DEFINING A SYNCRETIC, INDIAN CULTURAL IDENTITY FOR KASHMIR IS NOT UN-ISLAMIC

The famous social scientist Benedict Anderson once described nations as “imagined communities”, for, at the end of the day, we are all humans, and nationalism is a sense of identity that has been created. However, given that administering countries also takes the form of provincial demarcations, which itself becomes a cause of vociferous debate (take Telangana, for instance) and there are centralization-decentralization debates, it is impossible to practically imagine a world without borders. Hence, nation-states, being the inevitable reality that they are, are compelled to define their identity, and this is not to suggest that nationalism is necessarily at loggerheads with humanism, just like having special affection for one’s near relatives doesn’t make one inhuman.

In our subcontinent, Pakistan was created based on the notion that Muslims are a different nation from the Hindus, having a totally distinct and separate culture, and though Jinnah may not have had any theocratic aspirations, he was well aware of the fact that many of those supporting his Pakistan “tehreek” did, and the outcome was eventually a theocratic constitution. In the process of defining its “separateness” from “Hindu” India, Pakistan felt compelled to carve out its own uniquely Muslim identity, which meant a proximity to the Arab world. Thus, Pakistani history textbooks celebrate the invasion of Sindh by an Arab, Mohammed bin Qasim. Many Pakistanis even wish to be seen as Arabs, as a Pakistani classmate of mine in an LSE course once told me! Especially after the separation of East Pakistan in 1971, Pakistanis tried to divorce their history from Hindu and to an extent, even Persian influences (‘Khuda Hafiz’ came to be increasingly replaced by ‘Allah Hafiz’ and Pakistani Shias’ loyalty to Pakistan is doubted, with suspicion of them identifying more with Iran than Pakistan), and Arabize themselves, which has even meant geopolitical proximity to Saudi Arabia, which as per a Wikileaks cable, boasted of being a participant, not just an observer, in Pakistan. Such has been Saudi Arabia’s cultural and political control over Pakistan that the latter found it difficult to refuse help to the former for an imperialist war in Yemen (which has faced Saudi aerial bombings, indeed not very different from the Israeli aerial bombings in Gaza).

Moreover, the conception of a theocracy meant that the clergy could define who was a true Muslim and who was not, and so, that led to sectarian tensions among Muslims, and those with the Taliban brand of the sharia have now raised their head in Pakistan too, with their version of Islam, and in spite of all the emphasis on Islam, the Bengalis of East Pakistan apart, the Sindhis and Mohajirs, both Muslims, are still up in arms against each other, owing to linguistic differences in Karachi. The non-Muslim minorities are also quite often subjected to an automatic ‘otherization’ when Pakistan is defined as a country for Muslims.

Now, what does all this mean for Kashmir? Kashmiri Muslims certainly have their just grievances against the Indian state, when it comes to the human rights violations by security personnel, most of which have gone unpunished (though hundreds of soldiers have been convicted, perhaps the latest example being the Machil fake encounter verdict, and while not in the least undermining the pain of the victims, legal protective covers are given to soldiers in militarized conflict zones across the globe, failing which soldiers may fear shooting down genuine militants for fear of facing murder charges in court subsequently, and there can be many false complaints to hamper their working). However, the genuine issue of criminal justice has been conflated with a secessionist ideology, which had violently manifested itself before the all-pervasive military presence in the valley. While the alleged rigging of elections by the Indian state served as a trigger, the militancy clearly had theofascist undertones imported from across the border, which in turn had come from Saudi Arabia (by the way, the Arab world itself had a very different approach during the Golden Age of Islam, with ‘heretic’ intellectuals having complete freedom to articulate their views) and became more popular with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The attacks on radio stations and cinema halls in the valley were clear manifestations of that mindset, and this fanatical, xenophobic outlook is still being echoed by the likes of Asiya Andrabi, who doesn’t want the cinema halls to come up again in the valley. Yes, there have been excesses and other human rights violations by rogue elements in the Indian security forces (and while two wrongs don’t make something right, Pakistan-supporters would do well to note that even as per Pakistani official records, the Pakistani defence forces don’t have an exemplary human rights record in Balochistan or the erstwhile East Pakistan), but many of the gun-trotting ‘freedom fighters’ in Kashmir have fared no better with their own people, shooting them down on mere suspicion of being “mukhbirs” (even old, bed-ridden people like cleric Maulana Masoodi and poet Abdul Sattar Ranjoor were not spared) and running extortion rackets. Human rights violations by soldiers cannot alone justify secessionist aspirations, given that those aspirations preceded the same, nor can the rigging of elections forever remain a valid reason if that’s stopped. 

Also, as for the legitimacy of India’s claim over Kashmir, the hurdle in the plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir came not from India, which had already promised the Kashmiris a plebiscite, but Pakistan, which, in violation of the 1948 UN resolution, refused to withdraw its troops from the part of the erstwhile princely state it had occupied in the 1947-48 war following the Pashtun tribal raid, which, as per the resolution, was a precursor to the plebiscite. (And while I know that some would start citing Christopher Snedden’s book, the facts cited in that book do not match its conclusions, something I have written about previously.) Nehru had, in fact, gone on record even later to say that he was willing to follow the UN resolution (i.e. conduct the plebiscite) in the whole of the erstwhile princely state if Pakistan complied with the precondition of withdrawing its troops, as you can see in this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7wn0ZRhyq0&feature=share (please watch 1:58 onwards). Now, it must be mentioned that many Kashmiri separatists who haven’t read the UN resolution and just know that it calls for a plebiscite often invoke the UN resolution, but when made to realize that the resolution is not exactly what they claim it to be, their entire stance changes to ridiculing international law itself being irrelevant and a conspiracy of Western powers, a stance diametrically opposite to the one they took before learning of what the resolution entailed! 

However, if they support self-determination as an absolute right, which is to say that any part of any country should be unilaterally allowed to secede at will, would they support any household declaring itself as a separate country and not paying taxes, desiring to have diplomatic relations with their country, or any district of the hypothetical independent Jammu and Kashmir they envisage to secede at will? Pray, quite the contrary, their leaders do not wish to give Jammu and Ladakh that right in the independent country they envisage! And speaking of Pakistanis and even pro-Pakistan Kashmiris, given the secessionist voices in Sindh (and no, it is no use ascribing them to outsiders in a baseless fashion, the way some chauvinistic Indian nationalists try to portray all Kashmiri separatists as a fringe minority of Kashmiri Muslims, on ISI payrolls, citing the very many Kashmiri Muslims willing to join the Indian security forces and civil services) and the secessionist or pro-Afghanistan voices in Khyber Pakhtoonwa, are they willing to conduct plebiscites in these provinces?

Thus, the issue of Kashmiri separatism has had to base itself on apparently stronger foundations, and those foundations are of either supporting the “idea of Pakistan” (which was historically supported by the beneficiaries of the un-Islamic zamindari system, rejected by Hazrat Umar bin Khattab, which still persists in Pakistan but is abolished in India) as against the “idea of India”, with Muslim-majority Kashmir fitting in with the former, or an entire conception of a Kashmiri culture divorced from South Asia, linking the same with Central Asia, and both these try to write off Kashmir’s pre-Islamic cultural heritage (though Kashmir’s heritage even after the advent of Islam includes Urdu, a South Asian language, certainly not Central Asian, though Urdu should not be allowed to extinguish the Kashmiri language!), but Kashmir shares the same foundations of Vedic culture with much internal and external dialectics as the rest of India does. I know that some reading this would jump at the idea of defining Indian cultural nationalism based on Vedic culture, which they would hold as not being inclusive of the religious minorities and responsible for caste discrimination and patriarchy. Their critiques of the Hindu scriptures may or may not be valid depending on the context and every such matter is debatable, as is with texts of other religions. I am not personally averse to such debates and I, for one, am not suggesting ‘culture’ as a clearly defined entity to be frozen in a static mould, but rather, an evolutionary entity open to internal and external dialectics, as also layering of external influences that can enrich the same, which is why I believe in a composite conception of Indian culture, of which Vedic culture is a base, not a puritan narrative of culture antagonistic to other influences, refusing to accept that scientific or artistic creativity can exist in other civilizations (of course it did, and does!), though at the same time, the achievements of ancient India in diverse spheres such as economics, polity, mathematics, astronomy, metallurgy and literature, must be acknowledged. Furthermore, I may point out that as per my understanding and that of many others, what we know as Hinduism is open to such dialectics, holding the truth to be like a mountain that can be viewed from different sides by different people, even in the context of the most fundamental theological debates like the existence of God, as the beautiful Nasadia hymn from the Rigveda demonstrates. On the issue of caste too, there is much that is contentious vis-à-vis the actual position of the Hindu scriptures. 

Islam, rather than being a personal faith of submission to Allah to make peace with oneself and others, is now being largely seen as a basis of sociopolitical identity (the Muslim ummah) and a basis for an exclusionary legal system (the Islamic sharia). That leads to an attempt at redefining one’s history and culture. Is it possible to be a good Muslim and support pluralistic, secular democracy, especially in a country with another majority religion, simultaneously? Is it possible to be a good Muslim and celebrate one’s pre-Islamic heritage (as many Iranian, Egyptian, Indonesian and even Indian Muslims do) that one doesn’t have in common with Muslims in other parts of the world? The Kashmir issue fundamentally does have a lot to do with these questions, which is why it has ideologically sustained itself in good measure for much longer than the secessionist movements in Assam and Punjab, where there were also excesses by both the rebels as also the security forces (as is almost inevitably the case with armed uprisings globally), but the ideological underpinnings there were not so complicated.

As I see it, with the rise of the Boko Haram and the ISIS, Muslims across the globe are in a situation more than ever before to reinterpret their faith. In this regard, I have made my own study of Islamic theology, and have my ideas to offer. While I don’t subscribe to organized religion myself, I do think of religion to be a historical vehicle of ideas in many different spheres, and I do understand a rationale behind believing in some supernatural force governing the natural order and one that we can possibly reach out to. While some may indeed ask what business do I, a non-Muslim, have in interpreting the Islamic texts, my counter-question would be - how do Muslims expect others to embrace or at least not misunderstand their faith otherwise?

First, coming to the sharia, it is not one of the five pillars of Islam that defines being a truly practising Muslim, and given that there is absolutely no consensus on what the sharia entails or how it is to be applied today in a world with modern technology, among Muslims themselves, and trying to impose any version of it has led to the bloodshed we are witnessing in Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan, it is an idea that is not imperative, and there are interpretations of Islam that match a modern conception of human rights laid out in the UDHR. Rather than the state imposing what is supposedly Islamic, why not let the decision of who is a true believer be left solely to Allah?

The global pan-Muslim (Muslim “ummah”) line of thinking is also anachronistic, and I can prove my case on this point, even employing Islamic theology as a valid touchstone, and even the idea of having to delink oneself from one’s non-Islamic heritage is not Islamic. Those time and again talking of a Muslim ummah or global pan-Muslim fraternity cite the following verse of the Quran-

“The believers are to live as nothing else but brothers.” (49:10)

However, during Prophet Muhammad’s lifetime, Islam was largely confined to the Arab world and Muslims were under threat, since Islam had emerged as a challenge to the existing social order; thus, in that context, the emphasis on a religion-based fraternity meant something else (even Buddhism, which was a challenge to the existing order, emphasized the ‘sangh’, and even Christianity talks of a community of believers). However, with the passage of time, and especially now with the rise of nation-states (accommodating people of multiple religions) with a defined sovereignty that ought to be respected on one hand and global human rights activism (there were people of diverse faiths and nationalities, including people of Israeli origin, aboard the Gaza Flotilla) on the other, the concept hardly remains relevant in the same form, but this mindset leads to a US attack in Iraq for oil to be seen as an attack on Islam (though people have complete freedom to embrace Islam as their faith in the United States), but US interventions in Christian-majority Congo and Nicaragua or even Buddhist-majority Vietnam are overlooked, and the political fault-lines among Muslims (such as between Pakistan and Afghanistan), are just conveniently ignored. In fact, the fundamental message in the Quran is one of humanism. Verse 49:13, which comes after verse 49:10 (and later verses in the same chapter are believed to supersede earlier ones), illustrates this spirit and is stated hereunder-

“O mankind, indeed we have created you from one pair of male and female and made you nations and tribes so that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you. Indeed, Allah is Knowing and Acquainted.” 

