A ‘compact’ to strengthen or weaken the bonds?

By Ramesh Manvati

June 2012

“…I will not let the Kashmiri Pandit community down. It is a shame that the community has been forced to live as refugees in their own country…”replied Dr. Dileep Padgaonkar in response to “..Sir, we have a lot of expectations from you…”during a brief phone call from this writer, congratulating him immediately after being appointed by GOI as chief interlocutor for J&K on October 13, 2010. This writer had previously met him twice along with other Panun Kashmir colleagues including Dr. Agnishekhar, and Sh.Moti Kaul (then an active member of PK and now President, AIKS) as Padgaonkar was a member of well known Kashmir Committee headed by Ram Jethmalani, a leading legal luminary and former Law Minister of the country. All the members of Kashmir Committee had echoed similar sentiments when Panun Kashmir members had met with them previously. Hence the ‘courtesy’ call to Padgaonkar from this writer. And, since Dileep’s participation in Dr. G.N. Fai’s Pakistan-ISI backed Kashmir centric seminars in USA, was unknown at that point of time, this writer had felt a little bit assured by the chief interlocutor’s promise. As is known, almost similar assurances were subsequently given to various Kashmiri Pandit delegations, including Panun Kashmir, which had met the team of interlocutors comprising of Prof. Radha Kumar and M.M. Ansari besides Dileep Padgaonkar.

Brief analysis of the proposed “Compact” :

Before presenting the ‘final’ report last year on October 12, the team had a meeting with Union Home Minister P Chidambaram, on September 29, 2011.The report was made public by the Ministry of Home Affairs on May 24, 2012, through its website, after more than seven months of having been presented to Indian Home Minister. And, the government also chose to make it public only after the budget session of Parliament that ended on May 22. As is known, Indian Home Secretary, R. K. Singh, after his two day ‘preparatory’ visit to Kashmir,  (May15-17, where besides his other official engagements, he also met both CM Omar Abdullah and Governor N.N.Vohra-a previous interlocutor), left for Pakistan on May 23, to represent the country at Secretary level talks between the two countries. One can draw individual interpretations of the brief chronology given here before proceeding further.

The interlocutors have received “over 700 delegations of community representatives” but gives a list of only 357 in the report (Annexure ‘E’- page 153 to 169; wrongly mentioned as ‘D’ in the report). Another Pandit organization, AIKS, is also supposed to have met the team, but, finds no mention in the list. Similarly, there is no mention of the teleconference, arranged by US based KP Diaspora and attended by various Pandit representatives (from different parts of the world including USA, UK, New Zealand etc.) besides many parts of India with the chief interlocutor in New Delhi on February 5, 2011 where he had assured the community with these words:“The end result must be one which fulfills the dreams of the exiled Kashmiri Pandits to live a life of honor and dignity in their own homeland.”

It is also baffling to note that “verbal” consultations have been the “mainstay” and written memoranda have formed “only one of the inputs” of their work while framing solutions to the vexed issue. No wonder, the issue of the rise and spread of Islamic terrorisms in the valley and its subsequent expansion to rest of India has once again been virtually pushed under the carpet and consigned to the dustbins of history.

The issue of return and rehabilitation of “Internally Displaced” Kashmiri Pandits, presently in their 23rd year of forced exodus (seventh in the history) because of rise of Islamic terrorism in the Valley in 1986, has been dealt in a very insensitive manner. It is ironic to find them having been clubbed with the issue of Kashmiri militants wanting to return from POK etc. The exiled Pandit community’s prime demand to set up a ‘commission of enquiry’, to be headed by a retired Supreme Court judge, that would establish the real causes responsible for their gross human rights violation and genocide (termed as “akin to genocide” by the then Chairman, NHRC of India) and their forced displacement from their roots, has been totally ignored. It may be noted the demand has been repeatedly raised by their representatives, including, Dr.Agnishekhat and Dr.Ajay Chrangoo of Panun Kashmir, at various forums including before many Presidents of India and also during three Round Table Conferences, convened and chaired by current P.M. Dr. Manmohan Singh himself in 2006. PM’s RTCs find a mention in the report, but sadly, minus the Pandits’ key demand. It may not be out of place to emphasize here that Kashmiri Pandits, being earliest inhabitants of the valley, having a rich and recorded socio-cultural history of over 5000 years, are the principal victims and stakeholders in the entire issue and as such their legitimate urges and aspirations cannot be taken lightly. And, it should not leave anybody in doubt that return of exiled Pandit community to their place of origin symbolizes return of ‘India’ in Kashmir.

Likewise, the report lays no clear cut emphasis for implementation of the Parliament resolution of 1994. The proposals recommend reopening of Sharada Mata Temple presently in POK, not as an inalienable right, but, only as an overall part of Indo-Pakistan policy to facilitate religious pilgrimages between the two countries.

The report talks of preservation and promotion of all “spoken” languages but is silent about necessity of the revival of Sanskrit, the great language of “gods and higher learning”. It may be noted that Kashmir’s contribution to Sanskrit literature from ancient times, particularly predating the advent of Islam in the valley in early part of 14th Century, has been monumental and is well recognized the world over. Unfortunately, the sacred language, a symbol of great heritage and culture, has been rendered almost defunct now by centuries’ old Islamic hegemony and persecution in the state. The apathy of democratically elected state and central governments in the modern times, towards Sanskrit is equally shameful.

Although the proposed “compact” rightly mentions that the “clock cannot be set back” (  to pre ’53 situation), but how come it  recommends a “case by case review of all the Central laws and Articles of the Constitution of India extended to the state after the July 1952 Delhi Agreement”? Similarly, why the “temporary” Article 370 of the Indian constitution is suggested to be treated as “special” when the majority voice of the three regions of the state, including that of Jammu and Ladakh, wants its total repeal to help further integrate the state with rest of the country? The suggestion of “gradual” rolling back of Article 312 (All India Services and All-India Services Act-1951 that intends to “enhance” the State’s Administrative Services from present 50% (as against 33% in other States of the country) is also beyond ones comprehension.The crafty language / words used leave no one in doubt about the interlocutors’ compulsions that only smack of a big conspiracy to weaken India’s position on Kashmir.

In general public perceptions, the secessionists- APHC (both Geelani and Mirwaiz factions), JKLF, etc have boycotted the interlocutors. But, on close scrutiny of the final report “informal discussions” have taken place “with some of them”, including member organizations, “such as former APHC Chairman, Maulvi Abbas Ansari, and/or their supporters, and  district branches of such organizations as the Bar Association” – who have provided them “ illuminating ” inputs “especially for key CBMs, political elements and roadmap issues”.

It may be borne in mind that PDP, the well known political face of secessionist elements in the state, has welcomed the report with remarks: “Some of the suggestions made by interlocutors have been proposed by our party in self-rule document”. As is well known, the so-called “Self-Rule” is a proposal initiated by Pakistan’s General Pervez Musharraf during his presidency. He, as the then Pak Army Chief, was also behind 1999 Kargil intrusion that saw 527 Indian security forces martyred besides 1,363 wounded. The ruling NC, which has stuck to its “Autonomy” and pre-53 stand, thinks: “we had an ideal opportunity when we were dealing with Pervez Musharraf at the height of his power”. However, BJP has rejected the report and Panthers Party has termed “the three musketeers’” reportedly Rs. fifty crore exercise a “fraud”.

The legitimate demand for a separate statehood for Jammu, UT Status for Ladakh and a separate Homeland for KPs within the valley, stands sadly ignored by the interlocutors. And, what emerges in the end, is that the govt. is essentially trying to “build on commonalities” between NC’s ‘Greater Autonomy’; PDP’s ‘Self-Rule’ and Peoples’ Conference’s ‘Achievable Nationhood’ proposals and force down the so-called “new compact” through the throat of the patriotic and majority voice of the state i.e. the combined voice of Kashmiri Pandits, Jammuites, Ladakhies, Gijjar-Bakkarwals,Sikhs and other patriotic forces.

Not only is the apparently orchestrated report self contradictory, but lacks clear insight into the ground realities including the psyche of the large section of ‘majority’ community of the state. One may tend to agree with the suggestion, if India was to consider devolution of more powers, purely on equality basis, to various states of the country, including, Jammu and Kashmir. But, one must understand, the context and contours of such a demand from valley based politicians has a different connotation altogether. Thanks to its weak-kneed policies, Indian state has been grappling with political gimmickry in J&K, particularly in the valley, for more than six decades now. And, the just released 176 page report has only added to the prevailing confusing and capricious situation. Therefore, the interlocutors’ highly expensive exercise is nothing but one more attempt to appease the separatists and their cohorts, both within the state and across the border that leaves ample scope for dilution of India’s overall sovereignty and integrity in the state – which can’t be allowed at any cost. Besides, the supreme sacrifice of thousands of security forces who have laid down their precious lives to protect and uphold the sovereignty and integrity of the country in the state, particularly in the valley during last over six decades, cannot be allowed to go in vain just to please anti-national elements – who only deserve to be tried for treason and/or treated as per appropriate law of the Nation.

Dileep Padgaonkar and his team may have played to the gallery. But, have certainly not lived up to their promise made to exiled Pandits – now reduced to a “reverse minority” in the state. Therefore, the community has rightly rejected and burnt the report titled: “A new compact with the people of Jammu & Kashmir”. The compact may contain some new phrases and words but there is nothing fresh in it that could help strengthen further the millennia old bonds between Bharat Mata and her ‘crown’. Hence, the question arises: can the Indian patriotic forces in general, and the exiled Kashmiri Pandit community in particular, see the writing on the wall and help consolidate its only potent political voice-Panun Kashmir – to meet the challenges ahead? Yes, We Can !

*(The writer, a senior political analyst and activist of Panun Kashmir, can be reached through e-mail :- paannyaar@rediffmail.com    rameshmanvati@yahoo.co.in

The Long  Betrayal

By Dr. M.K. Teng

June 2012

The reports appearing in the Indian press,  emanating from the statement made by the Home Ministry in the Parliament,  on the eve of the 22nd anniversary of the exodus of the community of Hindus from Kashmir, that not a single family, living in exile , had availed of the Prime Minister’s Package, should give no cause for any surprise. Instead what should cause surprise is the belief that the Indian Prime Minister and the men around him harbored that the Hindus of Kashmir living in the refugee camps in Jammu and other parts of India should have returned to Kashmir to live in the refugee camps there at the charity of the Muslims and the mercy of separatist flanks who are leading the so called struggle for freedom of Kashmir from the occupation of the Indian army.

Not only the Indian Prime Minister , the whole of Indian political class knew the inherent conflict between the return of Hindus to Kashmir and the Muslim separatist and secessionist struggle and the rumbling underground of the Muslim Jihad. The leaders of the Jihad and the Muslim separatist regimes never changed their stand that the Hindus had been driven out of Kashmir because they had always opposed the Muslim struggle in Jammu and Kashmir and they had been dealt with as they deserved. At no point, during the last two decades, were Muslim separatist regimes prepared to abandon the strategic advantage of the demographic change in Kashmir created by the ethnic cleansing of Hindus in 1990. The pretentious acceptance of the return of the Hindus by some Jihadi war groups, Muslim separatist regimes and their over ground mentors in the Hurriyat conglomerates with the rider that the Hindus would join the Muslim struggle against India, was a well-planned move aimed more to silence their protest in exile than open the way for their rehabilitation.

The ethnic extermination of the Hindus was the first objective of the religious war, the Jihad unleashed in Kashmir. The Hindus had through the crucial days which followed the partition, offered stubborn resistance to the secessionist movements in the State and the Muslimisation of the government and the society in Kashmir. The ethnic extermination of the Hindus was therefore, the first strategic objective of the militant flanks, which formed the vanguard of Jihad for the secession of Jammu and Kashmir from India. After the war of separation triumphed, the Jammu and Kashmir would, as a part of fundamental unity of the Muslim brotherhood, join the commonwealth of Pakistan. The terrorist violence in Jammu and Kashmir as it spread, unfolded several of its aspects, which were characteristically original to it. The terrorist violence had a wider portent: the expansion of pan- Islamic fundamentalism and the achievement of the Muslimisation of Jammu and Kashmir. The extermination of Hindus in Kashmir was a part of Islamic revolution which the armed struggle aimed to accomplish.

The Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh and the people around him could not have been unaware of the conditions the return package would push Hindu refugees into. It would be an irony of history, if the Indian leaders believed that the Kashmiri Hindu would return to their homes and hearths to join the Muslim struggle against India. The sociology of the exodus of the Hindus of Kashmir needs to be studied in order to understand the impact of genocide on them and the upturning their exodus brought about in their lives.

The Sociology of Exodus

The Hindus of Kashmir had fought shoulder to shoulder with the people of princely States for the freedom of India from the British Paramountacy as well as the princely rule. In fact the first Plenary of the All India States’ Peoples’ Conference, held in Kathiawad, was presided over by a Kashmiri Pandit, Shanker Lal Koul, who, along with Lalla Muluk Raj Saraf of Jammu, represented the princely State of Jammu and Kashmir in the Conference. Shanker Lal Koul sounded the bugle of revolt against the Princes and their British mentors. The Hindus of Kashmir fought alongside their Muslim compatriots against the princely rule. They were also at the center-stage of the Khilafat Movement launched by Gandhi, which took Jammu and Kashmir by storm and which shook the British, who were secretly conspiring to colonise more temperate regions of the north of India including Jammu and Kashmir. In fact, the Hindus of Kashmir provided the main thrust to the State- Subject movement, which was aimed to frustrate the British efforts to colonise Jammu and Kashmir and convert it into a white enclave in India. The Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir opposed the State-subject movement and in collaboration with the Muslims in Punjab beseeched the British to merge the State with the British India. In spite of the Muslim intransigence and singed by the anti- Hindu riots of 1931, the Hindus of Kashmir joined their Muslim compatriots to initiate secular peoples’ movement for the freedom of the State. The leaders of the Hindu community of Kashmir alone dared to openly question the Gandhi’s decision to refuse the request of the President of All India States’ People conference, Sh N C Kelker, to integrate the State peoples’ struggle in the princely states with the liberation struggle of India.

In 1946, during the turmoil that followed the Quit Kashmir agitation, the Secretary General of the All India States ‘Peoples’ Conference, Dwarika Nath Kachroo, a Kashmiri Pandit, played a historic role to prevent a split between the National Conference and the Indian National Congress which was still committed to cooperation with the princely rulers. Meanwhile the left flanks of the National Conference, predominantly Kashmir Pandit, who formed the core of the War Council, the National Conference had constituted, carried on the agitation from its underground quarters under the leadership of Mohi-u-Din Qarra. The man second to Qarra, in the War Council was Niranjan Nath Raina Saraf, a veteran communist and an intellectual, who turned to academics later and became one among the first nuclear scientists of the post independent India.

In the aftermath of the June 3 Declaration, which envisaged the creation of Pakistan, the Hindus of Kashmir lost no time to declare their commitment to the accession of the State to India. It is not a widely known fact that during those fateful days , while the National Conference maintained a complete silence on the issue of accession of the State, , the leaders of the Yuvak Sabha, the premier organisation representing the Hindus of Kashmir, had a secret meeting with Acharya Kriplani, the Congress President, who had come to Srinagar, at the residence of Bal Kak Dhar in Srinagar. The next day Shiv Narayan Fotedar, Professor Laxmi Narayan Dhar and Pandit Gana Koul, moved a resolution in the General Council of Yuvak Sabha calling upon the ruler of the State to prepare ground for the accession of the State to India and bring to a close the existing distrust in the State. The resolution was adopted unanimously by the Sabha and given to the press the same day.

Dwarika Nath Kachroo participated in the crucial Working Committee meeting of the National Conference held in early October 1947, which took the historic decision to support the accession of the State to India. He cabled the minutes of the meeting to Nehru. The decision of the Working Committee of the National Conference was a determining moment in the unification of Jammu and Kashmir with India.

In the aftermath of the invasion of the State by Pakistan in October 1947, the Hindus of Kashmir joined the resistance the people of the State offered to the invading columns. After the accession of the State to India, the Hindus put themselves into the forefront of the resistance against the long war of subversion, Pakistan and the pro- Pakistan Muslim flanks carried on in the state. They gave ideological content to the political and economic reforms the Interim Government, constituted by the National Conference, embarked upon. They accepted the political and economic reforms with the hope that the Indian Secularism would eventually triumph, though they knew that the reforms underlined Muslim precedence in the government and the society of the State. They did not oppose the exclusion of the State from the constitutional organisation of India mainly because they were aware of the pressures the Indian government faced in the Security Council. However, they threw away their caution and stormed the streets of Srinagar after the disintegration of the National Conference in 1953, in support of the second Interim Government, headed by Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad installed in the State. Indeed the Hindus formed the main flanks of resistance against the long struggle for self-determination, the All Jammu and Kashmir Plebiscite Front spearheaded for more than two decades. For their audacity to oppose the Front they earned their rath who branded them as the “unpaid agents of Indian imperialism”. The condemnation pursued them even after the conclusion of the Indira-Abdullah accord which restored the Front leaders to power in Jammu and Kashmir in 1975.

Long Betrayal

The dissolution of the Plebiscite Front and the withdrawal of the movement for self-determination, Indira-Abdullah Accord envisaged, did little to contain the Muslim separatist movements in the State. On the contrary, the Accord broke up the plank on which the resistance to the Muslim Separatist movements was based.

The Front leaders reconstituted the National Conference after they dissolved the Front. In order to consolidate their hold on the State power, they adopted a two pronged strategy. First they put the National Conference on the right side of the Muslim separatist movements to assuage the ruffled tempers of the large sections of the Muslim society which did not approve of the abandonment of the movement for self-determination. Secondly the National Conference leaders launched a surreptitious campaign to: a) neutralize the Muslim flanks which had given support to the National Conference faction lead by Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, State Congress party lead by Ghulam Mohammad Sadiq and Sayed Mir Qasim and drive them out of State politics; b) eliminate the left flanks, which had played a decisive role in the dismissal of the first Interim Government headed by Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah in 1953; c) isolate the Hindus and the other minorities to eliminate whatever influence they still exercised on the ongoing political process in the State; and d) subvert the institutional framework which formed the basis of the support structures India had in the State.

The Accord broke up the main plank on which the resistance to the Muslim separatist movements was based. During the days which followed the accord the Indian political class bent so low to seek  a compromise with the Muslim separatist and secessionist forces that the Hindus were pushed out of the conflict, the Muslim separatism underlined.

The involvement of Pakistan in Afghanistan gave that country fresh ground and a new ideological plank for intervention in Jammu and Kashmir. The Islamic Revolution in Pakistan provided a new thrust to the fundamentalisation of the Muslim society in Kashmir, a serious development which the successive state governments chose to ignore. As the decline set in the Soviet power, Pakistan began the militarization of the separatist and the secessionist forces in the State. Not unexpectedly, Pakistan launched the Jihad in Kashmir towards the close of 1989. By that time the disintegration of the Soviet power had become imminent.

The Hindus of Kashmir were a witness to what happened around them. They cried in wilderness. The Indian political class gloated over its dependence on the Muslim support structures it claimed to have built on the basis of the recognition of the right of the Muslims in the State to a Separate freedom, which placed them outside the secular political organisation of the Constitution of India.

The Jihad Struck Kashmir in January 1990. The support structures the Indian political class had boasted to have built in the State vanished overnight. The Hindus were left alone on the frontline. The Indian security forces remained in the rear.

The Hindus bore the brunt of the first assault, the Jihad mounted. In the midst of the holocaust, as the death and destruction enveloped them, Hriday Nath Jattu, the Chairman of the All India Kashmiri Pandit Conference and his close associate Jagar Nath Sapru waited upon the State Governor, Jagmohan. With tears rolling down their cheeks, the beseeched him to save the community of the Hindus from the nemesis they faced. A few days later, Sapru was kidnapped by the militants. He survived the torture that he was subjected to, dragged himself out of a gutter he had been thrown into, and crawled to a nearby house where from he was taken to the Military Hospital at Badami Bagh.

The Indian political class refused to recognize the real import of the jihad because it did not possess the courage to fight the religious war, the Jihad waged in the State. For a long time the Indian political class took recourse to subterfuge. When it could not hide its face any longer it withdrew into the traditional trappings of its colonial past and offered to reach a compromise with the Muslim separatist flanks and their military regimes. The Hindus were hurled into the oblivion.

Return Package

In the sordid drama which the Indian political class enacted as the Jihad engulfed the state, the Hindus of Kashmir were the “dramatis personae”, who fought on the battle front, from where the nation of which they were the “unpaid agents” had withdrawn without giving a fight. For more than four decades they had borne servitude in the hope that history would set right the wrong done to them. They faced the Jihad with the fortitude of a people who refused to surrender after their defeat.

The veterans of the freedom movement in Jammu and Kashmir, Omkar Nath Trisal, Pran Nath Jalali, Reshi Dev , who had given the freedom struggle in Jammu and Kashmir its ideological content and imparted direction to the resistance against the Muslim separatist movements and foreign intervention, met this author in their exile. A sob was stuck in their throat. They gave expression to their remorse and the hurt, their exile had caused them. A decade later, Makhan Lal Sher, who enlisted himself in the defence of Srinagar in 1947, and later played a key role in the resistance against Muslim separatism in the state, met this author in Jammu. He told this author in resigned tomes: “We have done our duty. If the people of India failed to fulfill their pledge they will pay a heavier price than we have.”

The Prime Minister’s Return Package came as an affront to the hopes, the Hindus in exile harbored. It did not seek to set right the wrong done to them. It did not envisage the reversal of the genocide. It did not promise the Hindus the restoration of their homes, their temples and their sources of livelihood which they had lost in the holocaust that had enveloped them. Nor did it promise them protection in a social environment which was politically unstable. Ideologically regimented and exposed to subversion.

The Hindus of Kashmir acted as the “unpaid agents” for their commitment to the unity of their country. They could not be prepared to allow the Indian Political class to use them as its errand boys. They gave the Return Package of the Prime Minister, the consideration it deserved.

November 2011

In the latest issue of the  quarterly published under the aegis of the India International Centre, New Delhi have appeared two write-ups, ‘one Home, two lives’ and ‘Loving & Losing Kashmir’, one by Suvir Koul and the other by Natasha Koul. Suvir Koul is a Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania and Natasha Koul is also an academic and writes  fiction. Curiously, both of them happen to be the progeny of Kashmiri Pandits who have been treacherously expelled and exiled from their homes and hearths in Kashmir by the genocidal killers laced with deadly weapons, guns and grenades, supplied to them by Pakistan.

The substance of the two write-ups establishes the dubious credentials of the two worthies as intellectual and psychological dupes to the barrage of lies, half-truths, falsehoods, fibs and fables that have been profusely fabricated, churned out and orchestrated by the terrorist-cum-secessionist machine tasked to paint India in the darkest and gristliest colours. It is a sheer ‘smear campaign’ meticulous in its pursuit of the sinister design of disfiguring the democratic visage of India and its republican state and projecting it as brutal and tyrannical. The terrorist-cum-secessionist machine is financed and manned by the notorious ISI of Pakistan which is seen as the hub of terrorism and religious discord all over the world. The dominant design and motive of the dis-information campaign is to segregate and wean away Kashmir from the constitutional sovereignty of India and establish it as a Muslim state governed by the Islamic law and precedent. The cruel expulsion of microscopic minority of Hindus through torture, murder and inhuman brutalisation was strategically executed with this end in eye-scape.

The ISI fabricated and funded propaganda machine, the two worthies are urged to know, is equally geared to the much publicised project of reviving the Muslim caliphate lying in the dust-bin of history with Kashmir as its integral part and constituent. The war unleashed by Pakistan with active complicity and participation of genocidal killers in Kashmir is manifestly religious in hue and content. Its destination is ascendancy, supremacy and hegemony of Islam and nightmare for atheists, polytheists, infidels and all types of non-Muslims. It is a Muslim crusade the flanks of which have continuously been replenished and ramparted by the highly motivated terrorist herds from Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Somalia, Libya et al. The details percolating from the war-theatre in Kashmir provide a clinching evidence to the fact that the militarised Islam has not been chasing political goals alone in Kashmir, but has its sights riveted to the religious objectives too.

It is regrettable that the two worthies, one settled in America and the other in London, appear to have fallen in the dragnet of the same Jihadi machine that as a first step of achievement has wiped out the ancient tribe of Kashmiri Pandits from the soil of Kashmir alongwith its cultural and civilisational land-marks having a Hindu flavour. We as a patriotic community condemn the utterances of the two worthies as treasonous as they fabricate and churn out the same vile formulations and malicious condemnations that are the warp and woof of the ‘Seminar circuit’ piloted by a Pakistani spy, Dr. G.N. Fai and his mercenary cohorts.

We as an externed community heartily appreciate and admire the personal ambitions of the two worthies for having crossed the high seas for greener pastures, but their successes, if any, in distant America and London do not in any manner leverage them to have gut-hatred for the country of their genesis where their essential roots and cultural foundations lie. What makes them to be in close chaoots with the sworn enemies of India who spare no efforts to break it and fragment it for a second partition? We do not mind if they put on the high-brow airs of liberals and neo-liberals, but that never invests them with an intrinsic right to grossly abuse the democratic space available to them in their land of nativity by denouncing the very idea of India, its sovereignty over its territories and its militaries and para-militaries engaged in defending its historical borders. How is it that they in their solomonic wisdom pontificate that India is a geography, not a nation-state and hence any irate insurgent with a gun in hand can hive off its sacrosanct territories?

