Flawed Secularist Argument

Kashmir-The tumbled crown of Indian Secularism

The eruption of the fundamentalist separatist insurgency has exploded many myths in relation to Kashmir. For nearly five decades Kashmiris were described as ‘unique’ people, who rejected the two-nation theory of Jinnah. The ethnic-cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus from the only Muslim-majority province of India has debunked the claim that Kashmir was the crown of Indian secularism, or a secular oasis in the communally torn subcontinent.

Indian political leadership, failed in formulating the nation’s stakes in Kashmir. The stakes could be either strategic or ideological. By conceding the strategic northern areas in 1947, Indian leadership had conveyed that the stakes were not strategic. Successive Central governments connived in the policies of the Kashmir-Centric state leadership, which destabilized Kashmir Hindus in particular and Hindus in general in J&K.

For the nation stakes were always clear. Strategically Kashmir formed the northern frontier of India and ideologically active pluralism in Kashmir strengthened secular nation-building in India. Congress leaderships perspective for advocating accession of Jammu and Kashmir with India was however convoluted. Congress leaders had rejected the two-nation theory but accepted the partition. Accession of Kashmir to India for Congress leaders was a matter of pure expediency on three counts. One it deflected the criticism that Congress had accepted partition of the country on two-nation theory basis. Secondly, it allowed Nehru to fight his factional battles within Congress to outmanoeuver Hindu nationalist lobby of Sardar Patel, BC Roy and GB Pant. Thirdly, Congress wanted to cultivate Muslims as a votebank. Muslim minority in UP and Bihar had strongly supported the Pakistan movement. Thus concessions for these Muslims could be wrested only if compulsions flowing from accession of Kashmir to India were cited.

Glorifying Sheikh Abdullah and Kashmiris for their nationalism and secularism became a matter of expediency for the Indian political leadership. Clean chit to the Kashmir political leaders encouraged separatist blackmail and emboldened them for pursuing destabilization process of Kashmiri Hindus in Valley and people of Jammu and Ladakh. In early years when such great leaders like Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru tried to focus Nehru’s attention on the destabilization schemes of Sheikh Abdullah’s government, he snubbed him saying, “I have not done accession for Kashmiri Pandits.”

The expediency of Congress leadership was also exploited by alienated westernized secular Indian elite to fight its turf battles with those forces who wanted positive engagement with the genius of Indian civilisation. Secularists’ argument that Kashmir was the crown of Indian secularism rested on three arguments.

i) Sheikh Abdullah repudiated two-nation theory by acceding to India;

ii) National Conference saved Hindus from virtual destruction in the wake of tribal raid of 1947. Sheikh Abdullah built the foundations of secularism and Kashmiriat;

iii) and absence of communal violence in post-1947.

Close scrutiny of the historical details exposes the flawed basis of the secularist argument.

Historical data, which has since become available clearly points that Sheikh Abdullah’s role during accession has been exaggerated. Nehru’s strong dislike towards Hari Singh was responsible for Hari Singh’s delay in making up mind on accession to India. There is documentary evidence that Hari Singh had been pressing Indian government hard for accession since September 15, 1947. Nehru’s priorities were abdication by Maharaja in favour of Sheikh Abdullah rather than accession. After analyzing the declassified material, late Dr NN Raina, the father of communist movement in Kashmir remarked that “Hari Singh’s role needs to be rewritten”.

Role of Sheikh Abdullah in 1947 reflects expediency rather than any conviction to rebuff Muslim nationalism for a larger Indian nationalism. Since 1943 NC had been trying to mend fences with Jinnah. The essence of the conflict between NC and Jinnah lay in refusal of Muslim nationalism as represented by Muslim League to accommodate local Muslim nationalism as articulated by National Conference. This antagonism had nothing to do with supposed rejection of two-nation theory by NC in favour of secular nationalism.

Jinnah’s rejection of NC’s claim as popular party of Kashmiri Muslims in favour of Muslim conference left little options for Sheikh Abdullah. Even then NC continued to hold olive branch to Jinnah and Muslim League. Krishan Dev Sethi, veteran communist leader narrates in his memoirs that NC tried to rechristen itself as Muslim conference in 1945 to gain the goodwill of the Muslim League. During ‘Quit Kashmir’ agitation Sheikh Abdullah’s slogan was not accession to India but “Freedom before accession”. Sheikh Abdullah made the last effort to win the confidence of Jinnah, when he sent his two lieutenants Bakshi and Sadiq to Pakistan. The purpose of their visit was not to discuss the quantum of accession but to seek a commitment that Muslim League recognised NC and Sheikh Abdullah as main spokesperson of Kashmiri Muslims. Egoistic and overconfident Jinnah refused to accommodate Sheikh Abdullah and paid the price. Sardar Shoukat Hayat Khan admits that Bakshi-Sadiq mission was mismanaged.

