Gujarat burns, but Kashmir’s cool

Muzamil Jaleel examines the theories put forward by the Valley intelligentsia on why Kashmiri Muslims did not react to the Gujarat carnage

Srinagar: The entire country was scorched by the flames of communal hatred emanating from Gujarat, the Valley, ironically, was an oasis of calm. In fact, Muslim-dominated Kashmir did not even respond to a bandh called on Saturday to protest against the killing of Muslims in Gujarat.

‘‘Kashmiris seem to have grown wiser through experience; (they realise that) whenever there are communally motivated acts here, they are sponsored by outside elements’, says Prof C L Vishen, head of the Centre for Advanced Studies in Education and Technology (CASET), Srinagar. ‘‘In 1990,it was a sponsored wave; Pakistan’s games culminated in the migration of Pandits. The migration was not an outcome of a communal frenzy originating from Kashmiri Muslims. In the past 10 years of mayhem, Kashmiris have come to comprehend the dynamics; they know if there is communal violence, its players will never be indigenous.’’

But is Muslim-dominated Kashmir free of a communal backlash because there aren’t many Hindus left in the Valley? Vishen disagrees. ‘‘Communal violence is nothing but madness and when man turns mad, he manages to get targets. There are still more than 10,000 Hindus living in the Valley. There are hundreds of Hindu properties and places of worship. There is also a substantial Sikh population’’, he says. ‘‘Communal winds have always come from outside and then were restricted to the surface. The core of Kashmiri society has always been secular’’.

Though the bandh was called by the Kashmir Bar Association, a constituent of the All-Parties Hurriyat Conference, the APHC interprets the response to the bandh call as a victory for its separatist agenda. ‘‘It is a fact that Kashmiris no longer react to anything that happens in India. Although the people are angry over the incidents across Gujarat, they did not react because they see India — including the Indian Muslims — as usurpers of their rights’’, says Prof Abdul Gani Bhat, the Hurriyat chairman. ‘‘Indian Muslims are Indians first and Indians last, that is why they have never reacted to whatever has been happening in Kashmir over the past 12 years. We don’t hold any grudges against them about that, because we see them as Indians’’, he adds.

Bhat also believes that Kashmiris are too wrapped up in their own tragedies to be moved by anything extraneous.

People’s Democratic Party leader Mehbooba Mufti, too, holds the ‘‘densensitisation’’ of Kashmiris responsible for their apparent apathy towards the Muslim victims of the Gujarat carnage. ‘‘Kashmiris have seen violence worse than what is happening in Gujarat today over the past 12 years. There is no tragedy that people here have not experienced. That is why we have become immune to all this’’, she says. ‘‘The lack of reaction among Kashmiri Muslims is also a reaction to the attitude of Indian Muslims towards the happenings inside Kashmir. They (Indian Muslims) hardly ever extended their support to Kashmiris when tragedies struck them. They never wanted to be aligned with Kashmiris for their own reasons’’.

Hurriyat leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, also an important religious leader of Kashmir, described the reaction of the Kashmiri Muslims to the communal violence in Gujarat as ‘‘an eye-opener for those who brand us extremists, hardliners and terrorists’’. He says that with their reaction, the people of Kashmir have proved that they are not fanatics although they are deeply hurt by the incidents in Gujarat. ‘‘We believe that the Godhra incident is highly condemnable but the way the government gave a free licence to massacre Muslims is just barbaric’’, he adds.

Like many others, well-known Kashmiri Pandit social activist Kumar Wanchoo believes there’s always vested interest behind communal violence. ‘‘There are perhaps (no vested interests) in Kashmir this time, that is why no one has been provoked’’, he says.

Incidentally, Wanchoo’s father H N Wanchoo, noted trade union leader and human rights activist, was murdered by militants some years ago. Despite that, his son still lives in Srinagar. ‘‘In 1986, when Kashmir saw one of its few communal riots, there was a clear political motivation behind it. Even the migration of Kashmiri Hindus was triggered by vested interests. A few killings of Hindus, fear psychosis, communal slogans and then a chain reaction created the situation in which a majority of Kashmiri Hindus left the Valley in the early 1990s’’, he says.

The State administration is also pleased with the reaction to the communal violence, not only in Kashmir valley but also in communally sensitive Jammu. ‘‘There was no communally motivated violence reported anywhere, though there was a bandh in Jammu’’, says DGP A K Suri. ‘‘It is a positive development because we had some communal violence at the time of the demolition of Babri Masjid’’.