Moreso, it is mind-boggling that the two worthies, seem to be audacious enough in upholding, supporting and disseminating the terrible views of the terrorists and secessionists operational in Kashmir who have been waging a Jihadi war against the Indian state for horrendous destinations. It is also quite strange that their views, statements and formulations are mostly founded on myths and yarns that are disseminated from multifarious rumour-sites that have mushroomed in Kashmir. What they have churned out is false and malicious propaganda that has no factual basis.

As is revealed by the contents of the two write-ups it becomes apparent that the worthies have meekly chosen to tread upon the dirt-track of disgraceful capitulation to the genocidal killers in Kashmir and their cohorts wherever they be with a view to earning temporary reprieve for whatever tangible or intangible assets they have in Kashmir. If our experience in Kashmir can be their guide, they cannot save their assets of any form, name, fame, land and house for the very name-tag that they are burdened with qualifies them for loot, murder, grab, desecration and effacement superlatively.

It is intriguing that the two worthies maintained absolute silence, dipped themselves in ‘dyan-mudra’ or shut themselves up in a canary island when the genocidal killers perpetrated medieval barbarities and cruel savageries on hapless Kashmiri Pandits and their women-folk. Have they ever thought it apt and obligatory to fathom out the names of Sarla Bhat, Girija Tiku, Babli Raina, Rupawati Bhat, Prana Ganjoo et al from the gory book of savagery that the genocidal killers in Kashmir have written? Sarla Bhat was kidnapped, raped for days on end, tortured and put to bullets and thrown on the road-side. Girija was cut into two equal halves on a wood-chopping machine and given a burial. Babli was raped in presence of her children and whole family and thrown into the river Vitasta. Rupawati, an old lady, was tortured to death. Prana Ganjoo was raped and tortured and hurled into the river Vitasta.

I am not writing it to invoke anybody’s pity, much less of the two worthies, NRIs, who are in the business of high-pitched advocacy of human rights of those who are the worst violators of human rights of Kashmiri Pandits, the natives of Kashmir.

Suvir Koul on his grand-parents

In his outrageous write-up Suvir Koul has made a frequent mention of his grand-parents, but has not revealed their names. Prof. Jaya Lal Koul, the author of the classic on Lalla Ded, is his paternal grand-father and Prof. Shyam Lal Dhar, soft, suave and learned, is his maternal grand father.

Prof. Koul was a literary luminary of Kashmir who has made tremendous contributions to the Kashmiri literature. ‘Studies in Kashmiri’ is his magnum opus. His translation of the Kashmiri opera ‘Bombur Yambarzal’ written by Pt. D.N. Nadim and Mr. Noor Mohammad Roshan was unique. He was the first secretary of the State Academy of Culture, Arts and Languages when it was set up under the provisions of the state constitution. As a brilliant professor of English he had taught nearly two generations in Kashmir and was held in high esteem.

To up-date Suvir Koul’s knowledge about his paternal grand-father I feel constrained to write that when the Professor died of cancer outside his home state, no condolences were offered and no obituaries were written. Why? He was a Kashmiri Pandit.

About Prof. S.L. Dhar, Sudha Koul, the authoress of the Tiger Ladies, writes that he had to give up his teaching assignment in a college when Muslim students in his class shouted that they would like to have Muslims as their teachers. The Professor of old genre, as an epitome of culture and learning was shocked for he had no communal considerations while teaching his learners. This type of stark communalism had its old roots in Kashmir. Those who overlook it or brush it under the carpet are the proverbial ostriches. In fact, the present political problem in Kashmir has its first origins in devastating Muslim Communalism.

Suvir Koul on 1953 developments

Sheikh Abdullah was a charismatic leader who lent his absolute support to the accession of the state to the dominion of India. But, he had his personal ambitions too which could not be fully accommodated within the democratic imperatives of the State of India. He was seen trangressing the delineated powers that were vested in him as the Prime Minister of the state and those beings the cold war days he was deposed. Political power was not handed over to a Hindu. It was the Sheikh’s deputy, a Muslim who rose to the helm after having been duly elected by the representative assembly constituted on the basis of adult-franchise. Sheikh Abdullah as is well-known was deft in real-life politics. He forged an accord with Mrs. Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India and took over the reins of government in 1975. He voluntarily became a part of the same constitutional frame-work that he himself had pioneered. The changes and modifications that the successive representative assemblies had brought about in the constitutional provision of the detestable Article 370 were completely endorsed by the Sheikh as the Chief Minister of the State.

Sheikh Abdullah had his own inherent failings which clouded his vision as an impeccable secularist. He delivered a life-time shock to Kashmiri Pandits when he in his autobiography dubbed and denounced them as ‘agents and spies’ of India.

Suvir Koul is absolutely wrong to say that Sheikh Abdullah had tried to furrow an alternate track of politics for changing the status-quo of the state. Sheikh was conscious of the disastrous perils that were involved in it for all the ethnic groups in the state. He was on terra firma of historical realities. He could not opt for Pakistan where he was existentially in danger of getting exterminated. He had certainly exhibited an inclination for independence, but Pakistan would not allow it.

Suvir Koul on accession of the state to the Union of India

The worthy Indian-American claims to have changed his world-view on J&K’s accession to the Union of India after having gone through the tomes of history germane to the subject. Could he be asked about the titles that he has studied which have brought about sea-changes in his views on accession? The first principle of research is to reference his averments that he is audacious to make. There are numerous works that have been craftily sponsored by Pak foreign office only to distort the facts about accession. There is a lot of trash that has been churned out by the supporters of terrorists and secessionists in Kashmir. Koul seems to have fallen a prey to such distorted and unhistorical materials. It is his bounden duty as an Indian, if he feels that, he is one, to look for the relevant-materials available in genuine works on Kashmir history. And he will come to learn that Maharaja Hari Singh’s accession to India is full, final, irrevocable and flawless.

The worthy professor appears to be heavily prejudiced when he holds India responsible for non-conduct of plebiscite in Kashmir. It was actually Pakistan that deliberately sabotaged the plebiscite process by not vacating the territories that the tribal raiders from Pakistan had aggressed and forcibly occupied. It was a pre-condition for the conduct of plebiscite in Kashmir. To dispel his gross ignorance and deep-seated bias the learned worthy should rummage the American libraries for the said-resolution of the Security Council.

Suvir on Pro-Pakistan elements dis-allowed to fight-elections

Suvir Koul is an Indian by birth, but is obsessed with pro-Pakistan elements who he believes are debarred from fighting elections in Kashmir. Firstly there is no directive, order or ordinance by the state government or by the Election Commission of India that has debarred pro-Pakistan elements in the state from joining the electoral fray. Secondly, the pro-Pakistan elements are so weak in numbers and political prowess that they always shy away from elections lest they should get exposed as paper tigers. Ali Shah Gilani, a foreign settler in Kashmir and a rabid Muslim bigot, has been a member of the Legislative Assembly umpteen times. In Mir Qasim’s time Jamaate-Islami, a notorious pro-Pakistan outfit, had not fewer than eight members in the Legislative Assembly of the State.

Suvir Koul on his visit to Ganpatyar Temple, Srinagar

Prejudice and malice against the militaries and para-militaries of our country gets explicitly reflected when the worthy writes about his visit to the Ganpatyar Temple in Srinagar. The fact is that the forces were deployed for the safe-guard and protection of the temple when the Muslim terrorists subjected it to a missile attack from across the river. They have saved the temple from desecration and destruction, otherwise it would have met the same fate of 550 temples that have been desecrated, vandalised, demolished and laid waste by the rabid vandals and ‘lawless lizzards’ that have been prowling about the land of Kashmir since 1989. The para-militaries have a right to worship in their own mode and method and the gods that they invoke are not different from our religious lore and learning. The worthy is ignorant of the fact that Kashmir had tremendous impact of Vaishnavism which has impulsed our art, archeology and sculpture. His deliberate usage of ‘Hundutav’ is not only repulsive, but condemnable too.

Suvir Koul on militarisation

It is sheer saddening that Suvir Koul has joined chorus with the treacherous detractors of India who do not spare a moment from maligning our national armies. The real ire and grudge against our armies as tom-tommed by the Jihadi machine is because it has been frustrated and nearly defeated in its malicious designs of severing Kashmir from India. Sovereign countries have a right to defend their borders against aggression from their enemies. India was aggressed by Pakistan four times so far. Then, we have security threats looming large from China. Pakistan has unleashed a proxy-war in Kashmir and there has been infiltration going on incessantly for the last twenty years. It is the constitutional duty of the national government to defend the country from the external enemies.

Have Suvir Koul and men of his ilk guts and gumption to question the deployment of American forces to Iraq and Afghanistan ? If they dare do so, they will be deported next day lock, stock and barrel.

Suvir Koul on the rape of a Gujjar girl

The worthy has highlighted the case of a Gujjar girl who as per him was raped by para-military soldiers. It is a story, a fib and a yarn that has been dinned into his ears by the Jihadis or their committed supporters. I would like the worthy to divulge the name and address of the girl and the exact place where she was raped. His contention will hold ground only after he produces clinching and unassailable evidence. In absence of it he can be projected as a credulous person who readily believes in what he is told. The professor should know Kashmir has been a land of story-tellers. That is how we produced a voluminous work like ‘Kathasaritsagar’. When hapless Kashmiri Pandits were put to bullets in broad-day light, fabulous stories were yarned to malign them as ‘mukhbirs, spies and agents’ of India and everybody believed them uncritically.

Muslim stories to Suvir Koul appear more painful than Kashmiri Pandit Stories

Let the worthy be told that the Muslims have no stories to relate except that they have been a part of the insurgency that was inspired, conceived and executed by ISI of Pakistan. They were made to believe that Muslim Jihad had the blessings of Allah and hence was sure to succeed. The Jihadis trained in camps across the borders and laced with sophisticated guns were intellectually poor and had no estimations of the strength of the country they were pitted against. In religious frenzy the Muslims donated their sons to Muslim Jihad who crossed the borders to Pakistan for arms training. When pushed back into the Indian territory for loot, murder, sabotage and destruction, the militaries and para-militaries eliminated a good number of them. The insurgency has made them rich, nay fabulously rich and that is how they have purchased those properties of Pandits, which they could not grab. Pakistani moneys, hawala moneys, moneys sent as remittances from West and Middle-East and Indian moneys, loot of the state exchequer & absolute sway over the State and Central finances they say, have made them affluent and prosperous beyond the conceivable limits.

And, Mr Professor, the story of the Kashmiri Pandits is sad and painful. They have been subjected to a genocide, Jewish-style. They were targeted as individuals or as a group with an express intent of total annihilation and extermination. The methods chosen for annihilation have been hanging, burning alive, strangulation by steel wires, dragging to death, drawing of blood in hospitals, branding with red-hot iron-bars, slaughter, gouging of eyes, breaking of limbs and impaling. Their houses have been mercilessly looted, ravaged and put to arson. Nearly, twenty thousand houses have been destroyed and their materials looted. Five hundred and fifty temples have been desecrated, ravaged and destroyed. All Kashmiri Pandit habitations whether in the capital city of Srinagar or in distant villages and hamlets have been decimated. They are refugees in their own country. They are on cross–roads.

Now, the worthy should decide as to whose story is more painful and agoning.

Suvive Koul on self-determination

The worthy should know that the nation-states do not grant the right of self-determination to their federating constituents. The colonies that were held under the thraldom for exploitation and loot of resources by the imperialist powers clamoured for right of self-determination. This is how it gained currency with the people in the colonies that struggled for freedom and prosperity. India is not a clonial power. She has not subjugated people of other countries and is given to looting their resources.

Kashmir is a constituent part of the Indian union. It has made strides in the segments of health, education, agriculture, horticulture, trade and transport through the Indian moneys. Poverty is minimal in Kashmir. The present-day quality of life that Kashmiris have gained stands in stark contrast to what it was in pre-1947 era. People then  lived in penury, wore scantily and were on teh brink of starvation and ate.

The people of Jammu and Ladakh have catalogues of grievances against the Kashmiri rulers of Sunni brand. Their grouse is that they have been put to extreme discrimination and denial of funds and finances allocated to the state by the Central government. And they clamour against their colonisation by the state under the siege of Muslims.

Part II

January 2012

Natasha Koul on People of J&K & their aspirations

Natasha Koul, though a Kashmiri Pandit in her origins, has deliberately ignored the heterogeneity of the state of Jammu and Kashmir and projected the secessionist aspirations of a small segment of the Kashmiri population as the destiny of the entire state. She should know that Jammu province predominantly secular and democratic is whole-hog for fall integration of the state with the Indian Union and is vehemently opposed to the special status granted to the state under article 370 of the Indian Constitution.

So is Ladakh. It is entirely Buddhist with a sprinkling of Muslim population. The Shia segments of population inhabiting the region of Kargil fully know their fate in the Muslim state of Pakistan where shias are detested and have been under a state-sponsored process of elimination. The foreign settlers in Kashmir from Iran, Turan and Afghanistan are and have been the source of turmoil in Kashmir. They are in siege of the state power and have demolished the native cultural structures and motifs and fed and reared a brand of politics based on obscurantism and religious bigotry. It is they who donated their sons to Muslim Jihad and made it obligatory for the native converts to swell the ranks of Jihadis. The training camps opened by Pakistan military imparted them training in wielding leth weapons and funded the Jihadi groups formed at its behest. After having crossed into the Indian territory they made the Kashmiri Pandits as their first targets. JKLF killers were the first to wage war on natives of Kashmir and made them flee their homes and hearths. Jihadi aspirations of the foreign settlers in Kashmir are not the aspirations of the Hindus, Shias, Sikhs, Buddhists and large sections of Sunni Muslims of Kashmir. Peace will prevail in Kashmir only when the Jihadi forces in India, Pakistan and other Muslim countries are globally defeated. That is the solution to the present turmoil in Kashmir.

Natasha Koul on Kashmir as national and international problem

Kashmir certainly is a national problem. The patriotic people of the country are in four gears to vanguish the vicious forces that are hell-bent on partitioning the country a second time. The collaborators and mercenaries for petty gains and vested interests have chosen to fall in line and get mobilised for facilitating the Jihadi agenda to fructify. The ‘Seminar-Circuit’ run by Dr. Gulam Nabi Fai, a notorious ISI agent, stands exposed alongwith the Indian collaborators and mercenaries who are in sync with the ISI agenda of fragmenting India as a thriving democratic country. The nationalist forces will certainly defeat the ISI machinations and the Jihadi forces dreaming all the time Kashmir going the Pakistan way. Kashmir assumed an international complexion the day it became and inalienable part of India. The Muslim League led by Jinnah detested by the Kashmiri Muslims did not savour well the accession of the state to India. The considerations were bluntly communal. The tribal raiders invaded the Indian territory of J&K State and indulged in loot, murder and mayhem. The Indian army with the full support of Kashmiri Muslim populations fought the looters and killers to the extent of clearing large chunks of territories under their grab and occupation. India as a civilised country lodged  a complaint in the world-body against the Pakistani aggression on her territory. Cold-war politics enmeshed the entire issues in knots of complications. The world-body has deleted Kashmir from its agenda now.

The issue in Kashmir is mainly Hindu and Muslim, purely communal. If it were not so, why were the Hindus of Kashmir put to a genocide, thus forcing them to run from helter to skelter in search of existential safety and security? The Jihadis were more than conscious that the Hindus had a consistent history of fighting them from day one when they in the garb of sufis forcibly occupied Kashmir and reduced it to an Iranian colony. The  issue has gained prominence at international level when Pakistan, a Muslim state, waged a blatant war on India four times. Despite image-battering defeats, she did not drop Kashmir from its ominous Jihadi agenda. At its behest, Jihadi war has been incessantly going on in Kashmir for the last twenty years. The Kashmir issue, Madam Natasha, is nothing but communal and that is the only paradigm, through which it is to be seen and evaluated and strategies to be forged to defeat the religious war for disintegration of India.

Natasha Koul on history of Kashmir

It is a fact of history that parts of the state of Jammu and Kashmri are under an illegal occupation of Pakistan. It is also a fact that Pakistan treacherously ceded a portion of the state’s territory to China only to fortify and buttress its relations with that country. It is universally known that China too has grabbed large belts of the state’s territories through a treacherous war waged on India in 1962. The territories that historically belong to the state of Jammu and Kashmir have been under an illegal occupation of both China and Pakistan, now in an unholy alliance to offset the growing influence of India on international scale. The two states occupying Indian territories cannot be granted justification through ambivalence of not putting the whole issue to a rational judgment.

The learned writer has alluded to the foreign dynasties that have ruled over Kashmir in the past. She has named Mughal and Afghan dynasties but has not knowingly mentioned the Shahmiri dynasty which was as foreign to Kashmir as Mughal and Afghan dynasties were. Dogras, she says, purchased Kashmir from the Sikhs. But, she deliberately avoids to mention that a Shahmiri ruler divided the entire territory of Kashmir as his fiefdom among three Muslims, who were foreign occupiers of sacred land of Kashmir. Historical judgments always falter when they are made on the basis of some isolated periods of history.

How was the British partition-plan messed up in Kashmir? The powers to accede to the dominions of India and Pakistan were vested in the ruler of Kashmir, who, of course, was a Hindu. In view of Pakistan out to grab his state through aggression, he signed the  accession document in favour of India. Kashmir certainly was a Muslim majority state but the fact should not be ignored that the majority population supported the Maharaja for having acceded to India. Sheikh Abdullah was the leader of the anti-autocracy movement in Kashmir which had the full support of the whole population of India minus the Muslim League. Those who dissented fled to Pakistan. The Kashmiris, by and large favoured democratic politics and that is why the state of Jammu and Kashmir became a territory of the Indian state.

The Jihadis at the behest of Pakistan opened the secessionist agenda with mosques as its pivotal centres and the slogans that were blurted out were blantantly communal. 1989-90 events were highly shocking that the native Muslims who had supported the Indian accession could turn stark communal and be a part of the insurgency with micro-minority of Kashmiri Pandits as their essential and prime target. As of now, the Jihadi war has an overt communal agenda with its sights riveted to the establishment of a Muslim state in Kashmir.

Natasha Koul on accession of J&K State to India

The learned writer of the write-up, Natasha Koul, is deeply ignorant of the developments that led Maharaja Hari Singh to accede to India. How was the Maharaja forced to accede to India? can she establish it on the basis of genuine historical facts? To make statements about facts of history without quoting genuine references is totally absurd. Maharaja had practically unrestrained powers to make a decision about the issue of accession of his state to either of the two dominions. The aspirations of the people were taken due cognizance of. The broad masses under the leadership of Sheikh Abdullah were supporting the decision of the state’s ruler. The issue was raised and opened again by the Jihadis operating under the aegis of ISI of Pakistan. Terrorism was exported to India with a view to bleeding it for purposes of weaning away Kashmir from the constitutional sovereignty of India. Jihadi war going on in Kashmir has been a melange of terrorism and worst brand communalism and parochialism.

Natasha Koul on removal of governments in Kashmir

It is a statement mired in generalities, vague and ambiguous. The state of Jammu and Kashmir is part and parcel of Indian democracy which has been maturing over the years. The state of J&K never had un-representative governments. The Sheikh as the tall leader of Kashmir was constitutionally removed during cold-war days and his successor was a Muslim who was super dynamic and led the state to new milestones of progress and development. The governments of Ghulam Mohammad Sadiq and Syed Mir Qasim were very much representative and were so liberal as to allow a communal organisation like Jamaat-e-Islamia  to thrive and broaden its popular base. Both Sadiq and Mir Qasim were not impositions from New Delhi. They were stalwarts who too had their entrenched history in politics of Kashmir. The aberrations cropped up during the rule of Farooq Abdullah who did not prove deft in ruling the state with the dexterity and sagacity of a politician.

Natasha Koul on Kashmir as a conflict zone

The question is not that Kashmir is a conflict zone. The fact remains, yes, it is a conflict zone. But what needs a attention and emphasis is which forces reduced it to a conflict zone. It is the Jihadis from Kashmir, Saudi Arabia, Afgahnistan, Libia, Syria, Egypt et al who were launched into Kashmir from launching-pads in Pakistan. They have reduced Kashmir to a veritable hell, have killed and murdered people for no fault of theirs, displaced the Hindu minorities after infliction of genocide on them, raped and brutalized their women-folk and put the houses of minority Hindus to cruel flames of fire and arson. The learned author of the write-up is deliberate in over-looking the destruction of sprawling habitations of Kashmiri Pandits in cities and villages. She will get shell-shocked to see the charred ruins of such habitations if she takes a chance to place herself in the middle of the Habbakadal bridge in Srinagar and start looking on two sides of the river Jhelum. If she has some grains of sensitivity in her personality and thinking structures, she will realise the scale of destruction that the Jihadis have perpetrated on minorities in Kashmir.

Natasha Koul on Army intervention in Kashmir

The cruel killers, Jihadis in religious parlance, could not be allowed free rope to reduce Kashmir to stone age. Which country in the world will allow it? She should look to Libya and Syria and see the Muslim dictators killing their own Muslim subjects though the protests are not that lethal as we have witnessed in Kashmir. The Indian security forces have been on the borders of the state since 1947. There were no interventions on their part into the civilian life till 1989-90. But, when security situation in the state deteriorated, the Central government was within its rights to deploy forces to defeat the elements out to destroy the integrity of the country. The security forces have not only defended our borders, but also protected the life and property of the civilians who are none but Muslims.

Natasha Koul on Kashmiriat

Without dewelling on the finer points of Kashmiriat, Natasha Koul has made a ridiculous statement that ‘Kashmiriat is self-determination’. Kashmiriat, briefly put, is a symbolic expression of the cultural capital and episteme that Kashmiris as one ethnic group have garnered through their whole course of history. It has nothing to do with self-determination which gained currency and advocacy through the colonial struggles against the imperialist masters. The mischievous hyphenation of Kashmiriat and self-determination as a deliberate act on part of the author of the write-up is only to please her Jihadi masters whom she appears committed to. Kashmiriyat when hyphenated with self -determination is an open support to the enemies of India who are determined to balkanise and fragment her.

Natasha Koul on Imperialist methodologies of ruling the peripheries

Natasha Koul harbouring malice and hatred against the country of her genesis has uselessly theorized on the Imperialist methodology of ruling over the distant peripheries of the colonies. It does in no way reflect the Indian political system that the country has adopted through constitutional stipulations since independence. It needs reiteration to remind Natasha Koul that India is a federation of states with unitary characteristics. The states, now in India, no matter what their distances are from the central seat of power, enjoy the same political powers that the capital state of New Delhi is invested with. It is absurd to say that India is a colonial power and its methodology of governance is hegemonic and resembles a colonial power of yore.

November 2011

The ethnic cleansing of the Hindus of Kashmir in 1990, is one of the few episodes, which occurred after the second World War, and in which a whole community of people was subjected to genocide and driven out of its natural habitat. The terrorist violence with which the Muslim Jehad in Kashmir commenced in 1989, was aimed to achieve a number of military objectives which the militant regimes and the Jehadi war groups considered to be essential for the liberation of Jammu and Kashmir from the Indian occupation. The ethnic extermination of the Hindus was one of the primary objectives, the Jehad aimed to achieve. The Hindus of Kashmir formed the Sanskrit component of the social culture of Kashmir and provided the Muslim majority state of Jammu and Kashmir its secular identity. More importantly, the Hindus formed the frontline of the resistance against the separatists movements in the State, which the Muslim separatist forces carried on for decades with the support of Pakistan.

Ever since the commencement of their exile, the Hindus have been waiting for their return to the land of their birth, reiterating from time to time their resolve to return to their homes. The response of the Indian  State to their remonstrations was always feeble and continues to be so even now; mainly determined by the inability of the Indian political class to recognise the real import of the terrorist violence and its inaptitude to deal with the Muslim Jehad with any firmness. The Indian political class closed its eyes, like the ostriches do, to the death and devastation, the terrorist violence brought to the Hindus of Kashmir and to the Hindus of the Muslim majority districts of the Jammu province.

The Indian leaders never mustered courage to face the Muslim Jehad, without which the return and rehabilitation of the Hindus could not the achieved. Instead the Indian political class adopted a surreptitious policy of compromise with the Muslim separatist flanks. The Indian political class ascribed the terrorist violence to the alienation of the Muslims in the State which it traced to the inability of the Indian political system to recognise the genuineness of the Muslim struggle for a separate freedom in Jammu and Kashmir. Assuming a position in between the Jehad and the Hindus of the State, the Indian political class sat on judgement on who had done what in Jammu and Kashmir,  to fix the responsibility for the Muslim alienation and the consequent upheaval in the State. Expectedly, the Jehad triumphed and the Hindus continued to smoulder in exile.

Genocide of Hindus

The genocide, the Hindus in Kashmir, were subjected to and the exodus forced upon them by the terrorist regimes, right from the moment they began their military operations in the State, was undertaken in accordance with a well laid out plan. The plan envisaged the ethnic extermination of the Hindus in the Kashmir province and the Muslim majority regions of the Jammu province to bring about the de-Sanskritisation of the part of the State situated to the west of the river Chenab and prepare the ground for its separation from the Shivalik plains, situated to the east of the river Chenab. The division of the State in between India and Pakistan had been proposed as a basis for settlement of the dispute over Jammu and Kashmir, by the United Nations mediator on Kashmir Sir Owen Dixon in 1950. When the terrorist regimes, extended their military operations to the Muslim majority districts of the Jammu province, they followed the same “scorched earth”, policy there to bring about the ethnic extermination of the Hindus. In Kashmir as well as the Jammu province the first bullets fired by the militants were received by the Hindus.

The Hindus had always formed the frontline of the peoples’ resistance to all forms of Muslim separatism in the State. The Hindus had fought for the freedom of the State from the British rule and when the freedom came, they had paid the heaviest price to defend it against the invading forces of Pakistan in 1947. Not many people in India know that more than thirty eight thousand of Hindus and Sikhs were killed by the invading armies across the territories of the state they over ran.