The above verse, while emphasizing human unity, also acknowledges nature’s law of diversity that makes the world beautiful, explaining the multiplicity of nations and tribes (without any religious connotation). This verse makes it clear that embracing Islam should not come in the way of being loyal to your nation, which may comprise a non-Muslim majority or minority, nor does following Islam imply a need to delink yourself from the non-Islamic cultural aspects of your nation. Moreover, the term ‘ummah’ appears in the Quran only twice and has been used to refer to nations, without any religious connotation, and it was also used in the constitution of Medina drafted by Prophet Muhammad to connote a nation where Muslims and non-Muslims coexisted harmoniously. Prophet Muhammad united the warring Arab tribes to live together peacefully, and his philosophy wasn’t one of separatism.

In this connection, I’d like to quote some excerpts from Tariq Ramadan’s book ‘The Messenger – The Meanings of the Life of Muhammad’-

“Abdullah ibn Judan, the chief of the Taym tribe and a member of one of the two great alliances of Meccan tribes (known as the People of the Perfume), decided to invite to his home all those who wanted to put an end to the conflicts and establish a pact of honor and justice that would bind the tribes beyond alliances based merely on tribal, political, or commercial interests.

Chiefs and members of numerous tribes this pledged that it was their collective duty to intervene in conflicts and side with the oppressed against the oppressors, whoever they might be and whatever alliances might link them to other tribes. This alliance, known as hilf al-fudul (the Pact of the Virtuous), was special in that it placed respect for the principles of justice and support of the oppressed above all other considerations of kinship or power. Young Muhammad, like Abu Bakr, who was to become his lifelong friend, took part in that historic meeting.

Long after Revelation has begun, Muhammad was to remember the terms of that pact and say: ‘I was present in Abdullah ibn Judan’s house when a pact was concluded, so excellent that I would not exchange my part in it even for a herd of red camels; and if now, in Islam, I was asked to take part in it, I would be glad to accept.’ Not only did the Prophet stress the excellence of the terms of the pact as opposed to the perverted tribal alliances prevailing at the time, but he added that even as the bearer of the message of Islam - even as a Muslim - he still accepted its substance and would not hesitate to participate again. That statement is of particular significance for Muslims, and at least three major teachings can be derived from it. We have seen that the Prophet had been advised to make good use of his past, but here the reflection goes even further: Muhammad acknowledges a pact that was established before the beginning of Revelation and which pledges to defend justice imperatively and to oppose the oppression of those who were destitute and powerless. This implies acknowledging that the act of laying out those principles is prior to and transcends belonging to Islam, because in fact Islam and its message came to confirm the substance of a treaty that human conscience had already independently formulated. Here, the Prophet clearly acknowledges the validity of a principle of justice and defense of the oppressed stipulated in a pact of the pre-Islamic era.”

“From the very start, the Prophet did not conceive the content of his message as the expression of pure otherness versus what the Arabs or the other societies of his time were producing. Islam does not establish a closed universe of reference but rather relies on a set of universal principles that can coincide with the fundamentals and values of other beliefs and religious traditions (those produced by a polytheistic society such as that of Mecca at the time). Islam is a message of justice that entails resisting oppression and protecting the dignity of the oppressed and the poor, and Muslims must recognize the moral value of a law or contract stipulating the requirement, whoever its authors and whatever the society, Muslim or not. Far from building an allegiance to Islam in which recognition and loyalty are exclusive to the community of faith, the Prophet strove to develop the believer’s conscience through adherence to principles transcending closed allegiances in the name of a primary loyalty to universal principles themselves. The last message brings nothing new to the affirmation of the principles of human dignity, justice, and equality: it merely recalls and confirms them. As regards moral values, the same intuition is present when the Prophet speaks of the qualities of individuals before and in Islam: ‘The best among you [as to their human and moral qualities] during the era before Islam [al-jahiliyyah] are the best in Islam, provided they understand it [Islam].’ The moral value of a human being reaches far beyond belonging to a particular universe of reference; within Islam, it requires added knowledge and understanding in order to grasp properly what Islam confirms (the principle of justice) and what it demands should be reformed.”

Thus, Muslims in their respective countries, following their religious edicts, should be humanistic nationalists of their respective countries devoted to the truth. To defend the wrong actions of Muslims is not in line with Islam. Prophet Muhammad himself said that Muslims must stop fellow Muslims from oppressing anyone, Muslim or non-Muslim. To quote the relevant Hadith (Shahi Bukhari, Volume 3, Book 43, Hadith Number 624)-

“Narated By Anas : Allah’s Apostle said, ‘Help your brother, whether he is an oppressor or he is an oppressed one.’ People asked, ‘O Allah’s Apostle! It is all right to help him if he is oppressed, but how should we help him if he is an oppressor?’ The Prophet said, ‘By preventing him from oppressing others’.”

That is indeed a major reason for Kashmiri Muslims to not act like a section of jingoistic Indian nationalists who blatantly refuse to believe that there are rogue elements in the Indian security forces responsible for human rights violations against innocent civilians and call all Kashmiri Muslims talking of such human rights violations to be liars for saying something that does not sound like music to their ears, on the issue of the Kashmiri Pandits. It is ridiculous to suggest that hundreds of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits left their homes, leaving their belongings, to settle in tents on the instructions of a governor to malign Kashmiri Muslims! From Arunadhati Roy in her column ‘Land and Freedom’ (Guardian, 22 Aug 2008), to Sanjay Kak in his address in a seminar in the University of Westminster, to even Yasin Malik, in his interview accessible on the blog ‘The Kashmir’, to Basharat Peer in his acclaimed book ‘Curfewed Night’, it has been clearly pointed out even by these supporters of Kashmiri ‘freedom’ that Kashmiri Pandits were targeted for their faith and their pro-India political convictions (which they were and indeed are entitled to, if one supports a plebiscite, though as mentioned earlier, that is to happen only if Pakistan gives up POK), and the economic class struggle rationalization given as an alternative to the conspiracy theory holds no water either, given that poor Kashmiri Pandits were targeted and asked to leave too, though that treatment was not meted out to rich Kashmiri Muslims merely on account of being rich, and it is completely bizarre and baseless to label all Kashmiri Pandits as having been IB agents, nor is it fair to blame them for the favourable treatment their ancestors got from the Dogra monarchy (going further back in time, their ancestors did also indeed get a raw deal from several Muslim rulers too, and such an argument is not very different from Hindu rightists in the rest of India seeking to exact revenge against today’s Muslims citing wrongdoings by Muslim rulers historically). And if human rights violations by rogue elements in the Indian security forces suffice to justify a right to secede, don’t atrocities by militants and the threats of many separatists (a Kashmiri Muslim friend of mine with pro-India political leanings did not cast his vote for the Lok Sabha elections in 2014 in curfew-time, when there is a high probability of visibility, for fear of being thrashed by separatist goons) suffice to write off those aspirations by the same logic? Given that the Kashmiri Pandits are an injured minority of Kashmir, any attempt at their rehabilitation should not be laced with conditions.

Down the ages, Kashmir has been a part of the cultural construct India has been, recognized by foreigners even when India was not a uniform political entity, and while certain contemporary Kashmiri historiographers with separatist leanings have portrayed Kashmir’s invasion by Akbar as incorporating Kashmir into India (though Akbar also invaded many other kingdoms now a part of India), Kashmir was earlier part of the Mauryan empire, Kushan empire, Gupta empire and Khilji empire too. Kashmiri historiographers writing in the Persian language across the centuries acknowledged the importance of the Rajatarangini, written in Sanskrit, as a Kashmiri historical classic. As Maulana Azad, a great scholar of Islam and author of the acclaimed Tarjuman-ul-Quran, pointed out, such has been the confluence of the pre-Islamic South Asian cultures (containing what Maulana said were their very own beautiful treasures) and Islamic influences (which, as he pointed out, were further enriching, and in some ways, even reform-motivating, especially in the context of social egalitarianism) that they are totally inseparable now (most Hindus, in their daily parlance, use ‘zyada’ rather than ‘adhik’, and Muslims too use words like ‘ghar’, which is derived from the Sanskrit word ‘grih’). In the Kashmiri context, there have been political errors on both sides, but the biggest danger to Kashmir comes from redefining its own identity, and even Yasin Malik has held fundamentalist brands of Islam as being more harmful to Kashmir than the Indian state. 

Pelting stones at security personnel provoking firings and further crippling the Kashmiri economy by way of shutdowns and interrupting education is going to do no good to Kashmir. No bullets, whether from regular guns, pellet guns or sonic guns, are non-lethal, nor are even tear gas shells, and if children accompany adults in the stone-pelting protests and the security forces aim for the legs, the bullets are indeed unfortunately going to hit the shorter children in their chests and heads, and protesters’ stones and security forces’ bullets are a danger for passersby as well.

The panacea to Kashmir’s many ecological and socioeconomic problems lies in taking an active interest in public policy issues (for instance, why does J&K still not have an institutionalized right to education like the rest of India?), not in holding the economy hostage to secessionist aspirations driven either by vendetta or an exclusionary history or theology. If the cry for ‘azadi’ is given up (as is largely the case with Punjab, Assam and Mizoram, that have made peace with themselves and with India), the troops would obviously have to be withdrawn sooner or later in any case, and the AFSPA and PSA would become history (very recently, the AFSPA has been lifted from Tripura). And while the extreme fringe of the Hindu right in India is problematic, India’s secular constitutional setup, especially the judiciary that has held secularism to be a basic, inalienable feature of the constitution that cannot be amended by the parliament and has, for example, convicted hundreds of Hindu rioters in connection with anti-Muslim massacres in Gujarat in 2002, such as in the Best Bakery, Ode, Sardarpura and Naroda Patiya, and the civil society are indeed certainly strong enough to keep Indian secularism intact, notwithstanding some cyber-vocal ranters, and even Modi, whose NDA coalition won with just a 38.5% vote-share (the majority not desiring him was not unanimous on an alternative, something like a hypothetical situation in which a candidate gets three out of ten votes, while seven other candidates get a vote each, leading the candidate with just three votes to win) at a time when anti-UPA resentment was justifiably at its peak, has had to vocally echo the idea of Indian secularism. There are Indian Muslims who are prominent public figures in all walks of life, and Indian Muslims certainly do enjoy better civil liberties and security of life and property than Muslims in Pakistan and many other Muslim-majority countries, not to speak of the non-Muslim minorities in those countries. Indeed, there is much exaggeration of Muslim victimhood in India, as I have discussed at length here.

In any case, the people of Muslim-majority Kashmir are actually least threatened by the Hindu right, and have much to gain from India’s economy (in spite of being a conflict zone, J&K has still been ahead of several other Indian states, having a higher literacy rate than Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh going by the 2011 census, and J&K is ahead of Himachal Pradesh and Goa in terms of GDP currently, and if the conflict were to abate, it can do much better!) and stable democracy, especially given the fact that there are many Kashmiri Muslims living and working elsewhere in India. Yes, the Indian state needs to give Kashmiris a healing touch and apologize for its wrongs, and the Indian society is undoubtedly now much more aware of Kashmir as a people’s issue rather than it just being an Indo-Pak border conflict than ever before (indeed, Kashmiris must be allowed to enjoy some autonomy within the Indian Union if they so desire, since that was clearly a prerequisite to the accession to India), but efforts at reconciliation are not meaningful without both sides being open-minded in their approach. Fortunately, I even personally know some Kashmiri Muslims living in the valley who think along the same lines and some of them are in our organization Global Youth India as well.

