From weapons to words

Riyaz Masroor

Dr Sheikh Showkat Hussain appears an old-fashioned, aging professor who wears short beard and is never seen in a full business suit or necktie. But those who’ve seen him up close are in awe of him. In this self-effacing teacher, the young find a warm companion who shares their youthful aspirations without dismissing them as passé.
These attributes of Dr Hussain were loudly manifest when his work Facets of Resurgent Kashmir (Kashmir Institute 2009) was released on 19 April 2009 during a simple yet impressive gathering in a Srinagar Hotel. For one, most of the audience that turned out at Hotel Meridian comprised youth in their twenties and thirties. Two, Dr Hussain’s 212-page book stands out for its sobriety and low price, Rs 135 – though just the compilation of articles he wrote for several newspapers including Rising Kashmir, it does not carry the author’s profile.
For the record, Dr Hussain’s sense of history and political insight has won him admirers here and abroad. He has frequented several Asian, African and European countries, teaching students from almost half of the world. Currently Dr Hussain teaches International Law and Human Rights at Kashmir University. His unpretentious speeches, often in understandable accent, are devoid of rhetoric and carry loads of insight. It would not have been probably so difficult for him to project his academic muscle through this work but he chose not to.
Book launches in Kashmir generally lapse into a political get together where politicians from either side of the ideological divide spew clichés and the speakers shower praises on the author and on each other, turning the occasion into a society of mutual admiration. In contrast, the Sunday at Hotel Meridian had a different ambiance. The author himself conducted the proceedings and the speakers including Ved Bhasin, Advocate Zaffar Shah, Advocate Mian Qayoom and Dr Altaf Hussain spoke their heart out. One may not agree with Dr Hussain’s views was the buzzword in the function but every speaker candidly acknowledged Dr Hussain’s stoic denial to career intellectualism and termed his writings as a “step in right direction”.
The occasion bore a mark of symbolism. Inayatullah Khateeb – father of a slain militant commander Nadeem Khateeb from Chenab region’s Doda district – released the book and handed it over to a 10-year-old boy who was among the audience. This gesture symbolized a very significant transition. Many in the audience were reminded of a similar bequeathal in early nineties when Azam Inquilabi, then a militant commander, handed over his Russian AK 47 to a 12-year-old Muhammad Bin Qasim somewhere in Pakistan and shunned the career of militancy. What ensued is too fresh to be repeated but the context needs a brief revisit.
The contemporary Kashmir movement owes its ideological idiom to the Plebiscite Front that grew out of New Delhi’s ‘constitutional suicide’ on 9 August 1953 when the Kashmir Prime Minister Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah was deposed and thrown in jail. That two-decade movement created a host of anti-India slogans, which served as a catalyst in the society. Boycott of elections, shutdown, demonstrations, stone pelting et al are actually the making of the PF. One could safely say that this phase set in motion a particular culture of resistance within Kashmir society. This phase later gave way to a second phase in early nineties when Azam Inquilabi handed over the gun to Muhammad bin Qasim getting us in the lap of a deadly spell of violence.
Following those slogan-churning and gun-roaring eras is a more emancipated, much more progressive phase of writing. The arrival of this ‘Golden Era’ was aptly symbolized on 19 April when Dr Hussain handed over to the forthcoming generation a more civilized form of resistance. Someone has appropriately said in times of war words are weapons. Transitions could be either for good or for worse. We saw two of them between 1953 and 1990, both had merits as well as demerits. We just hope that our transition from violence to peaceful writing brings us back from the chaos where we had descended during past many years.
In fact, this culture of reflecting the popular aspirations through dispassionate narrative has already taken some root. Let the late Agha Shahid stand out from the rest, he represents the Kashmir’s freedom narrative in West. We have had a young author Basharat Peer recently telling our story to rest of the world through his much celebrated Curfewed Nights; Human rights defender and noted journalist Zahiruddin summed up cases about custodial disappearances in his debut work Did They Vanish in Thin Air and followed it up with Bouquet that features Kashmir’s important personalities; Delhi-based Kashmiri scribe Iftikhar Geelani’s Jail diary was published by Penguin in both English and Urdu editions(first Urdu book from Penguin); P G Rasool has written an insightful Urdu account on 1947-Kashmir and is working on a couple of projects related to Kashmir situation ; Poet and columnist Maqbool Sahil has penned his prison notes in Urdu;; Syeda Afshana’s lyrical response to Kashmir conflict Fugitive Sunshine is a commendable effort and of late Sheikh Abdullah’s biography by Ashiq Hussain was taken fairly well in Kashmir’s Urdu knowing audience. We have also heard of another young columnist Arjimand Hussain Talib coming out with a book on Kashmir’s political economy and the noted journalist Muzamil Jaleel probably putting together personal conflict experiences as narrated by 20-something boys and girls.
Let it be clear that these lines are not to promote the idea of writers becoming moral and political custodians of Kashmir society. No way. History bears witness that the educated have always made the common cause with power. Political theorists agree that where the educated ally with the power there is little likelihood of social unrest and upheaval because only the educated can supply the catalyst of words that turns a dormant mass of people into a resisting society. We are rather keen to underline the transition from Weapons to Words. Let’s pray this transition benefits the people more than it may benefit the power.

