KASHMIR: Showing up chinks in democracy

Deccan Herald, Sunday, August 5, 1990

In the first 20 years of India’s independence Kashmiri Muslims had two excellent opportunities to throw in their lot with their co-religionists who had opted for Pakistan. They chose to remain with India.

Today Kashmiri sentiments are clearly different from what they were in 1947 and 1965. The  message coming through loud and clear from the picturesque valley is that the bulk of the Kashmiri Muslims want nothing to do with India. If there is any difference of opinion among the extremist groups who rule their hearts it is over the alternative to India. Some of them want to join up with Pakistan. Others are  captivated by the romantic notion of an independent Kashmir, perhaps a neutral state a la Switzerland.

           

How did this vast transformation come about? Is the change reversible? Or must India reconcile itself to the loss of Kashmir?

One refrain that is often heard in the context of the separatist movement in the predominantly Muslim Kashmir valley is that India cannot allow it to break away because it is the symbol of its secularism. Had not Mahatma Gandhi seen a ray of  hope there when the rest of the subcontinent was engulfed by flames of communalism? Had not Jawaharlal Nehru said,”Kashmir is symbolic as it illustrates that we are a secular state, that Kashmir with a large  majority of Muslims has nevertheless, of its own free will, wished to be associated with India?”

           

It is an absurd argument. Surely it is none of the business of the Kashmiris to prove the secular credentials of India. In any event, the rest of India cannot claim a right to hold the Kashmiris in bondage so that they can parade as secular people.

           

Beneath this argument, originally aired by Congress leaders and subsequently adopted by their political heirs regardless of their new partly labels, lies an ingenuous attempt to reconcile the conflict  between theory and practice implicit in the rejection of the  two-nation theory and acceptance of partition.

          

If anything at all symbolizes the triumph of secularism in the subcontinent, it is not the presence of 4 million Muslims under Indian rule in Kashmir valley, who constitute an unassailable majority in their homeland, but the presence of close to 100 million Muslims elsewhere in India, living in perpetual insecurity as a vulnerable minority. When other Muslims had voted with their feet for Pakistan, they, or rather their parents, had voted for India with their hearts.

Indian official spokesmen have countered the Pakistan-backed demand of self determination for Kashmir by pointing out that this is a right exercisable by the people as a whole, not by sections of them. Though sound in principle, this argument is of questionable validity in conditions of total alienation of a section of the people.

Another frequently heard argument is that the people of Kashmir have expressed their will through successive elections. Had the elections been free from frauds this argument would have been unexceptionable.

          

A correct appraisal of Kashmir’s chequered history is necessary to appreciate the nature of the separatist movement thriving in an atmosphere of national resurgence mixed with religious revivalism.

           

This state with its wide variety did not emerge as a result of the normal operation of historical and cultural forces. It  was created by an adventurous general about 150 years ago by grabbing whatever he could from the declining kingdoms and feuding principalities of the time.

           

Gulab Singh was one of the commanders of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. The Sikh ruler’s heirs could not raise Rs. 1 crore to pay the war reparations imposed on them by the victorious British. Gulab Singh extorted Rs. 75 lakh from the areas under his control and paid it to the British who promptly recognized him as the ruler of Jammu and Kashmir.

           

Under the oppressive Dogra regime, Kashmiri Muslims, most of them poor peasants, lived in virtual serfdom. The first stirrings of a political movement occurred when young Muslims raised voices of protest. A massive demonstration outside the Central Jail in Srinagar in 1931, demanding the release of a man being tried for sedition for having denounced Dogra rule, was broken up by a police firing which left 21 dead. On that day Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah appeared on a public platform for the first time. The following year the Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference was formed  with him as President.

          

Thus the freedom movement in the state began on a communal note. But later Sheikh Abdullah, on the advice of Mohammed Iqbal, the  poet, transformed the organization into a secular body under the name of the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference. Gandhi had already made a deep impact on him. He had also been drawn to Nehru. It was easy for the Sheikh and his followers to invoke the spirit of tolerance infused by Sufi saints.

          

As the Pakistan movement gathered momentum, Mohammed Ali Jinnah attempted to take Sheikh Abdullah back to sectarian politics. But he rejected the Qaid-e-Azam’s overtures.

           

Emerging from prison on the eve of Independence, Sheikh Abdullah found his dream of a united and secular India crumbling. The Indian National Congress had agreed to partition. Jammu and Kashmir, as a princely state, had the right to accede to one or the other of the  emerging dominions of India and Pakistan.

Sheikh Abdullah’s political ideology drew him in the direction of India. But  the Kashmiri Muslims were finding the pressure of triumphant Muslim nationalism of the subcontinent hard to resist. The Kashmiri Pandits' leader, Prem Nath Bazaz, openly demanded the state’s accession to Pakistan because of its Muslim majority.