The first staggering blow which the Jehad delivered to the Hindus in Kashmir was the assassination of Tika Lal Taploo, a Kashmiri Pandit leader, who was widely respected in his community. A member of the National Executive of the Bharatiya, Janata Party, Taploo was an indefatigable man, who had fought untiringly against the marginalisation of the Hindus in the State. Taploo was given a tearful farewell by thousands of the people of his community, who accompanied his funeral procession. While the funeral procession, carrying Taploo on his last journey, wound its way through the streets of Srinagar, stones were pelted on it.

The terrorist violence struck the Hindus in its full fury in January 1990. The death and destruction it brought to the Hindus was widespread. Not much of what happened those days in Kashmir is known in the rest of the country as a concerted campaign of disinformation was carried on to camouflage the ravages the community of the Hindus was subjected to. By the end of the year, the death toll of the Hindus had risen to about eight hundred. The white paper  on Kashmir, the Joint Human Rights Committee, Delhi issued in 1996 noted : “A computation of the data of the massacred Hindus on the basis of reports in the local press, news papers published in Srinagar, and the other townships in Kashmir, reveals that the number of the Hindus killed ran into several thousands”. The White Paper notes further “Among the killed were several hundred Hindus who were reported missing. Among the missing were many Hindus whose bodies were never identified and were disposed off by the State Government agencies at their will. Many of the people killed and still to be identified were Hindus.” The chaotic manner in which information about the killings were reported is shown by the following wireless message, transmitting information of the death of two Hindu men, in Srinagar to their kin in Jammu, “To SSP Jammu L.B. No: 13 from Police Control Room Srinagar, 25/6/1990. Please contact Shri Makhan Lal Sumbli H.No: 28 Bhagwati Nagar and inform him about the death of Som Nath S/o Shri Lassa Koul and Chaman Lal S/o Shyam Lal R/o Pattipora Bala, Chattabal, Srinagar, the above dead bodies were lying unidentified at Ali Jan Road. Signature of officer, 1920 ToR, S.P. Police Control Room.”

As the Jehadi war groups and the terrorist regimes settled down to carry on a prolonged war of attrition in Jammu and Kashmir, they changed their tactics. They reduced the frequency of sporadic surprise strikes on specifically identified targets to pre-planned major military strikes on Hindu localities to carry out mass-massacres. The mass massacres were brutal and had s staggering effect on the entire community of the Hindus in the State.  The massacres were carried out at different places in the Kashmir province : at Sangrahampora where eight people were killed; at Wandahama in North Kashmir, in January 1998, where twenty three Hindus were killed; at Anantnag in South Kashmir, where twelve Bihari labourers were killed in July 1999; at Chattisinghpora where thirty-six Sikhs were killed in March 2000, at Pahalgam, where thirty-two Hindus, including twenty-nine pilgrims to Amarnath Shrine, were killed in August 2000; and at Nadimarg, where twenty-four Hindus were killed in March 2002.

In the Jammu province, the mass massacres were widespread and the death-toll heavier. Seventeen Hindus were killed in Kishtwar during 13-14 August 1993; sixteen Hindus were killed in Kishtwar in January 1996; Seventeen Hindus were killed in Simber, Doda in May 1996; twenty-nine Hindus were killed in Dakhikot Prankot, Doda in January 1998; Eleven Hindus (defence committee members) were killed in Dessa, Doda in May 1998, twenty nine Hindus were killed in Chapnari Doda, in June 1998; twenty Hindus were killed in separate terrorist attacks in Chinathakuri, and Shrawan, Doda in July 1998; seventeen Hindus were killed in Surankot Poonch in June 1999; fifteen Hindus wee killed in Thatri, Doda, in July 1999; seventeen Hindus were killed in Manjakot Rajouri in March 2001; fifteen Hindus were killed in Cherjimorah, Dodain July 2001’, Sixteen Hindus were killed in Sarothdhar, Doda in August 2001’, Thirty four Hindus were killed in Kaluchak, Jammu in May 2002; twenty-nine Hindus were killed in Rajiv Nagar, Jammu in July 2002; seventeen Hindus were killed in Udhampur in March 2003; twelve Hindus were killed in Surankote, Poonch in June 2004; ten Hindus were killed in Budhal, Rajouri in October 2005; three of a Hindu family were killed in Chaal, Udhampur in April 2006 and thirty Hindus were killed in Thana Kulhand, Doda in April 2006.

Exodus

The Indian State having failed in its rightful function to protect the Hindus in Kashmir from death and destruction, the terrorist flanks brought to them, they were left with no other course except to leave their homes to save their lives. The massacre of Hindus was aimed to eliminate them physically and at the same time fill their hearts with terror to force them to leave Kashmir. The Hindus, unable to believe that they would be abandoned by the Indian state, to face the Jehad as best they could, offered themselves as easy targets for the terrorist flanks and allowed hundreds of their brothern to be killed. But as the holocaust enveloped them, they left their homes and hearths to save their lives and the lives of their children. The White Paper on Kashmir noted: “A deliberately designed two-pronged plan to dislodge the Hindus from Kashmir was surreptitiously put into operation by the various terrorist organisations. Several hit lists were circulated all over the Valley, in towns as well as villages. The hit lists were accompanied by rumours about the Hindus who were found by the militants to have been involved in ‘Mukhbiri’, complicity, with the Government of India. The rumours were deadly, because they made life uncertain”. The White Paper noted further: “In a number of towns and villages, the local people issued threats from the mosques and spread rumours charging the Kashmiri. Hindus of conspiracy and espionage in order to break their resolve to stay behind. Larger number of prominent men among the Kashmiri Hindus, social workers, leaders and intellectuals were listed for death. Most of them escaped from the Valley, secretly to avoid suspicion and interception.”. The attack was open. The White Paper noted : “In the rural areas of the Valley, cadres of the secessionist organisations and their supporters, almost of every shade and commitment, the supporters of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front in the vanguard, did not hide their hostility towards the Hindus. At many places, even in Srinagar and the other townships, Kashmiri, Hindus were openly charged of espionage for India. The indictment spelt death”.

The exodus of the Hindus picked up pace as the summer set in. By the end of the year 1990, the larger part of the Hindu community of Kashmir had left. The rest followed as the terrorist violence intensified.

While the Hindus began to leave Kashmir the Jehadi flanks unfolded their plans to destroy the Sanskrit heritage of the Kashmir. The homes the Hindus left-behind, were ransacked and after their properties were looted, burnt down. Within four years of the onset of the terrorist violence in Kashmir, 18,000, Hindu houses were burnt down, bombed and demolished. The White Paper on Kashmir noted : “Many of the homes were torched and during the last four years about 18,000 were either burnt down or destroyed. Many of the homes, which were not burnt, were occupied by mercenaries serving the militant organisations. The premises of the business establishment, shops and commercial establishments were also taken over by the Muslim activists who supported the militancy. In the rural areas, agricultural lands, orchards, and the lands attached to the burnt Hindu houses, were nibbled away by Muslim activists supporting various terrorist organisatiosn. The cattle and the livestock left behind by the Hindus, were sold for slaughter”.  In due course of time as the militancy continued to ravage the province and the Muslim separatists forces and the Jehadi flanks gained an upper hand, the Hindus were dispossessed of whatever they owned, their land, dilapidated structures of their homes, business establishments and other assets by what came to be called the distress sales.

The depredations the terrorist regimes wrought did not end with the destruction of Hindu localities, homes and properties. They attacked the temples and Hindu places of worship with iconoclast zeal. The Minister of State for the Home Department  of the Government of India told the Indian Parliament on 12 March 1993, that thirteen temples were desecrated and demolished in 1989, nine temples were damaged and demolished in 1990, and sixteen temples were damaged and demolished in 1991. The White Paper on Kashmir noted : “The actual number of temples demolished and damaged in Kashmir was much larger and vandalism to which the Hindu shrines were exposed was widespread”. In the aftermath of the demolition of the Babri Majid, the militants and the Muslim mobs joined to attack the Hindu temples and places of worship. On 7 December, 1992, one day after this demolition of the Babri Majsid, two temples, one in Anantnag and one in Srinagar, were burnt down. During the night of 7-8 December, thirteen temples : one each in Kulgam and Sopore; two in Tangamarg; three in Srinagar and one each in the Anantnag, Uttrasu, Shadipur in Sumbal, Pahalgam and Verinag, were damaged and burnt down. On 9 December, two temples were damaged and burnt down at Trehgam and Pattan. The demolition of the Hindu temples continued after 9 December, for many more days taking the number of the temples, desecrated damaged, demolished and burnt down to thirty-nine. The White Paper  on Kashmir noted : “After the demolition of the Babri Masjid, the wanton destruction of the temples in Kashmir was reported by the press, though reservedly. Angry demonstrations and protest against the descration and systematic demolitions were held by the Hindu refugees in Jammu and the other parts of the country”. The protest evoked no response from the State Government or the Government of India.

The ancient ruins of the Hindu temples, most of them protected monuments of the Archeological Department of the State and the Archeological Department of the Government of India, were also subject to attack. The archeological remains of the ancient Hindu temples stood as an elequent testimony of the Hindu heritage of Kashmir. The temple ruins were sacred to the Hindus, who visited them as a part of their tradition. At many place the ruins were dug up, in order to obliterate their last traces.

The Hindu religious places where Hindu cultural and social institutions and organisations were located were subjected to bomb attacks or burnt down. The Hindu educational institutions were burnt down or taken over. The entire organisation of Hindu schools and colleges run by the Hindu educational societies including the institutions run by Hindu Educational Society, Dayanand Ayurvedic organisation and the Vishwa Bharti Trust were seized and taken over by the Muslim organisation supported by the militant flanks.

Reversal of Genocide

Genocide of the Hindus in Kashmir and their exile for decades, has changed the geographical alignments of their community in the province of Kashmir and destroyed their social and economic base. The terrorist violence has obliterated the Hindu religious heritage of Kashmir and almost efaced the Hindu cultural identity. The return of Hindus to Kashmir can assume meaning and effect only in case the genocide is reversed.

The issues which form the core of their return are : (a) the reconstruction of their economic and social base; restoration to them of their homes, land, properties, business establishment and institutions and assets; (b) recognition of their right to freedom of which the content is determined by the imperatives of secularism rather than the Muslim majority identity of the State; and (c) acceptance of their territorial claims in Kashmir in case of any settlement with the Muslims of Kashmir to reorganise the  the state into a separate Muslim sphere of power on the territories of India, inside India or outside India.

No one can expect the Hindus to return to Kashmir without their sources of livelihood being restored to them and a level of economic security ensured for them. They have lived as refugees in Jammu and the other part of India for two decades. They cannot be sent to live in Kashmir as refugees in improvised camps at the charity of the world.

The Indian political class should realise that the Hindus have lived, almost all over the six decades of the Indian freedom, within the space provided for them by the precarious balance between the commitment of the Indian people to secularism and the Muslim majority identity of the State. The Indian leadership should realise that the Jehad has severely impaired this balance and obliterated the space for the Hindus to live in Kashmir. It must be noted that any attempt to force the Hindus to accept to live in the space earmarked for them by the Muslim identity of the State will prove distasterous for them.

For those who rule India, the return of the Hindus may be a mere change of face, the Muslim identity of the state is given. But for the Hindus of Kashmir, it is a momentous, decision which will determine the future of their generations. The Government  of India must apprise the Hindus of Kashmir about the baseline of its approach to any future settlement, it is committed to reach with Pakistan on the one hand and Muslims of the State, on the other. The Hindus do not want their return to be used as a first step towards turning Jammu and Kashmir into a separate Muslim sphere of power, on the territories of India but independent of its constitutional organisation.

The return of the Hindus to Kashmir is a historical necessity, not only for the Unity of Jammu and Kashmir, but for the unity of India. Any cosmetic effort to bring about the return of the Hindus to Kashmir, aimed to provide a secular face to what the Indian political class has brought about in Jammu and Kashmir, during the last two decades, will spell disaster for the Hindus and perhaps lead to developments which do not augur well for the whole country.

Part II

January 2012

After the Hindus were driven out of Kashmir in 1990, their return to their homes was never under the consideration of the people who ruled India. The Indian leaders never had the courage to deny Pakistan and the Muslim separatist forces, the claim they lay to Jammu and Kashmir, on the basis of the Muslim majority composition of its population. Nor did they possess the resolution to fight against the religious war, Pakistan and the Jehadi war groups, operating inside as well as outside the State, waged to unite it with Pakistan. The Indian political class assumed complete silence over the death and devastation the Jehad wrought in Kashmir and, in fact, spared no efforts to camouflage the genocide of the Hindus and their ethnic cleansing in Kashmir and the Muslim majority districts of the Jammu province. The stray references, the Indian leaders made on the return of the Hindus to their homes and hearths, “with honour and dignity” were a part of the propaganda aimed to minimise the impact of the displacement of the Hindus in the State and contain its effect. Behind the scene, the Indian political class tried frantically, to negotiate peace with the Muslim separatist flanks inside the State and their Jehadi mentors outside the State. Negotiations for peace with the Jehadi war groups, who were later joined by Pakistan, left hardly any space for the return of the Hindus to Kashmir, who had been driven out by the Jehad for having harmed the cause of the freedom of the Muslims of the State.

The Indian Government and the State Government never made their stand clear on the genocide of the Hindus and the exodus forced upon them by the Jehad. They did not make their stand clear on the reversal of the genocide, which formed the precedent condition for the return of the Hindus to their homes. In fact the Indian Government never made any formal commitment in respect of the return of the Hindus to their homes and made no concrete proposals for their rehabilitation.

Disinformation Campaign

The Indian political class launched a widespread dis-information campaign to camouflage the portent of the terrorist violence and to conceal the real purpose of the Jihad in Jammu and Kashmir. The White Paper on Kashmir issued by the Joint Human Rights Committee, Delhi, noted : “All over the post-independent era, incessant efforts were always made by the State Government and the Government of India, to conceal the ugly face of the Muslim communalism in Jammu and Kashmir. Deliberate attempts were always made to provide cover to the growth of the Muslim fundamentalist and secessionist movements in the State, right from the time its accession to India. The various forms of the Muslim communalism and separatism which ravaged the life in the State, during the last four decades and which imparted to the secessionist movements in the State, their ideological content and tactical direction, were camouflaged under the banners of sub-national autonomy, regional identity and even secularism. Largely, perceptional aberrations, misplaced notions, and subterfuge, characterised the official as well as the non-official responses to the upheavals which rocked the State from time to time. More often, the real issues, confronting the State were overlooked by deliberate design  and political interest, a policy which in the long run operated to help the secessionist forces to consolidate the ranks and their hold on the people in the State”. No sooner the Jehad commenced in Kashmir, a mild goose chase began in search of scapegoats to camouflage the forces which were involved in the upheaval, the State faced. “Even after widespread militant violence struck Kashmir in 1989,” the White Paper on Kashmir noted : “and thousands of innocent people were killed in cold blood alongwith hundreds of the Indian security personnel and the whole community of the Hindus in Kashmir was driven out of the Valley, the disinformation campaign continued to cloud the real dangers the terrorist violence posed to the nation. Indeed efforts still continue to be made to side track the basic problems of terrorism and secessionism and the role of the militarised Muslim fundamentalist forces in the whole bloody drama enacted in the State and divert the attention of the Indian people to trivial concerns, which have no bearing on the developments there.”

The disinformation campaign succeeded only partially to provide a smokescrean to what the Jehad wrought in Kashmir and the Muslim majority districts of the Jammu province.

A part of the truth of what had happened in Kashmir was, actually, revealed by the Jehadi regimes themselves and their overground separatist outfits like the Hurriyat Conference. The Indian political class had ascribed the militant violence to alienation of the Muslim youth, brought about by the Indian misrule in the State which had led to the economic deprivation and political oppression of the Muslims. The Jehadi regimes told the Indian people and the world around, that the Muslim Jehad was aimed to liberate the State from the occupation army of India, which was stationed in the State illegally. The Jehadi regimes and the Muslim separatist organisations denied that the militant operations and the Muslim upsurge  were in any way related to any political distrust, economic deprivation or the alienation of the Muslims. They made it clear in unmistakable terms that the Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir had commenced the Jehad in Kashmir to liberate State from the “illegal occupation of the Indian army” and unite it with the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

A part of the truth was told by the leaders of the mainstream political parties: the National Conference, and the Peoples Democratic Party, who had ruled the State, before the onset of the militant violence as well as after it. Without mincing words, they accepted that the Muslim unrest in the State and the Muslim struggle were an expression of the peoples desire to seek a settlement of the Central issue which underlined the Kashmir dispute. They gave ample expression to their opinions stating that so long the Muslim quest for a separate freedom which was not subject to the secular imperatives of the Constitution of India and so long a settlement of the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan and the Muslims of the State was not found, Muslim distrust would not end.

A part of the truth, however, is still concealed. The story of the genocide of the Hindus, their ethnic extermination and how they were used as the scapegoats for the failings of the Indian political class in dealing with the Jehad, is yet to be told. The part of the untold truth is closely linked with the return of the Hindus to their homes and hearts. The Indian political class is hiding the truth of what the Jehad has wrought in Kashmir during the last two decades. The Indian Government has never mustered up courage to stand up to the Jehad. The Indian politica class is still following its own plans to use the Hindus in Jammu and Kashmir as a buffer in between the Indian segment and the war of subversion the Jehadi regimes are waging in the State. The double-speak of the Indian political class on the return of the Hindus to Kashmir, is bound to do them more harm.

The truth is that the security environment in the Kashmir province is severely strained and the social culture of the Muslim community has been drastically changed by the Jehad. The Hindus of Kashmir were driven out on the point of the gun because of their resistance to the Muslim separatist movements in the State. Their opposition to the Muslim Jehad assumed nation-wide proportions during the last two decades of their exile. They will hardly find it easy to come to terms with the conditions that prevail in Kashmir, while the religious war continues unabated. It may not be out of place to mention here that the overground political outfits of the Jehadi war groups and the militant flanks, including the various factions of the Hurriyat conference, have offered to accept the return of the Hindus and at the same-time expressed their hope that after their return the Hindus will join their Muslim brethren in their struggle for their liberation from India.

Changed Milieu

The war of liberation, which the Hindus are expected to join on their return apart, the Jehad has upturned the whole social milieu of which the Hindus formed a part, when they were cast overboard. The decades of the religious war has dissolved the mutually accepted rules which ensured the stability of the inter-community relations in the State and brought about imperceptible and drastic changes in the social organisation in Kashmir. First the ethnic cleansing of the Hindus in Kashmir has dissolved the pluri-cultural social organisation of Kashmir. The demographic alignments which existed in Kashmir before the onset of the Jehad formed the basis of its multi-religious social organisation. In the tradition-bound societies of the former colonial peoples, demographic alignments have been found to play a major role in determining the inter-community relations in their social cultures. The social culture of Kashmir has assumed a dominantly Islamic expression. No wonder, therefore, that during the last several years the Kashmiri Pandits who have been going on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Khir-Bhawani in Tulamulla on the outskirts of Srinagar, on Zeshta-Ashtami, have been greeted at the gate of the shrine by a crowd of Tablighi Muslim volunteers, who distributed Islamic literature among the pilgrims.

Secondly, the fundamentalisation of the Muslim society in Kashmir-a process which continued for nearly a decade, before the onset of the terrorist violence in the State in 1990, has led to the regimentation of the large sections of the Muslim society in Kashmir on the basis of their ideological commitment to the Islamisation of the State. Most of the regimented sections of the Muslim society are militarily responsive.

Thirdly, the regimentation of the Muslim outlook has severely impaired the secular character of the social and political institutions in the State. Suppression of all dissent in the Muslim society in Kashmir, which the materialisation of the Muslim separatist movements led to, has increased the acceptability of the Islamisation of all political and social institutions in the State. Many of the militant regimes and in fact all the Jehadi structures openly reject secularism as a basis of all state activity and governance and instead insist upon the regular reorganisation of the State and society in accordance with the precept and precedent of Islam. The protagonists of the Islamic order of the society and government have claimed that the Islamic religious injunction provided for the protection of the peoples who do not profess Islam and the other minorities. Some of the Hurriyat conference leaders have accepted without hesitation that secularism has no place in the Islamic order of the society and government as it conflicted with the imperatives of authority which draws their sanction from Muslim religion.

It is difficult to conclude that the Indian leaders are not able to realise the risks in sending back the Hindus to Kashmir in a situation of conflict. The truth is that the Indian political class follows a measured policy, in regard to Jammu and Kashmir, which does not underline the return of the Hindu refugees to their homes. The Indian political class seeks to graft the return of the Hindu refugees to their homes to an overall settlement on the Kashmir dispute with Pakistan and the Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir. Had it been otherwise, the Indian Government would have opened talks with the Hindu refugees of Kashmir, before they conceived of a settlement with Pakistan or the Muslims of the State.

Peace Process

A discussion on what constitutes the Kashmir dispute is outside the scope of this paper. Suffice it to say here that the Indian political class recognises Kashmir dispute to be what Pakistan and the Muslim separatist flanks in Jammu and Kashmir construe it to be. The Indian Government has, in principle accepted the Kashmir dispute to be the expression of the claim-Pakistan lays to Jammu and Kashmir on the basis of the Muslims majority composition of its population as well as the claim made by the Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir, to a separate freedom, to which the partition of India entitled them on the basis of the ratio of their population in the State. The negotiations for a settlement of the Kashmir dispute, which were originally initiated by the Indian Government and which have now assumed the brand name “political process”, underline a quest for an agreement which India seeks to reach with Pakistan and the Muslims of the State.

The “peace-process” has been carried at many levels : between the two governments of India and Pakistan, back-channel diplomacy, third power mediation and the negotiations carried on between the Indian Government and the various Muslim separatist as well as mainstream political organisations and outfits inside the State. Interestingly Pakistan has made its position clear in unmistakable terms, that it will accept a settlement on Kashmir dispute which is approved by the Muslims of the State. The Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir have also made their stand clear that they will agree to a settlement on Kashmir, which is acceptable to Pakistan.

The “peace-process” has largely revolved round the claim Pakistan has laid to the Muslim majority regions of the State : the province of Kashmir, the Muslim majority districts of the Jammu province and the Kargil district of the Ladakh region, as a baseline for a settlement of the Kashmir dispute. The two countries came close to the acceptance of the reorganisation of the Muslim majority regions of the State into a separate sphere of Muslim power placed in between the two countries under some form of a protectorate. The Manmohan Singh-Musharaff proposals, on which the two countries are reported to have come to an agreement, underlined the reorganisation of the Muslim majority regions of the State into a separate political structure, which was based upon the territory of India, but placed under the political control of both India and Pakistan.

The “peace-process is still in progress. But the Indian political class has given no indication of how it will graft the return of the Hindu refugees to Kashmir to the commitments it has given to Pakistan and the Muslims of the State in respect of the settlement of the dispute over Jammu and Kashmir.

Road Ahead

The uprootment of the Hindus from their homes in Kashmir, was one of the major displacements of people in the aftermath of the second world war, in which a whole community was torn off from its roots. The White Paper on Kashmir notes : “Like the other tradition bound, endogamous and native people, the Hindus in Kashmir with an incredibly long history, extending to pre-historic, proto-Aryan, later Stone Age Culture, formed an independent part of the cultural identity of the State and its personality. Because of their endocrine cultural patterns, local ritual structures, blended with the Vedic religious precept and practice and their pride in Sanskrit civilisation, they had a deep sense of attachment and belonging to their  land, which they addressed in their worship as the ‘Mother, who had given them birth”. The displacement of the Hindus has thus snapped their history.

Today the Hindus of Kashmir are a displaced people, torn from their social and cultural moorings, scattered in a state of diaspora, which threatens them with the loss of their identity. Nearly, half the people of the community are living around the subsistence level, in refugee camps in various parts of the country.

Ever since the commencement of their exile, the Hindus of Kashmir have been waiting to return to the land of their birth, reiterating their resolve, from time to time, to go back to their homes and hearths. The Hindus were driven out of their homes by a religious war, ‘which brought them death and attacked their faith. The political class of India is yet to accept that the delegitimisation of the religious war is a precedent condition for the reversal of their genocide and their return.

The Hindus have as sacrosanct a territorial right in Kashmir as their Muslim compatriots have. The claim made by Pakistan to Jammu and Kashmir State on the basis of the Muslim majority composition of its population and the claim made by the Muslim separatist flanks inside the State for a separate freedom, do not in any respect prejudice the territorial rights, the Hindus claim in Kashmir.

*(The author is the Chairman of Panun Kashmir advisory).

Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s visit to Pandit camps is pointless-Sanjay Tickoo

How do you look at separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s visit to Kashmiri Pandit camps outside Srinagar?

It has surprised us all. For years, Geelani advocated that Kashmir should be an Islamic State and should have Islamic law. Now, he talks about protecting Kashmiri Pandits. Since 2005, we have been asking what rights will minorities have in a Kashmiri settlement.

News reports suggested that more than 100 Kashmiri Pandits were present at Geelani’s meeting. How acceptable is he?

No one takes him seriously, leave alone Kashmiri Pandits. He remembers the Pandits only when he is losing ground in Kashmir. The only option left for Geelani is to approach the Pandits who are returning to the Valley for jobs — not to rebuild their old homes.

Does that mean the visit is meaningless?

In 2008, before the Amarnath land row, we went to Geelani with photographs of our temples that had been desecrated, looted and burnt by unscrupulous elements from the majority community. We went because he had issued a statement saying the temples were not burnt by people of the majority community. He said he would issue a fatwa against the guilty. But nothing has happened so far. Therefore, we fail to understand what he really means when he says that he will protect our dignity and our religious places.