The author would like to profusely thank Lt. Gen. (Retd.) Ata Hasnain of the Indian Army for his guidance and support.

Karmanye Thadani

SOME MAINSTREAM NATIONAL MEDIA NARRATIVES ON THE ISSUE OF THE KASHMIRI PANDITS ARE SHAMEFUL

Given that the rehabilitation of the Kashmiri Hindus (also known as Kashmiri Pandits), most of whom felt compelled to leave the valley owing to a very real threat to their lives, is becoming a major issue of national debate, the national media has some left-liberal voices that are resorting to whataboutism, pointing to the genuine grievances of Kashmir’s Muslim majority vis-à-vis the Indian state (primarily human rights violations by rogue elements in the Indian military and paramilitary forces) to suggest that the idea of rehabilitating Kashmiri Hindus in separate colonies is a bad idea. One typical example of the same is this piece by one Najeeb Mubarki. 

For a background of what these left-liberals sympathetic to Muslim communalism stand for, you can read this piece by me on this very forum, which even specifically addresses the issue of the Kashmiri Hindus, and I may also clarify that I am not a Hindu rightist, having written a book aimed at addressing and dispelling anti-Muslim prejudices in the Indian context, which I would request everyone with even the mildest anti-Muslim resentment to persuse with an open mind. That said, let me reiterate the background of the problem of the Kashmiri Hindus here. When the secessionist Islamist militancy (the terms ‘Islamist’ and ‘Islamic’ are not the same, ‘Islamist’ referring to a totalitarian ideology of imposing supposedly Islamic values as also a sense of hostility to non-Muslims) erupted in Kashmir in 1989-90 as a reaction against an allegedly rigged election and suppression of peaceful protests against the same by the Indian state (no, I am not absolving the Indian state of wrongdoings, and it is indeed necessary for all sides in a conflict to accept the truth for there to be reconciliation), hundreds of innocent Kashmiri Hindu civilians were killed on account of their faith and pro-India political convictions, being seen as extensions of the Indian state (like innocent Tamil Muslims in Sri Lanka were targeted by Tamil Hindu secessionist insurgents, for not having shared the same secessionist aspirations), which was especially sad, given there had been near to complete Hindu-Muslim harmony in the Kashmir valley when the subcontinent was engulfed with riots during the partition of India (that led to the creation of Muslim-majority Pakistan) back in 1947, and a Kashmiri Hindu friend of mine once shared with me how his maternal grandfather, who was in Lahore in Pakistan at the time of the partition riots, traveled to his also Muslim-majority Kashmir, where it was safe. Many Muslim doctors in the Kashmir valley refused to cure the Kashmiri Hindus injured in attacks by militants in 1989-90, leading them to succumb to their injuries, and the refusal by those Muslim doctors had to do either with endorsement of the militants’ activities or out of fear of the militants, for the militants didn’t hesitate to shoot down even Muslims they perceived as enemies (and indeed, many Kashmiri Muslims seen as having a pro-India posturing, like ailing bed-ridden cleric Maulana Masoodi, were actually gunned down by the militants, similar to Professor Asali, a Middle Eastern Muslim, having to pay for his critique of the ISIS for its maltreatment of Middle Eastern Christians with his own life, or how many moderate Sri Lankan Tamil Hindus were killed by terrorists from their own community). The killings were often accompanied by rapes and other atrocities, other than many non-combatant Kashmiri Muslims shouting slogans from mosques asking the Kashmiri Hindus to leave, leading an overwhelming majority of the Kashmiri Hindus who had till then survived the militancy to make an exit from the valley (some tolerant Kashmiri Muslims gave their Hindu friends asylum in their homes in those troubled times and helped them escape safely, just like Kurdish Muslims in the Middle East have recently been trying to protect Yazidis from the ISIS), which had been their homeland for centuries. Some Hindus, on leaving the valley, died of sunstroke and stress, and on making the exit from the valley, they were made to live in shoddy tents in the midst of insects and scorpions, by the Indian government.

Strangely enough, there is a conspiracy theory circulating in Kashmir that there was no major threat to the Hindu minority and they left their homes only to malign the Muslims in the valley, and here’s a well-written piece by Kashmiri Hindu writer Rahul Pandita (who has, by the way, also taken a firm stand against wrongdoings by rogue elements in the Indian security forces against Kashmiri Muslims, saying that he has lost his home but not his humanity) exposing the hollowness of this theory. There are, however, several rational and intellectually honest Kashmiri Muslims (including some I know personally, such as pro-India Kashmiri Sunni writer Sualeh Keen, whose brilliantly articulated defence of Rahul Pandita’s book Our Moon Has Blood Clots against the allegations levelled by one Kashmiri separatist Gowhar Fazili is a must-read!), even among the separatists, who do not subscribe to this ludicrous conspiracy theory. Basharat Peer, a Kashmiri separatist writer, author of the acclaimed non-fiction novel Curfewed Night belongs to this category, and even a prominent former militant Yasin Malik has acknowledged that militants had targeted the Kashmiri Hindus in those “dark” days of 1989-90 (interestingly, there is as much rationale to hold Malik, a hero of very many Kashmiri Muslims, guilty, certainly at least by association, of the Kashmiri Hindus’ killings, as to hold Modi guilty of the anti-Muslim carnage in Gujarat in 2002, but there is a deafening silence against Yasin Malik in ‘liberal’ circles) and some of them have even taken up the Kashmiri Hindus’ cause in the United Nations human rights bodies. Unlike in the case of the carnage in Gujarat in 2002 in which hundreds of Hindu rioters have been convicted for massacres like the ones in the Best Bakery, Ode, Sardarpura and Naroda Patiya, none of the militants who targeted Kashmiri Hindus have been convicted. In fact, the local Kashmiri Muslim policemen didn’t even pursue the cases against the murderers of the Kashmiri Hindus seriously, leading the perpetrators of these crimes to not be convicted. In one such case involving militant Bitta Karate, who had confessed to his crimes in a recorded interview, the judge was led to remark–

“The court is aware of the fact that the allegations levelled against the accused are of serious nature and carry a punishment of death sentence or life imprisonment but the fact is that the prosecution has shown total disinterest in arguing the case...”

Like the killings of Muslims by Hindu extremists in Gujarat, this too has been a sad Indian reality. Even the writer Arunadhati Roy, who has been a strong supporter of the Kashmiris’ right to secede from India (a conviction I do not share), has, to her credit (and I say so despite not in the least being her fan), unlike many of her somewhat like-minded comrades, been intellectually honest enough to state clearly that what she describes as the freedom struggle in Kashmir “cannot by any means call itself pristine, and will always be stigmatised by, and will some day”, she says she hopes, “have to account for, among other things, the brutal killings of Kashmiri Pandits in the early years of the uprising, culminating in the exodus of almost the entire Hindu community from the Kashmir valley.”

Even after most of the Kashmiri Hindus left the valley in 1989-90, there have been sporadic incidents of mass murders of those who chose to stay back, perhaps the most significant example being the Wandhama massacre of 1998. However, it is noteworthy that even prior to the eruption of the militancy in 1989, in spite of largely peaceful relations between the Hindus and Muslims of the valley, the minority Hindu community had seen its share of violence and vandalism, for example, in 1963, when the Mo-e-Muqaddas, which is believed to be a strand of Prophet Muhammad’s hair, was stolen from a shrine in the valley or in 1986 in the town of Anantnag, and sporadically on other occasions too, like stones being thrown at their houses if India won a cricket match against Pakistan.

Coming to the current scenario, while I am against any kind of ghettoisation normally, be it even intellectual ghettoisation in terms of schools of thought, the repeated assertion that Kashmiri Hindus must be willing to live in live in mixed settlements if they want to return is similar to Subramanian Swamy's rants that every Indian Muslim must proclaim himself/herself to be of Hindu ancestry to enjoy voting rights. It is not for the majority to dictate to the minority as to how the latter must choose to integrate, isn't it? And Kashmiri Hindus are an injured minority of Kashmir, and while I won't deny that a certain section of Kashmiri Hindus has become bitterly communal (though there is no dearth of them who are rational and impartial, in spite of what they underwent, and the rather violent protests by some communal Kashmiri Muslims only strengthen the communalists among the Kashmiri Hindus, though it must be noted that there are rational and impartial Kashmiri Muslims, including some I know personally, raising their voices against their communal co-religionists too) owing to what was inflicted upon them, the fact is that no section of Kashmiri Hindus has, asserting its communitarian identity, been involved in harming Kashmiri Muslims, and so, any attempt at a 'welcome back' for Kashmiri Hindus should be without 'if's and 'but's.

Now, coming to the article from the mainstream media cited at the outset of the piece. The author of that piece, who has a Muslim name, uses the well-known abbreviation ‘KP’ for ‘Kashmiri Pandit’ and ‘KM’ for ‘Kashmiri Muslim’, and accepts that KPs were “forced to leave their homes”. However, further, he contends that given that KMs refuse to accept the fact that KPs were forced to leave their homes, and in general, believe in a narrative antagonistic to KPs (that only recalls those of them who subjugated KMs in collaboration with the Dogra monarchy, but not those who protested against the Dogra monarchy alongside the KMs), and assert that they suffered more, the idea of a KP return in separate enclaves is not a good idea, and while KP return is desirable, their security should be entrusted to the Muslim majority of the valley but not policemen or army men. How does he expect even a well-intentioned non-combatant KM to protect KPs in times of crisis? Who is he to decide for KPs how they would like to exercise their legitimate right to return? He also makes a sweeping generalization about KPs who didn’t leave the valley being in opposition to such separate zones, though Sanjay Tickoo, their perhaps most prominent leader, has said that even the KPs of his ilk should be accommodated in such settlements. And so much for some KPs joining KMs in the protest against separate colonies, it actually turned out that some of those Hindus were Biharis and not KPs! He has also made passing references to UN resolutions and the issue of Kashmiri self-determination, and that has been delved into later in this piece.

Next, while this is not a narrative from the mainstream media, let me cite another narrative from the social media-

“The only anxiety that exists is around separate townships for them, and it's a valid concern. It's humiliating and communal, and casteist. Safety is ensured by living together, not by segregation. Fanatics sponsored either by Pakistan or by India can attack these settlements, and create communal frenzy, resulting in subsequent butchering of Muslims as collective punishment. Let's admit it, this has happened. Plz recollect Chhitisinghpora and Pathribal. Also, traditionally Brahmins have lived in segregated areas known as Agraharams. All the non-Brahmans in Kashmir are Muslims, and there was minority rule in Kashmir, by the Hindu Brahmins over the lower caste Muslims (until the workers movement of 1930s, Sheikh Abdullah's land reforms and educational reforms, that is). This is no different from the caste system elsewhere. Having separate settlements for them is as idiotic as it's communal and casteist.”

My reaction to the same, written on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/mvjkl/permalink/1041914775836954/), is stated hereunder-

“fanatic hindus butchering muslims in overwhelmingly muslim-majority kashmir, with an overwhelmingly muslim-majority police and an almost inevitably muslim CM answerable to a muslim-majority electorate! and fanatics from pakistan attacking these settlements? so, no faith in the local muslim policemen, many of whom have died fighting separatist militants?

what about fanatics among kashmiri muslims killing innocent kashmiri pandits in their settlements as collective punishment for wrongs by the indian state or imagined wrongs by KPs? *that* is something that has happened, even on occasions like the disappearance of the mo-e-muqaddas in 1963, in spite of no evidence of the involvement of KPs or the indian state!

and why is every non-dalit hindu like me branded as casteist by these leftists? isn't that a communal stereotype, like imagining all muslim men to be sexist? and why is she going back to the dogra period of history, neglecting that KPs certainly did not rule kashmir after 1947?

and KPs, being the injured minority that they are, deserve rehabilitation on their own terms, without 'if's and 'buts's, so long as the legitimate rights of kashmiri muslims are not violated...”

