[Reader-list] Book Review - Zakhmoo Ki Zabani

[Pawan Durani]

Zakhmoo Ki Zabani
Commented upon by Prof. M.L. Koul
Author: Pandit Rishidev, Zanipora, Anantnag
Pages: 256      Price : Rs. 100/-
Pandit Rishidev who is a native of Zainpora, tehsil Shopian, Kashmir
has remained a political activist of long standing. The Muslim
communalists were as cruel to him as to Kashmiri Pandits in general
even though he had been deeply wedded to the cause of peasant welfare
and upliftment. Rishidev’s role in the initiation and implementation
of purposeful schemes and projects directly related to agricultural
operations for increased yield has been widely acclaimed even by his
adversaries with communal motivations. Like all Kashmiri Pandits he
was driven out of his home and hearth and as a consequence has been
wallowing in exile for the past eleven years. His house at Zainapora
has been blazed by vandals drawing support from the local Muslim
population. In his 155-paged book titled as ‘Zakhmoo Ki Zabani’,
essentially a memoir, he has delved in the repertoire of his political
experiences with an attempt to put it in perspective. It is pertinent
to put that Rishidev in his political career spanning five decades,
has had affiliations with National Conference, Indian National
Congress, Communist Party of India, Democratic National Conference and
Kashmiri Pandit organisations.
The ferocious loot, plunder and murder of Kashmiri Pandits in 1931 has
found many proponents who have invented the spurious thesis of
‘political and economic oppression of Muslims by the ruling class and
their henchmen’ and justified the loot as the struggle of enslaved
people against the despotic rule, despite its aggressively communal
complexion in its outward form. To cover up the role of marauders a
researcher in his thesis has shifted the scene of bigotry and
belligerence from Kashmir to Punjab with a view to tracing its
communal hue and motivation. In his vivid account of 1931 happenings
Rishidev has debunked the text-book formulations of ‘political and
economic oppression’, ‘victimized and enslaved people’ and ‘despotic
rule’ and has focussed on the communally tainted pathological mind
that has been ruling roost in Kashmir seeking satiation in infliction
of atrocities of loot, arson and murder on Kashmiri Pandit minority.
But, sad as it is, Rishidev, though having a bias for Marxist
ideology, has not put the 1931 loot in its proper perspective by
probing the role of political and communal forces that planned and
executed the loot and murder. He has spared the Reading Room Party
which had forged links and alliances with the British Political
Department Ahmadiyas. The loot of Kashmiri Pandits was part of a
bigger game. The Britishers wanted the Maharaja to abdicate his
sovereignty over Gilgit which had emerged as a strategic point on the
chess-board of British politics in the region. Through  loot Kashmiri
Pandits were punished for the expression of their patriotic sentiment
when they made a bonfire of foreign goods. The correspondence between
BJ Glanay, L.E. Lang and other British spies and Sheikh Abdullah was
first splashed by the Blitz issued from Bombay and found detailed
analysis in the ‘Tragedy of Kashmir’, a book authored by H.L. Sexena
and banned by the Government of Jammu and Kashmir. Ahmadiyas though
hated and shunned as deviants from Islam had clandestine links with
the leader of the Reading Room Party. Punjab being their main
operational base they spent fabulous sums to fan out in Kashmir.
Despite giving some details about the horrendous loot of 1931,
Rishidev has not probed the vicious role of Qadeer, a man from
Peshawar and a waiter in the employ of an English army officer. His
sudden appearance in the mosque of Mir Ali Hamdani, where Muslims had
collected in considerable numbers for a political act of choosing
their representatives for an audience with the Maharaja was not and
could not be accidental. In fact, the whole game plan was pre-thought
and pre-planned. Qadeer’s venomous oratory which M.J Akbar lauds
ignited the communal trigger resulting in the loot, arson and murder
of Kashmiri Pandits throughout the Valley. To be more precise, Qadeer
was an Ahmadiya plant and the same was corroborated by Molvi Yousuf
Shah, Mirwaiz of Kashmir, who was interviewed by Ghulam Hasan Khan, an
author on post-1931 political developments in Kashmir.
Owing allegiance to communist politics Rishidev could be one of those
Kashmiri Pandit political activists who ideologically believed in the
efficacy of land reforms and liquidation of rural debts as twin
measures for retrieval of peasantry from economic backwardness. That
was how D.P. Dhar who rose to be a central minister was the first to
surrender his lands to the Muslim tenants without any consideration.
