Islam].
These were exploited to create doubts about completeness of 1947 Accession
to India.

The economic backwardness was explained to the poor and unemployed as a
result of  being a Muslim living under Hindu majority "rule". Hindu
Thaparite historians were most prominent in describing militancy as being
out of neglect, unemployment and communal hatred by Hindus. Kashmiri Pundits
were blamed for their part in this mistreatment of "Islam" and just as in
Bangladesh the "missing Hindu populations in the census" are tried sometimes
indirectly to be ascribed to the "economic opportunism of Hindus and their
hatred of Muslims and hence their stealthy migration" the Pundits' mass
migrations of flight to safety was represented as an opportunistic
Hindu-communal betrayal. All of this had to be done because the Nehruvian
strand of Congress politics [Nehru himself had declared that he felt himself
culturally a Muslim] possibly also under Western pressure to encourage Islam
as immunization against communism, took it upon itself to not only preserve
Islam but also to try and help it grow in India. In the "Muslim majority"
state of Kashmir, the "heart bleeding for the repressed minorities"
political elite of NewDelhi could not recognize the Kashmiri Hindu Pundits
or Buddhists as "minorities" - since doing so would have been an
embarrassing contradiction and not suitable for their strategy of using
Islam as a double whammy - something to tame Hindu pan-India cultural
consolidation which would have gone out of the control of the small UP based
coterie of Congress as well as an immunization against Left or progressive
forces [Islam has proved to be the best antidote against modernization in
social and human rights].

Our eminent historians of the Thaparite school of Indian history, never
discuss the circumstances that made the campaign posters threatening
Kashmiri Pundits a common sight in 1989-1990 in Kashmir Valley, showing the
extent to which the anti-Hindu Islamic forces had been allowed to
strengthen. The Kashmiri Pundits and many Muslims felt that the militants
could actually carry out their threats where as they were not sure about the
capacity or political will of the "democratic government" to guarantee
security to life and property of those who did not support merger with
Pakistan.

The Kashmiri Pundits were Hindu and neither believed in the two nation
theory nor did they believe that there could be any thing like an
independent nation of Jammu and Kashmir. Hence majority of Kashmiri Pundits
left Kashmir Valley along with some Muslims who supported accession to
India. Some from the Muslim ruling elite thought that Kashmir should have
special constitutional status within India but did not accept the merger
with Pakistan as well as Kashmir becoming an independent country. Hence many
Muslims and political leaders of the National Conference and Congress also
migrated from Kashmir Valley along with the Kashmir Pundits as they also
felt unsafe in the Valley. Some Kashmiri Muslims had stayed continuously
outside Kashmir Valley upto 1994 and thereafter they gradually returned to
the Valley. Dr. Farooq Abdullah had remained in exile for many years under
special personal security.

Dr.Farooq Abdullah always described himself as first an Indian and strongly
advocated "greater autonomy " and should be admired for his political
courage to oppose militancy and pro-Pakistan groups at the cost of political
losses to his party. His political dilemma comes out though on many
occasions, such as his allegation that Mr. Jagmohan, a BJP MP, encouraged
the Pundits to leave the Valley when he became governor of the state for the
second time. Some separatist leaders from Kashmir Valley, some Kashmiri pro
India leaders of local political parties and even sections of the Indian
media have claimed that Jagmohan wanted Kashmiri Pundits to be out of the
way to enable him to deal with militants. To understand this we have to
realize that the Kashmiri Pundits never had the tradition of aggressive
militant action to defend their rights as the Punjabi Hindus or Sikhs. This
is the reason that Punjabi Hindus and Sikhs who have had to survive the
worst forms of Islamic violence for at least fourteen hundred years (Sikhs
from the Mughal period) did not give up in the face of separatist terrorism
in Punjab. About 40000 Sikhs still manage to stay in the Valley.

The Kashmiri Pundits now in exile outside of the Valley, have been excluded
from the negotiations on Kashmir. The wishes of the non-Muslim majority
areas of Jammu and Kashmir should be taken into account. If this is not
done, sooner or later India will have to wake up to a very stark choice -
Kashmiri unification has to be then done militarily which may also
necessitate the dismemberment of Pakistan, and a thorough wiping off of
religious fundamentalist leadership and their cultural propagation systems
on the subcontinent.

The Hurriyat wants trade across LOC, and a shaking New Delhi bleats weakly
like a lamb that they also agree - only that Pakistan does not respond. This
is as I had predicted in a previous post, that NewDelhi will appear
increasingly the cornered fool dancing to pro-Pakistani Islamic revivalists'
demands. Indian non-Muslims, especially in the Kashmir and Jammu region
should gear themselves for increased Islam sponsored violence and should
begin thinking longer term about a permanent solution to the Kashmir problem
that safeguards non-Muslim existence and interests indpendent of whatever
the Islamophile bosses at NewDelhi promise or say. The ordinary Kashmiri
Muslim is an Indian, by origin, by history, by cultural roots. Islamic
violence only retreats before an overwhelming force that leaves no doubt
about its will and capability to exterminate Islamic "leadership" [the
"eradication of Islam" in Spain towards the end of the middle ages for
example]- this is the lesson of history, for survival at any cost in order
to preserve chances of future multiplication is a fundamental aspect of all
Islamic strategy. The American attempt in the middle east is running uphill
simply because they do not recognize that the main source of inspiration of
Islamic violence utilized by Islamic religious leadership is a primitive
greed for biological resources driven by extreme insecurities and
intellectual incapability to deal with the complexities of modernizing
societies. These religious "scholars" are the main source of selective and
opportune interpretations from the core Islamic texts with a shrewd
understanding of political manipulations that can satisfy their personal
ambitions of power and influence in a world system that goes increasingly
beyond their intellectual capabilities. Islamic religious mechanisms and
institutions that pretend to preach "peace" for the benefit and division of
non-Muslim opinions should have been the first target of the Western
colonizing forces in the expansionist phase of European colonialism, and the
world would have been spared a lot of pain if instead of concentrating their
efforts on destroying the "pagans" they had targeted erasing these Islamic
institutions from the face of the earth. Unfortunately we all have to bear
the fruits of the West's long love affair with Islam. But Indians may yet
have a way out, as they have always had in the past in overcoming forces
that had seemed invincible at first.