Divide Kashmir, destroy India

Neerja Chowdhury

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad has made a case for the division of J&K but, thank God, the Shankaracharya of Kanchi has opposed it. The idea has been around for 50 years. Senior US politician Adlai Stevenson, when he had gone to Srinagar to meet Sheikh Abdullah in 1953, had suggested the division of the state and independence for the Valley. In recent years, the think tanks in America have mooted various permutations of the same idea.

When it was out of power the BJP had argued for separate statehood for Jammu and union territory status for Ladakh. The RSS brass had favoured the division of the state. What’s new about the VHP plan is the idea of carving out a union territory from the Valley for the Kashmiri Pandits.

The VHP proposal reflects defeatist thinking: the Valley has bled India enough, retrieve Jammu and Ladakh and if, ultimately, the Valley has to go at least you would have cut your losses. The proposal may also suit the RSS’s larger objective: a Hindu Rashtra and a theocratic Pakistan are two sides of the same coin. Allowing the Valley to secede because it is a Muslim majority area is tantamount to accepting the two-nation theory that India had rejected. This, in turn, will create a backlash in the rest of the country — if the Muslims of Kashmir want a nation on the basis of religion, why should Hindus tolerate Muslims elsewhere in India, or so the argument will go.

Only the loony fringe could argue like this, considering that there are 150 million Muslims in this country. There are Muslim-dominated islands in every state. There, too, will be demands for the creation of separate states and UTs. In time, the logic of separation will not be limited to religion — there will be divisions demanded along cultural, lingual and ethnic lines. In other words, this could be the beginning of the end of India as an integral whole.

The division of J&K will also destroy that entity called Kashmir. The culture of Kashmiriyat that had held it together has less to do with religion and more to do with the sense of being Kashmiri. Over the centuries, local rulers in Jammu sometimes declared independence from Kashmir but historically, culturally and politically, Ladakh and Jammu have always been an integral part of the larger Kashmiri state. The Hari Parvat in Srinagar symbolised Kashmir’s cultural and religious unity, with the ancient Chakreshwari temple on one side of the hill, the shrine of Sheikh Makhdoom on the other and the gurdwara where the Sixth Guru stayed at the foot of the hill.

Of all the states, the Sufi culture was the strongest here. The Sufi saint, Sheikh Nooruddin Noorani, is revered as much by the Hindus as by the Muslims. Even today Muslim midwives deliver Hindu children and the Muslim Kawuj cremate the bodies of Hindus. The upkeep of the cave at Amarnath has traditionally been looked after by Muslims.

Muslim rulers in Kashmir, like Zainul Abedin in the 15th century, did their bit in nurturing the tradition of religious tolerance. He persuaded the Pandits who had fled during his father’s reign to return to the Valley and had rebuilt their temples. Communalism was hardly a problem in J&K, which is the only Muslim majority state in the country.

Therefore, any solution to the problem has to be based on J&K’s integrity as a state and much depends on the sincerity of the effort to keep it that way. For a start, the government should reopen a dialogue with the Kashmiris — and it cannot be that of the K.C. Pant variety. Let the government select a group of interlocutors who may have greater credibility with the Kashmiris. There is no dearth of names: I.K. Gujral, P. V. Narasimha Rao — who had once said the sky is the limit as far as autonomy went — Krishan Kant, Rajmohan Gandhi, Mir Qasim, Hamid Ansari, former chief justice A.M. Ahmadi. This is only a possible list.

The government has been harping on a free and fair election in the state, as if that is all its Kashmir policy boils down to. A free poll is every Indian’s birthright; the government is doing the Kashmiris no favour by offering this to them. But, certainly, the government can help to make a fresh start in the state by conducting elections there properly, whether under President’s rule or not.

The RSS and the VHP talk about the need for a strong nation but what they are advocating will only weaken India. The idea of a divided state is impractical, it negates everything that India stands for. J&K mirrors the pluralist ethos of India and it may well decide whether India survives as a united entity or not.