Author:
Publication: Vigil
Date: July 25, 2005
URL: http://www.vigilonline.com/news/plain_speak/ps_view.asp?plainSpeakId=88
I have been in the throes of an
attack of extreme hysteria ever since I saw all those touching visuals
of Hurriyat leaders being hugged and garlanded by some Kashmiri Pandits
who were making the landmark token gesture of 'returning' to the Valley
of Muslims. I wonder how many understood the significance of what happened.
The media highlighted the Pandits garlanding and offering flowers to the
Hurriyat no doubt in gratitude for allowing them to return and the Hurriyat
accepting the offerings graciously. I reached for my paper bag with one
hand and for the telephone with the other. I had my own Pandit source in
Delhi from whom I would get all the sordid details. She is as right-wing
as I am and just as 'hardlined' about her Panditness as I was about my
Hinduness. Taking deep breaths I reached for my pen.
Let me begin by telling you all
a story. My pet obsession Nirmala Deshpande came to Chennai within months
after the Kargil war wearing a fig leaf called Akhil Bharat Rachanatmak
Samaj of which her blurb says she is President. The day's papers also carried
in one small corner news about a day-long convention on Jammu and Kashmir
organized by, who else, Ms. Deshpande the self-styled Gandhian, and Admiral
Ramdas, an appellation he continues to flaunt even though he declared after
Pokhran II that he was ashamed to have served in the Indian armed forces.
In his acceptance speech in Manila in 2004 upon being rewarded with the
Magsaysay, the Admiral said and I quote -
"The India-Pakistan Soldiers Initiative
for Peace (IPSI) is an organization comprising retired Army, Navy and Air
Force personnel. I am the Chief Patron of the Indian Chapter. Ms. Nirmala
Deshpsande, a well known Gandhian, is the Chairperson of both the Indian
and the Pakistan chapters. We have had a couple of meetings in both our
countries and in a small way helped improve the understanding of each other
in the Armed Forces."
Voila! He needed the 'Admiral' to
precede his name for one of the several fig-leaves he continues to sport
for prosperous survival. The need for fig-leaves in Chennai will also soon
become apparent. The newspapers of the day said the Dalai Lama was coming
to town to participate in the two-day convention of the Akhil Bharat Rachanatmak
Samaj. Now I have a nose for stinking fish and I decided to gatecrash into
the convention on J&K.
Unfortunately I am not twins. Even
as the convention was underway in an auditorium in Chennai, Ms.Deshpande
was holding a public meeting in the name of the Rachnatmak Samaj not far
away at which were present Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, Abdul Ghani Lone (he was
alive then), the Dalai Lama, Admiral Ramdas and a retired Pakistani General,
Karamat Ali. Now what in the world were all these highly political worthies
doing at a convention in the name of Rachnatmak Samaj? Making use of the
social forum to make political speeches on Kashmir, that's what they were
doing and Nirmala Deshpande lent them all her Rachanatmak fig-leaf for
the occasion. Boy did they all need it!
The Dalai Lama as a refugee in this
country is expected not to comment on India's political affairs and neither
was a Pakistani General nor was the Hurriyat which was terrorist in Deshpande
clothes. Deshpande, let me admit, achieved a coup in that she managed to
get a Pakistani General, the Dalai Lama and the Hurriyat in little old
Chennai, on the same platform to make speeches about the 'troubled state
of Kashmir' and about the aspirations of the 'Kashmiri people' (read sunni
Muslims). The state government had egg on its face. The police didn't know
a thing about the presence of the Hurriyat until I called them in the afternoon
and told them about it.
The Dalai Lama made a highly improper
speech calling upon the Government of India to heed the voices of the Kashmiris
and warned the Government that if it did not then Kashmiris would become
further alienated from India. The Convention attracted huge media attention,
needless to say. Meanwhile in the auditorium, the convention on J&K
began in the morning with all these worthies except the Dalai Lama present
at the venue for the inaugural session - including a mammoth 'people to
people contact' delegation of 150 Pakistanis! There was not a single Hindu
from Jammu nor a single Pandit from the Valley, nor a Buddhist from Laddakh
and these rascals were assembled to discuss Kashmiri aspirations! And that
is why these touching visuals of the Return of the Pandits had me in hysterics.
Niramala Didi paused dramatically
midway in her inaugural welcome speech at the convention on J&K and
requested us all women, (we were just three of us not including all those
poor women of the Rachnatmak Samaj in whose name she was running this industry)
to tie rakhis 'for all our Pakistani brothers'. Permit me to puke. I was
still bleeding from the wounds of the Kargil War and couldn't contain myself.