Geelani had also announced that Kashmiri Pandits should move to their ancestral homes in the Valley. Is it possible in the present atmosphere?

No way. The burning of Kashmiri Pandit properties began in 1992 after the demolition of the Babri Masjid. If Geelani is asking the Pandits to return to their homes, why doesn’t he label their houses? The political rhetoric of the state changes according to the interest of the state and non-state actors. As of now, no one wants Kashmiri Pandits to really come and live in the pre-1991 state. It is just not possible. There is a big political, religious and societal divide between the two communities now.

How do you suggest reconciliation then?

The only way reconciliation is possible is when both mainstream political parties and separatist organisations start acknowledging that the Pandits were targeted. They know the people responsible for killing the Pandits from 15 March 1989 till today. We have already informed them that we have identified the killers. If they wish we can give them the names but they already know. The killers of not just the Pandits but also ordinary innocent Kashmiri Muslims have to be punished, even if they are punished under Islamic law. Let them make this gesture. They have also been propagating that the Centre conspired by sending Jagmohan as governor. This is a lie. If you go back in history, you will find most of the migration happened after Jagmohan’s tenure. The truth has to be told.

But there will be no reconciliation this way.

I didn’t leave the Valley, I have been living here through the troubled times. If I have not been getting the same stature as a Kashmiri, how can you expect whoever is returning to get a fair deal? Will we get back our lands, which were encroached upon? Will they return our businesses? People who have returned from other cities are virtually in jail here. They cannot venture out after 7 pm. Going to a Kashmiri Pandit camp means nothing. There has to be some concrete action.

By Ashok K. Behuria

April 2011

It is a truism to say that the elite in Pakistan has used Islam to perpetuate its hold on power ever since the state came into being in 1947. The judiciary in Pakistan has been the latest to emphasise its Islamist credentials to legitimise its rise as an important constituent of the influential ‘quartet’ that is ruling Pakistan today.

While it is debatable whether the current phenomenon of judicial activism will survive the tenure of the incumbent Chief Justice of the Pakistani Supreme Court, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, it is certain that the judiciary may have sealed the prospects of all debates in Pakistan on whether Pakistan should be a secular or an Islamic state. Initially conceived as a Muslim state, Pakistan has advanced incrementally since the days of Jinnah from a notional ‘Islamic republic’ to a state where Islam has occupied prime of place.

If the judiciary now arrogates for itself the power to quash any possible parliamentary legislation to declare Pakistan a secular state, it indicates the persisting appeal of Islam in Pakistani society and its body politic. To a large extent, it also explains the phenomenon of growing Islamic radicalism in Pakistan.

Judiciary against secular Pakistan

On August 16, 2010, during the course of a 17-judge full court hearing on the 18th amendment passed earlier by the Pakistani parliament, the Supreme Court Chief Justice held that the sovereignty of parliament did not mean it enjoyed unfettered powers to introduce any amendment to the constitution. He reportedly asked, ‘Should we accept if tomorrow parliament declares secularism, and not Islam, as the state polity?’ Another judge joined him in asking, ‘Will it be called a rightful exercise of authority if tomorrow parliament amends Article 2 of the constitution which states that Islam will be the state religion?’1

Such comments drew instant criticism from a section of the media. The News on Sunday wrote editorially, ‘What is worrisome is that these were not off the cuff remarks but a considered view shared by a majority of the country’s educated elite’.2 It went on to quote a Pakistani analyst who said that ‘Islam in Pakistan . . . has ceased to be a religion and worldview; it has become an obsession, a pathology. It has been drained of all ethics and has become a mechanism for oppression and injustice’.

Army chief’s emphasis on Islam

The judiciary is not alone in its penchant for Islam. Other important constituents of the quartet have also time and again stressed the Islamic roots of Pakistani society and polity. For example, not long ago, the Pakistani chief of army staff, Gen. Parvez Kayani, reportedly said while addressing a gathering in Police Lines, Peshawar, on November 25, 2009: ‘Pakistan was founded by our forefathers in the name of Islam and we should work to strengthen the country and make committed efforts to achieve the goal of turning it into a true Islamic state’.4 A few days later, while responding to a suicide attack claimed by Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on a mosque in Rawalpindi on December 4, 2009, he reportedly stated: ‘Pakistan is our motherland. It is the bastion of Islam and we live for the glory of Islam and Pakistan . . . Our faith, resolve and pride in our religion and in our country is an asset, which is further reinforced after each terrorist incident’.6

It is thus becoming increasingly clear day by day that the terms of popular discourse are being increasingly decided by the radical Islamist elements rather than the elements advocating ‘enlightened moderation’. By invoking ‘Islam’ the elite may be seeking legitimacy for its rule in an overall Islamised context, but it is perhaps unaware that it is indirectly legitimising the demand of the radical elements for the establishment of an ‘Islamic state’ in Pakistan.

The roots of the secular-Islamic divide

The debate over whether Pakistan should be ‘a Muslim state’ (for the Muslims of India) or an ‘Islamic state’ has a long history of its own. It had started in the womb of the Pakistan movement itself. In the Karachi Session of the Muslim League in 1943, Nawab Bahadur Yar Jang, an important member of the League, had clearly stated in the presence of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, ‘There is no denying the fact that we want Pakistan for the establishment of Quranic system of government. It will bring about a revolution in our life, a renaissance, a new fervour and zeal, and above all, a resuscitation of pristine Islamic purity and glory’. Addressing Jinnah, who was presiding over the session, he had stated, ‘Quaid-i-Azam (the great leader) we have understood Pakistan in this light. If your Pakistan is not such, we do not want it’. In his submission later, Jinnah had endorsed these views and held that ‘Islam was the bed-rock of the community’.

As a leader of a mass movement, Jinnah was aware of the appeal of Islam amongst the Muslim masses and did not hesitate to use it to his advantage. For example, he urged the students of Islamia College Peshawar in 1946 that the League stood for carving out a separate state and turning it into a ‘laboratory of Islam’, where Muslims were in a numerical majority to rule there under Islamic law. He used Islamic symbols to sell his idea of liberal democracy on many occasions.

Soon after his famous address to the Pakistan constituent assembly on August 11, 1947, where he asked his colleagues to work towards a system where ‘citizenship’ of the state would be more important than the religion of a person, he would ask each Pakistani to ‘take vow to himself and be prepared to sacrifice his all, if necessary, in building up Pakistan as a bulwark of Islam’, ‘to develop the spirit of Mujahids’ and be unafraid of death because ‘our religion teaches us to be always prepared for death. We should face it bravely to save the honour of Pakistan and Islam. There is no better salvation for a Muslim than the death of a martyr for a righteous cause’.

Use of Islamic symbols: Jinnah and his successors

Jinnah also used Islam as a unifier to stitch together disparate ethnic and sectarian identities which had started raising their heads soon after partition. In his speech on the occasion of the opening of the State Bank of Pakistan in July 1948, he even went to the extent of criticising ‘the economic system of the West’ for creating ‘almost insoluble problems for humanity’ and urged the audience ‘to work our destiny in our own way and present to the world an economic system based on true Islamic concept of equality of manhood and social justice’ and evolve ‘banking practices compatible with Islamic ideals of social and economic life’.8

Jinnah’s efforts to sell his idea of a liberal democratic Pakistan based on basic Islamic principles of equality and social justice sought to bridge the gulf between liberal democracy, which he wanted Pakistan to adopt as a system of governance, and a Sharia-based Islamic system, which many of his followers instinctively gravitated towards. He was perhaps aware of the contradictions he had to deal with in the process. In one breath he would dismiss the idea of Pakistan becoming a theocracy, while in another he would comfort the clergy, which was vocal about Sharia, by saying that the constitution will not be in conflict with the Sharia laws. He did not live long enough to resolve these contradictions. The constant tussle between the moderates and the conservatives would mark the political landscape of Pakistan heretofore.

The rulers of Pakistan who succeeded him inherited this legacy of unresolved contradictions. They employed the same tactics to justify their actions. The liberals like Ayub Khan (1958-1969) and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (-1972-1977) used Islam to justify their actions, legitimise their rule and even to undermine their political opponents. The years of military dictatorship under Zia-ul-Haq (1977-1988), which coincided with Afghan Jihad, saw the balance shifting towards the Islamists. It was during this time that the Islamic content of Jinnah’s speeches was isolated and served as proof of his Islamist rather than secular orientation. Democratic leaders like Nawaz Sharif, who followed Zia, even tried unsuccessfully to introduce Islamic provisions into the constitution.

The influence of the radical elements has grown manifold in Pakistan in the post-Zia years, despite the much-advertised efforts of Pervez Musharraf (1999-2008), another military dictator, to bring ‘enlightened moderation’ to Pakistan. Musharraf’s own attempt to appropriate Islamic symbols, much like Jinnah’s, could not make much of a dent into the radical Islamic constituency that is threatening to swamp Pakistan today.

Crisis of identity

The inability of the elite to define the Pakistani nation in non-religious geo-cultural terms has allowed Islam to endure as the most important marker of the Pakistani identity. This sense of identity crisis has been underlined by a Pakistani writer in the following words:

The mind of the Pakistani intellectual has often been agitated by considerations of the question of our national identity. But since the traumatic events of 1971, this self-questioning has assumed the proportions of a compelling necessity . . . If we let go the ideology of Islam, we cannot hold together as a nation by any other means . . . If the Arabs, the Turks, the Iranians, God forbid, give up Islam, the Arabs yet remain Arabs, the Turks remain Turks, the Iranians remain Iranians, but what do we remain if we give up Islam?

Ironically, as long as Islam remains the most potent referent, it will certainly emit strong Islamist impulses which will indirectly legitimise the operation of radical Islamic groups in Pakistan. Rather than leading to a consensus, the increasing accent of the state on Islam has hardened the boundaries between different sects and groups within Islam. Each of these groups has tried to define Islam in narrow and exclusivist terms and sought to impose their world views on others in militant ways. If one goes by their separate versions of Pakistan, one will find many Pakistans within Pakistan competing for influence and legitimacy.10 Rather than fighting them or trying to transcend such a fissiparous trend by promoting a progressive version of Islam, the state apparatus has collaborated with the Islamists and even granted them their mini-emirates in far-flung areas. Inevitably, the Islamist discourse has been dominated by sectarian and regressive maulanas (religious scholars) of all shades, pushing the resultant vector in the direction of growing Islamisation of Pakistani society with each passing day. The trend is too obvious to be ignored and  appears irreversible in the present circumstances.

The malaise and the remedy

The failure of democracy, prolonged periods of military rule, persisting crises of governance and a self-perpetuating highly exploitative and inegalitarian socio-economic structure have created the ideal context for radical forces to thrive in the name of Islam, which they argue could provide the panacea for all the ills Pakistan is suffering from at the moment. The Pakistani strategy of using some of these elements against India has strengthened the hold of the militant constituencies further and led to unintended consequences at the internal level. The rising incidence of sectarian violence and the spread of Taliban into the hinterland amply demonstrate this trend. Pakistan is thus likely to countenance a prolonged period of chaos and turmoil.

In the aftermath of the devastating floods, whose impact has been made even more severe by the economic crisis visiting Pakistan today, the situation may even become worse and make the state more fragile than ever. It will require a total transformation of Pakistani society to lift Pakistan out of the mess it is in today. Pakistan can arrest its decline and reverse the trend by de-emphasising Rs Islamic identity, reconstituting itself as a liberal democracy, bringing about people-centric socio-economic reforms, and integrating itself with regional economies. Is it prepared for that?

*(The writer is a Research fellow at Institute of Defence and Analysis)

–Source: Strategic Analysis

By Arif Jamal

April 2011

As Punjab governor Salman Taseer came out of a restaurant in an upscale area of Islamabad, one of his bodyguards uttered the slogan “Allahu Akbar” and fired on the man he was supposed to guard, killing him on the spot. The assassin in the January 4 killing, Malik Mumtaz Qadri, belonged to the Elite Punjab Police, a force specially trained in counterterrorism work and the protection of important individuals (Dawn [Karachi], January 5). Qadri was also believed to be associated with the South Asian Barelvi Sufi movement. The other bodyguards from the elite force did not try to stop him and the smiling Qadri surrendered to his fellow officers after he made sure the governor was dead. He later told the police that he had killed the governor because Taseer had insulted the Prophet of Islam by describing Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws as “black laws.” Within hours of the assassination, Barelvi ulema (religious scholars) and more than 500 leading members of the Jamaat Ahle Sunnat (“The Community of People  of the Traditions of Muhammad,” a Barelvi Sufi religious organization) had issued a fatwa against leading the deceased governor’s funeral prayers or even attending his funeral (The News [Islamabad] January 5). When the police brought the assassin to court a day later, hundreds of lawyers showered him with rose petals. There were widespread demonstrations in Qadri’s favor throughout the country. With all opposition to Islamism and jihadism in Pakistan falling silent since, Sufi Islamism has succeeded in doing what Deobandi jihadism had failed in the past.

Pir Mohammad Ilyas Attar Qadri and the Struggle against Deobandism

The most unusual and disturbing aspect of the assassination was that the killer belonged to the Dawat-e-Islami, a Barelvi Sufi group which normally shuns violence and has been in the forefront of the struggle against Deobandism (a conservative Sunni religious movement that has become associated with militancy) and the Ahle Hadith jihadi groups. Founded in 1984 as a small group around Pir (spiritual leader) Mohammad Ilyas Attar Qadri, Dawat-e-Islami grew into a formidable organization by the mid-1990s when more than 100,000 persons gathered at its periodic ijtimahs (conventions). Pir Ilyas Attar Qadri had sensed Deobandi extremism would grow as a result of the Afghan jihad and wanted to organize the Ahle Sunnat to face that challenge. However, Pir Ilyas believed in peaceful resistance. [2] Surprisingly, the Dawat-e-Islami is loosely structured on the model of the Deobandi Tablighi Jamaat (an international Islamic reform movement). All Dawat-e-Islami members, however, are required to wear parrot-green turbans and shalwar-kurta (traditional South Asian clothing) like their Pir.

Pir Ilyas Attar Qadri has sworn bay’at (allegiance) to four of the leading orders in Sufi Islam; the Qadriya, Chishtoya, Naqshbandiya, and Suharwardiya. He, however, took the suffix of Qadri as his title because he had sworn bay’at at the hands of Pir Ziaud Din Ahmed Rizvi Qadri, a successor of Imam Ahmed Reza Khan Barelvi, the 19th century Ahle Sunnat imam who challenged the rise of Deobandism by issuing a fatwa against the movement. As the group grew larger, most of his followers started calling themselves “Attari-Qadri,” turning the group into a mystic sub-order. [3] Like most Barelvi spiritual leaders, Pir Ilyas Qadri places more stress on zikr (devotional acts) and less on shariat (Islamic teachings and doctrines). However, unlike most modern pirs, he does not ignore shariat altogether. In this way, he serves as a bridge between the Barelvi ulema (Islamic scholars) and the pirs (traditional spiritual leaders). This is one of the reasons why he attracts students from the Barelvi madrassahs. Pir Ilyas is called “Amir Ahle Sunnat” by his followers, which reflects his desire to lead the Ahle Sunnat.

Formation of the Sunni Tehrik

Pir Ilyas Qadri’s reluctance to adopt violence against Deobandi jihadi groups led to a mini-rebellion among his followers, particularly those who had studied at Barelvi madrassahs. Consequently, a small group led by Saleem Qadri founded the Sunni Tehrik in 1990. Saleem Qadri wanted to meet Deobandi violence with more violence, as Pir Ilyas Qadri’s “non-violence was not taking the Barelvis anywhere.” [4] However, Saleem Qadri did not break his religious allegiance to Pir Ilyas Qadri even after leaving his group, nor did he ask his followers to break links with the Dawat-e-Islami. This approach worked and soon the ranks of the Sunni Tehrik swelled. The membership of the Dawat-e-Islami and the Sunni Tehrik also overlaps at the lower levels with several other Barelvi groups.

The Sunni Tehrik was the first Barelvi group to articulate the demands of the majority Barelvi sect and to use violence to achieve them. Their four basic demands were:

*             The protection of Ahle Sunnat beliefs.

*             The protection of the rights of the Ahle Sunnat.

*             The protection of Ahle Sunnat mosques.

*             The protection of the Ahle Sunnat awqaf (religious endowments), such as shrines.

The Sunni Tehrik was ready to use violence to achieve the last two demands in response to Deobandi groups’ use of violence to take over Barelvi mosques and awqaf property. Soon after its founding, the Sunni Tehrik started using force to take back the mosques the Deobandis had allegedly taken from the Barelvi ulema. The Dawat-e-Islami and the Sunni Tehrik cadres complained bitterly that the state had helped the Deobandi and Ahle Hadith groups and ulema to grow at the expense of the majority Barelvis. One of their most consistent demands has been for Barelvi imams to be appointed to army-owned mosques. The rise of the Sunni Tehrik posed a direct challenge to the Deobandi jihadi groups. Consequently, Saleem Qadri was assassinated in Karachi in early 2001 by Arshad Khan (a.k.a. Polka), a Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan/Jaish-e-Mohammad operative (The News [Islamabad] April 9, 2001).

The Jamaat Ahle Sunnat Challenges the Military’s Pro-Jihad Policies

Before he was assassinated, Saleem Qadri had played an important role in radicalizing the Barelvi youth, though neither he nor his spiritual leader, Pir Ilyas Qadri, were able to provide effective leadership to the ever growing numbers of restless Barelvi youth. This leadership was eventually provided by the hitherto dormant Jamaat Ahle Sunnat, the religious party of the Ahle Sunnat ulema. Dawat-e-Islami and the Sunni Tehrik had played an important part in reviving the Jamaat Ahle Sunnat, which held a convention in Multan on April 1-2, 2000. It was the biggest gathering of Barelvi groups in more than a century. The convention was very critical of the Pakistani military’s pro-jihad policy and support to Deobandi groups. In his speech, Jamaat leader Syed Riaz Hussain Shah came down hard on the military, saying: “If the civil war in Kashmir is the right policy, the government must involve all the Muslims in it. It will be dangerous, as is becoming evident, to arm only a few sects [such as the Deobandis].” However, the most important thing was that the Jamaat Ahle Sunnat had adopted the Sunni Tehrik narrative of a forceful defense of Barelvi interests as its own. The Jamaat Ahle Sunnat emerged much stronger after the convention and began to play a major part in the country’s Islamist politics.

The first opportunity for the Jamaat Ahle Sunnat to show its strength came in the fall of 2005, when Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten newspaper published 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet of Islam as a terrorist. The cartoons created anger among Muslims across the world. The fiercest demonstrations took place in Pakistan, where the Jamaat Ahle Sunnat and other Barelvi groups (including Dawat-e-Islami and the Sunni Tehrik), remained in the forefront of the demonstrations and sustained them for months. Every time the government indicated its intention of amending the blasphemy laws, the Islamists descended to the streets with a vengeance. Again, each time the Jamaat Ahle Sunnat and other Barelvi groups were in the forefront of the protests. The Jamaat Ahle Sunnat also led demonstrations against the release of Aasia Bibi, an illiterate Christian farm worker and mother of five who was accused of committing an act of blasphemy (insulting the Prophet Muhammad) and sentenced to death by a lower court based on the evidence of her lone accuser.

Conclusion

Although the Barelvis are the majority Muslim sect in Pakistan and in South Asia, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), under Saudi pressure, never allowed or encouraged them to take part in the Afghan and Kashmir jihads. When the jihad in Afghanistan started in 1980, the Saudis agreed to match American donations dollar for dollar, but also made sure that only their favorite sects, such as the Ahle Hadith, the Deobandis and the Jamaat-e-Islami, were allowed to take part in it, keeping Barelvis and Shias out of the jihad. Although the Barelvis are more hardline than the Deobandis in some respects, they are not armed like the latter. [9] Neither are they trained in guerrilla warfare like the Deobandis and the Ahle Hadith, who have been actively waging jihad for more than a quarter century. However, the Barelvis can show their street muscle through their numerical strength. The groups discussed in this article make up the backbone of the growing Barelvi/Sufi extremism in Pakistan. While the Dawat-e-Islami prepares the masses and the Sunni Tehrik counters violence from Deobandi and Ahle Hadith groups with more violence, the Jamaat Ahle Sunnat dominates the street with its madrassah-educated cadres to promote Sufi Islamism. The assassination of Governor Salman Taseer shows that Sufi Islamism can be a bulwark against or an alternative to Deobandi and Ahle Hadith jihadism but it is in its own way as great a threat to international security as the militancy of the Deobandi and Ahle Hadith movements.

*(The author is a visiting fellow at the New York University).

–Source: Terrorism Monitor, James Town Foundation

By S.M. Pandit

January 2011

There have been three significant judgments or interventions by three different courts vis-à-vis Kashmiri migrants recently. The first judgment was delivered by The Delhi High Court. The judgment was delivered on a bunch of petitions filed by 24 central government employees, all Kashmiri Pandits, who were facing eviction from govt. accommodation after their retirement. In the landmark judgment, Justice Gita Mittal not only restrained the govt. from evicting these from the accommodation till alternative residence is provided in the capital but also directed the govt. to pay a cost of Rs 25000to each of the petitioners. The court described ‘the right to shelter’ a fundamental right. “Petitioners may be compelled to return to the violent situation where from they were forced to flee. Forcing the petitioners to return to the area where they were persecuted violates the principles of International Law forbidding the expulsion of a refugee into an area where such person might be again subjected to persecution,” the court observed. Pulling up the government, the High Court said, “Instead of facilitating the resettlement and rehabilitation of the petitioners who are Internally Displaced Persons as per declared policy, they have arbitrarily been exposed to the additional trauma of the threat of forcible evictions and the uncertainty of seeking the adjudication by pursuing the litigation.” The court further described the case a ‘testimony to events which lead to unprecedented ethnic cleansing of a minority community from the Kashmir valley on account of the failure of the state to protect them and their property from violence, who as a result. Were rendered homeless.’

The second intervention came from the J&K High Court. In the given case,  the court directed the Divisional Commissioner, Kashmir to protect the property of the 200 year old Bajrang Dev Baba Dharam Dass Mandir Sathoo Barbar Shah, Srinagar. In the case, Justice Sunil Hali observed, “It transpires that the property of Bajrang Dev Baba Dharam Dass Mandir, Sathoo Barbar Shah, Srinagar is entangled in various litigations and is being encroached upon. It is necessary to pass some interim direction in order to preserve and protect the property of the Mandir. It will be appropriate and in the public interest to ensure that the property of the Mandir is preserved and protected from encroachments and illegal transfers.”

The third direction came from the Apex Court in a petition filed by All India Kashmiri Samaj and others in 2006. In the instant case, the Supreme Court sought response from the J&K government on the Rs1, 618 crore special package. “Where will the people who want to go will stay? Now their properties have been sold or auctioned. There are number of petitions pending in the High Court. How will they go?” the bench headed by Chief Justice S H Kapadia observed. In response to the enquiry, Additional Solicitor General Indra Jaising said the properties auctioned between 1990 to 1997 would be declared “illegal” and would be “restored.” “All those auctions are illegal and they will be cancelled,” she said.

Without any prejudice to the court verdicts, many things come to one’s mind. It has now been proved beyond doubt that the minority Hindu community of Kashmir faced persecution that resulted into their ethnic cleansing. The successive governments failed to prevent the persecution and the exodus. The administration also failed miserably to protect their properties, movable or immovable, in the valley. As a result, their properties were destroyed, occupied and encroached upon. In most of the cases, the representations by the aggrieved persons were consigned to the dustbins. It resulted in the distress sale of the property at through away prices. There are instances were the concerned authorities advised or intimidated the displaced persons to sell their properties to the people who had illegally occupied or encroached upon these properties. What is the most astonishing part of the story is the fact that the state administration itself contributed to the occupation of the migrants’ properties. Not only the agricultural land, orchards and residential land of them but even the cremation grounds were acquired by the government in the name of developing public utilities without considering its long term political implications. The owners are still to receive the compensation or were given very low rates as compared to the marked value. Though the State Government enacted a law in 1997 to prevent the distress sale and made the concerned DCs the custodians of the Migrant Property, but the situation has not changed as the concerned authorities are reluctant to act. Now as the Additional Solicitor General has informed the Apex Court that the properties auctioned between 1990&1997 are illegal and will be restored, the action in this direction will be a major CBM with positive political implications.

While the state and central governments failed to prevent the persecution and exodus, their indifferent attitude compounded the miseries of the community even in exile. The court interventions bear testimony to the fact that the Displaced persons have to knock the doors of the judiciary even for the matters that could be solved by the administration with ease. The Courts have come to the rescue of the exiled community at several times.

Unfortunately, at times the court verdicts are interpreted in a way to put the community to disadvantage.

To add to all this, the governments try to trivialize the exodus. The welfare and the rehabilitation of the exiled community in their ‘Homeland’ should have been the priority of the state and the central governments. The issue is being handled casually. The PM’s so-called Return Package is a reflection of this approach. There is nothing in the package that guarantees the political empowerment of the community and protection from further persecution and victimisation. The conditions attached to the ‘Employment Package’ give an insight how the state government has turned it into a trap taking advantage of the distress of the community youth.

To conclude, it is a national shame that the rehabilitation of the people who waged war against the nation is the priority of the state. The nationalistic community cannot be forced to remain hostage to the whims of jehadi and communal forces for generations together. The Indian state and the political class should revisit policy vis-a-vis Kashmiri Pandits and take cognizance of the geo-political aspirations of the community. Rehabilitation of the Kashmiri Hindus should be national issue and flagship of the policy.

