Inventing a cause in Jammu

If the BJP’s central leadership and Kashmir’s Tehreek-e-Hurriyat refuse to become part in the invention of a cause in Jammu, the inventors better call it a day, writes Riyaz Masroor
The ongoing agitation in Jammu, which supposedly started against the revocation of a controversial government order regarding the land transfer to Shri Amarnath Shrine Board but later assumed anti-Muslim overtones, has only reinforced two principles of History. First, it is possible to invent a cause and second that an invented cause, however loudly clamored, is always the wrong cause.
In late seventies Pakistan chanced to invent a cause in Afghanistan and espoused it with full blown Islamist rhetoric. Only three decades after this invention, the cause boomeranged with Afghanistan turning to a strategic threat rather than a strategic depth. It was a wrong cause.
Similarly, India invented a cause on its Eastern flanks and sliced Pakistan’s Western arm to create Bangladesh. In Bangladesh India should have earned an iconic image for liberating the region but, to the contrary, the tiny and famished country has become a keg of conspiracies against Indian state. Why? Because creating Bangladesh was a wrong cause.
During the same seventies, Nixon administration in USA, in order to destroy the perceived ‘safe haven’ of Vietcong guerrillas who were fighting US occupation in Vietnam, invented a cause in Cambodia. It claimed to promote democracy by bombing out Cambodia. Consequently the US lost grip over both Vietnam and Cambodia and the cause failed because the invented causes are doomed to fail.
There could be a chain of examples. See how the cause that the west invented to create Israel post world war II has not only failed but is now threatening a civilizational clash. Lately Israel wanted to invent a cause of nuclear disarmament in Iran but it boomeranged and evoked reaction in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq because the cause was artificial.
By the same principle India’s new cause in Pakistan’s western frontier which it is trying to invent through Afghanistan is also proving counterproductive. Leaf through any ordinary history textbook and you will come to know that the invented causes have always entailed deadly consequences for the inventors.
Back to Jammu: Then who is trying to invent a false cause in Kashmir’s summer capital? Answer to this question is not as relevant as the fact that whoever is espousing this cause is bound to suffer humiliating failure because, as the principle of history goes, invented causes never come to fruition.
The above explanation about the organic relationship between the failure and the invented causes should not be entirely lost on Professor Nirmal Singh, a sober academic and the BJP’s not-so-controversial man in Jammu.
It appears as if some power brokers in Jammu’s pro-BJP camp have been prompted by the motivated theories that since an alive and visible cause has won Kashmiris major share in power and pelf, so they also need a ‘festering’ cause to enjoy ‘more than Kashmiris’. The way a pure fight against an administrative order lapsed into an anti-Muslim and anti-Kashmir campaign, is enough to prove that the same thinking has prompted Jammu to invent a counter-cause against Kahsmir. What should be the result of a clash between an invented and a real cause is a foregone conclusion.
In fact, the failure of this ineffectual cause has already become visible like the tip of an iceberg. BJP’s central leadership seems to have awakened to the costs of inventing causes and has, contrary to the past practice at such occasions, responded to the gruesome blasts in Ahmedabad and Bangalore in a rather pure political way. BJP Chief Rajnath Singh may have liked to stretch the land transfer row to India’s Hindu heartland and ride a wave of hatred but the party’s key leader and former minister Sushma Swaraj has, of late, blamed Congress for the blasts in Indian metros.
Blame game is pure politics; the significant shift is that BJP does not look interested in any hate-Muslim wave in Jammu. It may be a conscious decision given the chances of BJP’s comeback in New Delhi. The party may not like to make its future decision-making difficult by appearing the inventor of a counter-cause against the dominant cause, which is the resolution of Kahsmir issue through dialogue.
And see the other extreme. Syed Ali Geelani who is abominably termed the ‘rabid Islamist’ in Delhi and Mumbai-based newspapers, in his response to Jammu situation has steered clear of any ‘Islamism’.
“This is sheer vote-bank politics,” Geelani told a press conference on July 29. It’s more surprising to see a ‘rabid Islamist’ calling for calm and urging Jammu Muslims to restrain during the communal tension in the city.
Despite an overcharged campaign against Muslims in Jammu, in which even Jammu and Kashmir Police was dubbed “Hurriyat Police” and CRPF spared of stone pelting, Geelani’s responsible and matured approach has defeated the designs to make the Kashmiri Muslims a fuse in the ‘bomb’ that was aimed to blast the culture of pleasant coexistence in Jammu and Kashmir. If the BJP’s central leadership and Kashmir’s Tehreek-e-Hurriyat refuse to become part in the invention of a cause in Jammu, the inventors better call it a day. After all you need a strong wind to blow a devastating fire; Kashmiri Muslims have appreciably refused to play ‘wind’.
On the other hand, the ‘Jammu cause’ is so grievously alienating the mainstream groups, NC and PDP, that they would be happier to propel the cause of a ‘Muslim Kashmir’ across the flows of Chenab river and the ranges of Pir Panjal, and in Kargil. PDP and NC have a sizeable presence in Jammu’s Muslim lands; burning the effigies of Mufti Syed and Omar Abdullah, and hounding out Syed Ali Geelani and Yasin Malik from Jammu is like inviting a real cause to outperform the artificial cause.
Kashmir’s Muslim politicians on both sides of the ideological divide may not have as much wherewithal to take up a Muslim cause across Jammu but Ashok Khajuria’s wrong cause of economic blockade has enough gravel to nudge them. So, the Jammu agitation will add to History’s testified principles, mentioned in the beginning; it will also show how an invented cause boosts a right but feeble cause. Best of luck Mr Khajuria!