by A. G. NOORANI
Reflecting popular opinion, Sheikh Abdullah was against Kashmir’s accession to India. Reflecting Indian opinion and his own preferences, Nehru would have nothing but accession. Both knew how the Kashmiris felt, hence India’s initial hesitation in forging the accession.
Nahi kuch subha-o-zunnar ke phande mein girai/wafadari mein sheikh-o-brahaman ki aazmaish hai (The loop of the rosary and the sacred thread cannot hold any one/ The real test of the Sheikh and the Brahmin is in their faithfulness).
Mirza Ghalib’s couplet accurately sums up the roots of the Kashmir dispute. It also provides a clue to the ever deteriorating situation in the State. Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah’s Kashmiri nationalism clashed with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s Indian nationalism. The clash was inherent in their relationship even at the best of times. Nehru arrogantly spurned conciliation and resorted to brute force, with the aid of the army, by ousting Abdullah from the office of Prime Minister of Jammu & Kashmir on August 9, 1953, and imprisoning him for 11 years. What is little known is that he subjected his prisoner and erstwhile friend to hardships; denying visitors access to him and foisting a conspiracy case which he knew to be false—plotting for accession to Pakistan and waging war against India.
To all outward appearances, India riveted its control over the State after the Sheikh’s ouster. But today, more than ever before, grim realities have surfaced, to the shock of many, to demonstrate that Kashmiri nationalism is very much alive and kicking despite New Delhi’s repressive policies and the army’s sustained record of outrages. India’s government, much of its media, especially television, and academia, and its stooges in Kashmir who have feasted on the crumbs New Delhi throws at them from the high table prefer to envelop themselves cosily in a state of denial. The reality is unbearable to witness—India governs Kashmir against the wishes of its people. They reject the very legitimacy of its rule. As Mir Qasim, installed as Chief Minister by elections which he admitted were rigged and who had supported Abdullah’s ouster in 1953, wrote: “They clearly say that they would not like to remain in India. They would like to go out of India. They ask for a plebiscite so that they will be allowed to answer whether they want to remain in India or go out of India” (Mir Qasim, My Life and Times , page 298).
It was left to one of India’s foremost public intellectuals, Ashok Mitra, former Finance Minister of West Bengal, to rip apart the veil of falsehood and expose the havoc that India’s policies have wreaked. “Behind the façade of the constitutional apparatus rests the nitty-gritty of rude fact: the Valley is an occupied territory; remove for a day India’s Army and security forces and it is impossible to gauge what might transpire at the next instant. Some of the stone-pelters may nurse illusions about Pakistan, some may think in terms of a sovereign, self-governing Kashmir, but they certainly do not want to be any part of India … the great Indian nation, with its load of civilisation stretching 5,000 years, is extraordinarily mum.
“The debauching of civilisation in Kashmir, no matter what its underlying reason, creates no ripples. One is suddenly hit by a fearsome realisation Indians by and large do not perhaps feel at all, this way or that, about the Valley’s people. In other words, the Indian nation is alienated from Kashmir” ( The Telegraph , August 27, 2010).
Mehbooba Mufti, head of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP)-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) coalition in the State, loftily declared, on April 19, in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, that “there is a pain in the heart of Kashmiris and we all have to heal it together”. What she added indicates all too well that the causes of the pain elude her. She cited “several tragic incidents in the past … and more recently in Handwara where innocent people were fatally caught in the vortex of violence ” (Yusuf Jameel, Asian Age , April 20; emphasis added, throughout). “Caught”, not “shot at”. Earlier, on March 26, she spoke of Mufti Mohammed Sayeed’s “mission of development and peace” (Peerzada Ashiq, The Hindu , March 27). She refuses to know why her people are in pain.
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