January 2011

We have the habit of taking public space for granted as if it has continuously been there. Yet public space is always the expression of the intentions of some person or institution. Purposes are given to a place by a person or institution and it is put forward as a place that has symbolic meaning. Many instruments are used to sustain that symbolic meaning. If we take a keen look at public space around us we can see that it is a site social and political contestation and many other conflicting discourses.

We can take Jammu Railway station as a typical public space.  When we enter the station, climb up the stairs and reach the gate leading towards platform no.1, on the right hand side wall we see a picture is painted. It is the picture of Hazratbal shrine which contains an inlet showing the sacred hair of the Prophet of Islam. It caught my attention when I was leaving Jammu some months back. What was this picture trying to say?

When I reached platform 1, on the left side there was a glow sign (not glowing at all), telling something about the Vaishno Devi Shrine. In my previous visit I had seen a glow sign installed by a Hindi Newspaper highlighting its success in the city of temples that is Jammu. But the picture of Hazratbal in a primary public place of Jammu had to say more than this.

During election times, political parties try to define public places through their posters. The number of posters gives an impression who has got more power. Getting control of public places is so important that the activists of political parties clash over the fact that other political parties paste their posters in their area. Controlling public places like this acquired a new dimension in Kashmir when terrorism began in 1990.  It was made mandatory for all shopkeepers to get their sign boards painted in green and white and no language but Urdu was to be used. This was to create an impression of an Islamic country. In the process it was forgotten that urdu is an Indian language that developed and flourished in India. But it was put forward as a muslim language and green colour was defined as muslim colour. It is this mindset that is at work at Jammu railway station.

Jammu is famous for vaishno devi shrine to which pilgrims come form all over the world. It has religious, social , cultural and economic significance and the finances generated are certainly more than the Hazratbal shrine. But on jammu Railway Station the painting of Hazratbal shrine is not only to put the burden of secularism on Jammu , it is to overmask the cultural identity of Jammu. The dominance of Kashmir is being forced here. Just paint the Vaishno Devi Shrine any where in Srinagar and see what happens. This painting suggests that Hazratbal is everything even in Jammu. The cultural identity of Jammu is being kept at bay. It is dissolved in this painting of Hazratbal shrine. This fact is to be kept in mind that the existence of this painting on Jammu Railway station is important because it is among the most important public spaces in Jammu. Many people may have noticed it but hardly anything has been done about it. This is a good example showing how attempts to define public places are made by those in power and how people take these attempts for granmted.  Even in USA Obama government tried to define public places. It was proposed that a mosque would be built at the ground zero of 9/11. The twin towers  that were razed to ground defined USA as a place. Those towers defined USA as a superpower, as an economic giant and that is how American citizens visualized their place. They resisted the attempts to put at that place a symbol that represented the forces which razed the symbol of American power to ground. Voices were raised against the mosque and it could not be built at ground zero. Americans do not take their public places for granted. They kept the right to define their places with themselves.  Building a mosque at that place meant appeasement of the forces which were responsible for the destruction. Public spaces are often filled with symbols of appeasement of destructive forces in many countries.

In fact, politics does not take into consideration any place as a whole. A convenient aspect is highlighted, emphasized and re-emphasized keeping other aspects in the background. Just remember the terrorist attack on Raghunath Mandir, Jammu. Political parties as usual defined the temple as a religious place and the attack on it naturally was explained as an attack on religious sentiments of Jammu. It was conveniently forgotten that Raghunath Mandir was a place of Sanskrit Learning and most probably still lodges a library of ancient manuscripts. Raghunath Mandir has been an important seat of the intellectual culture of Jammu. But this point cannot be the basis of politics. This temple makes us remember Dogra Kings like Maharaja Ranbir Singh who had great respect for intellectuals and scholars and did a lot to preserve ancient manuscripts. All the Dogra kings held Kashmiri Pandit Sanskrit scholars in highest esteem. This point is very important from the point of view of expansion of Jammu as a place and will establish its cultural link with Kashmir which separatists are trying to sever.  If these points are highlighted it will give new definition to Jammu as a place and it will not remain as a place of soldiers and warriors only which it, of course has been but that is not the only part of the culture of Jammu as a place. The politics in Jammu also suffers from victim mentality. The main thrust point is that Jammu has been ignored and all the attention has been given to Kashmir.  Here again Jammu is defined as a subordinate place and within this discourse Kashmir is being constantly strengthened and Jammu weakened. The identity of Jammu as a whole, Jammu as a place is no where. Kashmiri Muslims have been able to project Kashmir as a place all over the world. They have tried to distort traditional Kashmiri icons to fit into the mould of dominance of Islam. Jammu has not been able to emphasize that it has been a cultural resistance against this onslaught in its own way. It has done so not only through sword but intellect as well.

Public place is defined through the type of symbols you fill it with. Public place in Kashmir is defined by protests. Protests have become the identifying factor of Kashmir as a place and the likes of Arundhati Roy side with Geelani like people. These people do not treat Kashmir as a place but take it as a political entity as is inherent in Indian constitution also. This also shows what manipulating of public spaces can do! For many months the public space in Kashmir was filled with protests and deaths, blames on security forces and GOI. It was sustained for months altogether and Kashmir got a different meaning as a place. This is an interesting example of how carefully social structures of violence are created and used and how so called intellectuals like Arundhati Roy are a party to this structural violence which deprives other people of J&K of their rights in the state. Such machinations can be resisted only by visualizing our places of belonging in their wholeness and exhibiting that wholeness in our public places through whatever means possible.

*(The author is a prolific writer and a poet.)

By M.M. Khajooria

January 2011

Unfamiliar voices were being heard from familiar personages in Kashmir separatist front.  Skeletons were tumbling out of  closets kept securely locked till the other day.  Forbidden words bordering on blasphemy were being spoken, There is an air of expectancy. What does it portend?

A significant segment of   “over ground “separatists in Kashmir  have come a long way- from strikes to seminars . The tactical shift from  “Muzafarabad Chalo” to intellectual acrobats was equally  phenomenal.

Recent seminars  ,one on “United Nations Resolutions-A legal Base to Kashmir Dispute’ organized by Hurriyat (M) and   the other titled  ‘Role of Intellectuals in Freedom Struggle’   under the auspices of JKLF   in Srinagar  were conspicuous by the presence of leaders of both the Huriyat (M) and JKLF  and a smattering of  Kashmiri intellectuals mostly advocating   what had come to be known as the “Third  Option”. what motivated or propelled this shift is the  moot question?

Deceit, falsehood and subterfuge  have largely been the hallmarks of the   separatist politics  from day  one  . The attempts to mask their real identity  – tools in the hands of  Pakistan establishment  or  willing victims of their machinations -and masquerade as the “freedom fighters ” were  indeed pathetic.  The sham played out for the last about six decades  fooled no one ,Certainly not the people of Kashmir. The vastitudes of history and the experiences of   prolonged political  struggle  characterised by  great  commitment and sacrifices on the one hand and  treachery on the other  had  imbued them with an uncanny   almost  telepathic power  to  smell  such dirty tricks.  But they let the secessionist  leaders   live in the world of make believe   practicing  the dictum  _   “SAMAJJH TU HAR EK RAAZ KO MAGAR FARAIB KHAAY JA”..  May be the common man could no more put up with the charade .  The irrelevance of     these outfits   highlighted during the Geelani led  Stone pelting misadventure sent the warning signals. Was  the   fear of    open  public expression of    total lack of faith  discernable during June-August turmoil ,    behind the show “some guts”  or tactical , exposure  of  few  “secrets” as part of    damage control exercise.? Take for instance  Senior Hurriyat leader, Professor Abdul Gani Bhats’ call  to the intellectuals  on the need to speak truth. “We should speak out who killed Abdul Ahad Wani, fathers of Mir Waiz Umar and Bilal Gani Lone”,  he   demanded .The fact , however was that   he  had  already spoken about  this in the POK Assembly couple of years back.  And who  in Kashmir did not know  the identity of  the assassins of   Mir Waiz Farooq,? The “disclosure”  by DGP Kuldeep Khoda  that both late Mir Waiz Moulvi Farooq and his assassin were buried in the same grave Yard    ironically called Mazar Ul Shahuda  merely   affixed   the official seal on what was common knowledge. This  unacceptable  insult to the memory of Mir Waiz Moulvi Farooq  was in fact greatly resented by his close followers who , it was given out were restrained  ” to prevent further blood shed and harm to the person of  the succeeding  Mir Waiz, his son  Umar Farooq”. Otherwise how could the  assassin   of the Mir Waiz be   declared   a martyr and buried in the same  Mazar Ul Shuda.?   As regards Abdul Gani Lone   , his son Sajjad Lone had publically named   the  foreign agency behind the  crime  on the date of his assassination Itself.     Yasin Malik   now goes public and declares that. “He   (Prof. Abdul Ahad Wani) demanded Independence for Kashmir and that is why he was killed.”  Why does not he talk about the murder of  Dr. Guru  ?  The   list of  people who committed the blunder of  trusting   Pak   ISI as a genuine ally  in the “struggle for independence”    and became victims of Pakistan’s insatiable lust  for territorial gains in Kashmir   is   unfortunately too long to be recounted here. But what exactly  motivated  the Hurriyat (M) till yesterday  in cosy relationship with Pakistan establishment  and the JKLF  who despite  ISI treachery maintained cool relations with the agency  to go public on these now?    Has  the realisation that  Pakistan was using them  as mere tools in  furtherance of her agenda of territorial aggrandisement   finally  dawned upon them  ? Do these initiatives and disclosures indicate quest for  a new political strategy ?We may have to wait for some more developments to unfold to  find answers to these vital questions  .

‘United Nations Resolutions-A legal Base to Kashmir Dispute’ was the subject of the    seminar   held in the  Hurriyat ‘s  Rajbagh headquarters.  There , however  was not even a passing reference  either to the  origin, history  and dimensions of “the dispute” or to  the exact connotation and implications of the UN resolutions.  The  Mir Waiz vaguely spoke  of  “our strong case ” and  launched a tirade against UNO  calling it  “a failed Institution” ,which for decades  was  projected as the  repository of   justice .   Again, whom is he  trying to fool? Do these secessionist leaders seriously believe that they can black out history and lead  blindfolded  a  generation groomed in an era of information explosion and    global politico-economic regime?

Now about  the “dispute” which arose out of tribal invasion of 1947 , planned, organised and led by regular Pakistan army officers ,the fact is fully documented even in the accounts published by Pakistani and other  participants in the aggression including  the commander of the invasion force Col. Akbar Khan code named Gen. Tariq. In the latter stage of “the campaign”, the involvement of a brigade of its  army was conceded by Pakistan government.. Remember the aggression was launched against   state of Jammu & Kashmir which had become completely independent after the lapse of British Suzerainty on the 14th of August, 1947.Maharajah Hari Singh was clearly inclined to stay independent and in this decision he had the support of Muslim Conference leadership including the then Mir Waiz   Yusuf Shah   the grand uncle of Umar Farooq.  How Pakistan leadership forced the Muslim conference to reverse its decision to support the Maharajah  and his vision of an  independent Kashmir was   history.

Indian army entered Kashmir legally and constitutionally  and only after the Ruler of the State  formally  approached  India for accession .  The instrument of Accession was signed and sealed.. Therefore, those looking for the army of occupation would be well  advised to  caste their glance  across the LOC and Gilgit Baltistan where the army of occupation    was actually entrenched.  Talking of occupation , I am reminded of   the proceedings of a  2005 -seminar in New Delhi  in  which  representatives from both sides of the LOC and  Jammu & Kashmir Diaspora  participated.  While dictating a draft resolution as chairman of the drafting committee  I used term Pakistan Administered J&K ,  This provoked   strong protest from delegates   hailing from the area  who insisted that  it be termed as Pakistan Occupied Jammu & Kashmir because that is what it was.  one of the youth leaders was so incensed that he pulled up his shirt . I was horrified to see deep and knotted marks of lashes on his back.” Isn’t this enough to convince you that  we are condemned to  live in the territory under occupation.? he. demanded. I wonder how  the parties and leaders demanding Independent Jammu & Kashmir  can remain completely so insensitive and  unconcerned  about  the oppression and persecution that have become the fate of our fellow citizens living in bondage  in POK.

The Indian army landed  at Srinagar make shift air base  when the raiders were knocking at the doors of Srinagar, the winter capitol of the state and immediately got down to the task of evicting  the invaders , a job  they did with commendable speed and  success thanks to the active support of Kashmiri people. The  . Kashmiri Muslims rose to the occasion and  made history by  putting into practice their  secular beliefs  rooted in their religion, culture and tradition. Considering that all around the state the country was burning and  murder, rape and mayhem were the order of the day, the performance was super human.  This was  in sharp contrast to  the horrors of murder, loot and rape  perpetuated by the  tribal / Pak invaders  -the un Islamic  “Jehadi cult”  versus the Sofi Islam steeped in indigenous Rishi tradition.  The shameful barbarous deeds of the invaders  were still fresh in the memory of people. Those in doubt can check with the surviving members of that generation,  many of whom  were still around.

At the point of time when the raiders were on the run and “In order that the objective of expelling  invader from Indian territory   and prevent him from launching  fresh attacks should be quickly achieved, Indian troops would have to  enter   Pakistan territory; only thus could the invader be denied  the use of bases and cut off  from the sources of supplies and reinforcements in Pakistan “, India . filed a complaint   in the United Nations against aggressor Pakistan “The Indian complaint further pointed out   that “Since the aid which the invaders are receiving  from Pakistan is an act of aggression against  India, the Government of India are entitled under  international law, to send their armed forces i across Pakistan territory for dealing effectively  with the invaders./ However, as such action might  Involve armed conflict with Pakistan,  Government of India, ever anxious to proceed  according to the principles and aims of  Charter of the United Nations, desire to report the  situation to the Security Council  under article 35 of the Charter.”Thus India approached the UN in good faith to  have the remaining part of its territory  cleared from invaders through the intervention of the world body   without running the risk of  war with  Pakistan  which as it is, was in a mess.  Peace in the region and the world  continued to be objective of India foreign policy.  The complaint was listed in the UNO as “the India-Pakistan question” .  Kashmir was not mentioned.  Significantly, the issue did  not figure on the Security Council’s active agenda since November 1965.. Incidentally, under the relevant articles the UN had  only  recommendatory powers. Its resolution could not be enforced. Moreover  the world body had no authority  whatsoever to confer any “legal rights” and that too  on a third party   in a “dispute” between two member states.

The  implementation of  UN resolution cited by the separatists day in and day out  as the panacea of all the troubles in Jammu & Kashmir  and   problems between India and Pakistan had  mandatory   pre-conditions  attached . These had to be fulfilled before the Plebiscite  was conducted. A  paper read by  Khalid Hassan , an eminent political Pakistani analyst  in the Third International Kashmir  Conference in Washington deals with the package of  exercise of the so called ” Right of Self Determination”  by the people of Jammu & Kashmir state as it existed on 14th of August, 1947.”Assuming  that India agrees to the full acceptance and total implementation of the UN resolutions” he said  ”the ball will land in Pakistan’s court. Will Pakistan be prepared to pull out every single soldier now stationed on its side of line of control.? Will Pakistan agree to the expulsion of the Islamic fighting groups which continued to operate freely with the permission or connivance of the official authority in Azad Kashmir?.Will Pakistan agree to the holding of Plebiscite that it demands in the entire state, only 64 percent  of whose population   is Muslim, 33% Hindu and three percent is  Buddhist? Will Pakistan be prepared  to accept that Northern areas are an integral part of  former princely state of Jammu & Kashmir as it stood on 14th August of 1947?” he asked .Islamabad, he pointed out ” has also failed to honour the 1999 judgment of Azad Jammu & Kashmir Supreme court that declared the Northern areas (Galgit-Baltistan) to be  a part of Azad Jammu & Kashmir.”  “While the UN resolutions offer only two choices- India or Pakistan- will Pakistan be prepared to accept what has come to be known as the Third Option in the event that the people of the state demand independence”?, he questioned “The answers to all these questions frankly are in the negative”  he  concluded.  This was  just the sample.

Media and analysts in Pakistan have argued in the same vain on different occasions and varied platforms.

The pre conditions for the proposed  plebiscite were mandatory which   no government in Pakistan  could afford  to comply with .  Those who talk of solution of Kashmir tangle under the UN resolutions   are either hallucinating or trying to fool the people of Kashmir. More ever , legally speaking the Indian complaint to United  Nations  against Pakistan  became infractuous after the signing of the Shimla Agreement of July 3, 1972 where under both India and Pakistan    ” resolved to :-

a)         “Settle their differences by peaceful means through bilateral  negotiations or by any other peaceful means agreed upon  between them”.

b)  Respect the Line of Control In Jammu & Kashmir  resulting from  without prejudice to the recognised positions of either side.

And that” neither side shall seek to alter it  unilaterally irrespective of mutual differences and legal interpretations”.

The attention of those separatist leaders who  were  seeking  to carve out   an independent Jammu& Kashmir  with aid   from  Pakistan is invited to the official stand of the Pakistan government of the demand for independence.  The press had reported that “The  Foreign Office Spokesperson ,Tasnim Aslam has said that Kashmir’s legal framework is based on UN resolutions which give Kashmiris two choices either accede to India or to Pakistan. There is no third choice for them according to UN resolutions.” And added   “If we talk of independent Kashmir then we will be out of Kashmir’s legal framework which give the Kashmir dispute an international legality”. The then  Pak president  Musharraf also  ruled out independence as an option to resolve the Kashmir issue.   According to his 25 January,2007  statement in Islamabad  “he did not support the idea of independent Kashmir on the grounds that it might not be achievable as both India and Pakistan were opposed to it.”

Addressing  the seminar on the ‘Role of Intellectuals in Freedom Struggle’  JKLF leader   Yasin Malik  exposed his fascist mindset  reducing intellectuals to bonded labour when he declared that: “The writers and intellectuals cannot be impartial. Either they are state-centric or side with people.     In a direct insult to the Kashmiri intellectuals he accused  that  “Presently, 99 percent intellectuals work on the ‘government aid’. But all this need not be taken too seriously. How much he actually meant and how much was for “local consumption” remained to be seen.  In any case Political beings have a knack and means  of mending fences with the ” “intellectuals” many of whom reside in the media space.

Numerous reservations and misgivings not with standing,  it would be a serious mistake to ignore    the   breach   in relations  between Kashmiri separatists  and  Pakistan establishment  ( read PAK ISI) and ,  its  potential of   altering political positioning and re alignment of political forces in  Kashmir valley .  According to  Umar Farooq,  the Hurriyat (M) chairman ,” people of the valley are the masters of their own land”. That was the constituency to which his vision and focus was actually  confined .  May be   more than six decades old alliance between Pakistan establishment especially the ISI and a  segment of Separatists in Kashmir was  about to come  unstuck .

*(The writer is former  DGP, J& K State )

Return of displaced Hindus to Kashmir the only problem

Prof. Hari Om

January 2011

New Delhi has wasted enough of its time in Kashmir and achieved nothing whatsoever. Kashmir continues to simmer and pose a grave challenge to the national unity and the very idea of India. In fact, the situation has now reached a stage where even those constitutionally bound to defend and promote further the nation’s paramount interests in the Valley have started tinkering with and breaking provisions stipulated in the constitution and defending the seditionists, saying we are a democratic nation and everyone has the right to express his/her opinion even if that lampoons the Indian State. Even Union Home Minister P Chidambaram doesn’t mind the Kashmiri separatists advocating their seditious views. He had on December 9 said: “Contours of a political solution to the Kashmir problem are likely to emerge in the next few months…space must be allowed for peaceful protests (read protests by separatists)…The first and second report of the panel of interlocutors involved confidence building measures and now they have been told to focus on finding contours of political solution… Kashmir is a political issue for which a political solution must be found…” His only refrain was that they should preach sedition in a “peaceful” manner.

In other words, the situation has climaxed to the point where it has become extremely difficult to distinguish between the seditionists/fanatics and men at the helm. The reason: They are advancing almost identical arguments and questioning the very presence of New Delhi in the Valley. It is hardly necessary to differentiate here between those demanding complete independence and those a step short of it. Suffice it to say that the ultimate objective is the same: Another communal partition of India. Suffice it to say that there is no fundamental difference between those who describe Jammu & Kashmir as a “disputed” territory and those who say on the floor of the assembly that the “state has only acceded and not merged with India.”

Why has New Delhi failed in Kashmir? It has failed because it has all along recognized and patronized wrong persons and ignored and despised the nationalist constituency in the Valley. It has at no point of time during all these 63 years of the state’s accession strove to diagnose what ails Kashmir and the Kashmir’s polity. The need of the time in October 1947 was to sideline the seditionists and communalists, but it acted otherwise. It put all of its eggs in the seditionists’ and communalists’ basket. And thereafter, it never looked back; it never introspected; it never took into consideration the grave evils that followed. The situation remains the same even today even after grave provocation. No action against the seditionists and unstinted support and full freedom to persons at the helm in the state to undermine Indian sovereignty, jeopardize national unity and undermine territorial integrity of India is the hallmark of the New Delhi’s policy towards Kashmir.

What is happening these days? New Delhi is sending lawmakers to Kashmir to talk to those who are responsible for all the Indian troubles in Kashmir. It appears New Delhi wants them to don the mantle of knights. New Delhi is also not preventing the Delhi-based foreign diplomats from going to Kashmir in order to talk to the seditionists and their supporters in and outside the establishment. No wonder then that the emboldened and glorified seditionists are issuing more and more provocative and convoluted statements. Certain “civil society” activists, whose credentials are highly doubtful and who are masquerading as representatives of the Indian civil society, are visiting Kashmir at regular intervals and holding debates on Kashmir outside the Valley. They are not only issuing insidious and provocative statements, but are also glorifying the Kashmiri separatists and their savagery. As a matter of fact, they are instigating the people of Kashmir against the government and the Indian State.

As for New Delhi, it has given them a free run of time and the result is that they are openly stoking the fire of hatred and creating schism in the society. New Delhi is simply ducking issues that need to be dealt with resolutely and with amoebic rapidity. New Delhi is, in short, in a state of dilemma because it itself is unclear and ambivalent.

Enough is enough. New Delhi cannot go on like this any longer. It has got to deal with the situation as it prevails in Kashmir. It has to abandon the policy that only recognizes those who are absolutely disloyal and who are “green in tooth and claw.”

What exactly ails Kashmir? Who deserve New Delhi’s attention? Who need to be conciliated and won over? Who are the actual sufferers? Whose human rights have been violated in Kashmir? Worst form of communalism and fanaticism ails Kashmir. Intolerant and regressive ideology has been reigning supreme in the Valley ever since 1947. Ever since then, Kashmir has been witnessing a hate-campaign against the non-believers; ever since then, Kashmir has been witnessing the process of religious cleansing; ever since then, the Valley has been witnessing persecution of the minorities. In fact, the fanatics in Kashmir have already accomplished what they wanted to accomplish and what they wanted to accomplish was to convert Kashmir into an hundred per cent a non-non-believer region.

The fanatics in Kashmir wanted the minorities to quit the Valley and they achieved their objective with utmost. They have purged Kashmir of all the non-Muslim minorities. The process started in 1947 itself. New Delhi should have intervened then and nipped the evil in the bud, but it didn’t do that. Instead, it sided with the seditionists and fanatics, who always dubbed the minorities as fifth columnists or Indian agents. The result was the emergence of a situation that made the minorities quit their homes and hearths. The process of religious cleansing reached its zenith in early 1990, when all, barring a handful of members belonging to the minority communities, including Kashmiri Hindus and Jammu Dogras, vacated the Valley. Ever since then, the displaced minorities have been languishing in the refugee camps in Jammu and elsewhere in the country. They want to go back to their land of Vitasta (Jhelum), but they have failed. They have failed because New Delhi has abandoned them in its desperate bid to keep the fanatics in Kashmir in good humour. They are no factor in the New Delhi’s scheme of things. And, the result has been that the minorities continue to suffer untold miseries in their own motherland, notwithstanding the fact that their watchword and battle cry was, and continue to be, India.

These are the people who need to be looked after and conciliated. These are the people who need a special attention and special treatment because their human rights have been violated ruthlessly; because they have been deprived of their right to live in Kashmir; because they have been suffering not only politically but also psychologically; because their very identity and personality is under grave threat; because most of them have been living in an environment that adversely impacts privacy; because their religious sentiments stand outraged as a result of the official patronage to those who vandalize their religious symbols and desecrate their temples and shrines in Kashmir; and because the fertility rate among them has sharply declined and mortality rate considerably enhanced.

It is disgusting that New Delhi and the so-called human rights activists, conflict-managers and think-tanks care only for those fleecing and bleeding the Indian nation and dismiss the persecuted minorities as no factor in the Kashmir’s situation. They talk about the “alienation” of those ruling the state, exploiting Jammu and Ladakh and those responsible for the forced exodus of the minorities in Kashmir. Their heart bleeds only for the persecutors and not for the persecuted; their heart bleeds for the merchants of death and destruction and not for those who have been suffering for their commitment to the Indian nation, Indian sovereignty, Indian culture and Indian civilization. Their heart bleeds for those in Kashmir who have vitiated the whole atmosphere and given a particular type of religious orientation to the polity in the state and not for those who want to return to Kashmir to defend the national cause in the fundamentalist, regressive and intolerant Kashmir.

Here lies the basic problem. New Delhi needs to revise its Kashmir policy based on the realities as they exist in Kashmir and one of the realities is that problem in Kashmir is fundamentally communal. The bottom-line of the seditionists and fanatics in Kashmir is secession. This needs to be tackled forthwith using all means. The other problem is the problem of rehabilitation of the displaced minorities in Kashmir. The displaced minorities want the right to live in Kashmir and this right has to be conceded. They are original inhabitants of Kashmir. They represent the 5000-year-old Indian civilization. New Delhi has to see to it that they not only returned to Kashmir but also enjoy all the civil, political, social and economic rights there as are available to the rest of the Indians under the Indian Constitution. New Delhi should remember the fight in Kashmir is between those who stand for Indian nationhood and those opposed to it. The displaced minorities belong to the first category and, hence, they need to be protected, rehabilitated, empowered and patronized. In fact, they need to be given a dispensation of their choice.