Further, given that the 25^th anniversary of the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits was observed in 2014, there was a piece by Swaminathan Aiyar, a noted columnist, on their problem, but he side-tracked into whataboutism pertaining to what the Jammuite Muslims suffered during the partition riots of 1947 and at the hands of the Dogra monarchy in the wake of a pro-Pakistan rebellion by Muslims in the Poonch district of Jammu, citing the book Kashmir: The Unwritten History by Australian strategic analyst Christopher Snedden, which has been hailed by Kashmiri separatists, and Aiyar suggests that this has been concealed by the Indian media in furtherance of India’s national interests. However, this contention of his doesn’t hold water, for Indian narratives do acknowledge the partition riots across the subcontinent being horrendous (while Jammu was affected, Kashmir hardly was) and the rule of the Dogra monarchy as being oppressive.

Let us then begin the story from when the “Kashmir issue”, as we know it, began, and subsequently, even examine the UN resolutions and the issue of Kashmiri self-determination. To start with, it was the Pakistani establishment that tried to coercively capture the erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, which had been a part of Britain’s Chamber of Princes in undivided India (unlike Nepal, Bhutan and Balochistan), and the Pakistani tribesmen and soldiers raped and plundered people of all faiths, though the Hindu minority of Kashmir was particularly targeted. The claim of the Pakistani and pro-Pakistan propagandists that the invasion was legitimate, for Jammu and Kashmir was a Muslim-majority province with a Hindu ruler, with the Muslim majority unanimously desirous of joining Pakistan, to start with, is dubious. Why do I say so? To examine this, let me cite certain passages from the book  by  Christopher Snedden, which is, by no means, pro-India on the whole and as mentioned earlier, has been hailed by many Kashmiri separatists (some of the excerpts are lengthy but definitely make an interesting read and are highly relevant to the topic)-

“despite the fact that J&K had a Muslim-majority population, the political inclinations of the people of J&K were far more complex and uncertain” (page 10)

“neither India nor Pakistan was guaranteed majority popular support” (page 12)

“J&K was politically disunited by forces that had strong- and differing- post-British desires for the princely state's status.” (page 27)

“Despite J&K’s inherent disunity, Hari Singh’s accession would have been much simpler had Muslims in J&K been united in their desire for the state’s future status.  Indeed, Muslim disunity is one of the most significant explanations of why the so-called Kashmir dispute began – and continues.” (page 35)

“…the core of the problem in J&K was its people.  They were ethnically, religiously and culturally diverse, diffuse and different; they lacked religious and political unity; they were divided in their aspirations for J&K’s future international status.” (pages 35, 36)

“An important trait evident among Kashmiris partially explains why Kashmiri Muslims were ambivalent about Pakistan in 1947.  Called ‘Kashmiriness’ or ‘Kashmiriyat’, a newer term with Perso-Arabic roots, this trait was a fundamental and apparently long-held part of Kashmiri identity and culture.  Kashmiriness emphasises ‘the acceptance and tolerance of all religions among Kashmiris’.  It is ‘manifested in the solidarity of different faiths and ethnic groups in the state’.  The concept was apparently epitomized by the patron saint of Kashmir, Sheikh Noor-ud-Din, a Muslim born in 1375 of a Hindu convert to Islam.  Popularly known as Nund Rishi, he repeatedly poses a question in a poem; ‘How can members of the same family jeer at one another?’ The answer is the essence of Kashmiriness; Kashmiris, whoever they are and whatever their religious backgrounds and practices, are all members of one indivisible Kashmir Valley ‘family’.  It is a recipe – or even a requirement – for tolerance.

One significant consequence of Kashmiriness was that, compared with Hindus and Muslims in Jammu or northern India, Kashmiri Muslims and Kashmiri Hindus (Pandits) had relatively few social divisions or antagonisms.  While they nevertheless had disputes and rivalries, the two groups generally were more liberal and more tolerant and, in many cases, had amicable, even close relations.  This harmony arose because both shared the same ethnicity, language and geographical region and the same recent history under repressive rulers comprising Muslim Afghans (Durranis), Punjabi Sikhs (Ranjit Singh’s empire) and Jammu Hindus (Dogras), although the latter was less repressive for Pandits.  It was important that Kashmiri Muslims and Kashmiri Pandits also enjoyed a similar culture, including revering each other’s religious figures and festivals, eating halal mutton instead of beef or pork (even though Pandits were of the Brahmin or priestly caste that elsewhere usually practised vegetarianism), and not being particular about ‘defilement or pollution by touch’.   As a leading Pandit put it, ‘Racially, culturally and linguistically the Hindus and Muslims living in Kashmir [were] practically one’.  That said, Kashmiri Pandits also enjoyed greater influence and economic wellbeing than Kashmiri Muslims.  This was due to the Pandits’ position as Hindu subjects of a Hindu ruler, from which flowed benefits such as being landowners and their numerically large involvement as state employees.  Nevertheless, relations between Kashmiri Muslims and Kashmiri Pandits generally were far more amicable than the relations between Hindu and Muslims in Jammu Province.

One significant result of the concept of Kashmiriness was that Kashmiris may have been naturally attracted to secular thinking.  This was partly because they were apparently nor afflicted by the ‘majority-minority complex’ that was evident among Muslims in other parts of the subcontinent, and partly because they were ‘a deeply religious people who abhor[red] politically exploitation of their faith.  Hence, the pro-Pakistan stance of the major pro-Pakistan party in J&K, the Muslim Conference, and its Pakistan ally the Muslim League was not automatically popular with Kashmiri Muslims.  To join Pakistan simply because it would be a Muslim homeland was an insufficient reason.” (pages 18-20)

“A further factor that caused Kashmiris to be ambivalent about Pakistan was the significant role played in 1947 by Sheikh Abdullah and the political party that he dominated, the National Conference.  Abdullah’s role in J&K is very important.  For over fifty years (1931-82), he was Muslim Kashmiris’ most popular politician, whether in power or denied it.  (Abdullah was jailed for long periods by the Maharaja, by Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed, his successor as Prime Minister in J&K, and by the Indian Government).  According to his autobiography, Abdullah’s political career began as early as 1926, when he joined the ‘relentless struggle between the oppressor and the oppressed’ and, desiring to become the people’s savior, began to oppose the Maharaja’s regime and its practices on an individual basis.  He disliked a number of the Maharaja’s practices, including discrimination on religious grounds, exploitation of the people through taxation, corruption, the inequitable land system, and the people’s lack of political freedom.  Abdullah sprang to prominence in 1931 during the major anti-Maharaja agitation in Srinagar, and event of ‘seminal importance’ that temporarily – but severely – challenged Hari Singh’s rule.  Indeed, it was due to Abdullah’s bold part in this uprising that he became known as the Lion of Kashmir.  A further consequence of this major uprising was that, as a result of the Glancy Commission formed in order to investigate the uprising’s causes, the Maharaja allowed the formation of the first political party in J&K.  In October 1932, the All J&K Muslim Conference was formed in order to safeguard Muslim interest in J&K.  Abdullah, a Muslim, later remained this party the All J&K National Conference.  Espousing secularism, it would later play a significant role in delivering a large part of J&K to India and in ending the Maharaja’s rule.

Because Sheikh Abdullah had a strong aversion to autocracy, he regarded the concept of Pakistan negatively.  Abdullah disliked the Maharaja absolutism.  The United States’ Consul in Lahore agreed: saying, ‘according to all disinterested informants [the Maharaja] has never displayed the slightest interest in the welfare of the people over whom he has maintained an autocratic rule.  For Sheikh Abdullah, both Jinnah and the Islamic Pakistan that the autocratic Muslim League leader envisaged establishing were also unappealing.  The influential Kashmiri leader considered that Pakistan was the result of an emotional Muslim reaction of Hindu communalism and ‘an escapist device’.  Abdullah and his colleagues, many of whom were Muslims, also received (correctly) that Pakistan would be dominated by feudal elements, as well as being a society in which Kashmiris and their reform agenda would have little power: ‘Chains of slavery will keep us in their continuous strangehold.  Conversely, Abdullah considered that secular India would be different.  It would have people and parties, including India’s major party, the Indian National Congress, whose views largely coincided with Abdullah and his party. India also represented an option that would accept the National Conference’s enlightened and progressive ideas’.  It embraced more democracy that either Pakistan or the Jinnah-dominated Muslim League, ‘whose leader had a very high opinion of himself’.” (page 21)

Speaking of the pro-Pakistan Muslim Conference formed in 1941, Snedden says-


“…the Muslim Conference faced a major challenge in the numerically and politically important Kashmir Valley; it lacked a charismatic Kashmiri-speaking politician who could rival Sheikh Abdullah and his coterie of Kashmiri colleagues.  The Muslim Conference’s stance also was unpopular elsewhere, especially among the non-Muslim majority in eastern Jammu, as its killings of Muslims were clearly showing.” (page 24)

“Although Jinnah (falsely) believed that J&K would fall into Pakistan’s ‘lap like a ripe fruit’ once the Maharaja realized his and the people’s interests and acceded to Pakistan, and although he was prepared to allow the Maharaja’s ‘autocratic government’ to continue, support for independence enabled pro-Pakistan forces to woo the decision maker rather than the people.  This approach was pragmatic.  However, it also made the Muslim Conference appear keen to gain the Maharaja’s support at any cost.  And although this tactic adhered to Jinnah’s statement in July 1947 that princely rulers were free to join Pakistan, India or remain independent, many Muslin Conference members wanted their party’s support for independence reversed.  Also, by allowing the ruler to decide the issue, the Muslim Conference enabled its National Conference rival to advance the populist – and eminently mire ‘sellable’ – view that the people should be given self-government so that, ‘armed with authority and responsibility, [they] could decide for themselves where their interests lay’.  Apart from advancing its own popularity, the National Conference’s stance also served to reveal the Muslim Conference as simply an appendage or surrogate of the Muslim League – as it was.

The Muslim Conference’s pragmatic approach towards the Maharaja built on a previous stance Jinnah instigated during the National Conference’s ‘Quit Kashmir’ campaign that started on 20 May 1946 with the aim of ridding J&K of Dogra rule.  This campaign was significant between the positions of Jinnah and Nehru on J&K.  Jinnah opposed Quit Kashmir as a movement ‘engineered by some malcontents’.  This stance, coupled with his lack of criticism of J&K’s unpopular ruler, particularly when compared with criticisms made by Nehru and the Indian National Congress, made Jinnah appear pro-Maharaja.  This lost the Muslim League leader support among Kashmiri Muslims, especially among the ‘malcontents’, most of whom were National Conference members.  Indeed, one such National Conference member, Mir Qasim (who later became the Chief Minister of Indian J&K), believed that Jinnah’s unpopular and insensitive attitude ‘killed the chances of Kashmir going to Pakistan’.  The Muslim Conference lost credibility because it did not initially oppose the Maharaja when Quit Kashmir commenced in May 1946 – a policy Jinnah ordered because he believed that the party would do better working through constitutional channels.” (page 26)


“…the Muslim Conference appeared to be steadily lose support, certainly in the Kashmir Valley, owing to poor leadership and increased factionalism; conversely, support for the National Conference increased because it was united and had strong leadership.” (page 27)


I may add to this that Jinnah, in his visit to Kashmir in 1941, received much hostility from sections of Kashmiri Muslims and conceded that he did not get unanimous support. To add to that, when he sent an envoy to Kashmir in 1943 to assess whether Kashmiris would be willing to join Pakistan, his envoy gave him a response, which, to use the language of acclaimed historian Alex von Tunzelmann, was "disheartening" (The Indian Summer, p. 284). Jinnah tried to play his own politics in Kashmir, using the minister Ramchandra Kak, a Kashmiri Hindu, as a Trojan horse, but failed, and you can read about the same here.