I demanded of Didi if she had transported all these 'Pakistani brothers'
to meet the widows of those soldiers that had been killed, maimed and mutilated
by the war and demanded to know if she had ever tied a rakhi to an Indian
soldier on the Front.
There were ferocious whispers from
the Pakistanis, and if looks could kill I would have been charred meat
with the look that the Mirwaiz and Abdul Ghani Lone threw at me. But they
knew then that I was not a part of the poor Rachnatmak-Pakistani captive
audience and that I was there to stay. My blood had begun to boil and it
remained in a state of boil throughout the day. Several outrageous things
were said but I will confine myself to just two for the purpose of adhering
to the theme of this Plainspeak.
General Musharraf of the Pakistani
army had usurped power and those were the days when a spade was still a
spade and had no politically correct euphemism and the ISI like the Hurriyat
was still a terrorist organization. The Pakistanis assembled at the coup
bore the stain of General Musharraf's betrayal of democracy and the stain
of the ISI and Karamat Ali, just so he would not suffer the fate of Nawaz
Sharrif upon his return to Pakistan felt obliged to rub off some of the
stain on the Indian armed forces too. He told us all menacingly, "You Indians
pride yourself on the discipline of your armed forces. But if you leave
the issue of Kashmir unresolved for long, if the Government of India denies
the Kashmiris the right to self-determination and the 'insurgency' in Kashmir
continues, your army too will become just like the Pakistani army". What
this nonsense meant was that he thought the Indian army too would one day
dislodge a democratically elected government in Delhi and seize power.
At the end of the day after having
listened to all the assembled terrorists, separatists and anti-nationals
I rose to speak. I told them that for the entire day each and every member
referred to the state of Jammu and Kashmir as only 'Kashmir'. I told them
the full state as it had acceded to the Indian Union was Jammu and Kashmir
and besides the Sunni Muslims the state also comprised of Hindus, Buddhists
and non-Sunni Muslims like the Gujjars and the Bakherwals. There were also
the Kashmiri Pandits, the victims of genocide and refugees in their own
country and that this gathering was not representative of the whole state
because there was no one there from the state except the valley sunni Muslims.
To which the Hurriyat had the sense not to respond but fielded a Sunni
Muslim from the valley.
This piece of trash in the presence
of the Hurriyat told me the Pandits were renegades and traitors who ran
away from the valley, that they had only themselves to blame if they were
not represented in the seminar and that if the Pandits wanted to insist
on their rights they must first return to the valley and work for peace!
This happened in July 2000. And now these cock and bull stories about how
the Hurriyat is extending its hand of love, brotherhood, peace, social
justice, pluralism, secularism and democracy and all that crap to the Pandits
and how the Pandits overwhelmed with the gesture are returning to the valley
is what it is - cock and bull, crap or bullshit. Puking is a mild word.
Nancy Kaul, the feisty Kashmiri
Pandit of the Panun Kahsmir told me that Panun Kashmir had only on that
day charge sheeted the Hurriyat with genocide. The feisty Pandits held
a press conference in Delhi and denounced the Hurriyat for its duplicity
and castigated the state and central governments for doing nothing to enable
the Pandits to return to their homes with dignity, safety and honour. Dr.
Agnishekahar, an important Kashmiri Pandit formerly of Panun Kashmir also
rejected the overtures of the Hurriyat declaring that the valley was not
safe for the Pandits. True to his observations some Sunni Muslim terrorist
outfits, within two days of this dramatic 'return', warned the Pandits
to stay away from the valley if they wanted to live. We all know that the
homes and properties of the Pandits which they had left behind when they
fled the valley in terror had been misappropriated by the State and other
plundering Muslims; we also know that leopards do not change spots and
Muslims whenever they have been allowed to become the majority population
do not respect pluralism, secularism or democracy under which they thrive
and perpetuate themselves when in the minority. So why is the Hurriyat
cooing like a dove now? Thereby hangs a tale.
1. The US government is not in a
position to say 'no' to Pakistan which is holding the US in the vice-like
grip of 'anti-terrorism co-operation' blackmail. Pakistan wants Kashmir
and Big Daddy is supposed to get Pakistan what it wants. Now how will Big
Daddy do that?
2. Bill Clinton, in the days when
he was inviting terrorists of the world to the White House, created the
Hurriyat out of the assorted native terrorist groups operating in the valley,
at the behest of the CIA which has excellent relationship with the ISI
which in turn has excellent relationship with the native terrorists of
the Kashmir valley. This is a telescopic presentation of a long evolution
of events.