riyaz.masroor@yahoo.com

Crime and Punishment

Riyaz Masroor

Soon after becoming the “prime minister” of “free Kashmir” in 1947, Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah had realized what New Delhi expected of him. He was sent to United Nations to support India’s case. But, as records suggest, Sheikh sounded politically correct and chose to criticize Pakistan rather than appeasing India. "We shall prefer death rather than join Pakistan. We shall have nothing to do with such a country."

Though Sheikh would exaggerate Indo-Kashmir affinity at many occasions – in Kashmir and New Delhi – in UNO his tone sounded nationalist. The statement was open-ended and would not necessarily suggest that Kashmiris wanted to remain with India. Within a space of few years Sheikh was seen hobnobbing with American establishment through US embassy in New Delhi. Sheikh’s “diplomatic feat" in United Nations and his covert engagement with US discomforted New Delhi, especially the religion-obsessed bureaucracy.

Sheikh’s overtures were seen as an “unacceptable” nationalist assertion that was coming from a supposedly pro-India Kashmiri leader. An anti-Muslim agitation ensued creating a scare for the majority Muslims; the agitation was sponsored by the pro-Hindutva Praja Parishad. Sheikh suspected Congress that was ruling India. Many believe that the roots of a religion-inspired armed uprising were sown during the Praja Parishad movement, which seemed a counter assertion against Sheikh Abdullah’s UN speech. This agitation led to the dismissal of the government of Sheikh Abdullah in 1953 and Abdullah’s arrest on 9 August same year plunging the state into a 22-year chaos.

In 1974, when Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was about to reinstall a defanged “Lion of Kashmir”, Sheikh’s flamboyant Son, a not-by-choice doctor, was consorting with JKLF leaders on the foothills of Pakistan administered Kashmir. During his stay there Farooq is said to have taken an oath for the “liberation of Jammu and Kashmir from the yoke of Indian occupation.” This was also a nationalist assertion by the ambitious son of a pro-India Kashmiri politician.

Farooq’s nationalist assertion had already started weighing heavy on the minds of Kashmir handlers in New Delhi; Farooq saw an unstable succession to power after Sheikh’s death in 1982. Then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi wanted to assimilate National Conference into Congress fold so that the “Lion” could be completely “de-lionized”. Farooq resented the move and instead attempted to ally with parallel forces in Indian mainstream; yet another nationalist assertion by a Kashmiri pro-India politician. That too was followed by a consequence. Two years later Indira engineered a series of defections in National Conference leading to the dismissal of his government in brazen violation of democratic codes. It had dawned upon Farooq that he could not set right what had been wronged by his father’s surrender before New Delhi, so he capitulated in 1986 – Congress-National coalition came to power.

These nationalist assertions had been followed by humiliating surrenders but Abdullahs continued to enjoy the sympathy of Kashmiris as late as 1987, though not as manifestly as during Sheikh Era. Farooq staged a comeback in 1996 and bailed out New Delhi during worst times. His party fought elections at the height of turmoil and won effective majority in the JK assembly, though less than five percent turnout was recorded during polls.