Jinnah and Sheikh Abdullah hated each other. Both were autocrats. Jinnah left no options for Sheikh, who saw for himself no future in Pakistan dominated by Jinnah and Muslim League. He even knew of a secret Pak plan to kidnap him. Not very confident of India accepting accession, he was reconciled to a state of permanent political exile in India. Sheikh Abdullah, had already despatched his family to Indore (reports say in the same aircraft in which the Maharani of the state travelled around 24 October, 1947).

Sheikh as a mature politician had an elaborate game-plan for his rehabilitation. The first step of it was to prevent Kashmir from being annexed by Pakistan. Annexation by Pakistan would seal his future for all times to come. Tribal raid left him the only one option available i.e. accession to India.

Once the accession had been signed and the die was cast, Sheikh began unfolding his version of two nation theory. After Jinnah’s demise Sheikh tried to rebuild the bridges with the Muslim League through the instrumentality of Aga Khan. Sheikh also started cultivating pro-Pakistani section of Kashmiri Muslim bureaucracy. Justice Shahmiri was asked to head the committee set up to initiate dialogue with Indian leaders on Kashmir’s constitutional relationship with India. He made no secret of ‘great’ divergence with Congress Muslim stalwarts like Maulana Azad and Rafi Ahmad Kidwai and tried to undermine their prestige. Sheikh raised the bogey of communal representation in Central services to strengthen secessionist tendencies among the Kashmiris.

Sheikh’s arrest in 1953, was not only supported but actually implemented by Maulana Azad Rafi Kidwai, Dr KM Ashraf and ZA Ahmed. They understood well what Sheikh’s betrayal meant to millions of Indian Muslims still not out of traumatic conditions of the aftermath of partition. As early as December 1947 (barely three months after the accession had been signed, Ram Manohar Lohia had, in a sensational report, told Nehru, how the Sheikh was nursing separatist tendencies. This report had been passed on by Nehru to his two senior Muslim cabinet members.

Had Sheikh Abdullah’s support for accession been genuine, secularisation of Kashmiri Muslim society and its emotional integration with Indian people would have been his priority. Sheikh rather insisted on separate identity for Kashmiri Muslims and demanded Article 370 with right to secession to reinforce it. Where did the need of seeking this reaffirmationarise when the Indian constitution provided all the necessary guarantees. Pt. Prem Nath Bazaz commented on this, says, “If religious nationalism is to be a political creed, it is clear that Kashmiri Muslims will one day prefer Muslim nationalists or league to Hindu nationalism of Congress”.

From 1953 onwards, the Sheikh started the main separatist organisation called Plebiscite Front, which played the crucial role in building the separatist psyche among Kashmiris.

Not in vain did his official biographer state in a seminar in 1989 that “If Sheikh Sahib had been alive today, he would have been in the jail”.

NC and the Pandit minority in 1947

How does the credit of ‘saving’ the Hindu minority of Kashmir go either to Sheikh Abdullah or the NC? Was not the Sheikh’s position more precarious than that of the Hindus of the Valley? Were the hundreds of thousands of Hindus and Sikhs in the now Pakistan occupied part of the state saved by Sheikh’s activists in those areas? No, they were massacred in their own places most brutally. Did not the locals join the bands of the tribals when Baramulla fell and these marauders spread out in the rural areas singling out the Hindu and Sikh houses and families and subjecting them to loot, rape and killing? It is true that top NC leadership did not promote direct violence against Pandits. Had it done so, Nehru would have found it difficult to bail out Sheikh Abdullah, in the heat of partition aftermath.

If the Sheikh’s slogan of Sher-i-Kashmir Ka Kya Irshad etc. had made any real impact on the Muslims of Kashmir, their response to the savagery of the raiders would have been totally different. By the same logic we can say that if the Muslims of the Valley really believed in and acted upon what they called Kashmiriyat, then they would not have provided all conceivable logistic support to the armed Islamist insurgents in the ongoing situation. This falsifies the oft-repeated excuse “We have guns on both sides, what can we do”. The gun on one side is by choice and also the result of not resisting the ideological imposition.

Such was the impact of communal violence in 1947 that in Baramulla district no fewer than half of the Hindu and Sikh population was either killed or forcibly converted (even if only temporarily) or obliged to leave their homes and hearths for good.

The slogan of secularism was the key to induce the visionaries of New Delhi to throw their full support in favour of Sheikh Abdullah. Never before has this double edged weapon been used so effectively by any politician in the subcontinent. The only intellectual who could penetrate into the mind of the Sheikh in those fateful fears was Prem Nath Bazaz, of course his friend, colleague and political sympathiser.

Sheikh Abdullah, as a popular leader of a majority region (by which we mean the state of J&K) did not fall outside the Muslim League leadership’s perception of Muslim majority region leadership. It has to be noted that the Muslim League primarily represented the interests of Muslims in minority provinces and feudal-salariat groups. The conflict between the League and the Muslim leadership in Muslim majority provinces was resolved only after 1946. Active role of GM Syed (in Sindh) and the Unionist leaders in the Punjab in the affairs of the League thereafter and overtures of Sheikh Abdullah to the Muslim League were part of the same process.