It may be added that Shaikh Abdullah continued to be popular with Kashmiri Muslims after his having taken a stand in favour of India and after the Dogra monarchy was displaced, Abdullah ensured that land reforms were carried out by abolishing landlordism and giving peasants ownership over land, which won him tremendous affection from the people of the valley. Pakistan had retained the feudal system of landlordism, as it still has, and many Kashmiri Muslims realized that the land reforms in Kashmir were possible owing to Kashmir being a part of India rather than Pakistan. To quote the noted scholar Michael Brecher from his book The Struggle for Kashmir-

“The vast majority of Kashmiris have benefited from these reforms and many of those interviewed by the author expressed the feat that in Pakistan, where no comparable land reforms have taken place, the land recently given to them might be returned to the landlords or, in any event, that further implementation of the 'New Kashmir' programme will be impossible.” (cited in the 2002 paperback edition of MJ Akbar's book Kashmir - Beyond the Vale on page 139)

Abdullah had clearly stated in the context of Pakistan-

“The most powerful argument which can be advanced in her favour is that Pakistan is a Muslim State, and, a big majority of our people being Muslims the State must accede to Pakistan.  This claim of being a Muslim State is of course only a camouflage.  It is a screen to dupe the common man, so that he may not see clearly that Pakistan is a feudal state in which a clique is trying by these methods to maintain itself in power...” (cited in the 2002 paperback edition of MJ Akbar's book Kashmir - Beyond the Vale on page 139)


Even today, there are Kashmiri Muslims, including those who want their region to be an independent country, who acknowledge that back then, Abdullah had made the right decision by opting for India. As one such person has articulated-


“The first question that comes to mind is would the Pakistani establishment quash the Feudal or Zamindari systems in Kashmir handing the land over to the tillers? Do keep in mind that even today Pakistan is a feudal society with most of the land in the hands of the Punjabi Chaudhrys. I mean all that the Kashmiri Hindus and Dogra land owners had to do was convert to Islam and just like the Punjabi Chaudhrys of Pakistan continue with the feudal system.”


He further says-


“Now picture yourself as a common Kashmiri filling the chillum of a Punjabi Pakistani Chaudhry or that of a Kashmiri Hindu/Dogra Feudal lord with tobacco and ask yourself this question.............how smart was Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah?”

And by the way, Islam as a religion emphasizes socioeconomic egalitarianism and the first land reforms in world history were carried out by the caliph Hazrat Umar Bin Khattab, and so, it is particularly shameful that Pakistan, calling itself an Islamic state, still has an institutionalized zamindari system, asPakistani liberal Hasan Nisar points out!

However, coming back to Kashmir, the pointers raised  as justifications for Pakistan’s armed actions either take the form of whataboutism with respect to India’s stand on the Muslim-ruled, Hindu-majority Hyderabad and Junagadh, or cite the pro-Pakistan rebellion in Poonch before the Pathan tribal raid (the latter point became popular to cite after Snedden’s book mentioned it).

The Poonch rebellion does go to show that the Dogra king was unpopular among his subjects, but that is something already acknowledged by Indians and Pakistanis alike. From the Indian point of view, Jawaharlal Nehru’s trips to Kashmir in which he peacefully took on the monarchy and even faced arrest in the princely state are well-known. But when he assumed the role of India’s prime minister, Nehru did not engage in such adventures and did not interfere, at least blatantly, in the internal affairs of Jammu and Kashmir, which would amount to disrespecting sovereignty.

It may have very well been legitimate for the pro-Pakistan Muslims of Poonch to rise in armed revolt against their king, just as it may have been legitimate for the pro-India Shaikh Abdullah to lead peaceful movements against the monarchy in the valley (and Shaikh Abdullah’s mass struggle had a history predating the Poonch rebellion in 1947), but how do these become the starting point of what we conventionally understand as the “Kashmir issue” involving India, Pakistan and the people of the (now erstwhile) princely state? And if the Poonch rebellion is indeed taken as the starting point, it can only be on two grounds - the first being that these rebels wanted accession to Pakistan [in Snedden’s words-“The only way the Maharaja could possibly appease Poonch Muslims would be to accede to Pakistan; they would not have settled for anything less.” (page 32)] and the second being that there were elements in Pakistan that supported the rebellion. To quote from Snedden’s interview given to Tehelka correspondent Baba Umar (who is a Kashmiri separatist and happens to be an acquaintance of mine)-“there was some degree of support from the Pakistan government”.

Let us examine both points one by one. As regards Poonch Muslims wanting accession to Pakistan, this hardly goes very far in suggesting that the majority of the populace in the whole of the erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir favoured accession to Pakistan, as the excerpts from not only Snedden’s book but even other sources stated above, demonstrate.

So, even if the Muslims of Poonch were united in the demand for the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to Pakistan, the people (even Muslims) of the entire princely state were not, and indeed, it has been no one’s case that there wasn’t a pro-Pakistan section among the people of the erstwhile princely state, but Snedden himself concedes that it cannot be said with certainty as to what the aspirations of the majority of the populace were. Hence, Pakistan’s case for claiming Jammu and Kashmir solely on the basis of its Muslim majority falls flat, as opposed to India’s case for a majority of people in the princely states of Hyderabad and Junagadh desiring to join India, which was proved by subsequent plebiscites. The hurdle in the plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir came not from India, which had already promised the Kashmiris a plebiscite, but Pakistan, which, in violation of the 1948 UN resolution, refused to withdraw its troops from the part of the erstwhile princely state it had occupied in the 1947-48 war following the Pashtun tribal raid, which, as per the resolution, was a precursor to the plebiscite. Nehru had, in fact, gone on record even later to say that he was willing to follow the UN resolution (i.e. conduct the plebiscite) in the whole of the erstwhile princely state if Pakistan complied with the precondition of withdrawing its troops, as can be seen from this video (watch 1:58 onwards). Now, it must be mentioned that many Kashmiri separatists who haven’t read the UN resolution and just know that it calls for a plebiscite often invoke the UN resolution, but when made to realize that the resolution is not exactly what they claim it to be, their entire stance changes to ridiculing international law itself being irrelevant and a conspiracy of Western powers, a stance diametrically opposite to the one they took before learning of what the resolution entailed!

However, if they support self-determination as an absolute right, which is to say that any part of any country should be unilaterally allowed to secede at will, would they support any household declaring itself as a separate country and not paying taxes, desiring to have diplomatic relations with their country, or any district of the independent Jammu and Kashmir they envisage to secede at will? Pray, quite the contrary, their leaders do not wish to give Hindu-majority Jammu and Buddhist-majority Ladakh that right in the independent country they envisage! And speaking of Pakistanis and those who are pro-Pakistan, given the secessionist voices in Sindh and the secessionist or pro-Afghanistan voices in Khyber Pakhtoonwa, are they willing to conduct plebiscites in these particular provinces?

Also, when Shaikh Abdullah had later started vacillating in the 1950s between Kashmir being a part of India with some autonomy, and being an independent country altogether (Pakistan was still not an option for him, and a reason for vacillating from his firm pro-India stance was his concern over Hindu majoritarianism in India, which had manifested itself even in the killing of Mahatma Gandhi), and Nehru had him imprisoned, Nehru did, on the other hand, again offer Pakistan a plebiscite! To be quote the eminent writer MJ Akbar on this point, from his highly acclaimed book Kashmir – Behind the Vale(2002 paperback edition)-

“Within a fortnight of arresting Abdullah for asking too much of Delhi, Jawaharlal Nehru completely reversed India’s position and offered Pakistan a plebiscite!

The Prime Minister of Pakistan, now Mohammad Ali, came to Delhi on an official visit.  In the talks Nehru suggested that after the two Prime Ministers had finalized the preliminary issues, a plebiscite administrator could be named by April 1954.  He even told Mohammad Ali that voting could be done in the whole state rather than separate Hindu & Muslim regions, and if this meant the loss of the whole Valley, he was prepared for it!  The offer was confirmed in a letter to Mohammad Ali on 3 September.” (page 154)

“The only condition Nehru placed was that the American UN nominee Admiral Nimitz be replaced ad Plebiscite Administrator by someone form a smaller country.  Deeply suspicious of the US, he did not want this superpower’s hand in the plebiscite.” (page 154)


“If there were any doubts about Nehru’s sincerity in those years about the plebiscite commitment, then surely they should have ended with this proposal.” (page 154)

Akbar further mentions how Pakistan’s insistence on the US admiral led Nehru to withdraw the offer. For more on how Pakistan sought to avoid a plebiscite, see this.

In fact, Pakistan's stand was always to go purely by the will of the ruler, by virtue of which it had sought to engage Hindu-majority princely states like Hyderabad, Junagadh, and even Jodhpur and Jaisalmer (in Jodhpur and Jaisalmer, even the rulers were Hindu, unlike Hyderabad and Junagadh) to join it. It had never basically adopted the principle of a plebiscite, to begin with.

Speaking of the second point of how the Pakistani state machinery supported or at least allowed non-state actors to support an armed rebellion in Poonch, does acknowledging this help Pakistan’s case? Certainly not, as it would amount to blatant disregard for international law! It is already embarassing for the Pakistani state to admit that its non-state actors (Pashtuns) had infiltrated into another territory! And on this point, we may delve a little more into the legal status of the erstwhile princely state following India’s independence. The princely states were, after the British government taking control over India from the British East India Company, following the Revolt of 1857, no longer the subsidiary but sovereign powers they were prior to that but subordinated officially to the British Crown, as Queen Victoria proclaiming herself to be the Empress of India, demonstrated as also the Chamber of Princes in New Delhi. However, once the British left India, the princely states re-emerged as sovereign entities, with the lapse of British paramountcy as becomes clear from Section 2 of the Indian Independence Act, 1947, meeting all the four criteria established under Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention on Rights and Duties of States, which are stated hereunder verbatim-


(a) a permanent population;

(b) a defined territory;

(c) government;

and

(d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.

As regards the first three clauses, little explanation is required. But if there’s any ambiguity about the last one, mention may be made of the standstill agreements many of the princely states entered into with India and Pakistan, which they were authorized to do by the British.  In this connection, those who understand Hindi can watch this video (from 11:12 to 13:06).

And Jammu and Kashmir had entered into a standstill agreement with Pakistan (something that Snedden mentions in his book on page 9), which was violated by the latter during the 1947 aggression. The very fact that the princely states could voluntarily accede to any country again reflects their sovereign character. However, the British had made it clear unofficially that the princely states must opt for India or Pakistan. To quote Snedden on this point-

“Powerbrokers in 1947 also were influenced by the method used to decolonize Princely India (as against British-controlled India), whereby each ruler was deemed to have the power – and, indeed, was expected – to accede to either India or Pakistan.  Princely states therefore were considered to be indivisible and without any independent future.  Neither the departing British nor the future leaders of India and Pakistan sought partition of any princely state along religious lines, nor would they countenance independence for any of them.  Instead, the British encouraged each princely ruler to consider geographical factors and the will of his subjects in deciding his accession.  Even though the accession would clearly impact on all of the prince’s subjects, nevertheless there were no legal requirements or popular pressures for the ruler to consider either factor.  He alone would decide the accession.  And, once it was decided, the expectation was that all of his princely state would, along with the ruler, join the new dominion of his choice.” (page 7)

While the British did convey to the princes that they must opt for India or Pakistan [this is testified by great Indian nationalist leader Maulana Azad’s account in his autobiography India Wins Freedom that as early as in 1942, Sir Stafford Cripps, a British politician representing his government, on a visit to India, “told the Maharaja of Kashmir that the future of the States was with India”, that “(n)o prince should for a moment think that the British Crown would come to his help if he decided to opt out”  and that “(t)he princes must therefore look up to the Indian Government and not the British Crown for their future” (page 61 of the 2009 reprint) – the  demand for Pakistan wasn’t being seriously considered then; if Lord Mountbatten's account as narrated to Larry Collins and Domique Lapierre in their book Freedom at Midnight is true, then Mountbatten had also tried hard to convice Raja Hari Singh to not entertain fancies of independence], there was no legal obligation upon them to do so. Thus, legally, it was for the ruler to decide and in this case, he opted for India, and Alistair Lamb’s contention that the instrument of accession did not exist on paper has now been disproved with the document being brought out in the public domain. If the counterargument is made to run that popular support ought to have been the basis, as was the case in Hyderabad and Junagadh, then the rebuttal to that has already been stated above (i.e. that Pakistan did not withdraw its troops, and having to do so was a precursor to the plebiscite), and it may be added that Pakistan did not conduct any plebiscite while getting the ruler of Balochistan, which, like Nepal and Bhutan, was not even legally a part of India, to coercively sign the instrument of accession in its favour.