*(The author is a well known writer and a political commentrator)

August 2010

The sudden outburst of anger with which the Foreign Minister of Pakistan, Syed Mohamood Qureshi, reacted to what happened in the Foreign Ministers’ Conference in Islamabad, needs to be considered more seriously. The acrimony which pervaded the conference has brought to surface, very wide differences in the perspectives of Government, of India and Pakistan, in respect of South Asia as a regional complex of inter-state relationships and the future Asian balance of power, which is taking shape with the emergence of China as a major Asian military power. The two countries also differ in their strategic outlook and seek to achieve diametrically diverse objectives from the dialogue they have so eagerly continued for many more decade now.

Pakistan has been insisting upon the structurisation of the composite dialogue between the two countries in a way that ensures the priority of the issues which it considers vital to its interests, within a time-frame, it believes, Pakistan has a right to lay down. Obviously the Foreign Minister of Pakistan felt uneasy, when S.M. Krishna stressed upon the need to tackle the problem of terrorism on a basis of priority. Perhaps Qureshi did not expect Krishna to do that. And he had good reason to do so. Infact, India never took a firm stand on terrorism, which the Jehadi war groups in Pakistan waged the Jammu and Kashmir and in the other parts of the country. India always resorted to invoke good neighbourly relations with Pakistan and sought the cooperation of that country to put a curb on the terrorist regimes operating from its soil.

The Indian Foreign Minister did not invite the jibe from his counter-part the Foreign Minister of Pakistan on account of the statement the India Home Secretary had made. For Qureshi, the comment made by the Home Secretary was not so uncommon a statement and was a repetition of what the Indian officials of various stations had been telling Pakistan, right from the time the terrorist violence struck Mumbai. Qureshi felt angry, because everyone in Pakistan was angry on the insistence of India on the urgency to deal with cross-border terrorism. The government and the people of Pakistan never budged from their stand that the settlement on Jammu and Kashmir could not be subjected to the fulfilment of their commitments to fight terrorism. Everyone in Pakistan told the Indians in unmistakable terms that a settlement on Jammu and Kashmir, which was acceptable to them and the Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir, was a precedent condition for the successful conclusion of the war on terrorism they were waging in Afghanistan and their own country alongside their allies.

One fundamental aspect of the cross-border terrorism, the Jehadi war groups have been incessantly carrying on in India, has received much less attention in this country. The terrorist violence Pakistan has been exporting out of its borders, right from the time it joined the Muslim resistance against the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan to the time it commenced the militarisation of the Muslim separatist movement in Jammu and Kashmir in 1989, as well as the war of subversion the intelligence agencies of that country has been waging in the other parts of India, during the last two decades, is an organised military campaign committed to the Islamic Jehad. In Afganistan, the Jehad was ideologically committed to the liberation of the Muslims in Afghanistan from the Soviet army of occupation. In Jammu and Kashmir and the other parts of India, the Jehad is ideologically committed to the freedom of the Muslims in a Hindu dominicated India, where they are sub-servient to the law and order of a society, which is not based upon the theological imperatives of Islam.

Jehad is not a political struggle. It is a more profound and subtle prescription for social change than a political struggle is. It is an ideological commitment of the whole Muslim Umah to a social and political order, which is based upon the law and precept of Islam.

The Jehad in Jammu and Kashmir, the leadership and the people in Pakistan including the so-called civil society  believe, cannot be subjected to the process of a dialogue between India and Pakistan, which is aimed at the settlement of the issues between the two countries. For any Islamic state, including Pakistan, Jehad transcends all limitations on national power imposed internally or externally.

For the Foreign Minister of Pakistan, Shah Mohammad Qureshi, the priority therefore was not the end of the cross-border terrorism the Indian Foreign Minister sought to take up for consideration. The priority was the discussion on Kashmir, where the Muslim separatist mobs were actively engaged in an anti-India agitation. Qureshi sought to send the Muslim separatist mobs a message. He did that effectively. The Muslims in Kashmir quickly erupted, into a widespread ding dong battle with the Indian security forces and left about thirty five protestors dead. S.M. Krishna, who bore the insult hurled on him by Qureshi with a stoic indifference, rued the indiscretion of the Indian Home Secretary unmindful of what his counterpart had accomplished.

The intolerance of the Foreign Minister of Pakistan, to the Indian way of carrying on the dialogue, manifest in his anger, reflected his eagerness to pin down India on Jammu and Kashmir. For Pakistan, the composite dialogue with India is aimed to achieve one political objective : secession of Jammu and Kashmir from India and its eventual inclusion in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Once India is pinned down to a discussion on Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan will repeat its star performance to coax India to handover Jammu and Kashmir to that country on account of the Muslim majority composition of its population, or more conveniently, handover to that country the Muslim majority regions of the state situated to the west of the river Chenab. Infact, all the proposals which Pakistan has agreed to discuss as a basis for a settlement of the Kashmir dispute so far, have revolved round the secession of the Muslim majority region of the state, situated west of the river Chenab from India, while Pakistan retained its hold on the occupied territories of Pak occupied Kashmir, the Northern Areas, now renamed as Gilgit-Baltistan province of Pakistan along with the tribal Dardic dependencies of the state, which were annexed by Pakistan to its territories in 1947.

The much-hyped Manmohan Singh-Musharraf plan too underlined the same proposals of delinking of the Muslim majority regions of the state from India, under the cover of self-rule, demilitarisation and joint control. Musharraf knew what he had accomplished. Manmohan Singh unaware of what he was asked to give away, groped in the dark.

Manmohan Singh walked the proverbial “extra-mile”, but Musharraf was cast aboard by the so-called civil society in Pakistan which was backed by the Muslim fundamentalist flanks in that country as well as its army command. Neither the Jehadi war groups nor the armed forces in Pakistan approved of the Manmohan Singh Musharraf plan. This plan did not receive the approval of Jehadi war-groups operating inside Jammu and Kashmir as well.

The present Government of Pakistan has no need for the Musharraf proposals. Qureshi’s demand for a “time-bound” and “result oriented” dialogue” between the two countries, reveals the real intentions of the Government of Pakistan to carry the dialogue process further. Pakistan seeks to confront India with the apparently simplicitic demand of a settlement on Jammu and Kashmir, which is acceptable to the Muslims in there. Further Pakistan wants India to take the initiative to re-shape the composite dialogue and put up the Kashmir issue on the top of its agenda.

That is the message, Qureshi actually sent to India, when he told the the Indian Foreign Minister that Pakistan wanted the talks between the two countries to be meaningful and effective. In carefully chosen words the Foreign Minister of Pakistan told S.M. Krishna to convey to his government in Delhi that, (a) Pakistan considered the dispute between India and Pakistan over Jammu and Kashmir central to the composite dialogue; (b) Pakistan would not agree to subordinate the Kashmir dispute to the Indian complaint on terrorism or any other extraneous issue, including Siachin and Sir Creek; (c) Pakistan would accept a settlement on the Kashmir dispute which is approved by the Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir; and (d) Pakistan would want the dialogue to be time bound, to ensure that it is result oriented.

Qureshi left no one in India in doubt that in case India refused to shape the dialogue process the way Pakistan wanted to, the blame for obstructing purposeful talks, would fall upon India. Qureshi did not tell the Indian people that Pakistan would use the refusal of India to negotiate a settlement on Kashmir, to legitimise the Jehad against India. The Indian office missed to pick up the signal. The ongoing strife and violence in the State cannot be delinked from the acrimony in which the Islamabad conference ended.

*(The author heads Panun Kashmir advisory)

By JN Raina

July 2010

Pakistan should cease to think of Kashmir. Time is not far away when it will forget about its own existence; when third world war will begin to wipeout Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. The situation is developing fast. Time is ripe for action. There is more hope (asha) for war, to end the menace of terror, than for peace, which is illusory.

The international community is more critical about Pakistan’s involvement in spreading global terror. Hope for peace (aman-ki-asha) is fading away, because of Pakistan’s prevarication. Its trusted ally, the United States – generally acting as grandmaster, equating India with Pakistan –  is more transparent in declaring “To hell with Pakistan”. The U S and for that matter Russia have fastened their safety belts. They have asked Pakistan, suffering from folie de grandeur (delusion of grandeur), to wind up terror business or else.

After the failed Times Square car bombing, the Obama administration warned Pakistan of dire consequences if it was proved such terror plots are traced to Islamabad. Two days after, Barack Obama’s homeland security and counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan blamed Pakistan Taliban for attempted car bombing. The bomber, Faisal Shahzad, was working for Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan.

The latest salvo was fired by Russian Ambassador to India Alexander M Kadakin, who revealed that 40 terror camps are active in the Pakistan-Afghanistan belt. He says if the NATO forces are withdrawn immediately from Afghanistan “ There will be hell in Afghanistan”. He observed that ‘moderate Taliban is an oxymoron’. Such comments are in contrast to Russia’s earlier stand that bringing in more troops in Afghanistan would further ‘worsen the situation…’. Pakistan, for its export of terrorism, can be dubbed as a war monger. There is hardly any country which has remained unaffected due to Pakistan-linked terror.

The U S Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has attacked the stormy petrel Pakistan for its ‘long and covert’ association with terrorists. Some government officials, she blamed, were ‘harbouring’ Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar. The U S cannot ‘tolerate’ attacks on America, emanating from Pakistan. Her most critical comment came on the heels of the disclosure that Times Square bomber Faisal was connected to the Pakistani Taliban. Pressure is mounting on Pakistan to launch fresh military offensive in North Waziristan, Talibans’ headquarter, after the American investigators traced Faisal’s links with the Taliban. Pakistan is reluctant to act and go to town. As if it was not enough, Pakistan newspaper ‘The Daily Times’, has in a  blistering criticism advised Pakistan that it had no options but to ‘fall in line’ and obey the Americans.

Pakistan knows it is faced with ‘domestic insurgency’.  The principal threat to Pakistan is terrorism. But it does not hesitate from exporting terrorism of the highest order, affecting the U S, the European Union countries, Britain, Russia and even China. But China keeps mum, having been ‘gifted’ by Pakistan chunks of territory, which form part of the undivided state of Jammu and Kashmir.

The on-again; off-again nature of peace negotiations between India and Pakistan, for the resolution of several issues, including what Pakistan says ‘the core issue of Kashmir’, is rhythmless.  Is it possible to move forward, given the mistrust created by Pakistan? Such talks are meaningless unless Pakistan comes on board and gives up its demand for the resolution of an issue, which is already settled. It is just to satisfy its hurt ego. The root cause of trouble is not Kashmir, but cross border terrorism and Islamic jihad, nurtured by ISI. Terrorism in fact, has been the problem since partition. It existed in one form or the other when series of invasions were carried out by Muslim warlords. They have created bad blood and bad examples for their off-spring, who think by inflicting a thousand cuts on India, Pakistan will get Kashmir on a platter. They live in a fool’s paradise. It is just in their psyche – breath, life and soul.

Any fresh peace overture with Pakistan will be misdialed and misdiagnosed. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made it clear to his counterpart in Thimpu that his ‘faith in engagement could only work if Pakistan’s civilian establishment stepped up the plate of terrorism’. He had blundered at Sharm-el-Sheikh by downgrading terrorism, ‘releasing Pakistan from the consequences of terrorism’, according to noted writer M J Akbar.  The joint statement had said: “Action on terrorism should not be linked to the composite dialogue process and these should not be bracketed”

Any Indian initiative to set aside the past is fraught with dangerous consequences. There will be more Kargils and Kasabs.

Normalizing relations is essential, but not at the cost of India’s sovereignty. Resumption of old composite dialogue is out of place. It has been India’s experience that whenever a dialogue process started, either Kargil would happen or 26\11. Engaging Pakistan in a meaningful dialogue is difficult, unless terrorism is completely destroyed.

Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India, legally. If there is any problem, it is about PoK, the Northern Areas and Aksai Chin, forming part of the undivided state of Jammu and Kashmir. In a hush-hush manner, Pakistan in 1963 border agreement had ceded 20 per cent of Kashmir’s territory, including Aksai Chin (in Ladakh) and trans-Karakoram region to China. That is why China keeps mum and tolerates Pakistan’s terrorism. If there is any dispute about Jammu and Kashmir, China should be made party to it and asked to handover these areas. If it was a disputed territory, Pakistan had no moral right to cede these areas to China.

To bleed India, Pakistan can even sell its soul to countries like China, which are not friendly towards India.  Indian Parliament’s 1994 resolution, seeking reclaim of PoK, cannot be nullified. The UN Security Council resolutions on Kashmir are outdated. Kashmiris enjoy religious, political and economic freedom. These facilities are absent in Pakistan, where thousands of people are butchered by the Army. 

After the 1971 war, Pakistan got divided. Should Bangladesh also become party to the dispute?  Various theories and suggestions have been floated about the resolution of Kashmir issue, like the ‘middle path’, ‘European model’, plebiscite, or General (rtd) Musharraf’s so-called out-of-the-box solution. Even Army generals are opposed to him. It is sheer waste of time.  Even converting the LoC into a permanent border will not be feasible. Pakistan should simply be told to vacate occupied areas and China should buzz off from Aksai Chin. According to a survey, 67 per cent of people are against greater autonomy.  The needles of a clock cannot be turned back.

Even after 26\11 judgment, Pakistan wants India to address the root cause of trouble, inter alia Kashmir. India has to find other means to deal with Pakistan.  The past cannot be put behind for a song.  Pakistan Army is not sincere in keeping peace with India for obvious reasons. In any manner, the Army has to be anti-India. It will never keep distance from jihadists and terrorist groups raised to bleed India. They are its strategic assets.

For India, the core issue should be terrorism, which has become a global concern. The problem should be addressed collectively by world powers. Time has come to wage war collectively on terror camps and repulse the jihadi moment.

by Prof. Hari Om

July 2010

During the last about 20 days, the Kashmir Valley witnessed violent activities on an unprecedented scale. What had added a new dimension to the ongoing over 20-year-old secessionist and communal movement in Kashmir was the sudden rise of unruly groups across the Valley, all hurling stone mesiles on the security forces, particularly the CRPF personnel on duty. It was a new tecnique invented by Pakistan and its separatist supporters in Kashmir, especially those belonging to the Tehrik-e-Hurriyat of dreaded Syed Ali Shah Geelani, to cause more damage and ensure the state’s separation from India. It was the continuation of the same low-intensity proxy war that Islamabad started in Jammu and Kashmir, particular  after 1989 to realize its most cherished goal – annexation of the state. New Delhi had suffered more losses in this proxi war in every respect as compared to the losses it suffered in the conventional wars with Pakistan.

If was clear from day one that the defeated and desperate Pakistan and its agents in Kashmir are behind the rise of these unruly groups, all indoctrinated to create havoc in the Valley by taking on and provoking the security forces with a view to ensuring more deaths. Their objective was clear: Cause more deaths because more deaths would mean more anti-India protests, more clashes between the security forces and the unruly mobs and more publicity. Those behind the rise of these unruly groups across the Valley had perhaps come to realize that their earlier strategies had failed to produce the desired results and that it would be highly rewarding if the stone-pelting force was created and made maximum use of to create maximum possible trouble in Kashmir. It was a well-crafted strategy and it did pay off.

Islamabad and its dreaded Inter-Service Intelligence(ISI), plus the handful of Kashmiri separatists, did bloody and convulse the Kashmir’s political and social scene with impunity and succeeded in paralysing the functioning of the government, bringing all the economic activities to a grinding halt, disrupting the developmental activities, hitting hard those engaged in tourist industry, highlighting the so-called Kashmir issue at the international level and frightening those internally-displaced Kashmiri Hindus who had been induced by the ill-designed and ill-conceived employment package to return to their original habitat. It would be no exaggeration to say that Kashmir witnessed one of the worst periods in its recent history.

That the unnerved, clueless, ambivalent and directionless government had to impose curfew across the Kashmir Valley and call out the Army in several towns, including Srinagar, Sopore,Kupwara and Baramulla was a grand success of Islamabad and the otherwise most hated separatists in Kashmir. It was their success in the sense that they did achieve what they wanted to achieve. They wanted to create an impression across the world that “all was not well with Kashmir” and that “New Delhi was maintaining its hold over the Valley with the help of the gun.” And, they succeeded.

The most notable aspect of the whole situation as the nation witnessed in Kashmir during those days was that Islamabad and its agents, paid or otherwise ideologically committed to Pakistan, carried on their activities in a very planned manner. So much so that they would ask their unruly and highly indoctrinated platoons of youngmen carrying iron rods, bricks, stones and wood logs in their hands to start action against the security forces in the early morning, even at 7 or 8 A.M., so that the security forces personnel were taken by surprise and so that they were able to disrupt the normal life in the early morning itself. They would attack the security forces, plus the policemen, not only in the areas that could be termed as liberated zones, but also in the always busy and highly crowded areas like Maisuma and Lal Chowk in the heart of Srinagar, the summer capital of the state. The fact is that this time Islamabad and its operatives in Kashmir wanted to set ablaze the whole of the Valley at the same time.

Yet another notable aspect of the whole situation as the nation witnessed in Kashmir during the said period was the no-holds-barred hate campaign that Islamabad through its agents in Kashmir unleashed to tarnish the Indian image in the eyes of the civilized world. The purpose of this hate campaign was to tell the world that India was “violating the human rights of innicent Kashmiri Muslims on an unprecedented scale.” What was even more significant was the manner in which the otherwise ever-feuding Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq conducted themselves during that turbulent period. They worked in perfect unison and they conducted anti-India operations with precision. They forgot their so-called reported differences. In fact, they supplemented each other’s efforts aimed at derailing everything in Kashmir. Both would ask the common Kashmiri Muslims, who were not really aware of the dangerous ramifications, including the real possibility of police-crowd clashes of what their so-called leaders had been doing since years, to organize marches to the worst-affected areas. They obeyed their dictates and the result was action on the part of the security forces leading to the death of 8 to 10 stone-pelting boys. Two innocents also lost lost their precious lives.

What had aggravated the situation in Kashmir? What helped Islamabad and Islamabad-supported and funded Lashkar-e-Taiba, United Jijad Council, Hizbul Mujahideen, All-Party Huriyat Conference (Mirwaiz) and Tehrik-e-Hurriyat of Syed Ali Shah Geelani stoke more fire in the Kashmir Valley? What was the response of New Delhi and the Jammu and Kashmir Government to what the anti-national forces, including the Pakistani-inspired stone-throwing holligans, did to vitiate the atmosphere in Kashmir? What did the opposition People’s Democratic Party did to further complicate the already rather complicated situation in the sensitive Kashmir?

What aggravated the situation in Kashmir was the politics of competitive communalism indulged in by the two Kashmir-based so-called mainstream political outfits, National Conference and People’s Democratic Party. The People’s Democratic Party, which had been in a state of shock ever since it handed over the office of Chief Minister to the Congres in November 2005, consistently put forth demands which were not only out-and-out anti-India, anti-Army, anti-CRPF and anti-Armed Forces Special Powers Act, but also patently pro-Pakistan, pro-separatist, pro-terrorist and pro-stone throwing unruly mobs. It was expected that the National Conference-led government would behave like a responsible government behaves and take on the People’s Democratic Party and all such outfits who always tried to foment anti-India and anti-state government troubles. This did not happen. Whast happened was to the Contrary, The National Conference leadership thought it prudent to walk into the dangerous trap meticulously laid by the canny People’s Democratic Party. Instead of countering the insidious propaganda and baneful influence of the main opposition party, the ruling National Conference tried to take a more radical stand on each and every issue, thus making it extremely difficult for people to distinguish between the two and enabling Pakistan and Pakistan-backed agents in Kashmir to exploit the situation to the extent possible.

The ruling party, like the opposition People’s Democratic Party, which was constituionally bound to defend the Indian Constitution, the Army and other Indian institutions, adopted a line that created difficulties for the state government itself. On one fine day, the Chief Minister publicly warned the stone-pelting force to behave failing which action would be taken against them. But very soon he changed his stand, which otherwise was very rational and consistent with the exigencies of the time. In fact, he came out with a rehabilitation package for the stone-pelting Kashmiri boys. It sent a wrong signal and promoted the cult of stone. The state government, in short, walked into the People’s Democratic Party’s trap, thus facilitating the task of the Kashmiri extremists and their master, Pakistan.

It was also expected that the Congress, which is a national party and which has its stakes all over the country, would behave maturally and apply brakes wherever and whenever required, too, behaved irresponsibly. Instead of applying brakes, its Kashmir-based leaders, particularly, the party president, also adopted a soft approach towards the troublemakers. In fact, he, on occasions more than one, spoke the language of the People’s Democratic Party. His was a line that was no different from the line the National Conference and the People’s Democratic Party had been pursuing religiously and relentlessly for quite some time. The result was that there remained none in the troubled-Kashmir who could say what was right and what was wrong.

As for New Delhi, less said the better. It did not act when it should have. On the contrary, it issued statements from time to time that indicated that the policy-makers in New Delhi and the rulers in Kashmir and the main opposition People’s Democratic Party were one as far as their approach to Jammu and Kashmir was concerned. Each one of them created an impression that the revival of democratic process in the state and resolution of the so-called Kashmir problem were two different things. New Delhi did not even once, did not even once, made it loud and clear that it shall not allow anyone to tinker with the Indian sovereignty in Kashmir and that it shall not allow anyone in Kashmir to speak a single word against the Indian Constitution and other Indian institutions. Instead, it talked of quiet diplomacy, unique solution to the Kashmir problem, amendments in the AFSPA, lowering of guards in the terrorist-infested Kashmir, dialogue with Kashmiri separatists and peace process with Pakistan. That New Delhi’s approach would create additional complications was quite evident and it did happen. New Delhi took a decision to act when it was too late, when the vested interests and anti-India forces had set ablaze the whole of Kashmir Valley.

It’s no wonder than that the situation in Kashmir has assumed alarming proportions. The situation as it exists today in Kashmir Valley just cannot be compared with what we witnessed in Kashmir during 1989-1990. It is much worse. The keen Kashmir-watchers describe the present situation in Kashmir as ther most dangerous one. They also say that the entire political class in the Kashmir Valley is responsible for what happened during those dreadful days and that it would take years and years for things to stabilize in Kashmir, again subject to the condition that the ruling party in the state and New Delhi would not make any political statement that has international ramifications and that directly or indirectly promotes communalism, secessionism and extremism in Kashmir.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the authorities in the state and at the Centre would not learn lessons from their past mistakes. The Chief Minister’s July 9 statement that the “stone-pelting incidents and strikes in the Valley are ‘symptoms’ of a wider problem” and that “there is a problem in Jammu and Kashmir that needs to be resolved” and the report that New Delhi would take political intiative to win over the hearts and minds of the Kashmiri people (read Muslims) and engage what certain elements in New Delhi call “moderates like the Mirwaiz and Yasin Malik” to find out ways and means to resolve the Kashmir issue do indicate that neither the National nor New Delhi would ever learn lessons from the past mistakes. The statement made by the Union Minister and National Conference presiden in Delhi on July 10 that New Delhi must talk to the separatists as this was the only course left to restore peace in Kashmir also indicate that he and his party have not learnt any lesson.    

Here lies the basic problem. The Indian State is unwilling to move against the jihadis. Unless the authorities categorically say that Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India and that they shall not under any situation allow the politics of communalism and separatism to grow it Kashmir, there is no possibility of the state returning to normalcy. The authorities have to act and defeat comprehensively the negative forces at whatever cost. Jihadis of all varieties have to be defeated at any cost. At the same time, they have to take on board those who have been holding the Indian flag in the state high against all odds. They are in a majority and they include the people of Jammu and Ladakh and the internally-displaced Kashmiri Hindus. They are Indians in the true sense of the term and, hence, the only stakeholders in the state

(The author is chair professor Maharaja Gulab Singh seat University of Jammu) 

By Yoginder Kandhari

April 2010

Omar Abdullah, the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, has announced that his government intends to bring back ‘misguided’ Kashmiri youth who have crossed over to Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) and Pakistan, obviously for arms training,  during two decades of insurgency in the Valley.  He attempts to score a political brownie point over the Mufti father-daughter duo, his vociferous political opponents in the Kashmir Valley. It may be recalled that a proposal to bring ‘disillusioned’ Kashmiri youth back to their homes had earlier been mooted by the senior Mufti but then, rightly so, there were no takers in the Union government for this largesse to those who were waging a war against the nation. However, this time both Omar and Chidambaram claim to be on the same page albeit the wrong one. What strategic foresight has prompted centre to bite the Omar bait, especially in the current surcharged security scenario in the region, is anyone’s guess. Interestingly, Nasir Ahmed Wani, a close friend of the Chief Minister and also a minister in his cabinet, has come out in support of Omar’s rehabilitation policy by drawing a bizarre analogy between the rehabilitation policy for militants and that for the Kashmiri Pandits who were forced into exile at gun point by these very Omar’s ‘misguided’ boys.

In an attempt to steal some sheen out of Omar’s latest move, separatists were quick to reject ‘surrender’ component of his proposal since it would paint their cohorts as losers in the ongoing Jihad to liberate Kashmir. Strangely, Omar did a u-turn to re-christen his dice as ‘rehabilitation only’ policy. One wonders how insurgents can be rehabilitated without handing over their arms and, more importantly, abjuring cult of violence and religious intolerance which they espouse. It all points to a very disturbing scenario wherein Omar, unwittingly, appears to be furthering separatists’ agenda. Such a proposal, if implemented, would adversely impact security, political and social context in the state of Jammu and Kashmir and the nation as a whole.