           

Maharaja Hari Singh, egged  on by the dewan, a Kashmiri Pandit, was toying with the idea of an independent Kashmir. Like him, Sheikh Abdullah found it difficult to make up his mind. The Sheikh’s emissaries held negotiations on merger terms with the leaders of both India and Pakistan.

          

It was Pakistan that helped the two vacillating men to decide in favour of India. As tribals, trained, equipped and backed by the Pakistan army, descended on the valley, Hari Singh turned to India for help. For the Sheikh, too, the dilemma was over. He called upon his people to rise and defend their homeland against the invading force. In a needless display of democratic zeal, the Government of India, while accepting the state’s accession, declared that it was subject to ratification by the people. After India took the issue of Pakistani aggression to the United Nations the idea found expression in Security Council resolutions.

           

While Sheikh Abdullah was coping with the problem of squelching attempts by Muslim communalists in the valley to keep the Pakistani option alive, Hindu communalists in Jammu were agitating for an end to the state’s special status, to which the Kashmiri Pandits were committed as deeply as Kashmiri Muslims at that time. 

Momentarily, perhaps, the idea of an independent state appealed to the Sheikh. Less than five years after he came to power, he was ousted in a midnight coup and thrown in jail. Lacking popular support, Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed, who took the reins, relied upon political corruption for survival. As he became the symbol of servitude to India, the Sheikh, invoking Kashmir’s honour, remained the hero of the masses.

During his long incarceration Sheikh Abdullah realized that Kashmir was doomed to live under the shadow of conflict until India and Pakistan learned to live together in peace. Out of prison, in 1964, he travelled to Pakistan, with Nehru’s blessings, to sound that country’s leadership on the idea of a confederation. Nehru’s sudden death forced him to abandon the mission and return home.

 
There was little chance of a favourable Pakistani response anyway. For, by then, the Ayub Khan government was committed to a daring plan to grab Kashmir by engineering an insurrection. Thousands of Pakistani infiltrators moved into the valley in the summer of 1965 in pursuance of this plan.

The plan flopped because Kashmiri Muslims did not take the proffered opportunity to revolt  Instead, they helped the Indian army to round up the intruders.

Educated Muslims had much to be unhappy about. Jobs were not easy to come by even for those with professional qualifications. Corruption was widespread. But they were by now reconciled to remaining in India. Indeed, many were beginning to like the good life the corrupt system offered those who accepted the status quo. They knew they could any day extract far more from India, which was keen to prove its secular credentials, than from Pakistan, which would treat them as just another province.

The 1971 India-Pakistan war. which resulted in the creation of
Bangladesh, strengthened these sentiments. Pakistan was now
seen as a weakling which could never be a match for India.
Sheikh Abdullah himself was now ready to settle with the
Government of India.

The Sheikh’s changed attitude was based on recognition ofground realities. New Delhi had demonstrated that it could hold Kashmir indefinitely with the help of pliant politicians, obedient officials and an acquiescing population, not to mention the might of the Indian army. Mrs. Indira Gandhi took the initiative to draw him back into the political mainstream, again in recognition of ground realities. While the Sheikh remained out of the democratic process, the state administration could never gain legitimacy.

Today, 15 years after Sheikh Abdullah was reinstalled in office under the Kashmir Accord, it is evidentthat Mrs.Gandhi’s calculations went wrong. Partly, she herself is to blame for this.And partly, the Sheikh.

The accord did not lead Kashmir to the democratic path. Mrs. Gandhi compelled the Sheikh to share power with her Congress party, whose leaders she had repeatedly denounced as corrupt. It was not until the Janata Party, riding the wave of anti-Emergency sentiments, swept aside Mrs. Gandhi’s government that he could get the Congress off his back.

The State Assembly elections held during the Janata rule was the first in Kashmir—and so far the only one— that came close to being free and fair. On the strength of its showing in the Muslim-majority areas the Sheikh’s National Conference could secure an absolute majority. But a durable democracy was no longer one of his concerns. His primary interest was securing the chief ministership for his eldest son, Dr.Farooq Abdullah, after his time. Since the only other contender for the gaddi was his eldest son-in-law, Mr. G.M. Shah, the succession battle looked more like a medieval palace intrigue than a democratic exercise.

The party transferred its allegiance from father to son. But the people could not be persuaded to see Dr. Abdullah, who had acquired a play boy image early on, in the heroic mould of the Lion of Kashmir. To make things worse, Mrs. Gandhi was soon back in power. Dr. Abdullah had to reckon with the Congress establishment’s desire to have a finger in the pie of Kashmir politics. Dr. Abdullah was ousted in a midnight coup to pave the way for a coalition government under Mr. Shah which included Congressmen.