Jia Lal Taimiri who was known for his proverbial honesty and kept a
vigilant eye on the corruption and kitties of National Conference
leaders and hence detested had also surrendered his lands to the
tenants much before the land grab had started. Taimiri was a socialist
by conviction. The Muslim leaders of National Conference vintage never
emulated or appreciated the extra-ordinary precedent set by the two
prominent leaders of Kashmiri Pandits. Instead what they did was to
project the Kashmiri Pandits as a community of exploiters.. The fact
was that Kashmiri Pandits, not all, but some of them like Muslims,
were petty chakdars who had sold their precious assets and ornaments
to purchase land. In Mirpur the land was owned by the Muslim
land-lords who had been more cruel to their co-religionist tenants
than their counter-parts elsewhere. Curiously they were not projected
as exploiters of Muslims. Instead Hindu Mahajans pursuing the
indigenous system of banking were focussed as the ‘target group’ and
ruthlessly harassed and looted by the ‘Jathas’ (groups) despatched
from the Punjab by the Ahrars who had pretensions to secularism and
deserted the Congress ranks in the wake of the formation of Muslim
League for the avowed objective of a separate land for Muslims.
The Kashmiri Pandit communists and radical humanists as the innovators
of land reforms in terms of an ideograph never controverted the
malicious disinformation unleashed by the Muslim leadership of
National Conference against Pandit minority in general. The fact is
that they were rootless people mired in the quagmire of fantasy
leagues away from any commitment to the weal and welfare of the
community. Unthinkingly and myopically they pandered the politics of
Muslim majoritarianism wedded to the idea of entrenching itself in the
state power in perpetuity. Sad as it is, they were completely ignorant
of their past history of gore and blood and failed to learn lessons
from history with a view to shaping their reasonable responses to the
challenges emerging for them as a vulnerable community. It was
absolutely bad politics as to have lent unqualified support to the
forces of Muslim sub-nationalism unfolding under an elusive facade of
left-oriented programmes and sham slogans. As is known to all and
sundry consistency was never a virtue of Sheikh Abdullah. He tried to
draw maximum support from local communists and communist leadership at
national level when he told such elements that he was following their
road-map and implementing their cardinal programmes. In his meeting
with Loy Handerson he allayed his fears about his radicalism when he
told him that he implemented land reforms just to appease communists
within National Conference.
It was not for nothing that Sheikh Abdullah divulged the land reforms
plan in toto from the pulpit of National Conference much before it was
put in practice. The purpose was to tip off in advance all the Muslim
land-lords to negotiate with their Muslim tenants for showing their
land-holdings under self-cultivation or distributing the lands in
excess of standard ceiling among family kins. In the process religious
affinities were exploited to the hilt. Kashmiri Pandits were at a
disadvantage as they subscribed to a different faith. As a matter of
prudence a Kashmiri Pandit land-lord had distributed his broad acres
among his family kins much before land reforms gained momentum to
dispossess a small minority. Later on the mutations attested by the
competent revenue authorities were ordered cancelled on the
intervention of Revenue Minister who was brazen in his religious
prejudices.
The Land Reforms Committee nominated in April, 1948 was stuffed with
members who were  rubber stamps. There was not a single member
equipped with thorough knowledge of all the contemporary models that
had been under experimentation in various countries of the world. Nor
were the services of a reputed economist borrowed to make the exercise
rational, fair, meaningful and purposeful. Why were not the
Soviet-type co-operative and collective farms accepted as a model? Why
were not the Brazilian and the Chinese models considered for
implementation? In fact, no studies were made on scientific lines. No
blue-print was spelt out. No long ranging discussions were held with
respect to the whole exercise. The communists made a ridiculous
suggestion to involve ‘peasant committees’ for the stipulated grab.
The nominated members felt proud to mouth panegyrics to the new age
lord donning the authority of the chairman of the committee. Dissent
if any was dubbed as treachery. The chairman alone knew the contours
and shades of the plan and  modalities of its execution. The members
getting Rs 200/- p.m. were required to repose full faith in the
omniscience of the chairman. The Pandits on the committee were
silently told that in view of the plebiscite being held under UN
supervision mass of peasants had to be won over for India and giving
them land on a platter could be the best bait. This was how Pandit
resistance if any to the absurdities of the executive fiat was
eliminated.
