[Reader-list] "Kashmir Romantics" are a serious threat to India - M.D. Nalapat

[Sanjay Khak]

*India should stop subsidising the ISI’s agents in Kashmir
"Kashmir Romantics" are a serious threat to India*

*By MD Nalapat*

 As Dr Rajendra Prasad was not born in Anand Bhavan, his writings have not
received the attention of the state, whereas they ought to have been
required reading for every high-school student. An example is India Divided,
in which the first President of the Republic of India describes how the
Muslim League led by MA Jinnah would immediately move on to another demand,
as soon as the other one was satiated. The true father of Pakistan was not
Jinnah but Winston Churchill, who worked tirelessly to divide Hindus from
Muslims, and to truncate India into as much of a rump as could be managed at
the time.

The ISI would be emboldened to further push ahead with its efforts at
seeking to once again (as during the period 1927-47) separate Muslims from
the rest of the country. Already, there are multiple (and well-funded)
voices within this vibrant community that are calling on it to dress
separately, live separately, study separately and think separately from
other communities. A victory in Kashmir for the separatists would embolden
them across the entire country, thereby provoking a backlash within the
Hindu, Sikh and Christian communities, all of whom are content to be part of
multireligious India.

*UNLIKE the Peoples Republic of China, which incorporated Xinjiang and Tibet
into itself soon after driving the KMT from the mainland in 1949, India's
leaders of that period allowed (and in some cases participated) in the
division of the subcontinent into Myanmar, Sri Lanka,Nepal, Bhutan,the
Maldives and Pakistan. Much of the reason lies in the fact that most were in
their 60s and 70s, and wanted to enjoy the fruiys of office before they
passed on. After having sworn that Pakistan would be formed "over my dead
body", Mahatma Gandhi subsequently not only agreed to the further breakup of
India, but demanded that a large sum of money to be transferred to Karachi
even while Indian troops were being killed by their Pakistani counterparts
in Kashmir. *

The transfer of cash to Pakistan in 1948 is perhaps the only example of a
country ensuring that its enemy be given the financial sinews needed to wage
war against itself. Small wonder that from then onwards,the establishment in
Pakistan has been convinced that the generosity of spirit of the Indian
political elite in matters of national interest would enable it to expand
its winnings in a costless way,especially after the 1972 Shimla Agreement
showed that it was easy for Pakistan to retrieve from the conference room
what its troops had lost on the battlefield

As Dr Rajendra Prasad was not born in Anand Bhavan, his writings have not
received the attention of the state, whereas they ought to have been
required reading for every high-school student. An example is "India
Divided", in which the first President of the Republic of India describes
how the Muslim League led by M A Jinnah would immediately move on to another
demand, as soon as the other one was satiated. The true father of Pakistan
was not Jinnah but Winston Churchill,who worked tirelessly to divide Hindus
from Muslims, and to truncate India into as much of a rump as could be
managed at the time. Jinnah and Churchill carried on a clandestine
correspondence with each other, and much of the former’s tactics was
dictated by the latter. The Congress policy effectively siding with Japan
during its 1940-45 war against the British ensured the silencing of those
voices in Britain that opposed Churchill's race-driven determination to keep
India subjugated. Having studied the lessons of the 1857 revolt, after which
the heaviest punishment fell on the Muslim community, Junnah was determined
to never again get on the wrong side of London. He therefore took advantage
of the serial blunders committed by the Congress Party, such as the
withdrawal from provincial ministries in 1939 and the Axis-leaning
"neutrality" that the party adopted when the 1939-45 war broke out, thereby
alienating friends in the UK who wanted to see a united India succeed the
Raj.

Since 1947, a country such as China that was half the size of India in
economic terms developed its economy into three times India's size by the
1990s,while (then) impoverished countries such as (South) Korea grew to a
stage where their per capura incomes became fifty times that of India.
Despite all this, the sarkari historians whose texts are the only ones
allowed to be imbibed by our young tell us that the leaders of our country
were intellectual and moral giants. While Mahatma Gandhi has been largely
forgotten in favour of his protege Jawaharlal Nehru, the many intellectuals
hovering around 10 Janpath write tome after tome about how Motilal Nehru’s
only son "brought democracy to India". Really? It was Jawaharlal Nehru who
retained almost all the British-era laws in "free" India. Let it not be
forgotten that these laws were not laws passed by the British for
themselves, but to control a slave population. British laws for indian
subjects were very different from British laws for the citizens of the UK,
yet it is the former that continues to form the basis of the Indian judicial
system,a set of constructs that grants almost unlimited powers to the state.
Which is, of course, the reason why no government since 1947 has changed the
legal system into a genuinely democratic one, that transfers rights to
citizens and obligations to the state.

