Virtual Homeland of Kashmiri Pandits

Kashmir News Network

Here we go again.

Another proposal for an Indo-Pakistan summit at Almaty, Central Asia, has been put forward to diffuse the tensions in South Asia. Now Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to mediate between India and Pakistan.  He is right about one thing: we are on the brink and therefore the situation can spiral out of control. Any one who closely followed the Indo-Pakistan conflict would recognize that India is the victim of cross-border terrorism during the last 12 years. It is the Pakistan’s military dictator Pervez Musharraf’s hair-trigger nuclear posture and his allusions to waging a holy Islamic war against India have unnerved many world leaders, including Mr. Putin and the American President George W. Bush. Commenting on President Putin's peace initiative, Russian state TV reported that in mid-1960s Moscow had successfully reconciled the south Asian rivals when General Ayub Khan and Lal Bahadur Shastri had signed Tashkent declaration in January 1966.  Except for the fact that Tashkent Accord did not bring any lasting peace in the subcontinent.  Not only did the Tashkent Accord fail, subsequent summits that took place in Simla, Lahore and Agra also failed to yield desired results.

Without examining these past summits and the reasons for their failures, it is meaningless to hold further summits on Kashmir issue. The hawkish and media savvy Pakistani dictator wants to avail every opportunity to keep the kettle boiling and also wants to internationalize the Kashmir issue. India has not properly ‘educated’ the world community of the real status of Kashmir as an integral part of India. On the other hand, Pakistan has spent the last 55 years propagating myths and historical lies about Kashmir. Thus, there is an erroneous understanding of what the Kashmir problem is and what it is not.  Often, the world community looks at Kashmir as a real-estate dispute. In reality, Kashmir problem is much more an issue of pan-Islamization.

Thus, Pakistan has not only succeeded in creating an issue out of a non-issue, but also created a humanitarian crisis for the residents of the state. In truth, Kashmir is a tool in hands of Pakistan, which does not care for the welfare of Kashmiris. If it did, there wouldn’t be any killing of women and children in the valley in the name of a ‘freedom struggle’. The main aim of Pakistan supported terrorist attacks throughout India is rather meant to destabilize India. Thus, Pakistan entertains and readily jumps at the idea of dialogues and summits, even though it knows there is no reconciliation between its fundamentalist concepts of nationhood and India’s secular outlook.

The second problem with Kashmir comes from unenforceability of UN resolution number S/1196, because it is squatting on the real estate property of India for 55 years without vacating it.  BJP President Jana Krishnamurthy correctly observed that Kashmir problem stems from erroneous understanding of the background to terrorist attacks had led to foreign powers to assume “Pakistan has a claim to Kashmir” and thereby urging India to have a dialogue with Pakistan.

Recently, both US and UK and also the high officials of UN, have indicated that they consider UN resolutions on Kashmir issue non-operational and unimplementable, with the suggestion that both countries should look forward rather than look back.  Our neighbor’s disastrous record with democracy weakens its claim for the plebiscite argument. Not to mention the plight of 350,000 plus Kashmiri Pundits who are forced to live a life of refugees in their own country for nearly 12 years. Recently 34 lives of army families, mostly women and children and also, a 2-year-old toddler tells to what extend these terrorists are willing to go. This brings us back to the original question: How can we resolve this continued cycle of violence? Whatever may be the ‘other’ options, summits and dialogues with Pakistan are not viable options.

Rajiv Malhotra of the United States has written extensively on this subject. In his column “The root of India-Pakistan conflicts” (http://www.sulekha.com/column.asp?cid=170243) Mr. Malhotra observes that any genuine attempt to address geopolitical problems must look deeper than examining merely the symptoms of conflict. In his own words “Most people fail to recognize that this clash between ‘pluralism’ and ‘exclusivism’ does indeed exist” and goes on to add that 'Kashmir issue' is itself the result of a deeper root cause, which is a clash of two worldviews: pluralism versus exclusivism.  He feels that religion plays a major role in this conflict. Mr. Malhotra believes that religious reforms have never been accomplished successfully in Islam and therefore it remains as a medieval religion. Unlike other religions, which have ‘theological beliefs’ and ‘sociological beliefs’ as separate entities, Islam has never learned to look at it differently.  Thus, Islam remains a fundamentalist religion, which denies integration with people of other faiths. Hence, Mr. Malhotra argues that it is naïve to think that Kashmir issue is ‘not about religion’ . Those who tried to reform or add amendments to orthodox Islam have been killed as heretics. Thus it is felt that the sociological dictates of orthodox Islam, in many ways, are still in medieval thinking and are comparable to the days of pre-Reformation Christianity.