3. The Hurriyat is pro-Pakistan
and wants the state of Jammu and Kashmir to be wrested from India so that
it can become the vassal state of Pakistan with the Hurriyat at the helm
of affairs.
4. But unlike in the past, now neither
the US nor Pakistan can openly support or condone terrorism the shortest
route to achieving political goals, not after September 11 and not after
all the sanctimonious declarations about the scourge of terrorism that
emanated from the White House after September 11. So paint the Hurriyat
in different colours.
5. Make them political and make
them the political representative of J&K. But they have genocided the
Hindus of the Valley, and hounded them out in terror. So what next?
6. Make them coo like doves and
teach them to sing, "Won't you step into my parlour."
7. And some of the Pandits did indeed
step into their parlour. We must wait and watch to see what the Hurriyat
and the other Sunni Muslims of the state do to these gullible Pandits.
8. What does this 'peace' gesture
do for the Hurriyat?
9. It gives them the right to claim
that they now represent all the voices of all the people of J&K. Much
like the LTTE which claims to speak on behalf of all SriLankan Tamils and
a section of Indian Tamils to boot!
10. Then what?
11. Now Bush will pressure India
through Mush to make the peace process credible by seriously taking up
the issue of Kashmir for resolution.
12. And then Bush or some one else
in the White House a few years down the line will tell us that no resolution
can be complete unless it includes the voice of the Kashmiris.
13. And now that the Hurriyat represents
all the voices, make them the third party in the dialogue for 'peace',
the US will tell us.
14. Once the Hurriyat is made a
party to the 'peace process' we can all kiss Kashmir, Jammu and Kashmir
goodbye because the Hurriyat is the paid minion of Pakistan and will serve
only Pakistani interests on Kashmir.
This then is the background to the
Hurriyat's desperation to get at least some Pandits who had fled the valley
to return. And the carrot dangled before the Pandits - Kashmiriyat. Now
this Kashmiriyat as I have mentioned elsewhere in another Plainspeak, is
nothing more than the language and the culture of the Kashmiris. Much like
the language and the culture of the Marathis, Bengalis, Malayalees, Tamils.
This is Hindu India remember folks and all this glorious diversity is what
Hinduism is all about. So Kashmiriyat is the culture and cuisine specific
to Kashmir. So what is the big deal?
Kashmiriyat, the Hurriyat is telling
the Pandits binds us all. We have the same language, the same culture,
so please come back. We are incomplete without you; forget the thousands
that we killed. Come back in the name of Kashmiriyat, the Hurriyat is telling
the Pandits. Now roll folks, roll on the ground and laugh. Since when have
Muslims, and Sunni Muslims in particular owned up to any culture other
than Islam? Now as earlier, Kashmiriyat is the biggest con that has been
peddled to sever the Hindus of the valley from the Hindus of India. And
the Kashmiri Muslims even as they were demographically aggressing upon
the Hindus of the valley with their sufi poetry (another big con), and
converting the Hindus to Islam, convinced the Hindus that even after conversion
they were still the same as before - Viva Kashmiriyat.
They needed to maintain the myth
of Kashmiriyat to keep the diminishing Hindus from wizening up to what
was happening to their Kashmiri Saivite religion, culture and territory
and to keep the Hindus from the rest of India marching into the valley
to correct the demographic aggression. And the conning trick of Kashmiriyat
succeeded. The myth of Kashmiriyat was being peddled only until the Muslims
had achieved the critical numbers in the valley to decide its fate after
which they didn't need the lie of Kashmiriyat any more. They could now
browbeat and genocide the surviving Hindus into submission.
Now the lie of Kashmiriyat is being
peddled again to con the Pandits into returning to the valley just so the
Hurriyat gets to anoint itself as the sole representative of the Kashmiri
people. I only hope the Pandits learn from the history of the Tamils and
from their own history. Christian missionaries in Tamil Nadu during colonial
administration began to peddle the concept of Tamil Culture being different
from Hindu culture. Hindu culture was Brahminical, Sanskritised and Aryan
they said, whereas Tamil culture was non-Brahminical and Dravidian. In
one stroke they severed the non-Brahmins from the Hindu fold and the Tamils
from the rest of India. This provided the ideological basis for the political
separatist movement in Tamil Nadu and which is also the basis for separatism
and terrorism in Sri Lanka.
Christians and Muslims have always
fragmented Hindu consciousness for predatory religious and political intentions.
Whether Kashmiriyat or Tamil culture they will peddle it until they succeed
in realizing their intentions. So why blame the predators when Hindus are
such willing prey. When crocodiles shed tears the Hindu will be the first
to offer his handkerchief.