Thus, with all the emphasis given by Snedden to the Poonch rebellion, his contention that it would suit Pakistan to highlight the same or that it, in any way, tilts the narrative in its favour, is a flawed conclusion, even in the light of much of what he has said in that very book! In fact, on the other hand, the Pakistani narrative so far had only stressed the atrocities of the king's army in Poonch (to justify the Pashtun tribal raid), trying to overlook that they were armed rebels backed by the Pakistani state, and this fact exposed by Snedden only makes Pakistan guilty of violating sovereignty, which is the cornerstone of international law!


Other than the Poonch rebellion, Snedden has also highlighted that in Jammu, there were communal riots in 1947-1948 as a result of the partition of India (something Swaminathan Aiyar has also highlighted), in which both Hindus and Muslims lost their lives (though Kashmir was largely free from such violence), but again, that only goes to show that there was a section of pro-Pakistan Muslims in the erstwhile princely state, and as we have discussed above, that is something no one denies and doesn’t take us very far.

The tragedy of the Kashmiri Hindus is very real, and so is the issue of their legitimate right to return to the valley. The Indian civil society cannot choose to be silent on this crucial issue, also because silence on legitimate concerns like these cedes the space to the Hindu right.


Karmanye Thadani

PAKISTAN HAS NOT CREATED ANY GOOD ATMOSPHERE IN KASHMIR

At a time when militants have struck the valley, leading to deaths of local policemen (many of them Muslims), but nonetheless, our minister General VK Singh graced a Pakistan Day function, and when a certain section of Kashmiri Muslims is violently protesting against the return of those from the Hindu minority displaced from the valley (though there is also a vocal section of Kashmiri Muslims, including some I know personally, opposing such communalists in their midst), it becomes necessary to reflect on the statement of the current chief minister Mufti Muhammad Sayeed as to whether Pakistan and the militants created a good atmosphere in the valley during the latest state elections. In fact, this piece seeks not only to rebut what Mufti specifically said, but to debunk the notion that Pakistan has ever played any positive role in the resolution of the Kashmir issue, except perhaps on some very rare occasions, but even on those occasions, the Pakistani state was never a monolith in this regard. No, I am not attempting at engaging in anti-Pakistan hate-mongering, but to clear the historical record, and my stand on how Indians should view Pakistan has been spelled out in some detail in this article, and that is not the focus here. I may also clarify that India hasn’t been fully clean when it comes to the Kashmir issue, as I have discussed in this article, but that is not the focus here.

Let us begin the story from when the “Kashmir issue”, as we know it, began. To start with, it was the Pakistani establishment that tried to coercively capture the erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, which had been a part of Britain’s Chamber of Princes in undivided India (unlike Nepal, Bhutan and Balochistan), and the Pakistani tribesmen and soldiers raped and plundered people of all faiths, though the Hindu minority of Kashmir was particularly targeted. The claim of the Pakistani and pro-Pakistan propagandists that the invasion was legitimate, for Jammu and Kashmir was a Muslim-majority province with a Hindu ruler, with the Muslim majority unanimously desirous of joining Pakistan, to start with, is dubious. Why do I say so? To examine this, let me cite certain passages from a book Kashmir: The Unwritten History by Australian strategic analyst Christopher Snedden, which is, by no means, pro-India on the whole and has been hailed by many Kashmiri separatists (some of the excerpts are lengthy but definitely make an interesting read and are highly relevant to the topic)-

“despite the fact that J&K had a Muslim-majority population, the political inclinations of the people of J&K were far more complex and uncertain” (page 10)

“neither India nor Pakistan was guaranteed majority popular support” (page 12)

“J&K was politically disunited by forces that had strong- and differing- post-British desires for the princely state's status.” (page 27)

“Despite J&K’s inherent disunity, Hari Singh’s accession would have been much simpler had Muslims in J&K been united in their desire for the state’s future status. Indeed, Muslim disunity is one of the most significant explanations of why the so-called Kashmir dispute began – and continues.” (page 35)

“…the core of the problem in J&K was its people. They were ethnically, religiously and culturally diverse, diffuse and different; they lacked religious and political unity; they were divided in their aspirations for J&K’s future international status.” (pages 35, 36)

“An important trait evident among Kashmiris partially explains why Kashmiri Muslims were ambivalent about Pakistan in 1947. Called ‘Kashmiriness’ or ‘Kashmiriyat’, a newer term with Perso-Arabic roots, this trait was a fundamental and apparently long-held part of Kashmiri identity and culture. Kashmiriness emphasises ‘the acceptance and tolerance of all religions among Kashmiris’. It is ‘manifested in the solidarity of different faiths and ethnic groups in the state’. The concept was apparently epitomized by the patron saint of Kashmir, Sheikh Noor-ud-Din, a Muslim born in 1375 of a Hindu convert to Islam. Popularly known as Nund Rishi, he repeatedly poses a question in a poem; ‘How can members of the same family jeer at one another?’ The answer is the essence of Kashmiriness; Kashmiris, whoever they are and whatever their religious backgrounds and practices, are all members of one indivisible Kashmir Valley ‘family’. It is a recipe – or even a requirement – for tolerance.

One significant consequence of Kashmiriness was that, compared with Hindus and Muslims in Jammu or northern India, Kashmiri Muslims and Kashmiri Hindus (Pandits) had relatively few social divisions or antagonisms. While they nevertheless had disputes and rivalries, the two groups generally were more liberal and more tolerant and, in many cases, had amicable, even close relations. This harmony arose because both shared the same ethnicity, language and geographical region and the same recent history under repressive rulers comprising Muslim Afghans (Durranis), Punjabi Sikhs (Ranjit Singh’s empire) and Jammu Hindus (Dogras), although the latter was less repressive for Pandits. It was important that Kashmiri Muslims and Kashmiri Pandits also enjoyed a similar culture, including revering each other’s religious figures and festivals, eating halal mutton instead of beef or pork (even though Pandits were of the Brahmin or priestly caste that elsewhere usually practised vegetarianism), and not being particular about ‘defilement or pollution by touch’. As a leading Pandit put it, ‘Racially, culturally and linguistically the Hindus and Muslims living in Kashmir [were] practically one’. That said, Kashmiri Pandits also enjoyed greater influence and economic wellbeing than Kashmiri Muslims. This was due to the Pandits’ position as Hindu subjects of a Hindu ruler, from which flowed benefits such as being landowners and their numerically large involvement as state employees. Nevertheless, relations between Kashmiri Muslims and Kashmiri Pandits generally were far more amicable than the relations between Hindu and Muslims in Jammu Province.

One significant result of the concept of Kashmiriness was that Kashmiris may have been naturally attracted to secular thinking. This was partly because they were apparently nor afflicted by the ‘majority-minority complex’ that was evident among Muslims in other parts of the subcontinent, and partly because they were ‘a deeply religious people who abhor[red] politically exploitation of their faith. Hence, the pro-Pakistan stance of the major pro-Pakistan party in J&K, the Muslim Conference, and its Pakistan ally the Muslim League was not automatically popular with Kashmiri Muslims. To join Pakistan simply because it would be a Muslim homeland was an insufficient reason.” (pages 18-20)

“A further factor that caused Kashmiris to be ambivalent about Pakistan was the significant role played in 1947 by Sheikh Abdullah and the political party that he dominated, the National Conference. Abdullah’s role in J&K is very important. For over fifty years (1931-82), he was Muslim Kashmiris’ most popular politician, whether in power or denied it. (Abdullah was jailed for long periods by the Maharaja, by Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed, his successor as Prime Minister in J&K, and by the Indian Government). According to his autobiography, Abdullah’s political career began as early as 1926, when he joined the ‘relentless struggle between the oppressor and the oppressed’ and, desiring the become the people’s savior, began to oppose the Maharaja’s regime and its practices on an individual basis. He disliked a number of the Maharaja’s practices, including discrimination on religious grounds, exploitation of the people through taxation, corruption, the inequitable land system, and the people’s lack of political freedom. Abdullah sprang to prominence in 1931 during the major anti-Maharaja agitation in Srinagar, and event of ‘seminal importance’ that temporarily – but severely – challenged Hari Singh’s rule. Indeed, it was due to Abdullah’s bold part in this uprising that he became known as the Lion of Kashmir. A further consequence of this major uprising was that, as a result of the Glancy Commission formed in order to investigate the uprising’s causes, the Maharaja allowed the formation of the first political party in J&K. In October 1932, the All J&K Muslim Conference was formed in order to safeguard Muslim interest in J&K. Abdullah, a Muslim, later remained this party the All J&K National Conference. Espousing secularism, it would later play a significant role in delivering a large part of J&K to India and in ending the Maharaja’s rule.

Because Sheikh Abdullah had a strong aversion to autocracy, he regarded the concept of Pakistan negatively. Abdullah disliked the Maharaja absolutism. The United States’ Consul in Lahore agreed: saying, ‘according to all disinterested informants [the Maharaja] has never displayed the slightest interest in the welfare of the people over whom he has maintained an autocratic rule. For Sheikh Abdullah, both Jinnah and the Islamic Pakistan that the autocratic Muslim League leader envisaged establishing were also unappealing. The influential Kashmiri leader considered that Pakistan was the result of an emotional Muslim reaction of Hindu communalism and ‘an escapist device’. Abdullah and his colleagues, many of whom were Muslims, also received (correctly) that Pakistan would be dominated by feudal elements, as well as being a society in which Kashmiris and their reform agenda would have little power: ‘Chains of slavery will keep us in their continuous strangehold. Conversely, Abdullah considered that secular India would be different. I would have people and parties, including India’s major party, the Indian National Congress, whose views largely coincided with Abdullah and his party. India also represented an option that would accept the National Conference’s enlightened and progressive ideas’. It embraced more democracy that either Pakistan or the Jinnah-dominated Muslim League, ‘whose leader had a very high opinion of himself’.” (page 21)

Speaking of the pro-Pakistan Muslim Conference formed in 1941, Snedden says-

“…the Muslim Conference faced a major challenge in the numerically and politically important Kashmir Valley; it lacked a charismatic Kashmiri-speaking politician who could rival Sheikh Abdullah and his coterie of Kashmiri colleagues. The Muslim Conference’s stance also was unpopular elsewhere, especially among the non-Muslim majority in eastern Jammu, as its killings of Muslims were clearly showing.” (page 24)

“Although Jinnah (falsely) believed that J&K would fall into Pakistan’s ‘lap like a ripe fruit’ once the Maharaja realized his and the people’s interests and acceded to Pakistan, and although he was prepared to allow the Maharaja’s ‘autocratic government’ to continue, support for independence enabled pro-Pakistan forces to woo the decision maker rather than the people. This approach was pragmatic. However, it also made the Muslim Conference appear keen to gain the Maharaja’s support at any cost. And although this tactic adhered to Jinnah’s statement in July 1947 that princely rulers were free to join Pakistan, India or remain independent, many Muslin Conference members wanted their party’s support for independence reversed. Also, by allowing the ruler to decide the issue, the Muslim Conference enabled its National Conference rival to advance the populist – and eminently mire ‘sellable’ – view that the people should be given self-government so that, ‘armed with authority and responsibility, [they] could decide for themselves where their interests lay’. Apart from advancing its own popularity, the National Conference’s stance also served to reveal the Muslim Conference as simply an appendage or surrogate of the Muslim League – as it was.