In the summers of 2000 Farooq grew conscious about the fast eroding image of his party and his family and chose to mend it for good. He wanted to do it again through a nationalist assertion: NC drafted autonomy report and passed a resolution in the assembly. The fate of this assertion would not have been different than the assertions made by Sheikh in 1947 and by Farooq in 1982. The resolution was summarily rejected by then BJP-led coalition in New Delhi despite the fact that National Conference had sidestepped the Muslim sensitivities and allied with the BJP sponsored NDA. Whatever the sub context, NC later lost more than half of the mandate it had won in 1996 and a little known PDP rose to power with Mufti Muhammad Sayeed seeing his wish being fulfilled after nearly four decades.

Mufti subtly calibrated his relations with BJP as well as Congress and shot himself into prominence through his green mantra, which is soft separatism. While Mufti tried to build his empire on NC’s political ruins he too lapsed into the nationalist mode and began to assert before New Delhi. In 2005, during the snowstorm in Valley, Mufti is said to have virtually shouted down some senior Army generals telling them the army should not encroach upon the domain of state administration. He also engaged PMO over the issue of demilitarization; the catchword was first aired by then Pakistani President and Army Chief General Pervaiz Musharraf. What else should have been the result of this nationalist assertion? Mufti could not continue as CM and had to be content with the power sharing agreement even as the Prime Minister had promised an extension.

This takes us to the historical floor test of Congress-led UPA government in the Indian parliament on 22 July 2008. It was the time when a massive revolt in Kashmir was brewing over the land transfer to Amaranth shrine. Omar Abdullah, MP and Farooq’s tech-savvy son, gave the famous one-inch-land statement. “Jaan Dengay par ek inch zameen ka tukda nahin dengay (We shall prefer death rather than giving you an inch of our land),” Omar spoke to an unusually quiet Lok Sabha comprising 543 members.

Those angered with Omar’s nationalist assertion picked up threads from Praja Parishad agitation of 1950s and set off an orgy of communal violence across Muslim lands of Jammu and on the Srinagar-Jammu highway. But unlike in 50s and 80s New Delhi suffered a dilemma: How to ‘punish’ the pro-India politician who had committed the ‘crime’ of asserting before the ‘Raj’? Mufti was a choice but he had already gone overboard by pulling out of Congress-led coalition in J&K over the land row. Omar’s coronation on 5 January 2008 must have incurred a huge political cost. Ladakh? Bghlihar? NHPC? Or……? Think over it!

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Taliban are coming?