Security Implications

Current Security Scenario.  Of late, there has been a steep increase in the number of encounters between militants and the security forces in the State, stand off grenade attacks and militancy related deaths. According to South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), this year up, to 7th March, there already have been 64 fatalities which include 43 terrorists, 14 security personnel and seven civilians. After a gap of almost two years a fidayeen attack took place at Lal Chowk, the heart of the summer capital of the State. Infiltration by terrorists from across the International Border (IB) and Line of Control (LoC) in J&K is also on the rise. According to official sources, year 2009 recorded 485 incidents of infiltration as against 342 in 2008 thus registering an increase of 30% while security agencies estimate that more than 300 terrorists have crossed over to this side. During first two months of this year, militants made 25 attempts to infiltrate into our side in conjunction with five ceasefire violations by Pakistani forces, ostensibly to cover infiltrations by some important militants groups.  As per available official data (up to November 2009) 273 terrorists sneaked back to Pakistan, 93 were killed during infiltration attempts while 152 of them were neutralized across the state. State government estimates that about 600-800 terrorists are currently operating in the State. These figures present a gory scenario. To complicate the matters further, in 2009, UPA government pulled out 30,000 troops from twin border districts of Rajouri and Poonch leaving majority of 50 identified infiltration routes thinly guarded. All these events do not foretell a rosy summer for our security forces.   At this juncture, talking about the return of the youth, whose faculties would sure have been Talibanized to the last strand, from across the border will be suicidal for our national interests.

A spate of public protests and repeated incidents of stone pelting indicate that the insurgency in the Valley has graduated into a more complex phase manifesting  comprehensive assaults against the state authority and mass mobilization campaigns, aptly termed as ‘Agitational Terrorism’ by Lt. Gen. B. S. Jamwal, General Officer Commanding- in- Chief of Army’s Northern Command. Recently, Mr. N. K.Tripathi, Special Director CRPF, Jammu & Kashmir Zone, on February 2010, revealed how terrorist regimes were crafting public demonstrations and protests in conjunction with focused violence. He added that Pakistan’s covert agencies were hiring Kashmiris to pelt stones on security forces. Ajaat Jamwal, in his essay ‘From Terrorism to Agitational Terrorism in Kashmir’ published in South Asia Intelligence Review, says “Agitational terrorism is a far more sophisticated phenomenon than is currently being recognized by the authorities. Over ground support structures of terrorism including separatist and religious extremist political formations, civil rights NGOs, media organizations, subversive elements within the Government, international organizations operating from various countries in the West, have all been cast into roles in this campaign. Public protests and hertals (strikes) have been transformed into an assault on the credibility and symbols of the state.”

Impediments. From the security stand point, challenges to implement this policy would be manifold. Firstly, database of the persons who have crossed over to the other side of the border is not available with any state agency. Even the figures projected by the State government are vague and its estimate ranges anything from 4,000 to 10,000. In such a situation what stops ISI and Jihadists from sending across battle ready terrorist via this route especially since, in the words of M.J. Akbar, a noted columnist, “….who has identified the proposed prodigals as authentic? They did not leave their names and address with the Intelligence Bureau in Srinagar when they went off to prepare for their holy war. There are no special genetic traits that differentiate Kashmiris on either side of LoC. The Pakistani government did not control this lot directly. They were outsourced to outfits like the Jamaat-e-Islami and Lashkar-e-Toiba, so only people who would know a genuine cross-border warrior from a home grown one would be Jamaat or LeT. Would Delhi honour certificates handed out by LeT?” It, indeed, is a valid argument.

Secondly, it is difficult to imagine the type of mechanism that would be put in place to ascertain whether there has been a genuine change of heart among those craving to return home. A mere plea by some of them to Omar Abdullah, during his recent Pakistan visit, does not certify their genuineness. Surrendering of arms alone is not a guarantee that they would not relapse into armed rebellion against the state.

Thirdly, one can well imagine fatal consequences of housing a pool of 4000 to 10000 fully trained and indoctrinated people amongst our middle. We need to learn our lessons well from recent history. Post independence, first attempt to militarize separatist sentiment in Kashmir was emergence of Al Fatah immediately after the Sacred Relic Agitation in 1963 when massive protests were witnessed in the Valley. It was for the first time that the separatists in the Valley realized that there existed a military option too to achieve their goal. Pakistan launched its second mission in 1965 to annex Kashmir and she was banking on the local support orchestrated by Al Fatah to achieve her goal. As is history now, this misadventure failed and Al Fatah had to lie low for a long time. Subsequently, its cadre was rehabilitated in the mainstream by the successive governments in the State under the pretext that it had abjured violence and the separatist ideology. Some of its members were absorbed in state apparatus thus enabling separatists to institutionalize their struggle. Their strategy was to join the system to wreck it from within to achieve the ultimate goal. It needs to be understood that the strong foundations for the current armed insurgency was laid by Al Fatah cadre entrenched within the State establishment itself.

Consequences. One needs to place the proposed rehabilitation policy in context of current security situation in the Valley.  With an alarming rise in incidents of infiltration, increase in militant encounters and agitational terrorism gaining popular support, rehabilitation of Omar’s boys may prove to a be the catalyst to foment another massive upheaval in the Valley leading to a powerful civil struggle, as witnessed in early 1990s in Eastern Europe, which would ultimately culminate in secession of Kashmir from Indian Union. One only hopes the political class and security think tanks in New Delhi have factored in all these possibilities before conceding to Omar’s move unless some larger consensus has already been arrived at.

Political & Social Implications

It is an established fact that revival of the political process in the State was greatly helped by the militants who voluntarily surrendered to the security forces and joined the mainstream. Despite severe reprisal  against their families and relatives by militant organization these genuinely reformed militants remained steadfast in their commitment to Indian nation and helped her re-establishing its authority in the State. Unfortunately, such people have been forsaken both by the Sate and the Central governments. Without any patronage from the very state that they helped re-establish its authority, a large number of them and their kith and kin were killed or threatened with dire consequences so much so that  most of them had to shift their families out of the Valley and in many cases out of the State. One fails to understand why Omar Abdullah or Chidambaram have not cared to rehabilitate them before seeking amnesty for those who are still in Pakistan and whose credentials are yet to be established. Obviously, there is a compulsion to fast track rehabilitation of those who are still armed and discard those who abjured violence long back and proved beyond any doubt their loyalty to the nation.

Equating latest rehabilitation policy with the rehabilitation schemes drawn for Kashmiri Pandits is a weird justification. Mr. Wani must remember that Kashmiri Pandits did not take up arms against the state nor did they go to Pakistan for any training. He is trivializing a human tragedy caused by the very people whose case he is pleading. Such a comparison has serious undertones and should not be considered as political naivety. Given Wani’s proximity to the Chief Minister, it appears that the Sate government wants to project Omar’s boys as victims of militancy- they could have suffered only at the hands of security forces- and internationally displaced people as a consequence. It is an attempt to internationalize this issue and that can have serious ramifications.

Conclusion.

Return of Omar’s prodigals is bound to reignite secessionist urge within the Valley. They would constitute a viable force to reinforce mass uprising in conjunction with a vigorous armed struggle for Kashmir to wither from India. It would be a sure-shot recipe to firm up insurgency and the separatist sentiment in the Valley. May be it is time for people who matter in New Delhi to wake up.

*(The author is a Retd. Indian Army Officer).

 April 2010

A lot of hue and cry  was raised by the  J&K government by creating the so called Apex Committee to oversee the return and rehabilitation of the Kashmiri Hindus to their original habitat Kashmir.  The atmosphere was ripe with the speculation of permutations and combinations that may emerge to send the Kashmiri Hindus back to Kashmir without realizing that the Kashmir which they had left to highlight the incompetence and impotence of the Indian political class and the Indian state to protect the rights of the minority in all respects in the Muslim majority state of J&K is today in the hard grip of the forces representing the fascist and Talibanised culture.  And above all the politics of exclusion is the cardinal principle of the political establishment in the state in terms of the minority rights which has trampled the Indian nationalism in every sphere. 

Two decades have passed as far as the forced exodus and ethnic cleansing of the Kashmiri Pandits is concerned but it is unfortunately shocking that this genocide has been trivialized by not correctly interpreting the fall out of this national shame.  The Internal displacement of the Kashmiri Hindus has been trivialized by the Indian state in terms of economics.  Without analyzing the real mindset and the contours of the ethnic cleansing inflicted on the community, the Central government is treating the community as the victims of the natural calamities like flood, earthquake, etc. It is a problem that has vast religious, political and social dimensions that make it a case fit for national shame . It is sad on the part of media and political establishment of the Indian nation that secularism and democracy has been compromised in the J&K state for bailing out the majority community of the valley who could not protect the social structure of the valley as a whole. 1984 riots and the Godhra episode in 2002 have been accepted by the political parties across spectrum as the shameful fate of secular India.  But the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Kashmiri Hindus has not been accepted by the Indian state as the failure of the Indian secularism in J&K. 

Commissions were constituted to look into the factors and forces that led the nation to the disgrace during 1984 and 2002 riots but none of that ilk has ever been constituted in J&K to look into the events and factors that forced the minority community of the Kashmiri Pandits to live as refugees in their own state and own country.  Indian Policy makers and hence the Indian state is still in the state of denial and refusing the expulsion of the Kashmiri Pandits as a national shame . Moreover, it is in a state of denial to accept the religious, social and political fault lines in the state that have reduced the minorities as perpetual hostages to the majority to squeeze as much benefits as it can in the name of pseudo secularism and so called myth ‘ Kashmiriyat. ’

The bonhomie which the political class is enjoying with the vested interests in J&K and the fringe elements in the community are trying to create a myth called ‘Kashmiriyat’-It is a misnomer and more or less the political counterpart of the pseudo-secularism propagated by the left-liberal intellectual discourse in the Indian polity. 

The fraction of the Kashmiri Hindus(Pandits) perhaps a few thousand or even less who are living a life of second class citizens in Kashmir have been threatened to abdicate so that the process of Islamisation of the Kashmir Valley is complete.  It speaks volumes about the social, political and religious ground realities in Kashmir.  For the last twenty years this fractional chunk of the Kashmiri Pandits had tried hard to hold on to their ancestral properties in the valley by compromising their social, political and religious rights but now they have decided to call a spade a spade as they have been threatened by the majority community to leave otherwise they will be eliminated in no time.  This is the state of secularism in Kashmir. 

The policy makers are busy at the centre to use the Kashmiri Pandits as cannon fodder to give legitimacy to the myth called ‘Kashmiriyat’ and to implement the hidden solution to Kashmir problem under the garb of ‘quite diplomacy’ and ‘unique solution’ they are ready to bail out the majority community of the human rights violation which they have committed by the expulsion of the Kashmiri Pandits from the valley.  Indian state has given ideological concessions in Kashmir and now after complete expulsion of the Kashmiri Pandits it is all set to give the territorial concessions as far as the J&K is concerned to secessionists . It is the first step by the Indian political establishment of India and the political state to demolish the Northern frontiers of the Indian nation by diluting Indian territorial integrity in J&K ,the frontline state in the Himalayan region-without realizing its implications on India in terms of balkanization. 

Indian state should pay heed to the ground realities and persecution of the minorities in Kashmir by reading between the lines the open letter from the Kashmiri Pandit Sangarsh Samiti (KPSS), Srinagar representing the fraction of Kashmiri Pandits living in adverse conditions . It reads” On 15 th November ,2009 two of our members went to Bhairav Ghat, Chattabal, Srinagar to take some pictures of the temple ruins so that the fate could be settled with the concerned authorities . But the members of the majority community who had encroached the temple land abstained them from taking pictures and used unparliamentary language against the Kashmiri Pandits and religious places . They started the slogans like”Jis tarah hamne tumhare mandiroon ko jalaya hai vaise hi tum logon ko jalayenge,aur kisi ko pata bi nahi chalega”The way we have burnt your temples in the same way we will burn you and no one will know about you. ”Yehan sirf Isalm chalega”Only Islam will prevail here. ”India ko lagta hai ki tum logon ko vapas layega, jo bi aaye ga mara jayega, hum log phir se gun uthayenge”. India thinks that they can bring Kashmiri Pandits back to valley, whosoever will come will die, we will again raise arms against you.  The mob there even man handled the members of KPSS and they had to leave the place . Even they could not file an FIR against the mob due to the life threat given by these hooligans belonging to a particular community. ”

This open letter addressed to the Prime Minister, Chief Minister and the Separatist leadership should wake the Indian state from the slumber of denial and rise to the occasion to safeguard the minorities in the state. 

The concluding part of this open letter should put the political establishment to shame in India as they have given open ground to the anti India elements in Kashmir.  It further reads”KPSS requests the state and the Central Administration to re -think about their proposal to bring back the Kashmiri Pandits to the valley instead prepare to register the fresh lot of migrants who will leave the valley in the coming days if the situation is not taken care of in due course of time.  KPSS also appeals to the International Community to take the matter seriously and ensure that all necessary steps are taken to safeguard the Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley. ”

Indian state has failed Kashmiri Pandits to bail out the Islamic fascism in the Kashmir Valley. 

*(Writer is a PhD scholar at the Centre for Hospitality and Tourism Management (CHTM), University of Jammu).

 May 2010

The partition of the Indian subcontinent should be seen in the perspective of the Anglo-Muslim alliance that was forged by the British to retain their strategic foothold in the Indian subcontinent to have an access to the Russian activities and the appreciable influence on the Central Asian region mainly in terms of oil reserves.  As the oil reserves were in the domain of the Central Asian and Middle Eastern Islamic countries and regions so the British encouraged the separatist Muslim sentiment in India to impress the Muslim World and at the same time kept the nationalist movement for the Indian independence under check. , which the British viewed as the “Hindu Nationalist’ upsurge.

Kashmir problem is the outcome of the “Great Game “ which the British played to keep the separatist Muslim element alive to keep its stakes high even though –the World War II had changed the dynamics of the strategic world order.  This move was further meant to make the northern Indian borders weak and pregnable forever and result is the present Kashmir crisis.  It was a clear move to sow the seeds of the balkanization of the Indian Union.

The process of maintaining the checks and applying brakes on the Indian nationalists were already devised by the British well before 1947 and M. A.  Jinnah was a British prop to materialize the separatist Muslim claims for the partition of India. 

These ploys and what was going on in the British mind has been revealed by Krishna Menon,  who was close to the British circles,  in the following words to Lord Mountbatten well before the partition on 14 June 1947,  “Is this frontier of (the northwest of India abutting Afghanistan & Iran) still the hinterland of the Imperial Strategy? Does British still think in terms of being able to use this territory and all that follows from it? There is considerable amount of talking in this way; and if Kashmir,  for one reason or another,  choose to be in Pakistan,  that is a further development in this direction. I do not know of British policy in this matter.  I do not know it whether you know it either.  But if this be the intent,  this is tragic………. As it becomes more evident, the attitude of India would be resentful and Britain’s hold on Pakistan would not improve it. ”(pp. 15-16, The Untold Story of India’s Partition)

Menon was pointing towards the British strategy of using the West Pakistan as a base to stop the Soviet expansion towards the Indian Ocean,  Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf and secondly he implied that was the British policy so “subterranean “that even the Viceroy was ignorant about it? These intrigues shaped the Kashmir problem and result is the present state of chaos and desperation. 

Accession of the J&K state to the Indian Union needs to be understood by keeping in mind the traits of the British and the separatist Muslim mindset of the Muslim League nurtured by the imperial policy makers to divide India to suit their strategic hold on the Sub continent. 

There is a false premise on which the J&K’s Accession to India is always understood by certain vested interests “That the Radcliffe Boundary Commission award giving Gurdaspur District to the Indian East Punjab was announced on august17,  1947,  two days after the new Dominions of India and Pakistan had already come into being. ” It is totally absurd. 

The demarcation of the areas that would go to Pakistan was already devised by the British well before 1947, the partition year.  Its blueprint was already prepared by the Viceroy Lord Archbald Wavell in 1946 to forge an alliance with the Jinnah’s Muslim League, the foundation of this unholy alliance was laid in 1940-41 by his predecessor Linlithgow to project M. A.  Jinnah as the sole spokesman of the “Muslim India”

The same blueprint was kept under cover till the opportune time came in 1947 for the British withdrawal. It was deliberately kept in abeyance so that the finger of suspicion for the vivisection of India is not raised on the British Empire. 

Narender Singh Sarila,  who was an ADC to the last Viceroy,  Lord Louis Mountbatten was a witness to the British decisions and policy.  Has observed candidly in his book The Untold Story of India’s Partition that “secret archives cannot be depended upon to reveal the entire picture.  Many decisions that are taken by government are never committed on paper or, if so committed, are not revealed, even after the probationary period for keeping them under wraps has lapsed. For instance,  Lord Mountbatten’s reports to London, sent after 15 August, 1947. while he was the governor-general of India, have not been unsealed even after almost sixty years, thereby depriving us information surrounding British policy on Kashmir “. ”(pp. 168, The Untold Story of India’s Partition)

Lord Wavell was constantly in touch with the Secretary of State in London. His blueprint for the partition was being taken seriously in London. On 29 January 1946, Secretay of State revealed the British policy by stating in a telegram to Wavell that “It would help me to know when I may expect to receive your recommendation as regards definition of genuinely Muslim areas if we are compelled to give a decision to this (Partition)”. (pp. 194-195, The Untold Story of India’s Partition)

Gurdapur district was not incorporated into the Indian Union after the partition,  Wavell’s partition plan forwarded to London on 6-7 February 1946 makes it clear as to what was in store for millions of people of the Indian subcontinent. His partition plan which was implemented by his successor Lord Mountbatten reads”1)If compelled to indicate demarcation of genuinely Moslem areas I recommend that we should include (a) Sind, North-West Frontier Province,  British Baluchistan and Rawalpindi, Multan and Lahore Divisions of Punjab,  Less Amritsar and Gurdaspur districts…… In the Punjab the only Moslem –majority district that would not go into Pakistan under demarcation is Gurdaspur. Gurdaspur must go with Amritsar for geographical reasons and Amritsar being the sacred city of Sikhs must stay out of Pakistan……”. “(pp. 195, The Untold Story of India’s Partition)

Therefore it becomes clear that the decision regarding the Gurdaspur district was taken well before partition and the argument regarding its inclusion in the Indian Union after the partition does not hold any ground as it is far from the historical fact made amply clear by Lord Wavell’s partition plan. 

So the point raised by the fifth columnists and other left liberal intellectuals that “Maharaja Hari Singh could not accede to the newly created Indian Dominion and the Indian Prime Minister,  Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru could not accept such a request on or before August 15, 1947 because under the provision of July 1947 Indian Independence Act passed by the British Parliament,  Pathankot tehsil at that time,  the only geographical link of J&K,  was located in Gurdaspur District of west Punjab which had been notified under the aforesaid Act as part of Pakistan” is the falsification of the reality. 

Another observation by these individuals that “The Maharaja Sahib had therefore no other option than to think of Standstill Agreement with both new Dominions of India and Pakistan and making Jammu and Kashmir an Eastern Switzerland of Asia” is another misinterp-retation of constitutional realities and the facts.  As the India under the British was composed of the British India and the Princely states which accepted the British Paramountcy,  the rulers of these states were thus bound to accede to one of the Dominions and there was no provision for the Independent existence.  The celebrated political scientist Prof. M. K. Teng in the preface to his book titled Kashmir the Myth of Autonomy has cleared this misconception regarding the accession of the J&K and other princely states to the Indian Union. He writes “the partition of India did not envisage the accession of the Princely states to the Dominion of India and Pakistan on the basis,  the British India was divided. The partition of India left the states out its scope and the transfer of power accepted the lapse of the Paramountcy: the imperial authority the British exercised over the States. The accession of the states to India was the culmination of a historical process which symbolized the unity of the people in the British India and the Indian States”. (pp. VII, Kashmir-Myth of Autonomy)

It is a populist view in order to cover the truth regarding the accession that Maharaja Hari Singh was trapped and was hence indecisive to accede to India. To clear this misconception further Prof. . M. K. Teng writes, “In 1947, when Jammu and Kashmir acceded to India, the ruler of the state, Maharaja Hari Singh signed the same standard form of the Instrument of Accession, which the other major Indian states signed. The accession of the state to India was not subject to any exceptions or pre-condition to provide for any separate and special constitutional arrange-ments for the state. Neither Nehru, nor Patel gave any assurances to Hari Singh or the National Conference leaders that J&K would be accorded a separate and independent political organization on the basis of the Muslim Majority character of its population.” (pp. VII, Kashmir-Myth of Autonomy)

Thus the above analysis makes it crystal clear that the accession of the Jammu and Kashmir State to the Indian Union is complete in the constitutional manner.  And the role played by Maharaja Hari Singh is that of a true patriot and democrat. 

(Writer is a Ph. D.  scholar at the CHTM,  Center for Hospitality and Tourism Management,  Faculty of Management Studies,  University of Jammu,  Sangarsh)

May 2010

After the Foreign Secretary level talks between India and Pakistan, the meeting between the Prime Ministers of the two countries in Bhutan, has exposed the inconsistencies in the politics followed by India in dealing with what the Indian Government has called ‘ cross border terrorism’. For quite some time, the Indian Government repeatedly complained about the inability of Pakistan to act against the terrorist regimes, operating in that country, and accused it for the 26/11 attack on Mumbai.  There is enough ground to believe that the Indian Government has once again buckled under the American pressure and agreed to resume talks with Pakistan, ostensibly to smoothen relations with Pakistan, but in reality to find a settlement on Jammu and Kashmir, which Pakistan has insisted constitutes the core dispute responsible for destabilizing the relations between the two countries. However, Americans have not hidden their preference for a settlement on Jammu and Kashmir, which underlines a territorial adjustment altering very drastically, the geographical boundaries of India.

During the Cold War the Americans exhorted upon the Indians how important it was to settle the Kashmir dispute in the struggle to protect “open society and the free world” from totalitarianism. After the end of Cold War the Americans have spared no efforts to support the Muslim Jihad Pakistan waged in Afghanistan against the Soviet intervention though the Jihad spilt over into Jammu and Kashmir, ravaging the whole of the north of India. After 9/11 Al Qaeda attack, the Americans have been vociferously seeking to persuade the Indian leadership that a settlement on Jammu and Kashmir was vital for a purposeful prosecution of the “war against terror” in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the recent past, many quarters in the United states have given expression to their dissatisfaction with the Indian Government, often in much less polite words, for its inability to recognize the American concern for a settlement on Jammu and Kashmir, which they claim could not be ignored in view of the urgency with which the Afghan campaign and the military operations against Al Qaeda and Taliban were being carried out.

Publicly the American concerns find expression in crude words, which are considered to be insolent in India, where a fairly large section of people speak English. Brian Trill of the Creator’s Syndicate, an American think tank, writes in a paper analyzing the military campaign in Afghanistan, “Thus Kashmir, the dispute at the centre of the bloody fissure between India and Pakistan, remains the most important region to the U.S. interests—and, ironically, it exists as one of the few conflicts over which we cannot wield significant influence. There has not been a call for U.S. mediation, the boisterous Indian population likely won’t stomach American pressure and there is a need to reiterate the loathing the Pakistanis feel towards the United States. Particularly the Pakistani military with whom power ultimately resides and which has the capacity to undermine any progress—is well steeped in distrust of the U.S.” Trill adds, “Indeed the defining struggle of our time- unlike those of previous generations that pitted competing imperial aggressions and ambitions and competing capitalist and communist ideologies against one another—our challenge and foe exists outside the State-system; it is the battle against lawlessness, backwardness and statelessness.” Another American Patrick Seale advocates, “an immediate and vigorous US-UN effort to broker a settlement over Kashmir—and if not a settlement then at least a reasonably amicable settlement which India, Pakistan, and the Kashmiris could live with.” Seale further  notes, “The US should use its full diplomatic clout to bring this about because Kashmir weighs heavily on the situation in Afghanistan, So long as the Kashmir conflict remains unresolved, the Pakistan military and intelligence services will think that they need Jihadi allies to put down the sizeable chunk of the Indian army in Kashmir and keep Indian influence at bay in Afghanistan, a country Pakistan considers its strategic depth.”

There is enough evidence to believe that the Americans are as committed to fortify Afghanistan as a forward post in their Asian policy as they were committed to protect it in the aftermath of the Soviet intervention. There is also enough reason to believe that the Americans seek to strengthen the Muslim power of Pakistan in a more effective way than they did during the Cold War, for their interest in the Himalayas is as deep as it was in the Cold War era. Gilgit-Baltistan horn of the northern frontier of Jammu and Kashmir, now under the occupation of Pakistan, reorganized into what is known as ‘Northern Region’ is vital to Anglo-American- Pakistan alliance structure in Asia, as it was during the Cold War era.

The American opinion is aware of the significance of Afghanistan and Pakistan to the future foreign policy formulations of the allied powers in Asia. The Commander of the allied troops in Afghanistan strongly pleads for a long military presence in Afghanistan committed to “winning or buying over dissidents, expanding the Afghan army and police and reforming and strengthening the Kabul government.” Former American Secretary of State for foreign affairs Henery Kissinger, the American Vice- President Joe Biden, Jhon Kerry, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, say the same thing in different words. An American journalist warns that the withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan and Pakistan will have catastrophic consequences. “NATO will fold. So will Pakistan”.  That is exactly where the Indians are required to make good the forfeit to keep Pakistan and the Muslims on the American side while they fight the Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and elsewhere in the world.

