Author: M.V. Kamath
Publication: Organiser
Date: July 20, 2008
URL: http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=246&page=12
Can't we for once behave like decent human
beings respecting each other's rights and elementary needs? Kashmiri Muslims
and their political parties must be ashamed of themselves, if, that is, they
have any conscience. Recent events have shown that they have none.
In recent months the country has been witnessing
lawlessness growing at an experimental rate, resulting in crores of rupees
less to both government and the people. It is a sign that is both disturbing
and frightening. Political parties, communal organisations and other riff-raff
are all associated with violence, committed, as we have noticed, with utter
impunity. We will not, for the moment, take into account the jihadists and
the Naxalites who belong to a wholly different category.
What is disturbing is the violence shown by
Gujjars in Rajasthan, by Gurkhas in Darjeeling and more recently in clashes
between followers and opponents of that that incredible bogus guru, Gurmeet
Ram Rahim Singh. Those opposed to him-over one thousand-took law into their
own hands and descended on Mulund station in Mumbai to block rail traffic
and the same lawlessness was exercised in Chandigarh as well, forcing cancellation
of 14 long distance trains. The latest show of violence has been in Srinagar
where Islamists indulged in angry protests against the assignment of some
39.88 hectares of degraded forest land to the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board
(SASB) for "raising pre-fabricated structures" for temporary use
by Hindu pilgrims.
The assignment of the land has had a long
and painful history, going back to 2005. The issue of using forest land to
set up seven rest sites to provide pilgrims with proper access to sanitation,
shelter and security had been cleared by the Jammu & Kashmir High Court
and indeed, anticipating the court's judgement, State Forest Minister Mohammad
Afzal Qazi had even approved the Shrine Board's request for land on March
25, 2005. But then came dissent from various communal quarters. The charge
was made that the Government was inducting 400,000 police and para-military
personnel to provide safety for Hindu pilgrims, severely straining the counter-terrorism
grid.
Those who made the charge forgot that in 2000,
some 22 pilgrims had been massacred during the yatra in one of the series
of communal attacks executed by the Lashkar-e-Taiba that year. Seven pilgrims
and five workers were killed in 2001. In 2002, another eight pilgrims were
killed and 30 injured by jihadists. What were pilgrims to do? Give up on pilgrimage?
Raise their own security force? Jihadists were not interested in these questions.
The sight of Hindu pilgrims going to Amarnath irked them. All kinds of excuses
had to be trotted up. The argument was made that the then Governor, Gen. S.K.Sinha
was planning to make demographic changes in Kashmir by reducing the Muslims
presently the majority in Kashmir into a minority. Forgotten was the fact
that thousands of Kashmir Pundits had been hounded out in the past in ethnic
cleansing. Then secessionist elements got into the act.
Then other gangs sought to take advantage
of mob fury, some of them to protest against hiking of interest rates on taxis!
These elements attacked the Punjab National Bank in Anantnag and a branch
of the Jammu & Kashmir Bank in Srinagar itself. Muslim fundamentalists
also sought to take advantage of the deteriorating law and order situation
by destroying a large hotel because it was serving alcohol as well as a well-known
bar for much the same reason. Frightened by the violence in which two students
were killed and seventy persons injured and two dozen buses set on fire, the
Amarnath Shrine Board has been practically wound up and the forest land taken
back by the Jammu and Kashmir government, which has promised to look after
the pilgrims, exactly how is anybody's guess. The jihadis have the last laugh.
Meanwhile, far away from Kashmir, in Kottayam,
Kerala, members of the Students Federation of India turned violent on June
25, brutally attacking three journalists. The SFI organised a march allegedly
to protest against the contents of a school book on history, demanding its
withdrawal. It is not clear what the unhappy journalists had to do with history
books when all that they were doing was covering the march. To add to this
in Andhra Pradesh there was violence of another kind. A leading Telugu daily,
Andhra Jyoti, had dared to publish an article a month ago, accusing leaders
of some dalit organisations of indulging in questionable means to make money,
rather than working for the interests of the communities they represent. What
was the result? The daily's office was vandalised by members of the dalit
groups who reportedly even tried to set afire some staffers. Worse, the government
slapped a case against the editor and several other journalists, based on
which they were arrested late in the night as if they were criminals in hiding,
a clear example of brow-beating and terrorising the media.
Readers will remember the attacks made on
the editor of a Marathi paper in Pune, because he had the gumption to ask
whether it was wise to spend crores of rupees on a statue of Chhatrapathi
Shivaji Maharaj out in the sea near Mumbai, when hundreds of Maharashtrain
farmers were committing suicide because they couldn't pay off their debts.
The editor's credentials as a cent per cent Maharashtrian and a respectful
admirer of Shivaji are impeccable, but that doesn't obviously matter for political
goondas. All these disparate events are symptomatic of a deranged society
and gutless administrations. We have turned into a nation of unthinking brutes,
and helpless governments.
Issues are not discussed in a civilised manner.
Buses are burnt, houses of dissidents are vandalised, innocent by-standers
are killed, hundreds of people are put into great inconvenience, trains are
stopped, trade and commerce is brought to a standstill causing losses in millions-and
all for petty causes that could have been settled across a conference table.
It is always "we" versus "they". "We" are always
right and "they" always wrong. "They" have to be abused,
wounded, killed and damned. Have we all become barbarians? The voice of sanity
is never heard. The Srinagar violence is particularly sickening because it
showed Muslim communalism in all its nakedness. When will we stop thinking
of ourselves in narrow terms of caste, creed, community, ethnicity, linguistic
affiliation and geographic boundaries?
Can't we for once behave like decent human
beings respecting each other's rights and elementary needs? Kashmiri Muslims
and their political parties must be ashamed of themselves, if, that is, they
have any conscience. Recent events have shown that they have none. In the
end it is politics and politics alone that matters and decency be blowed.
If the President of the People's Democratic Party, Mehbooba Mufti thinks she
has won a victory, she must be told that all that she has done is to shatter
faith in Kashmir's long tradition of fellowship and understanding.