Again, it was Jawaharlal Nehru (the creator of India, in the superb prose of
Sunil Khilnani and Shashi Tharoor) who set up the Permit License Raj, which
almost destroyed honest enterprise in India. He (on the advice of Nicholas
Kaldor) created a tex structure that speedily reduced any honest assessee to
penury, thereby creating the Black Money Mountain that has overhung the
economy ever since. And it was Nehru who established a state monopoly in
broadcasting, as well as in numerous other sectors of the economy. These
days, through measures such as the proposed laws designed to ensure a
uniform (and lowest common multiple) curriculam for all the country's
schools, and by investing the Income-tax Department with powers that it had
only during the time of the East India Company, the Sonia Gandhi-led UPA is
showing its fealty to Jawaharlal Nehru. A leader who distrusted his own
people,who turned to outsiders for advice, and who put in place a regime
that severely restricted the freedoms enjoyed by the common citizen. Even to
set up a small shop, it was needed to get multiple licenses and permissions,
as also to build a house. About the only action in Nehru’s "democratic"
India that did not need permission from some agency of the state was to go
to the morning toilet. Citizens were generously allowed this privilege
anywhere they wished.

The culmination of Nehruvian "democracy" can be seen in the party system in
India, the core of any genuinely free society. Almost every political party
in India, bar the Communist parties, is controlled by either a family or a
self-perpetuatinge clique of individuals. The voter is therefore given the
choice of choosing between the servant of Family X or Family Y, or between
the hangers-on of Clique Z or Family B. Those with some spine, those who
refuse to act as the domestic staff of either a particular family or a
clique, have zero chance of political advancement. The absence of
inner-party democracy has reduced freedom of electoral choice to a travesty
in India, but this will not stop those hungry for an invitation from Number
Ten and the several advantages that brings to pen yet more articles on how
Nehru and his family "brought democracy to the heathens of India". As almost
all of them are based abroad, they are happy that -for example -financial
institutions there continue to hold more than $1.3 trillion of illegal bank
deposits from Indian citizens. Had Sonia Gandhi permitted the UPA to bring
an amnesty scheme (on the lines of that done recently by Italy, a country
that she is familiar with), more than $ 400 billion would have come into the
country in the shape of 5-year Build India Bonds. This money would have
given the means to raise the country’s infrastructure to international
standards, especially if Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is given the freedom
to utilise such funds in an honest and effective way, without constant
interference from the likes of those who seek to profit from each decision
of the state, another legacy of the peerless "Jawaha" (the term used by
Edwina Mountbatten to describe her close friend).

Corruption can weaken India,but Kashmir can break India up into multiple
pieces. Should the ISI succeed in its game plan of creating a Talibanised
enclave within the state, the effect on societal relations in the rest of
India would be catastrophic. The ISI would be emboldened to further push
ahead with its efforts at seeking to once again (as during the period
1927-47) separate Muslims from the rest of the country. Already, there are
multiple (and well-funded) voices within this vibrant community that are
calling on it to dress separately, live separately, study separately and
think separately from other communities. A victory in Kashmir for the
separatists would embolden them across the entire country,thereby provoking
a backlash within the Hindu,Sikh and Christian communities,all of whom are
content to be part of multireligious India.

Once Union Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram moved to exclude Kashmir
from the Unique Identification Scheme of the Government of India, he sent a
clear signal that the Home Ministry did not regard Kashmiris as Indians.
This misstep, followed by Chief Minister Omar Abdullah's pandering to the
separatists and kicking at those who have fought them all these years, gave
the oxygen needed for the separatists to ramp up their movement. Governor NN
Vohra is known to be a follower of the Wajahat Habibullah school of thought,
which sees no harm in allowing Kashmir to "go its own way". Unlike his
father, who was as devoted to India as Lala Lajpat Rai, the younger
Habibullah has ingested a lot of sophisticated concepts from his frequent
stints abroad, all of which have fused in the apparent belief that a
Muslim-majority state can throw secularism out of the window. Today in
Kashmir, those who are not Wahabbi are discriminated against, even if they
be Shia or Sufi. Only the fanatics get attention and largesse,including from
the state. Indeed, the more trouble they create, the more the cash that they
get from a panicky Centre.

*It is time for the romance between State and Separatists to end. The
Kashmir virus is in danger of spreading across the whole country, unless it
be dealt with firmly. The more concessions that are given, the quicker will
be its descent into chaos. What is needed is to show that those destroying
the tenor of life in the state will have to pay the financial price for
doing so. The rest of India should not any more subsidise the ISI’s agents
in Kashmir.*

*(The writer is former editor of Matrubhumi and Times of India)*