There is hardly any doubt about the existence of pressures on the Indian Government to resolve its differences with Pakistan and the Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir. There is a visible uneasiness pervading the pronouncements of Indian leaders and an ominous sense of helplessness spread across the national discourse on the whole gamut of relations between India and the other countries of the world, particularly the neighboring countries. The solemn statement of the Indian Prime Minister that “India could not change her neighbors” and therefore, India was bound to buy peace with them, at the cost they demanded is a counsel of despair. Apparently the Indian Prime Minister is convinced that after all, the decades of the Indian commitment to “Panch-Sheel and Peaceful Coexistence”, “Non- Alignment”, “No first Use of Nuclear Weapons”, and “Non-Violence”, India is isolated in a world where the force is the ultimate arbiter of all inter-state relations. But why then does the Indian Prime Minister shirk from telling the truth to Indian People that, India needs a complete reappraisal of its foreign policy postulates and the Indian political class needs to come out of its intransigence, which has brought the country to such a pass? Indian Prime Minister must tell the nation about what is the “Strategic Partnership” between the Indians and Americans worth, if it underlines the demolition of the northern frontiers of India with the objective of excluding India from any future balance of power in Asia, which the Americans consider necessary for the stability of the “new world order”. For the people of India, these questions need to be answered.

The Americans are using the dispute over Jammu and Kashmir as a lever to smother India into submission. Pakistan is also using the dispute over Jammu and Kashmir, as a lever to secure submission of India. And China is also using Jammu and Kashmir as a lever to smother India into submission. The USA, China and Pakistan have common strategic objectives to follow. Pakistan seeks to (a) open the way for the eastward expansion of the Muslim power of Pakistan into Jammu and Kashmir; (b) demolish the northern frontier of India to establish its hold on the Himalayas and (c) assume a central role in the shaping a future balance of power in Asia. The Americans are eager to (a) consolidate their military presence in Gilgit-Baltistan region to extend the reach of the Anglo-American-Pakistani alliance over the Himalayas; (b) use the Muslim power of Pakistan- spread over the Afghanistan, Pakistan and Jammu and Kashmir for penetration into Central Asia; and (c) to acquire a factorial role in determining the future balance of power in Asia. The Chinese are keen to consolidate their hold on the Indian territories south of McMohan Line under their occupation; (b) establish its reach over the eastern Himalayas and reach out to Central Asia; and (c) to join United States and Pakistan in the establishment of a triangular balance of power in Asia, in which the Muslim power of Pakistan acts as the balancer, or the laughing partner.

Government of India should realize that the British fortified the northern frontier of their empire in India, which was forged by the Sikhs. It should also know that the Sikhs laid down the northern frontier of India on the ground which had been cut centuries before the Sikh empire was founded, by the Hindus of Kashmir, who Sanskritised the Himalayas. The triangular balance of power in Asia, the Anglo- American- Muslim alliance and the Sino- Pakistan axis seek to realize, can only be achieved by the de- Sanskritisation of the Himalayas.

If the Americans fight for the safety of their borders in a country as far away as Afghanistan, how is it that the Indians do not deem it was necessary to secure their borders In Jammu and Kashmir? Do the Indians believe that after they got rid of Jammu and Kashmir, the Americans, the Pakistanis, and the Chinese would guarantee the neutrality of their borders?

*(The author heads Panun Kashmir Advisory)

April 2010

When the Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh expressed the decision of the Government of India to to take on board all the ‘stake holders’ of Jammu and Kashmir in order to reach a settlement , he was in real terms proposing a paradigm shift in the Indian stand on Jammu and Kashmir. The reference by the Prime Minister to the ‘stake holders’ is a dangerous interpolation in the vacillating positions taken by the Government of India on the very unity of India.

The partition and the upheaval which accompanied the founding of Pakistan, cost millions of lives of people who had fought for the freedom of their country and were consumed by the process which commenced with the Direct Action campaign the Muslim League launched in August 1946. The transfer of power led to the emergence of two countries, India and Pakistan , with their territories defined by the partition plan and the process of integration of the States, the lapse of British Paramountacyover the princely States, set into motion. The accession of Jammu and Kashmir State to India was accompalished by the ruler of the State, Maharaha Hari Singh, in accordance with the procedure laid down by the Indian Independence Act, enacted by the British Parliament and the Instrument of Accession drawn by the State Ministry of India.

It must be known that after the partition plan was announced on June 3 1947, the States’ Department of Government of India was divided into two parts: the States’ Ministry of India and the States’ Ministry of pakistan. Sardar Patel took over the charge of of the States’ Ministry of India while the Muslim League appointed Sardar Abdur-Rab-Nishtar to head the States’ Ministry of Pakistan. The Indian Independence Act and the partition plan did not incorporate any provisions in respect of the Instrument of Accession. Infact, the two divisions of the States’ Department, the States’ Ministry of India and the States’ Ministry of Pakistan drew up the form of the Instrument of Accession for the rulers of the princely States in order to enable them to join either of the two Dominions. The States’ Ministeries provided for such exigencies as well in which the princely States were unable to take a decision on the accession of the State till the transfer of power was completed and the ruler wanted more time to take a decision, but sought to continue the existing arrangement of trade, transport, communications, currency etc. that subsisted between the British India and the princely States during the British rule. For such exegencies the States’ Ministeries drew up separate instruments known as Standstill Agreements. The Standstill Agreements were strictly restricted in their content and application and provided for the continuation of the existing arrangements between the States and the British India.

It needs to be mentioned again here that the princely States were Kingships of the native Indian potentates, which formed an integral part of the British empire in India and were liberated from the british Paramountacy with the dissolution of the British Empire in India. The princely States did not become a part of the two Dominions with the lapse of Paramountacy, but they did not fall apart from the political arrangements, the transfer of power in India envisaged. The British Government made it clear that it would neither recognise the independence of the States nor admit them as independent Dominions of the British Commenwealth. Not only the British, the Americans too, refused to recognise the independence of the princely States, when some Muslim rulers approached the American Diplomatic Legation in New Delhi to solicit the recognition for the independence of their States.

Evidently the princely States were not land masses over which their rulers exercised proprietory rights. They were actually a part of the Indian nation, which the British divide into two separate constitutional organisations. Nor did the States form a no-man’s land in india, which any of the two Dominions or any other foreign power could claim on account of the religion of their rulers.The transfer of power in India did not divide the whole of india. Actually the partition was confined to the British Indian provinces, leaving the princely States out of its purview.

It also needs to be clarified here that the accession of the princely States underlined the irrevocable meger with the Dominions they acceded to . The accession made them a part of the Dominion and subjected them to its sovereignty. Accession of the States formed a part of the process which described the territorial jurisdiction of the two successor states of India and Pakistan.

The Jammu and Kashmir State, which had oferred a Standstill Agreement to the two Dominions was invaded by Pakistan. The accession of the State to India followed as a matter of course. Nehru was misled by Mountbatten, when the later advised the indian Prime Minister, to secure the accession of the State to India as an incumbent condition for the deployment of the indian troops in the State. India could not have left the State undefended. The British had not provided for any exigency in which a princely State needed to be defended from external threat and invasion. So long as the British were in India, the responsibility to defend the States fell upon them. But after the British left the Indian shores, the responsibility to defend the States fell upon India.

Inside the Security council as well as outside the Security Council the Indian Government insisted upon the finality of the accession of the State to india and its inviolability. The Indian Government refused to recognise the contention of Pakistan that the Muslim majority composition of the State of Jammu and Kashmir accord that country any right to claim it. India could not have allowed pakistan to jeopardise its freedom as well as its strategic interests in the Himalayas which formed the hinterland of the Indian frontier in the north.

The partition was foisted on Indian people against their will by the Muslims with the support of the British. The British were no longer the masters in India, and India was under no constraints, to allow Pakistan achieve its territorial ambitions in Jammu and Kashmir and Hyderabad where the Muslim ruler was invoved in intrigues to align with Pakistan in order to keep his State out of India. Jammu and Kashmir was vital to India because it formed the central spur of the northern frontier of India and crucial to the security of Himalayas. Hyderabad was situated deep inside India, south of the Vindhyas.

The lapse of Paramountacy was an unilateral process which underlined the withdrawal of British power from India. The Princes as well as the people of the States, the religious communities forming ethnic majorities in the States, were not a party to the lapse of Paramountacy. The two successor states of India and Pakistan, formed by the division of the British India, as well, were not a part of lapse of Paramountacy. Who does the Manmohan Singh Government indentify as the ‘stake holders’in Jammu and Kashmir? There cannot be any stake holders to the unity of India, which is indivisible and inalienable.

The recognition of the right of any people in any part of India, to claim a veto on the unity of India is a negation of the nation of India. The Indian nation does not rest on the proportion of the population of the many communities which form the indian people. The Indian unity is an expression of the secular integration of the Indian people on the basis of the right to equality. The British divided India because they were a colonial power. No government of India, not even the government headed by Manmohan Singh, can preside over the vivisection of India on the ground that the Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir claim a separate freedom.

The transfer of power in india in 1947, envisaged the liberation of the Indian nation from the colonial rule of the British, which the British refused to concede without recognising the corresponding claim made by the Muslims in India to a separate nation. The lapse of the Paramountacy, as explained here, underlined a parallel process for the liberation of the princely States and their integration with the successor States.

The partition of British India, the lapse of Paramountacy and the accession of the princely States were a part of the process of the transfer of power in India. Who, except India, is the ‘stake holder’in jammu and Kashmir. It is pertinent to note that when the National Conference leadership claimed separate charge in the Constituent Assembly of the State, independent of the accession of the State, the Indian Government refused to recognise any such claim.

*(The writer heads Panun Kashmir advisory).

February 2010

The nature of the failure of Indian Leadership:

THE Indian leadership  did  not realize that the   partition of India had also brought about the territorial division of India. They were unable to comprehend the importance of princely States in the determination of the territorial borders of the two Dominions of India and Pakistan, the partition of India created. The Indian National Congress, which spearheaded the struggle for Indian freedom, had long before the British decided to quit India, abandoned their commitment to the continuity of the Indian history and the civilizational frontiers of the Indian nation. Congress did so in its abortive attempt to reconcile the Indian freedom with the separate freedom that the Indian Muslims lay claim to.

It was on the instance of the Muslim League leaders that the Indian National Congress refused to integrate the States peoples’ movements for the freedom of India. Had the Congress taken a bold stand and integrated the States peoples’ movements in the national movement, India would not have faced the disaster that partition led to.

Even after the Indian leaders drew close to the freedom of their country based on two nation principle, they failed to recognize the significance of their national frontiers and their civilizational content. An insight into the outlook of the Indian leaders about the national frontiers of India is provided by their pronouncements in the Asian Solidarity Conference which was held in New Delhi in 1946, a year before India won freedom. Both Gandhi and Nehru reflected a complete disregard of the crucial importance the national borders had assumed with the commencement of de-colonization and the emergence of new nations of the former colonial peoples. Except India, most of the newly independent nations of the former colonial peoples guarded their borders jealously.

It has been a historical reality that wherever, in Asia or Africa, the newly independent nations of the former colonial peoples lost their caution and ignored the security of their borders, foreign intervention disrupted their unity. India did not prove to be an exception. The lack of a systematic policy framework to integrate the Indian political culture and the identification of the national unity of India with pluri-cultural and multi-national composition of Indian social organization negated the process of the national integration. That led to the subversion of the national consensus on national unity in the north-eastern states, Jammu and Kashmir and finally Punjab.

The Indian leadership did not change its outlook about the territorial integrity of India and the consolidation of its civilizational frontiers even after it assumed the reins of power in 1947. The Indian leaders refused, rather stubbornly the necessity to protect the frontiers of India, which the partition had severely impaired and which the recalcitrance of the rulers of several major princely States threatened to erode. Indian leaders failed to evolve policy plans, which underlined the unity of India and the re-integration of the Indian political culture, the consolidation of the civilizational frontiers of the Indian nation with the national borders of the Indian state and the preservation of the Sanskrit content of the cultural configurations in the border regions of the country.

The Northern Frontiers

The Indian leaders were oblivious of the implications of the territorial divide, the partition of India had brought about, for the northern frontier of India. The Jammu and Kashmir formed the central spur of the northern frontier of India. There was none among the leaders of India who realized the importance of the Jammu and Kashmir state to the security of Himalayas, crucial for the security of whole of the north India and basic to any future balance of power in Asia.

Pakistan launched a surreptitious war of subversion in Jammu and Kashmir to undermine the stability of the State Government and its security organization, right from the day that country was brought into being on 14 August 1947. Within days Pakistan cut off rail and road communications with the State and stopped the transit of all essential supplies to the State. By the beginning of September 1947, Pakistan had begun to smuggle arms and ammunition into the Muslim majority border districts of the Jammu province to foment an armed uprising against the State Government. And by the end of September 1947, the border districts of Jammu province were embroiled in a civil war.

The Government of India was not unaware of the developments in the State. However, it did not act till Pakistan launched a full fledged invasion of the State on 22 October 1947. Led by Tochi Scouts, a part of the mechanized troops of the Pakistan army, the invading forces could reach Srinagar, the capital of Jammu and Kashmir in a day. The dogged resistance of the state army kept the invading columns at bay till 26 October 1947. The airborne troops of the Indian army reached Srinagar on the morning of 27 October 1947, five long days after the invading hordes had swooped on the border township of Muzaffarabad. The advance columns of the First Sikh Regiment of the Indian army established contact with the invading forces while the latter were advancing to invest Srinagar. Not many of the soldiers of the First Sikh, who went into action that day, returned home.

The Indian leaders faltered once again. No measures were taken to ensure the defense of the frontier division of Ladakh, Baltistan, Gilgit, and the Gilgit Agency along with the Dardic dependencies of the State, including the strategically important Dardic principalities of Hunza, Nagar, Punial, Yasin, Ishkoman, Koh Gizir and Darel. Before the British quit India, the Gilgit Agency was fortified by the British and was garrisoned by the Gilgit Scouts, a military force raised by the British from the local Shiate Muslim population of Gilgit and commanded by British officers. The administrative and military control over Gilgit Agency was transferred to the government of Jammu and Kashmir when the British left. There was an air strip in Gilgit over which the Dakota planes, which carried troops to Srinagar, could have safely landed. Gilgit stood on the precipice for four days. Finally the Gilgit Scouts mutineed, took the Governor of Gilgit prisoner, and declared accession of the Gilgit Agency to Pakistan. On October 1, 1947, airborne troops of Pakistan army landed in Gilgit. The Muslim officers and ranks of the State army posted at Bunji in Baltistan also mutineed and killed their Hindu and Sikh officers and comrades in arms. As the invading armies began to spread across Baltistan, the remnants of the State army and civil police, Hindu and Sikh survivors and the elements of local Buddhist population regrouped to organize resistance against them, which eventually saved Kargil and Ladakh  for India, till the Indian army scrambled up the Zojilla Pass to join them.

After the cease-fire in 1949, Pakistan consolidated its hold on the territories of the State, which remained under its occupation and which included the Muslim majority district of Muzaffarabad, and a part of the Baramulla district in the province of Kashmir, the district of Mirpur and a part of Poonch in the Jammu province, the whole of Baltistan, Gilgit and Gilgit Agency along with the Dardic tribal dependencies of the State. Pakistan refused to implement its commitments on the withdrawal of the invading army from the occupied territories and instituted a local government, known as Azad Kashmir Government, to administer them. Pakistan raised a Muslim militia of more than thirty thousand men from among the “Muslim deserters of the Dogra army, Muslin ex-servicemen of Mirpur, Poonch and Sudhunti, who had been demobilized from the British Imperial Troops of India after the end of the second World War and recruits from the adjoining districts of Pakistan, who had brought up the rear of the invasion into the State and tasted blood and booty in their adventure”. In less than a year the occupied territories were turned into a springboard for a Jihad to liberate the part of the State on the Indian side of the Cease-Fire line from the Indian hold.

Pakistan followed a different strategy in respect of the frontier division of the State, which remained under its occupation. It integrated the Gilgit Agency, Gilgit and Baltistan along with the Dardic dependencies of the State into a separate administrative region, which was placed under the direct control of the Government of Pakistan. Right from 1954, when Pakistan joined the Anglo-American-Muslim alliance system for the containment of Communism, the Northern Regions were fortified into a most formidable military outpost of the Cold War in Asia. As the Cold War receded with the disintegration of the Soviet power, the Northern Regions formed an important centre of the struggle for the rise of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan.

Territorial Dispute

The invasion of Jammu and Kashmir in 1947 had territorial objectives. The Jihad, Pakistan has been waging against India in Jammu and Kashmir ever since, is also aimed to achieve territorial objectives. After having swallowed more than one-third of the territories of the State, Pakistan seeks to grab the part of the State on the Indian side of the Cease-Fire Line. The annexation of whole of State of Jammu and Kashmir or the critical portions of it will open the way for the eastward expansion of the Muslim power of Pakistan into the north of India and the demolition of the northern frontier of India. This will enable Pakistan to extend its hold over the Himalayas, which it is frantically craving, to exclude India from any future balance of power in Asia.

Pakistan has already encircled northern India into a pincer-hold of its strategic alliances: the Anglo-American-Pakistan alliance and the Sino-Pakistan axis, both aimed at the reduction of the Sanskrit culture of the Himalayas. The pronouncements of the American President, Barrack Obama during his recent visit to China, indicate the extent of isolation, India has been pushed into.

The dispute over Jammu and Kashmir, between India and Pakistan, is a territorial dispute. Pakistan has succeeded in steering ‘peace process’ between the two countries to facilitate its territorial gains. Even the Musharaf proposals, which the Indian leaders claim to be a blue- print of a non-territorial settlement, have a territorial content. The most significant territorial stipulation of the Musharaf proposals is the separation of the Muslim majority regions from the Hindu majority regions of the state, situated to the east of river Chinab and the recognition of the Jammu and Kashmir State on the Indian Side as a ‘sphere of Muslim interests’ in India.

The Congress leaders accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan which envisaged a non-territorial settlement of the Muslim demand for the territorial division of India, in the hope of retaining the unity of India. The Cabinet Mission Plan in essence envisaged a Muslim State within a united India. The Cabinet Mission Plan was ingeniously designed by the British on the advice of the Muslim leaders of the Indian National Congress. The Plan lead straight to the division of India, when the Muslin League repudiated it on the issue of the princely states. However, had the Plan been  implemented, India would have been totally balkanized.

The acceptance of the territorial claims of Pakistan on Jammu and Kashmir under the cover of a non-territorial settlement is bound to impair the entire northern frontier of India from Kashmir to Arunachal Pradesh. The pressures being built on India to recognize the territorial claims of China in Arunachal Pradesh, is a strategic maneuver to delink India from Himalayas as are the claims made on Jammu and Kashmir by Pakistan. The security of Himalayas is crucial to the unity and the territorial integrity of India. Non-territorial settlement is a sure recipe to compromise the security of the Himalayas. Indian People must put all the pressures on the Indian government to reclaim and retrieve Gilgit and Baltistan along with the Dardic dependencies of the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir. This reclamation will break the encirclement of India in the pincer-hold of the Anglo-American- Pakistan alliance and the Sino-Pakistan axis and give meaning to the ‘strategic partnership’ the Indian government claims to have established with the United States of America. The strategic partnership has no meaning so long the Americans act as a “laughing balancer’ in between Pakistan and China over the northern frontier of India.

November 2009

Engagement with Pakistan, which the  Indian Prime Minister, Dr Man Mohan Singh has commended to the Indian People as “a way forward” to establish a relationship of peace, is in real terms a prescription for the second partition of India. The composite dialogue between the two countries and the long Track Two negotiations held behind the scene for over a decade now, have been centered round the quest for a settlement on Jammu and Kashmir, which is acceptable to the Muslims of Pakistan and the Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir.

The claim made by the Indian Prime Minister to have formulated proposals, envisaging a non-territorial solution on Jammu and Kashmir, which does not involve any territorial adjustments and which would be acceptable to Pakistan and the Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir, is deceptively simple. In essence Man Mohan Singh’s approach underlines the recognition of Jammu and Kashmir as a separate sphere of Muslim interest in the Republic of India. The proposed non-territorial settlement seems to essentially envisage the inclusion of Jammu and Kashmir in the territories of India but at the same time exclude it from the secular political organization of India. The approach further envisages the exclusion the state of Jammu and Kashmir from the territories of Pakistan while at the same time including it in the political organization of the Islamic republic of Pakistan.

The methods and means of balancing the act of the inclusion of Jammu and Kashmir in the territories of India and its exclusion from the Indian political organization and the exclusion of the state from the territories of Pakistan with its inclusion into the political organization of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, are spelt out in the proposals made by General Musharraf , the then President of Pakistan. Musharraf by no means a friend of India, had the opportunity of a life time, perhaps the one he had never expected to come his way, to accept the formula of a non-territorial settlement on Jammu and Kashmir which virtually opens the way for the second partition of India.

Musharraf accepted the formula of a non-territorial solution on Jammu and Kashmir exactly the way the founder of Pakistan Mohammad Ali Jinnah had accepted the Cabinet Mission plan. The principles, underlying the non-territorial concept as envisaged by Man Mohan Singh, are identical with the principles which underlined the Cabinet Mission Plan. The Cabinet Mission Plan underlined the recognition of a separate sphere of influence with a separate political organization, constituted of the Muslim majority provinces of the British India, within a broad structure of a future confederation of India. Ironically enough, the British historians of the partition of India, later made the startling revelation that the Cabinet Mission Plan was originally conceived by the senior Muslim leadership of Indian National Congress. When the Muslim League accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan, Jinnah exclaimed that he had accepted the Plan because it recognized the principle of Pakistan. History proved Jinnah right. The Cabinet Mission Plan led straight to the partition of India in 1947.

Musharraf had no reason to be dissatisfied with the non-territorial solution of Jammu and Kashmir. Like Mohammad Ali Jinnah, he was wise enough to understand, where, the recognition of Jammu and Kashmir into a separate Muslim sphere of interest in India, would lead to. India, he must have felt, was the one country, where the history would repeat itself.

The Cabinet Mission Plan was a prescription for the complete balkanization of India. The British officials and men, who were close witnesses of the events in India those days, wrote later that had the Cabinet Mission Plan been implemented India would have broken into several fragments. The Government of Pakistan must be fully aware that the de jure recognition of Jammu and Kashmir into a separate Muslim sphere of influence in India, would disrupt the Sanskrit content of the northern frontier of India and shift the battle front from the line of control in Jammu and Kashmir to the Shivalik plains situated to the east of river Ravi.

Neither the Prime Minister of India , nor the Indian Foreign Office, have provided the people of India a clear exposition on the content and contours of the non-territorial settlement on Jammu and Kashmir. The Indian Prime Minister has publicly only stressed the necessity to render the Line Of Control irrelevant as the basis of their perspective. But Indian Prime Minister has unambiguously stated that some sort of final settlement had already been arrived at between India and Pakistan during the rule of Pervez Mushrraf which could not be given a practical shape because of the internal instability in Pakistan.

However a clear exposition of the terms and conditionalities of the proposed settlement on Jammu and Kashmir was made by the former President of Pakistan Pervez Mushrraf. The broad structure of the proposals he made underlined:

1.   Demarcation of the Muslim majority regions of the state including those situated to the west of river Chenab from the Hindu majority areas situated mainly to the east of river Chenab.

2.   The dissolution of the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir.

3.   The demilitarization of the State.

4.   Self-rule.

5.   Joint management of the State by India and Pakistan.

Pervez Musharraf left no one in doubt about the fact that the proposals he made formed the broad framework of the negotiations which took place between the two countries almost up to the time Musharraf was forced to step down from his office. Whether or not, the new Government in Pakistan which replaced the military regime of General Mushrraf, accepted to continue the negotiations with the Indian Government on the basis of the Musharraf Plan, is not yet clear. It is, however, clear that the Indian Government did not abandon its commitment to implement the proposals Musharraf had made.

An overall assessment of Musharraf Plan leaves no one in doubt about its import. The plan is an ingenious road map to bring about the unification of Jammu and Kashmir with Pakistan within a period of ten Years. Musharraf plan has specified ten years after which the whole process would be subject to review. The demarcation of the Muslim majority regions of the state and their reorganization into five Muslim majority zones and the reorganization of the two and a half districts of Jammu, Kathua and Udhampur into a Hindu majority zone, is aimed to confine the Hindu and Sikh population of the State, nearly four million, towards the east of river Chenab. The dissolution of Line of Control through the stratagem of creating porous border and joint management is actually aimed to integrate the five Muslim majority zones of the State with the occupied territories of POK. These occupied territories have been used by Pakistan as a springboard of Jihad against India The demilitarization of the State, which forms the most prominent part of the Mushrraf Plan, is aimed at the withdrawal of the Indian security forces from the Muslim majority zones of the state and their replacement by the militarized separatist forces, which have been fighting against India for the last two decades.

The most deceptive of the conditionalities envisaged by the Mushrraf Plan, is the implementation of the self-rule in the State. Self-rule underlines the transfer of power in the state to the Muslim separatist regimes through the instrumentalities of multiple legislative bodies constituted to fortify Muslim demographic domains. The last, and in fact, the least conspicuous part of the Mushrraf Plan underlines the transfer of the de facto control over the State to the Government of Pakistan, which after the period of ten years, would be followed by the transfer of de jure control over the State.

When the army of the Sikh Monarch, Maharaja Ranjit Singh, chased the Durrani Afghans, across the river Attock in the north-west of India and fought its way up to Daulat Beg Ouldi in the north of Ladakh the Sikhs closed the routes of invasion into India from the north. The dissolution of the Line of Control will only shift the battlefront with Pakistan to the Shivalik plains of Jammu situated to the east of river Ravi.