The coup was plotted by Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, with Mr. Arun Nehru, then his chief political aide, and Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, then Pradesh Congress chief, and put through by the then Governor, Mr. Jagmohan. This government had no legitimacy in the eyes of the people and did irreparable damage to their faith in the Indian democratic system. It was during its brief existence that the seeds      of insurgency were sown.

Like Sheikh Abdullah before him. his son too finally made peace with the Central Congress leadership to regain the chief ministership. No longer confident of popular support, Dr. Abdullah’s party resorted to poll rigging, inflicting further damage to the battered democratic system.

In the new term Dr. Abdullah had to reckon with strong enmity from two sources within the establishment.  Mufti Sayeed, not pleased with the high command’s deal with Dr. Abdullah, started patronizing various groups of dubious legitimacy operating in the valley. Mr. Jagmohan, as Governor, kept up a flow of letters to New Delhi recommending the Chief Minister’s dismissal. Eventually Mufti Sayeed drifted to the Jan Morcha with Mr. Arun Nehru. Mr. Rajiv Gandhi decided to stick with Dr. Abdullah and send Mr.Jagmohan home. It was against this background of endless political intrigues by constitutional functionaries and other political leaders that the insurgency in Kashmir gained ground.

When a transition occurred at the Centre, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed emerged as a key player in Kashmir once again as the Union Home Minister. Also in a position to influence official thinking was Mr. Arun Nehru, the Commerce Minister. Little wonder then that the National Front government began its uncertain career on a disastrous note. Within hours of its assumption of office, a terrorist group kidnapped the Mufti'sdaughter, Rubaiya. Two of his Cabinet colleagues flew to Srinagar and got the Stategovernment to secure her freedom by releasing five terrorists. After this act of surrender the Centre felt a compelling need to prove that it was capable of standing up to terrorists. This was done by despatching Mr. Jagmohan back to the State as Governor.

Mr. Jagmohan took only a few weeks to turn those sections which were not fully sympathetic to the terrorists against India. Those who could have played a part in bridging the gulf that developed between the Central authority and the people of the State were either put behind the bars, as in the case of Mr. Abdul Ghani Lone, the President of the People’s Conference, or got eliminated, as in the case of Mirwaiz Mohammed Farooq, chief of the Awami Action Committee.

Although Mr. Jagmohan was hurriedly replaced by Mr. G.C. Saxena, a former chief of the Research and Analysis Wing, in the wake of the assassination of Moulvi Farooq, there has been no change in the official policy of ruthless oppression. The administration now finds itelf in a situation where it cannot trust its own officials. The State police having been found unreliable, there has been a massive induction of Central forces. Both the army and the paramilitary forces have attracted serious charges of excesses, including atrocities against women and children.There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that in the prevailing circumstances the victims will only view them as occupation forces.

Over the 15 years of its existence the State has not evolved a composite personality or achieved emotional integration. The relationship between the peoples of the different regions remains tenuous. None of the regions has thrown up a leadership capable of viewing the State as one political unit.

The events of the recent past have destroyed the sense of kinship that prevailed between Hindus and Muslims within the Kashmir and Jammu regions.

The role of the Jammu province deserves scrutiny in the present context. Its leaders fall in two groups: those belonging to the Cogress stream who are reconciled to its permanently playing a subordinate role to placate the Muslims of Kashmir and keep them within India and those belonging to the Jana Sangh stream whose strident advocacy of a Hindu communalist position feeds Muslim communalism in the valley.

Amidst the enveloping darkness a ray of hope can be gleaned in the essentially secular approach of some of the terrorist groups. A wise course for the Centre will be to impress upon this section, which wants independence, that this goal is not practical and that the Indian political system can fully accommodate their desire to live in freedom.

Recently, the Prime Minister, Mr. V. P. Singh, spoke of economic factors being behind the problems in Punjab, Kashmir and the Northeast. While there is truth in this observation, it is not the whole truth. Many economic measures were initiated in Punjab, first by Mr. Rajiv Gandhi and then by Mr. V. P. Singh, but these have not made a qualitative change in the situation.

While the economic and social factors responsile for the present situation need attention, the problem is essentially a political one, arising from fatal flaws in democratic practice. This is an area where the Naional Front’s record is no better than the Congress’s.

While in the major States the present Central government has been content to leave the administrations undisturbed, in other States where religious minorities or tribal communities hold sway it has not been able to resist the temptation to encourage changes of regime.

The separatist movement is thriving today because of the thwarting of the democratic process. The Indian establishment can reverse the course of events there by ending the policy of oppression and giving the people the opportunity to choose their government freely. (Sunday Herald, August 5, 1990.)