Mr. Malhotra theorizes that the “internal” aspects such as theological and cultural side are not the primary causes of global conflict. Rather, the external sociological aspects of religion are the direct causes of global conflict. He further goes on to say:

“It logically follows that it is the business of the world at large to interpret, question, and challenge those aspects of a religion that take a position concerning outsiders. If I am the subject of some other religion's doctrine, and such a doctrine states how I am to be treated, what is to be done to me, what I may or may not do freely, then, even though I am not a member of that religion, it does become my business to probe these doctrines and even to demand a change. On the other hand, if a religion minds its own business, and has little to say pertaining to me as an outsider, then I should respect its right to be left alone.“

In other words, a given religion's right to be left alone by outsiders should be reciprocal and contingent upon its responsibility to leave outsiders alone.

Rajiv Molhotra also lists the other serious issues that need special attention to understand the nature of Pakistan’s thinking. The three important social demands that dominate the Islamic orthodoxy as adopted by Pakistan's government and many other Islamic States (as opposed to alternative liberal interpretations that are subverted) are: (1) the 2-nation theory, (2) global loyalty to Islam superceding sovereignty of man-made countries, and (3) Islamic triumphalism.

Thus, this special demand of ‘Islamic exclusivism’ and imposition of Islamic law upon the public sphere is the root cause of Kashmir problem.  It is not uncommon to note that wherever Muslims live, they start demanding special status, treatment and separate identity for Muslims once the population of Muslims in a given region crosses a threshold in numbers.  It is this ‘external’ sociological issue and exclusivism that led to the ‘threshold’ numbers to make such an assertive demand of ‘self-determination’, and the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus was part of this process.  Unfortunately, India has failed to recognize the evil designs of Pakistan early on and thus failed to inform the world community about these ‘theological and social’ issues as related to Islam.

This explains why Pakistan and the Hurriyat conference, a coalition of Kashmiri separatists, demand another partition, even though more than 140 million Muslims live in other parts of India with all their democratic and constitutional rights intact.  If left unchecked, Mr. Malhotra predicts that the United States will have similar experience and similar separatist demands from American Muslims in the next few decades.  Thus, Kashmir problem is not a real-estate issue belonging to Kashmir alone, but a ‘religious’ one belonging to the entire world. It is a front-line ideological battle between pluralism vs. exclusivism.

While Pakistan is responsible in making ‘religion’ as a problem in Kashmir, the Government of India cannot be totally absolved from its responsibilities for the present mess.  The Indian constitution has given special status to Kashmir empowered by the article 370.  It was supposed to be a ‘temporary’ one.  However, it has so far turned out to be a ‘temporarily permanent’.  But for the article 370, the demography in Kashmir would have never reached ‘Islamic threshold’ in terms of numbers and thus would have well integrated with mainstream India.  Also, the social problems of Kashmir such as poverty, unemployment and illiteracy, and lack of development are related to the continued use (rather misuse) of article 370 by the state government.  Thus, the solution to Kashmir problem lies in removing article 370 which would allow people of Kashmiri to join the mainstream and enjoy the fruits of democratic freedom, free speech and religious freedom enshrined in the constitution.

Any talk of summit, therefore, must seriously address the role of ‘Islamization’ of Kashmir struggle. Pakistani dictator Mr. Musharraf is no ‘nice guy’ as he tries to portray himself. He must be seen as a product of a medieval religious thinking and also an army general strongly influenced by the jihad mind-set.

[Krishna Kannan, Ph.D has received his academic training at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He currently serves as a biomedical research scientist in the United States.]