When the Kashmir society doesn’t identify itself with violence India better invest in peace building rather than glorifying Taliban
Riyaz Masroor
“We’re here for your safety but that is not enough. It’s you who will ensure complete safety. You will have to be vigilant and behave as good citizens. We know you hate violence and love peace but when a militant comes to you, counsel him. You can persuade him for surrender. Violence destructs, peace promises prosperity.”
This is just to recall those ‘nostalgic’ sermons an army commander or a CO of BSF/ CRPF would give at the end of every crackdown during early days of militancy in Kashmir. We’ve also witnessed the armed forces – which would be expected to handle the insurgency through military means alone – lapsing into the domain of public administration; a whole gamut of military administration came up in the form of Operation Sadhbhawana. Under the aegis of this operation, we saw schools, computer centers and orphanages being set up, mini-power projects, sports and cultural festivals being commissioned, student-trips across India (Bharat Darshan) being sponsored and rousing reception being given to Hajj Pilgrims on their return from the Holy city of Jeddah.
On the face of it, the motive behind the operation looked positive: to make the violence in Kashmir unpopular. Pundits of peace and conflict studies may agree with the fact that India in Kashmir never faced the crisis of control; it was trying to tackle the crisis of public alienation from the political mainstream, precisely the legitimacy. The main characteristic of Kashmir militancy was the social acceptance of violence against India and it was this social sanctity attached to the gun-wielding militant that was troubling Indian policy makers hence the attempt at “winning hearts and minds”. So much emphasis was given to stigmatize the violence that we saw a whole host of writers, newspapers, institutions , academics, separatists and semi-separatists promoting the idea that Kashmiris cannot afford violence for too long and they should stop counting on violence vis-à-vis their aspirations for Azadi.
Almost a decade went without any substantial impact and we even heard the most reasonable voices, including that of Late Abdul Gani Lone, welcoming the “Mujahideen” who had occupied the mountain peaks of Kargil in the summer of 1999. But at long last the Operation Sadhbhawana worked, though major part of the credit must go to nine-eleven. Thereafter we saw the separatist discourse in Kashmir performing a headlong. Hurriyat Conference, which by then would be seen as the over-ground face of militancy, would now advocate peaceful negotiated settlement, oppose innocent killings and ask militants to hold fire against Indian troops. The killing of top militant leaders would doubtless attract large funerals but the absence of support for a violence-driven resistance was conspicuous.
If there were any doubts that the violence was still popular, they were cleared in the summer of 2008 when around five million people marched during half-a-dozen Azadi rallies and militants preferred to retreat on the fringe, their guns downed. Not just this. Having seen at least sixty people dead during ruthless Police and Army actions, people lined up outside polling stations and voted in throes, ignoring the boycott calls from APHC while wearing the Azadi sentiment manifestly on their sleeves. Interestingly, all this happened when India and Pakistan were on the brink of a war following a terrorist strike in Mumbai on 26 November 2008. Indeed the collective peace overture from Kashmir showed that the purpose for which Operation Sadhbhawana was launched had been served to the fullest; not just separatist groups but people in larger numbers demonstrated their mutual aversion to violence and willingness to adopt democratic means of expression.
The violence lately became so unpopular that some sections even opposed the stone-throwing youth and wanted to devise even more “civilized form of resistance” let alone the option of gun. These impressions betray a loud urge for peace within Kashmir society. If the militancy in 1989 heralded an armed uprising it was because of a mass support. Would Taliban be so naïve to enter Kashmir at the height of popular distaste for violence?
Taliban are coming?
In such a fertile scenario for peace building in Kashmir, how should New Delhi proceed if there is really a Taliban threat? The answer is simple, it should consolidate the change of “hearts and minds” that has occurred post 9/11. Or to be precise, it should invest in people rather than Taliban. By glorifying the Taliban the country’s over-patriotic media is actually creating problems for the country. Neutral observers must be wondering why the authorities are scaring people of a specter, which is even abhorred by Syed Ali Geelani, whom the media portrays as the militant face of Kashmiri separatism, and also the sitting MP and PDP Chief Mahbooba Mufti. Both have questioned the government claims of spurt in militancy activities.
There is no formal word yet from home ministry or defense ministry. Director General of J&K Police Kuldeep Khudda has just pointed to the “possibility” of a Taliban spillover in Kashmir by arguing that after capturing Swat, Taliban have now reached to Lahore and “may be” interested in Pakistan’s Eastern borders. TV channels picked this up and made mountain out of a molehill. Even if the presumptuous TV disclosures about Taliban presence in Kashmir hold any salt, the standard way of dealing with it is not glorifying the intruder but building your fort. That is reinforcing the social stigma attached to violence.
Saner response from New Delhi should have been somewhat like this: “Taliban have no constituency in Kashmir. People have voted in larger numbers and rejected violence. People don’t want them here.” But it is a strange irony that the state and the society in Kashmir seem to have undergone a role reversal. While the state-backed media appears hell-bent to hammer the fact that Taliban are coming, the society is crying hoarse denying the possibility. Imagine if Taliban really come here, will they remain content with Kashmir alone? India better invest in peace building rather than glorifying Taliban.


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Kabul, Kandhar and Kashmir

Tale of two Kashmiri academics – one warned British of dangers in Kabul the other is still testing Afghan waters

Riyaz Masroor

Mohan Lal (1812-1877) was an ethnic Kashmiri Pandit who pursued a career in British intelligence during first Afghan war; it was the time when the East India Company was relieved from managing India and the country was taken (or enslaved) into the direct domain of the RAJ. Mohan Lal was less likely to go with the freedom struggle because his father, a high-caste Brahmin, had also participated in a British mission to Afghanistan in 1808. He, therefore, went with the family tradition. Credible historians have recorded that in early nineteenth century Mohan Lal was the first Kashmiri to speak fluent English as he had graduated with first-class degree from Delhi English College that was founded by Charles Travelyan. It was Travelyan who had spotted Mohan Lal and sensed a spark of 'coercive diplomacy' in this dynamic Kashmiri young man. He had so impressed Sir Alexander Burnes that when Burnes was appointed British Resident in Kabul he invited Mohan Lal to become his partner in the mission.

