Author: Sreeram Chaulia
Publication: Asia times
Date: Jul 8, 2008
URL: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JG08Df02.html
After two decades of calm in large-scale popular
movements, Indian-administered Kashmir recently witnessed mass demonstrations
and protests against the state government's decision to transfer forest land
to facilitate a Hindu pilgrimage.
The decision of the Jammu and Kashmir authorities
to grant 40 hectares of uninhabited jungle tract to the Amarnath Shrine Board
triggered a furor in the Kashmir Valley and brought life to a standstill for
nearly two weeks, a throwback to the 1988-1989 insurrection against Indian
rule. So forceful was the clamor that the state government had to eventually
rescind the transfer order.
The anti-land transfer agitation fed on important
new trends in Jammu and Kashmir. Firstly, the state has been enjoying a rare
respite from terrorist violence initiated by Pakistan-sponsored jihadi outfits
like the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Jaish-e-Muhammad.
The internal political turmoil in Pakistan, pitting a military presidency
against a democratically elected parliament, and the challenge posed to Pakistan's
security by the US war on the Taliban, left the jihadis in Kashmir confused
and rudderless.
The capability of terrorists to attack Indian
military personnel and pro-India civilians in Kashmir was intact, but the
power struggle in Islamabad created uncertainty about whether or not the jihadis
could rely on Pakistan's undying support to wrest Kashmir from India.
The anti-land transfer movement can be seen
as filling the "liberation" space that had sunk into a vacuum due
to the gradual rusting of the jihadi guns. The alienation of ordinary Muslim
Kashmiris from the Indian government did not subside with the decline of terrorist
violence by "freedom fighters". It was waiting for an opportune
symbolic issue to explode, and the Amarnath land transfer issue emerged as
the perfect cause.
It is worth recalling that symbolism playing
on the religious fears of Kashmiri Muslims has a history of inciting unrest.
In 1963, the disappearance of a strand of hair believed to belong to the head
of the Prophet Mohammad kicked off a major storm in the Kashmir Valley. Likewise,
the razing of the shrine of Kashmir's patron saint in 1995 by the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen
stirred a massive commotion among Kashmiri Muslims suspicious of the shenanigans
of "Hindu India".
A second way of analyzing the upsurge in Jammu
and Kashmir is to run it through the prism of democratic politics in the state.
The decision to grant the land to the Hindu shrine was made by the Congress
party-run state government in the run-up to provincial elections scheduled
for October. Since the territory of Jammu & Kashmir includes Hindu-majority,
Buddhist-majority and Muslim-majority areas, the land transfer decision could
have been aimed at winning Hindu votes from the Jammu area for the Congress.
The vehement reaction to the transfer by the
People's Democratic Party and the National Conference was, in turn, geared
towards beefing up their own electoral prospects among the valley's Muslims.
These parties are, in theory, wedded to the Indian constitution and its democratic
processes, but they have to show their "pro-Islam" credentials to
be electorally relevant in the Kashmir Valley. The land transfer issue was
ripe for exploitation by these political opportunists who benefit from perks
and privileges as people's representatives within the Indian polity but commiserate
with jihadi secessionists.
The irony of the anti-land transfer movement
is that its very raison d'etre is spurious. The forest land was clearly given
to the Amarnath temple for erecting temporary shelters and conveniences for
Hindu pilgrims who flock annually to the Himalayan abode of Lord Shiva. It
was in no way a violation of the special status accorded to Jammu and Kashmir,
which blocks citizens of the rest of India from acquiring property in the
state. The makeshift structures planned by the Amarnath temple staff on the
transferred land were meant purely for the pilgrimage season.
That a temporary land transfer for a Hindu
pilgrimage could be painted by separatist politicians as a devious plot of
the Indian government to alter the demography of Kashmir shows how communalized
Islam has become in the valley. This is the third and most potent explanation
for the movement that rocked Jammu and Kashmir. While alienation of Muslims
amid a lull in terrorist violence and machinations of democratic politics
partially account for the crisis, neither of these could galvanize the public
without the wholesale Islamization of Kashmir, a land ironically mythologized
as a cradle of eclectic Sufism. The same drivers of Taliban-style enforcement
of strict moral codes on Kashmiris, especially women, are at the forefront
in the anti-land transfer movement.
So mainstreamed is the influence of intolerant
Islamist ideology in Kashmir that there is barely a squeal of anguish regarding
restoration of properties of nearly half-a-million Kashmiri Hindus ("Pandits"),
who were hounded out of the valley by terrorists in 1988-1989. The restitution
of Hindu properties that were destroyed and taken over is a genuine grievance
for which Islamists show no sympathy. Islamists have also never condemned
terrorist attacks that, over the years, have killed dozens of Hindu pilgrims
whose simple ambition in life was to pay their respects to a supernatural
phenomenon in Amarnath.
While the reality on the ground is that the
demography of the Kashmir Valley has been forcibly redrawn through the killing
of Hindus, the mass movement that erupted in June was based on fictitious
claims of the land transfer being a diabolical conspiracy for Hindus to deluge
the valley. There is little evidence to prove that India's Kashmir policy
mimics Chinese internal colonization solutions that have changed the population
profile of Tibet in favor of Han Chinese. While the Tibetan upheavals this
year against Chinese high-handedness had a legitimate basis, the anti-land
transfer ruckus in Kashmir rests on concocted charges.
The most perverse sign of bigoted Islamism
running the roost in the Kashmir Valley is a report that shrines are being
built to glorify jihadi groups as a retort to the Amarnath temple imbroglio.
The first-ever shrine to the Lashkar-e-Toiba has just been inaugurated in
a village near the town of Ganderbal in memory of two Pakistani holy warriors
who died fighting the Indian army. According to The Hindu, local businesspersons
who erected this monument declared, "Here was India conspiring to seize
our land and hand it over to infidels [Hindu pilgrims visiting the Amarnath
temple], and here were these two foreigners who had given their lives to save
Islam in Kashmir."
The agenda of "saving Islam" from
alleged threats is growing stronger in Jammu and Kashmir, even though its
Muslims enjoy constitutionally guaranteed religious freedom. Terrorist violence
in Kashmir may wax and wane and state-level elections may come and go every
five years, but the seeds of Islamist hatred continue to sprout and augur
ill for peace. The liberation of Kashmir from jihadi mentality remains an
uphill task.
Sreeram Chaulia is a researcher on international
affairs at the Maxwell School of Citizenship at Syracuse University, New York
