Author:
Publication: Business Standard
Date: June 5, 2001
From words of war to a war of words,
it is yet another concession to hope in the tragedy of terrors being enacted
in Kashmir. Even as Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee readies to host
Pakistan Chief Executive General Pervez Musharraf, the most neglected and
yet perhaps the most telling component of the troubled picture remains
out of focus.
Nearly 4 lakh Kashmiri Pandits,
who have been forced to lead the lives of refugees within their country
over the past 12 years simply do not figure in any proposed peace process.
New Delhi is willing to recognise those who speak through the barrel of
the gun and now, through the remote control in Islamabad that directs the
gun, but those who have been driven out of their homeland apparently couldn't
matter less.
Although nearly 7 lakh Kashmiri
Pandits have left the Valley since Independence, mostly in order to escape
persecution at the hands of the overwhelming Muslim majority, more than
half of them have been forced to flee since 1989 when guns began roaring
louder than the call of the muezzins.
In all, 55,000 families across the
country are registered as displaced Kashmiris. While more than half of
these are in Jammu alone, a considerable number of Kashmiri Pandits live
in cramped refugee camps in Delhi and Mumbai too.
Back home in the Valley, their homes
have been looted and some have even been forcibly occupied. That complete
Islamisation of the Valley is the objective is proved by the recent killings
of the hitherto spared Sikh community.
Present-day Kashmir, therefore,
is a resounding negation of the very concept of post-Independence India.
It is not just a threat but a negation of values embodied in our Constitution.
Though the term "secular" was incorporated in the Constitution only in
1976, by the 42nd Amendment, Jawaharlal Nehru had clearly stated early
on, "We call our State a secular one... What exactly does it mean? It does
not obviously mean a society where religion itself is discouraged. It means
freedom of religion and conscience, including freedom for those who may
have no religion. It means free play for all religions, subject only to
their not interfering with each other or with the basic concepts of our
State."
There is, quite inevitably, an array
of opinions on just what went wrong in Kashmir. There is no dearth of analyses
on how a region that has lived with Islamic domination since the 13th century,
and yet has remained largely peaceful, could suddenly turn so hostile to
the minorities.
As Pakistan also keeps reminding
us periodically, there are more ways of looking at the "Kashmir problem"
than India's official stance. Yet, in the context of Indian nationhood,
any solution to the Kashmir problem would have to recognise the forgotten
factor: the Kashmiri Pandits. So long as every Kashmiri Pandit does not
feel secure enough to return to his or her home, the Kashmir problem would
remain unresolved.
There is clearly more at stake in
Kashmir than the lives of the soldiers and the civilians they are stationed
to protect, the peace of a region, or even the democratic assertion of
a nation. Just as the creation of Bangladesh in 1971 dealt a body blow
to the two-nation theory, which had formed the basis of the carving out
of Pakistan in 1947, the ouster of Pandits from the Valley and India's
acceptance of this position poses a threat to the basis of the Indian republic.
In that sense, Kashmir can be equated
with the Punjab of the 1980s. As such, conditional peace is a commodity
that India cannot afford. Farooq Abdullah, for all his failures, knows
this well. That's why, he makes it a point to make a token reference to
his resolve to facilitate the return of the Kashmiri Pandits. That it's
a token reference with complete disregard to the ground realities takes
nothing away from his understanding of the importance of the issue.
New Delhi, in fact, has more to
answer for in this regard. On the one hand, it has been instrumental in
legitimising militancy: hobnobbing with masked, gun-totting men can send
out no other signal. Moreover, it has been guilty of spreading despair
in, rather than strengthening, the displaced community: the state of the
refugee camps is a clear enough evidence of the successive governments'
attitude.
By treating the Valley as a completely
separate entity from the Hindu-dominated Jammu and the Buddhist Ladakh,
New Delhi has only compounded its problems. And by keeping the Pandit community
out in the cold, it has behaved little better than international human
rights agencies that habitually indulge in a conspiracy of silence. India
is clearly under threat from within.