The first secretary of the Land Reforms Committee, a Kashmir, a
senior-most Revenue officer, took no time to resign from the committee
when he was apprised of the content and methodology of the land
reforms as the exercise was officially trotted out. He shocked the
chairman of the committee by candidly telling him that he could not be
a party to an act which prima facie was illegal. The Muslim policy as
it was then, so it is now was to involve a Kashmiri Pandit for
implementation of the executive fiat of a sensitive nature. A frantic
hunt was launched and the man picked up was a mere matriculate, pliant
and senile, career conscious and myopic. He slavishly followed the
dictates of his new found masters. When he was asked to bend, he went
whole hog for genuflection. The way land reforms were implemented, it
virtually ended in the wresting away of land from Hindus and its
transfer to the Muslims. To have his own pound of flesh, he meekly
approached the powers that be for his elevation to the position and
status of the Financial Commissioner. A vehement ‘no’ from the then
Prime Minister of the state sent a chill down his spine. The Kashmiri
Pandit, perhaps, was ignorant of the resolution of the Muslim
Conference submitted to the Maharaja in which among other things it
was clearly spell out that no Kashmiri Pandit should be appointed to
the key-positions in the state administrative apparatus.
The Emergency Administration and the Interim Government lost no time
in embarking upon the loot of the landed properties. Both were headed
by Sheikh Abdullah who chose himself for the echelon and people were
afforded no chance to express their pleasure or displeasure. The land
grab process started when there was no elected legislature,  no
supervening constitution spelling out a forum for redressal or
restoration of basic rights if encroached upon. It was a total vacuum
which was fraudulently exploited to snatch away landed properties that
were either purchased or legally inherited. The new bosses having been
appointed to the positions at the helm had yet to establish their
representative character under a constitutionally spell-out democratic
process. The loot of landed properties was nearly complete till 1952
when the constituent assembly was constituted under a facade of
elections which did not grant any political space to the opposition
groups present in the state. The bankruptcy of the political
leadership in the country became evident when the list of fundamental
rights as incorporated in the Republican Constitution was not allowed
full-scale application to the citizens of Jammu and Kashmir with a
view to facilitate the processes of loot being perpetrated on the
bonafide citizens of the country. The State High Court as appointed by
the highly detested ruler of the state dithered in establishing rule
of law under a fear psychosis generated by the Emergency and Interim
Government lineage-lords. In fact, the accession issue was used, as a
weapon of blackmail to weaken the resolve of the Central government to
establish the full-dimensional sovereignty of the Republican
Constitution over the State of Jammu and Kashmir. The then Indian
leadership was shaken in their roots when the five members of the J&K
state refused to bring the state under the purview of the Republican
Constitution. One of the five members was a Hindu from Jammu.
Rishidev is reticent on many issues which have been raised from time
to time in relation to the content and methodology of the land
reforms. He does not confess that the Land Reforms Committee as
constituted under an executive fiat was a mere eye-wash. He does not
even dilate upon the differences that had divided the leadership of
the National Conference on some of the basic issues relating the land
reforms. He does not even tell us that the will of the chairman of the
Land Reforms Committee was the ultimate arbiter. He is silent on the
issue of the standard ceiling which was fixed at 182 kanals of land
and does not convey as to why and how it was kept open for future
tamperings to destabilize a vulnerable minority. He does not seem to
be aware of the fact that soon after the abolition of the Big Estates
Act of 1952 no fewer than 10,000 Kashmiri Pandits bid adieu to their
land of genesis in search for a pittance elsewhere.
There are some more vital issues which Rishidev has failed to ponder
and clarify for guidance of the posterity. How was it that the ceiling
was fixed With an individual as a unit of cultivation, not a family?
Did he know its implications? It meant that a family was allowed to
have as many times the amount of ceiling land as the number of sons in
the family and their father. It also meant that they could possess as
many times the portions of  exempted lands like bedzars, safedzars et
al. It cumulatively meant that a family was deliberately allowed to
own a big landed estate. Rishidev, Dr NN Raina, Moti Lal Misri, DP
Dhar, Shyam Lal Saraf and those Kashmiri Pandits who declared.

Source: Kashmir Sentinel