The Muslim Conference’s pragmatic approach towards the Maharaja built on a previous stance Jinnah instigated during the National Conference’s ‘Quit Kashmir’ campaign that started on 20 May 1946 with the aim of ridding J&K of Dogra rule. This campaign was significant between the positions of Jinnah and Nehru on J&K. Jinnah opposed Quit Kashmir as a movement ‘engineered by some malcontents’. This stance, coupled with his lack of criticism of J&K’s unpopular ruler, particularly when compared with criticisms made by Nehru and the Indian National Congress, made Jinnah appear pro-Maharaja. This lost the Muslim League leader support among Kashmiri Muslims, especially among the ‘malcontents’, most of whom were National Conference members. Indeed, one such National Conference member, Mir Qasim (who later became the Chief Minister of Indian J&K), believed that Jinnah’s unpopular and insensitive attitude ‘killed the chances of Kashmir going to Pakistan’. The Muslim Conference lost credibility because it did not initially oppose the Maharaja when Quit Kashmir commenced in May 1946 – a policy Jinnah ordered because he believed that the party would do better working through constitutional channels.” (page 26)

“…the Muslim Conference appeared to be steadily lose support, certainly in the Kashmir Valley, owing to poor leadership and increased factionalism; conversely, support for the National Conference increased because it was united and had strong leadership.” (page 27)

I may add to this that Jinnah, in his visit to Kashmir in 1941, received much hostility from sections of Kashmiri Muslims and conceded that he did not get unanimous support. To add to that, when he sent an envoy to Kashmir in 1943 to assess whether Kashmiris would be willing to join Pakistan, his envoy gave him a response, which, to use the language of acclaimed historian Alex von Tunzelmann, was "disheartening" (The Indian Summer, p. 284). Jinnah tried to play his own politics in Kashmir, using the minister Ramchandra Kak, a Kashmiri Hindu, as a Trojan horse, but failed, and you can read about the same here.

It may be added that Shaikh Abdullah continued to be popular with Kashmiri Muslims after his having taken a stand in favour of India and after the Dogra monarchy was displaced, Abdullah ensured that land reforms were carried out by abolishing landlordism and giving peasants ownership over land, which won him tremendous affection from the people of the valley. Pakistan had retained the feudal system of landlordism, as it still has, and many Kashmiri Muslims realized that the land reforms in Kashmir were possible owing to Kashmir being a part of India rather than Pakistan. To quote the noted scholar Michael Brecher from his book The Struggle for Kashmir-

“The vast majority of Kashmiris have benefited from these reforms and many of those interviewed by the author expressed the feat that in Pakistan, where no comparable land reforms have taken place, the land recently given to them might be returned to the landlords or, in any event, that further implementation of the 'New Kashmir' programme will be impossible.” (cited in the 2002 paperback edition of MJ Akbar's book Kashmir - Beyond the Vale on page 139)

Abdullah had clearly stated in the context of Pakistan-

“The most powerful argument which can be advanced in her favour is that Pakistan is a Muslim State, and, a big majority of our people being Muslims the State must accede to Pakistan. This claim of being a Muslim State is of course only a camouflage. It is a screen to dupe the common man, so that he may not see clearly that Pakistan is a feudal state in which a clique is trying by these methods to maintain itself in power...” (cited in the 2002 paperback edition of MJ Akbar's book Kashmir - Beyond the Vale on page 139)

Even today, there are Kashmiri Muslims, including those who want their region to be an independent country, who acknowledge that back then, Abdullah had made the right decision by opting for India. As one such person has articulated-

“The first question that comes to mind is would the Pakistani establishment quash the Feudal or Zamindari systems in Kashmir handing the land over to the tillers? Do keep in mind that even today Pakistan is a feudal society with most of the land in the hands of the Punjabi Chaudhrys. I mean all that the Kashmiri Hindus and Dogra land owners had to do was convert to Islam and just like the Punjabi Chaudhrys of Pakistan continue with the feudal system.”

He further says-

“Now picture yourself as a common Kashmiri filling the chillum of a Punjabi Pakistani Chaudhry or that of a Kashmiri Hindu/Dogra Feudal lord with tobacco and ask yourself this question.............how smart was Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah?”

And by the way, Islam as a religion emphasizes socioeconomic egalitarianism and the first land reforms in world history were carried out by the caliph Hazrat Umar Bin Khattab, and so, it is particularly shameful that Pakistan, calling itself an Islamic state, still has an institutionalized zamindari system, as Pakistani liberal Hasan Nisar points out!

However, coming back to Kashmir, the pointers raised as justifications for Pakistan’s armed actions either take the form of whataboutism with respect to India’s stand on the Muslim-ruled, Hindu-majority Hyderabad and Junagadh, or cite the pro-Pakistan rebellion in Poonch before the Pathan tribal raid (the latter point became popular to cite after Snedden’s book mentioned it). 

The Poonch rebellion does go to show that the Dogra king was unpopular among his subjects, but that is something already acknowledged by Indians and Pakistanis alike. From the Indian point of view, Jawaharlal Nehru’s trips to Kashmir in which he peacefully took on the monarchy and even faced arrest in the princely state are well-known. But when he assumed the role of India’s prime minister, Nehru did not engage in such adventures and did not interfere, at least blatantly, in the internal affairs of Jammu and Kashmir, which would amount to disrespecting sovereignty.

It may have very well been legitimate for the pro-Pakistan Muslims of Poonch to rise in armed revolt against their king, just as it may have been legitimate for the pro-India Shaikh Abdullah to lead peaceful movements against the monarchy in the valley (and Shaikh Abdullah’s mass struggle had a history predating the Poonch rebellion in 1947), but how do these become the starting point of what we conventionally understand as the “Kashmir issue” involving India, Pakistan and the people of the (now erstwhile) princely state? And if the Poonch rebellion is indeed taken as the starting point, it can only be on two grounds - the first being that these rebels wanted accession to Pakistan [in Snedden’s words-“The only way the Maharaja could possibly appease Poonch Muslims would be to accede to Pakistan; they would not have settled for anything less.” (page 32)] and the second being that there were elements in Pakistan that supported the rebellion. To quote from Snedden’s interview given to Tehelka correspondent Baba Umar (who is a Kashmiri separatist and happens to be an acquaintance of mine)-“there was some degree of support from the Pakistan government”. 

Let us examine both points one by one. As regards Poonch Muslims wanting accession to Pakistan, this hardly goes very far in suggesting that the majority of the populace in the whole of the erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir favoured accession to Pakistan, as the excerpts from not only Snedden’s book but even other sources stated above, demonstrate. 

So, even if the Muslims of Poonch were united in the demand for the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to Pakistan, the people (even Muslims) of the entire princely state were not, and indeed, it has been no one’s case that there wasn’t a pro-Pakistan section among the people of the erstwhile princely state, but Snedden himself concedes that it cannot be said with certainty as to what the aspirations of the majority of the populace were. Hence, Pakistan’s case for claiming Jammu and Kashmir solely on the basis of its Muslim majority falls flat, as opposed to India’s case for a majority of people in the princely states of Hyderabad and Junagadh desiring to join India, which was proved by subsequent plebiscites. The hurdle in the plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir came not from India, which had already promised the Kashmiris a plebiscite, but Pakistan, which, in violation of the 1948 UN resolution, refused to withdraw its troops from the part of the erstwhile princely state it had occupied in the 1947-48 war following the Pashtun tribal raid, which, as per the resolution, was a precursor to the plebiscite. Nehru had, in fact, gone on record even later to say that he was willing to follow the UN resolution (i.e. conduct the plebiscite) in the whole of the erstwhile princely state if Pakistan complied with the precondition of withdrawing its troops, as can be seen from this video (watch 1:58 onwards). Now, it must be mentioned that many Kashmiri separatists who haven’t read the UN resolution and just know that it calls for a plebiscite often invoke the UN resolution, but when made to realize that the resolution is not exactly what they claim it to be, their entire stance changes to ridiculing international law itself being irrelevant and a conspiracy of Western powers, a stance diametrically opposite to the one they took before learning of what the resolution entailed! 

However, if they support self-determination as an absolute right, which is to say that any part of any country should be unilaterally allowed to secede at will, would they support any household declaring itself as a separate country and not paying taxes, desiring to have diplomatic relations with their country, or any district of the independent Jammu and Kashmir they envisage to secede at will? Pray, quite the contrary, their leaders do not wish to give Hindu-majority Jammu and Buddhist-majority Ladakh that right in the independent country they envisage! And speaking of Pakistanis and those who are pro-Pakistan, given the secessionist voices in Sindh and the secessionist or pro-Afghanistan voices in Khyber Pakhtoonwa, are they willing to conduct plebiscites in these particular provinces?

Also, when Shaikh Abdullah had later started vacillating in the 1950s between Kashmir being a part of India with some autonomy, and being an independent country altogether (Pakistan was still not an option for him, and a reason for vacillating from his firm pro-India stance was his concern over Hindu majoritarianism in India, which had manifested itself even in the killing of Mahatma Gandhi), and Nehru had him imprisoned, Nehru did, on the other hand, again offer Pakistan a plebiscite! To be quote the eminent writer MJ Akbar on this point, from his highly acclaimed book Kashmir – Behind the Vale (2002 paperback edition)-

“Within a fortnight of arresting Abdullah for asking too much of Delhi, Jawaharlal Nehru completely reversed India’s position and offered Pakistan a plebiscite!

The Prime Minister of Pakistan, now Mohammad Ali, came to Delhi on an official visit. In the talks Nehru suggested that after the two Prime Ministers had finalized the preliminary issues, a plebiscite administrator could be named by April 1954. He even told Mohammad Ali that voting could be done in the whole state rather than separate Hindu & Muslim regions, and if this meant the loss of the whole Valley, he was prepared for it! The offer was confirmed in a letter to Mohammad Ali on 3 September.” (page 154)

“The only condition Nehru placed was that the American UN nominee Admiral Nimitz be replaced ad Plebiscite Administrator by someone form a smaller country. Deeply suspicious of the US, he did not want this superpower’s hand in the plebiscite.” (page 154)

“If there were any doubts about Nehru’s sincerity in those years about the plebiscite commitment, then surely they should have ended with this proposal.” (page 154)

Akbar further mentions how Pakistan’s insistence on the US admiral led Nehru to withdraw the offer. For more on how Pakistan sought to avoid a plebiscite, see this.

In fact, Pakistan's stand was always to go purely by the will of the ruler, by virtue of which it had sought to engage Hindu-majority princely states like Hyderabad, Junagadh, and even Jodhpur and Jaisalmer (in Jodhpur and Jaisalmer, even the rulers were Hindu, unlike Hyderabad and Junagadh) to join it. It had never basically adopted the principle of a plebiscite, to begin with. 