Mohan Lal assumed the charge of Mir Munshi in 1831 amidst the Afghan resistance against the installation of Shah Shuja, a British prop. "In Kabul, he (Mohan Lal) was the Resident's ears and eyes, his silent partner and agile fixer, capable of becoming a fly on the wall, or a figure in the carpet," writes Karl Meyer and Shareen Brysac, who have jointly authored an exhaustive account of South and Central Asian conflicts. Pandit Mohan Lal's knack for counterintelligence was superb. He had engineered defection within Afghan warriors during the famous British siege of Ghazni. Historical accounts suggest he had long before recruited a defector at Ghazni who would later tip the British troops about a less walled up gate (other two gates were impregnable) that could be easily stormed.

When Kandhar fell and things were calm under Shah Shuja, Mohan Lal got reports about a clan chief Abdullah Khan having vowed to slay Burnes. The Kashmiri spy informed his mentor in advance but Burnes ignored the warning and stayed put in his Kabul mansion; two mornings later the British officer and his visiting younger brother Charles were hacked to death in the Resident House. Later, Mohan Lal would organize a sort of “operation clean-up” at the behest of Sir William Macnagten to eliminate the resisting Afghan chiefs. He would distribute Rs 10000 for the head of each of the “rebel Afghan chief”. Two chiefs including Abdullah Khan, who had slain Burnes, were assassinated during this “operation”. This too did not work to the Empire’s advantage and Mohan Lal could only ensure his own safety; he survived the disaster of British retreat that saw many bigwigs dead including Macnagten, returned to Delhi where he died almost unnoticed in 1877.

More than 170 years after Mohan Lal believed he could facilitate a British victory in Kabul, another bright Kashmiri Professor Amitabh Mattoo visited the war-ravaged Afghanistan in the spring of 2008. Mattoo, then Vice Chancellor of Jammu University, was received in Kabul by Afghan President Hamid Karzai with official protocol on 16 April 2008, two weeks after Professor Matoo had been nominated as Government of India’s nominee on the Board of Directors of India-Afghanistan Foundation (IAF) for two years.

Besides Karzai, Professor Mattoo had a long chat with the Afghan government’s National Security Advisor, Dr Zalmay Rasool whose great grandfather was the last Afghan governor in Jammu and Kashmir. It is interesting to note that in 1831 a Kashmiri academic reached Kabul with a mission and earned a significant if short-lived victory for the Empire and in 2008 another Kashmiri academic landed in Kabul to bolster India’s policy toehold in Afghanistan. Though known in the annals of history as a spymaster, Mohan Lal was a ‘principled intriguer’ who would advise his mentors to the best of his knowledge about Afghan resistance to British occupation.

Burnes ignored his advice and lost his life; Macnagten put down his word of caution against a withdrawal pact with Akbar Khan, son of the deposed ruler Dost Mohammad, and was shot dead with the pistol he had gifted Akbar sometime back; Macnagten’s body was dismembered, his head borne like a trophy and his corpse impaled on a meat hook. Not just this, in all around 12000 British troops and agents died in the much quoted “Death March”, which Mohan Lal had opposed. British did not listen to Mohan Lal and the war went wrong; we don’t know if Professor Mattoo will follow Mohan Lal’s principle, of being honest and accurate while assessing Afghan situation for the mentors, during his tenure as India nominee in India-Afghan Foundation.

Indeed Professor Mattoo and Mohan Lal represent two different eras of Kashmiri disempowerment. While Mohan Lal earned Kashmir a broader mention in the elite war history of British Empire, the community is keenly watching Professor Mattoo. Will he forge a grand reconciliation between Muslim and Pandit sections of the same ethnic stock of Kashmiri society or allow himself to become just an extension of Mohan Lal’s nineteenth century network of secret agents, more politely called as diplomats.

Tailpiece

Speaking in a seminar about Pandit heritage on 31 March 2009, Muhammad Yasin Malik, Chairman of JKLF, advised Kashmiri Pandits against collaboration with the government. “As a student of history I should say it is dangerous for minorities in conflict societies to be affiliated with the government.” Unlike their Muslim natives Pandits don’t lack intellectual capital but in order to stage a social comeback they should listen to this vital piece of advice from a non-intellectual Kashmiri liberal.

riyas.masroor@yahoo.com