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Kashmiriyat: a form of Jaziya

Kashmiriyat: a form of Jaziya

Author: Sandhya Jain
Publication: Organiser
Date: October 16, 2005

The brutal and cold-blooded murder of ten Hindus in Rajouri district on midnight 9 October 2005 is a grim reminder of the ongoing genocide of the native minority in Jammu & Kashmir. And the disgraceful near-total blackout of this news by the secular media is proof, if any were needed, that Kashmiri Hindus will remain orphaned in their struggle for survival in their own homeland if they do not change their approach towards their oppressors.

This is the second such atrocity this year, and the previous incident in which five Hindu men and one woman had their throats slit in a grim parody of the ritual of halal, whereby sanctified meat is obtained for food, was also blacked out by a media conspiracy of silence. What is particularly shocking about the current incident is that it has been executed in the immediate wake of Kashmir's killer earthquake, at a time when people were literally struggling to crawl out of danger themselves and pull their near and dear ones out of the rubble and debris that brought whole hillsides down in one frightening apocalyptic moment.

Security agencies believe the atrocities were committed by foreign jihadis who walked in from Pakistan, belying Islamabad's pious claims of having dismantled the camps. The fact, as is apparent, is that the terror factories are alive and kicking, and their ambition of ethnic cleansing the Indian side of the border unchanged. Pakistan's sharp reaction to Indian offers of joint relief operations are desperate measures to prevent exposure of the locations of its terror factories, and many Indian citizens think poorly of Dr. Manmohan Singh's generous aid to a country that does not put the war-of-a-thousand-cuts on hold even in the midst of such a grim natural calamity.

Those who descended upon Budhal tehsil, Rajouri, on midnight Saturday and brutally slaughtered ten members of two Hindu families had certainly never tasted the milk of human kindness (Pioneer 11 October 2005). Unfazed by the proclamation of Hizbul Mujahideen supremo and United Jihad Council chairman Syed Salahuddin of a temporary suspension of militant operations in the quake-ravaged areas (Budhal was Rajouri's worst hit area with more than 100 houses collapsing), the heavily armed militants probably availed of the quake-induced confusion to reach Rajnagar in Budhal tehsil unmolested around 11pm.

The male members of Munshi Ram's family were separated and their throats slit one by one. Munshi Ram's two sons were thus murdered before his eyes, before he himself was killed; his brother and his nephew also met a similar gory end. According to reports, survivors told the police that after these gruesome killings, one criminal had the gall to telephone the local police station in Kotranka and say they were leaving "gift packets" for them.

This same group then went to Gabbar village in the same tehsil and killed four male members of the family of Kartar Singh; one of his sons was critically injured and it remains to be seen if he will survive this ordeal. Two other villagers died in what appears to have been a killing spree allegedly organized by Abu Usman, a commander of Hizbul Mujahideen Peer Panchal Regiment (HMPPR). Police suspect that the killings may have been planned on suspicion that the nine men were informers. This belief has been strengthened by the recovery of a bullet-ridden decomposed body in Mardwaha-Daccan area of Doda district.

This makes a total of 12 dead bodies in 24 hours! It is obvious that the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus is not going to stop as neither media nor politicians are willing to draw attention to the "communal" nature of the assaults. Any fair-minded person can see that the genocide of Hindus in Bangladesh and Pak-coveted Kashmir is part of a systematic design to "purge" these regions of their respective Hindu minorities. Sadly, both national and international human rights watchdogs are complicit in these murders.

Like the Jews of Nazi Germany, Kashmiri Hindus will have to help themselves first before the nation and the world at large acknowledge their plight. Pandits who fled for their lives nearly 17 years ago have not got peace or honour in India; asking remaining Hindus to quit the valley and hand the jihadis a great victory is adding insult to injury. Hence the issue of leaving or staying should be left to those who have to make this painful decision. But Hindus who have left the Valley owe it to themselves and their future generations (if any) to introspect why things have come to this pass.

At the very least, they must immediately halt the slavish cultural surrender to Islamic fundamentalism that they have practiced for generations, with little benefit to themselves. It is high time Kashmiri Hindus woke up to their Hindu identities (which terrorists have never forgotten), became community-minded, and re-Hinduized themselves.

Kashmiriyat, the false notion of a specifically Kashmiri identity based on a composite culture centred round the cult of Islamic pir Nund Rishi, must be abandoned if Kashmiri Hindus hope to arrive in the next century as Hindus. Composite culture was a myth foisted on Kashmiri Hindus to cover up their disempowerment and servitude to extremely fanatical rulers who indulged in the most brutal slaughter of Brahmin families.

Kashmiriyat was a form of jaziya extracted from Hindus to allow them to practice their dharma in private while accepting its denial in all public spaces in the State. Worse, it divided Kashmiri Hindus from Hindus in the rest of the country (it was common to hear them describe India as "Hindustan," as if it was a foreign country!). Interestingly, Kashmiriyat never separated the Muslim community of Kashmir from the Ummah in Mecca, Kabul, Indonesia, London, Taliban, Pakistan, et al. Kashmiriyat thus curtailed the space in which Hindus lived, leading inexorably to the contemporary displacement. Had Kashmiriyat been genuinely the composite culture of two communities, the Pandits would never have had to flee, nor would there be a sustained ethnic cleansing programme in the State.

Real Hindu dharma in Kashmir is the worship of Shiva or Sharada Devi. There is a need to promote awareness that by denying their Hindu roots, by embracing non-Hindu sources of religion at the expense of their ancestral dharma, Kashmiri Hindus are doing themselves a grave injustice. If they do not assert their special cultural identity in this hour of crisis, the genocides will continue, and the rest of us will not know who or what we are expected to defend. We cannot keep clapping with one hand.


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