Speaking of the second point of how the Pakistani state machinery supported or at least allowed non-state actors to support an armed rebellion in Poonch, does acknowledging this help Pakistan’s case? Certainly not, as it would amount to blatant disregard for international law! It is already embarassing for the Pakistani state to admit that its non-state actors (Pashtuns) had infiltrated into another territory! And on this point, we may delve a little more into the legal status of the erstwhile princely state following India’s independence. The princely states were, after the British government taking control over India from the British East India Company, following the Revolt of 1857, no longer the subsidiary but sovereign powers they were prior to that but subordinated officially to the British Crown, as Queen Victoria proclaiming herself to be the Empress of India, demonstrated as also the Chamber of Princes in New Delhi. However, once the British left India, the princely states re-emerged as sovereign entities, with the lapse of British paramountcy as becomes clear from Section 2 of the Indian Independence Act, 1947, meeting all the four criteria established under Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention on Rights and Duties of States, which are stated hereunder verbatim-

(a) a permanent population; 

(b) a defined territory; 

(c) government; 

and

(d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.

As regards the first three clauses, little explanation is required. But if there’s any ambiguity about the last one, mention may be made of the standstill agreements many of the princely states entered into with India and Pakistan, which they were authorized to do by the British. In this connection, those who understand Hindi can watch this video (from 11:12 to 13:06).

And Jammu and Kashmir had entered into a standstill agreement with Pakistan (something that Snedden mentions in his book on page 9), which was violated by the latter during the 1947 aggression. The very fact that the princely states could voluntarily accede to any country again reflects their sovereign character. However, the British had made it clear unofficially that the princely states must opt for India or Pakistan. To quote Snedden on this point-

“Powerbrokers in 1947 also were influenced by the method used to decolonize Princely India (as against British-controlled India), whereby each ruler was deemed to have the power – and, indeed, was expected – to accede to either India or Pakistan. Princely states therefore were considered to be indivisible and without any independent future. Neither the departing British nor the future leaders of India and Pakistan sought partition of any princely state along religious lines, nor would they countenance independence for any of them. Instead, the British encouraged each princely ruler to consider geographical factors and the will of his subjects in deciding his accession. Even though the accession would clearly impact on all of the prince’s subjects, nevertheless there were no legal requirements or popular pressures for the ruler to consider either factor. He alone would decide the accession. And, once it was decided, the expectation was that all of his princely state would, along with the ruler, join the new dominion of his choice.” (page 7)

While the British did convey to the princes that they must opt for India or Pakistan [this is testified by great Indian nationalist leader Maulana Azad’s account in his autobiography India Wins Freedom that as early as in 1942, Sir Stafford Cripps, a British politician representing his government, on a visit to India, “told the Maharaja of Kashmir that the future of the States was with India”, that “(n)o prince should for a moment think that the British Crown would come to his help if he decided to opt out” and that “(t)he princes must therefore look up to the Indian Government and not the British Crown for their future” (page 61 of the 2009 reprint) – the demand for Pakistan wasn’t being seriously considered then; if Lord Mountbatten's account as narrated to Larry Collins and Domique Lapierre in their book Freedom at Midnight is true, then Mountbatten had also tried hard to convice Raja Hari Singh to not entertain fancies of independence], there was no legal obligation upon them to do so. Thus, legally, it was for the ruler to decide and in this case, he opted for India, and Alistair Lamb’s contention that the instrument of accession did not exist on paper has now been disproved with the document being brought out in the public domain. If the counterargument is made to run that popular support ought to have been the basis, as was the case in Hyderabad and Junagadh, then the rebuttal to that has already been stated above (i.e. that Pakistan did not withdraw its troops, and having to do so was a precursor to the plebiscite), and it may be added that Pakistan did not conduct any plebiscite while getting the ruler of Balochistan, which, like Nepal and Bhutan, was not even legally a part of India, to coercively sign the instrument of accession in its favour.

Thus, with all the emphasis given by Snedden to the Poonch rebellion, his contention that it would suit Pakistan to highlight the same or that it, in any way, tilts the narrative in its favour, is a flawed conclusion, even in the light of much of what he has said in that very book! In fact, on the other hand, the Pakistani narrative so far had only stressed the atrocities of the king's army in Poonch (to justify the Pashtun tribal raid), trying to overlook that they were armed rebels backed by the Pakistani state, and this fact exposed by Snedden only makes Pakistan guilty of violating sovereignty, which is the cornerstone of international law! 

Other than the Poonch rebellion, Snedden has also highlighted that in Jammu, there were communal riots in 1947-1948 as a result of the partition of India, in which both Hindus and Muslims lost their lives (though Kashmir was largely free from such violence), but again, that only goes to show that there was a section of pro-Pakistan Muslims in the erstwhile princely state, and as we have discussed above, that is something no one denies and doesn’t take us very far. However, moving on from here, obviously, any sincere attempt at resolving the Kashmir issue would mean respecting the Line of Control as a de facto border, as India and Pakistan have officially agreed to, and seeking the path of negotiation for conflict resolution.

Next, let us take a further leap in history to 1965. When Operation Gibraltar was launched by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, sending ISI agents to instigate an armed rebellion in Kashmir, that can certainly not be taken to be contributing to a conducive atmosphere, and that nefarious design failed. Likewise, the incursion by Pakistani soldiers in regions like Kargil in 1999, leading to a full-blown war, is something that cannot be appreciated either. In fact, while the Indo-Pak war of 1971 is cited by Pakistanis as an Indian attempt to partition their country, the fact is that even in that war was initiated by Pakistan on India’s western front in Rajasthan (remember the Battle of Longawala, shown in the movie ‘Border’?), as is conceded by Pakistani analysts themselves. And yes, after the creation of Bangladesh, the Bihari and other non-Bengali Muslims were not and still have not been given citizens’ rights in that country (though Bengali Hindus and Christians in Bangladesh do have citizens’ rights), and Pakistan has not accepted those people identifying themselves as Pakistanis as its citizens either, but wants to have Kashmir!

In fact, in the late 1960s, when a Kashmiri Muslim by the name of Maqbool Bhat who wanted an independent Jammu and Kashmir, including the part occupied by Pakistan, crossed the border and sought Pakistan’s help for an armed rebellion he wished to engineer, they refused it, saying that he must support the whole of the erstwhile princely state joining Pakistan, and tortured him to that end, but he refused to accept that Kashmir should be a part of a country under de facto military rule. When they failed to convince him, they sent him to India, where he was subsequently hanged! Here's a piece on Bhat in a liberal Pakistani newspaper - http://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/20991/maqbool-butt-kashmir-doesnt-want-any-of-it-no-indian-rulers-and-no-pakistani-generals/. (However, his death sentence in India came only after some of his comrades killed an Indian diplomat in Europe, and that murder must obviously be condemned in the strongest terms.) So much for Pakistan genuinely respecting the wishes of the Kashmiri people! While Maqbool Bhat is hailed as a hero by most Kashmiri Muslims today, they would be surprised to learn that the strongly pro-Pakistan section among them back then abhorred him so much that the pro-Pakistan Jamaat-e-Islami in Kashmir expelled one of its members for protesting against Bhat’s hanging! Here's an interview of one off Bhat's associates about torture by the Pakistani establishment for desiring an independent Kashmir, rather than Kashmir as a part of Pakistan - http://mayatoday.com/inner.php?id=5407. 

Since 1989, Pakistan has been encouraging militancy in Kashmir and used the Hizbul Mujahidin, which supports Pakistan’s stance, to fight the JKLF fighters who were desirous of an independent Kashmir and were also fighting the Indian state. This excerpt from an interview of someone who was earlier in the Hizbul Mujahidin and has now taken to electoral politics under the Indian constitution is worth citing-

“Just before I left for India, there was a ferocious showdown over the course of events, with an ISI officer whom we knew as General Liaqat Ali. I was then the vice-chairman of the council of 15 groups active in Jammu and Kashmir. At a meeting in Rawalpindi, I asked him point- blank what Pakistan wanted to do about this aimless war of attrition. He replied that our job was to prick India just enough to make it bleed, but not enough to make it bite back. I became very angry, since we were the ones who were doing the bleeding, not India. Nine of us walked out, and came back only after a great deal of persuasion. I now knew that we were fighting a war for Pakistan, not for Jammu and Kashmir. I just wish that more of the nine people who were with me that day had the courage to take the course I have taken.

But of the future, who knows? Abdul Majid Dar is making some efforts to bring about some change in the Hizbul Mujahideen. The Hurriyat's Abdul Ghani Lone, I know, is committed to peace. I worked with him for many years, and I know where his heart lies.

As for me, I have other things on my mind. While I was in Dhaka, a student asked me where my village, Groora, was. "Don't you know," I joked, "it's the greatest tourist country of the world!''

It's heading that way. We've planted trees over 30,000 kanals of land, for which each person in the village pays Rs.10 a month. We have ducks and even bear in the area now. I've spent Rs.20 lakhs on a school for the area's children. In the next election, I'm going to tell the people I can't solve the Kashmir dispute, but I can make a difference to their lives. After these years of pain and bloodshed, I think that is more important than anything else."

The militancy sponsored by Pakistani establishment is what has led the Indian state to have its troops stationed even in civilian areas in Kashmir, and life became worse for the common Kashmiri. More and more Kashmiri Muslims are convinced that joining Pakistan would not be a good idea (something acknowledged by Western analysts and even Pakistani analysts), sensing the instability of that country and the rise of terrorism, the terrorists being those who were earlier to be utilized against India. The terrorism has not been confined to the Kashmir valley alone, where it has taken a toll on the Hindu minority, most of which has had to leave its homeland (an Indian Muslim acquaintance of mine wrote a powerful piece for the Pakistani media on this issue, and going by what he has to say, the media house changed the title of his piece; the first comment by a Kashmiri Muslim is also worth a read) , but even many Kashmiri Muslims with a pro-India political posturing, many of whom were also killed, and many of whom also left the valley (as also Kashmiri Muslims running radio stations and cinema halls, for the militants saw music and cinema as un-Islamic), but also elsewhere in India, such as the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, at the behest of the ISI, which apparently made it impossible to have a genuine resolution of the Kashmir issue, which democratic governments on both sides of the border were aiming at (which is why I said that the Pakistani establishment, even if having well-meaning elements, has never acted as a monolith on this score). Even until recently, village headmen in the valley were killed for contesting elections under the Indian constitutional setup! And so much for Mufti’s expression of gratitude, there were indeed instances of militancy during the latest state elections in J&K too, that took the lives of Kashmiri policemen and civilians (it is noteworthy that local Kashmiri Muslim policemen have played a crucial role in the fight against militancy, which must be acknowledged and even appreciated) and thereafter as well. Not too long ago, in October 2014, we had Musharraf, someone with political aspirations and who is credited with having lowered militant infiltration during his tenure, say that Pakistan is ready for war with India over Kashmir!

Next, it may be useful to examine what some rational Pakistanis themselves make of the “Kashmir obsession” of some of their countrymen. These articles/videos - https://www.facebook.com/iconoclast999/posts/10153181468487873?fref=nf, http://nation.com.pk/blogs/21-Feb-2015/why-do-pakistanis-love-kashmir, http://nation.com.pk/blogs/06-Feb-2015/kashmir-is-not-pakistan-s-jugular-vein and http://tribune.com.pk/story/202209/time-to-forget-kashmir/, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17B5e9s_zZc, are worth a read/watch in this context.

This article would be incomplete without acknowledging the problems of people in POK, which can be read about in these articles - http://www.jammu-kashmir.com/insights/insight990902.html , http://www.weeklyvoice.com/south-asian-news/pakistani-kashmiris-struggle-under-islamabads-azad-kashmir/, http://www.pressforpeace.org.uk/Gilgit-Baltistan/Baba-Jan and http://www.lfpress.com/2013/06/13/fatah-west-must-wake-up-to-aggressive-sino-pak-partnership.

As I stated at the outset, this piece was meant to make a summary of the historical record, and I hope that it has served that purpose well.

Karmanye Thadani