W.C. Smith, the noted historian, in his seminal work, ‘Modern Islam in India’, rightly notes that Sheikh Abdullah was not superceding Muslim subnationalism in larger Indian nationalism but was on the contrary undercutting it still smaller local loyalties, expressing as Kashmiri Muslim subnationalism.”

We have already noted that so far nobody has tried to address fundamental issues in relation to NC’s commitment to secular nationalism.

One of the tasks of far reaching consequence which Sheikh accomplished when in power was to carve out Gool Tehsil in Reasi, Doda district in Jammu region and Kargil district in Ladakh division. Nothing but communal undertones justified this machination. The people quickly realised how the administration looked at things. Exacerbation of communal tension in otherwise prosaic societies of these regions was engineered.

In 1978 during the second stint of the Sheikh, gerrymandering of electoral constituencies pushed the minority groups, Gujjars, Shias and Pandits to the political Junkyard and established firmly the dominance of the Sunni Muslims of the Valley.

The crowning act of non-secularist character was the introduction in the Legislative Assembly the most dangerous Resettlement Bill in 1982. As leader of the ruling party, he piloted the bill. The official record of the debate will show the vicious communal undertones at work when member after member from the treasury benches supported it fiercely. Even a cursory glance on the pamphlet ‘Kashmir Mein Aksariyata Ko Aqalliyat Me Bedelne Ki Sazish’, published by ruling NC gives the background in which the Resettlement Bill was drafted. This pamphlet, highly treasonable and provocative (it was later on withdrawn after having seen limited circulation) gave clear indications that the NC was anything but a secularist group. The aftermath of NC attack on Jamaatis in the Valley in the wake of the hanging of ZA Bhutto, brought about a radical change both in the precept and the practice of NC. Here the Wahabi element exported by the Saudis came to play its role in Kashmri and the Sheikh’s role during this period needs to be refocussed. Islamising the historical names of nearly 800 places in Valley, and Sheikh Abdullah’s speeches at Ganderbal in 1978 and at Hazratbal in 1982 do not portray Sheikh Abdullah as an outstanding secularist.

Secularism has become a much profaned word. Conventional secularist wisdom recognises communal violence particularly the major conflagrations only as manifestations of communalism. Subtle and often imperceptible undermining of the interests of the religious minorities are no less detrimental socially and politically. Pseudo-secularists characterize the present secular breakdown in Kashmir as an aberration and hence ignorable. But it is here where once must dig deep into social phenomenon to arrive at the root of the problem.

Communal violence is only the flash-point of communalization process, which can be subtle, slow and lengthy. Communal violence is contingent on a number of factors like a) size of the minority b) minority’s attitude to assault on its cultural, political and economic rights c) its cohesiveness d) its vote-bank potential. Smaller numbers, peaceful disposition, non-retaliatory behaviour, historicity of cultural values and its non-votebank structure explain the relative absence of large scale communal orgy. Communal riot is a situation where the two communities not numerically highly disproportionate attack each other. Even 1986 program against Pandit minority at Anantnag was more of a communal aggression, where violence went only one way. Even if no minority member was killed, yet the scale of attack on minority property and places of worship was comparable to any major riot.

What then were the visible manifestation of communalism in Kashmir? These were individual attacks on community members, kidnapping and forcible conversion of Pandit girls, raking up false disputes over Pandit places of worship, grabbing of Pandit property through politico-administrative connivance and erecting boards of Maqbooza Ahle-e-Islam on disputed or unattended Pandit land, attacks on and desecration of Pandit places of worship. Even known left wing Pandit activists like Tej Bahadur Bhan and HN Wanchoo were not spared by the rank fundamentalists. In 1986 in many villages of district Pulwama and Baramulla and also earlier at other places call for boycott against the Pandit minority was given. And whosoever won or lost the Indo-Pak cricket match, the Pandit became the hapless victim of Vandalism by the majority community hooligans. Their holier-than-you wards, looked on in gleeful sadism.

The exodus of the Pandits inter-mittently from 1947 till the mass exodus in 1990 is the result of a carefully drawn plan of ethnic cleansing. This passed on as ‘Kashmiriyat. Dr Farooq Abdullah government’s strong Pandit-bailting in 1983-85 period and totally hostile attitude against exiled community, aimed at destroying Pandits’ roots for ever in Kashmir is in itself an eloquent commentary on subtleties of communalisation process in the ‘secular crown’ of India.

Modern Muslim elite and mainstream political groupings in Kashmir have not lagged behind fundamentalists in fomenting communal hatred against religious and ethnic minorities. It is this leadership that is busy pursuing apartheid against displaced Kashmiri Hindus and is creating obstacles in Pandits’ complete and sincere return. Its public posture on Pandits’ return is for the consumption of Indian public.