Author: Prakash Nanda
Publication: VijayVaani.com
Date: September 6, 2008
URL: http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=12
In recent weeks, many "liberals"
have argued in leading Indian publications such as The Times of India and
The Hindustan Times that if Kashmiris (Muslims naturally) do not want to remain
with India, they should be allowed "azadi," i.e., to secede from
the Union of India and join the previous breakaway rogue-nation called Pakistan.
The prescriptions of these "liberals"
are as astonishing as they are one-sided, for they would never extend to suggesting
that Pakistan hold a referendum in Sindh, Baluchistan, or Pushtunistan - areas
dying to break free of the shackles of Islamabad. Nor would such solicitude
extend to the tribes of the Chittagong Hills Tracts in Bangladesh.
One can legitimately take issue with some
aspects of this startling recommendation. While endorsing the Kashmiri separatists'
demand for "azadi", the liberals have not explained how the separatists
should receive this independence. In other words, on what grounds are the
separatists demanding independence, and do these celluloid intellectuals -
who owe their name and fame to a closed television talk circuit - believe
the grounds are just?
Separatists in Kashmir have made it amply
clear from every pulpit and at every rally that because the Valley has been
carefully cultivated into a Muslim-majority area, Muslims there cannot co-exist
with non-Muslims, i.e., Hindus who are otherwise the majority community in
India. Thus, though virtually only Muslims live in Kashmir, and it is led
by Kashmiri Muslims, the state's Muslim leaders feel that they want to return
to the pre-1947 era when the Great Calcutta Killing coerced Partition. Muslims
cannot live in "non-Muslim" India; hence the presence of so many
Pakistani flags in separatists' rallies and Geelani's exhortation for accession
to Pakistan.
So, sixty years after Partition, when independent
India is just trying to shake off the shackles of a crippling Nehruvian secularism
that has led to this situation in the Valley, we are face-to-face once again
with the old shibboleths of the past. The two-nation theory is being revived
and revisited upon us, this time in Kashmir. It is only a matter of time before
it extends to other states like Assam and West Bengal, where neighbouring
Bangladesh has kindly 'loaned' nearly 1.5 crore citizens to help push Hindus
away from regions being overtaken by arriving Muslim hordes.
To probe the "azadi" advocacy still
further, how should India allow independence to Kashmir Muslims; what would
be the modus operandi of this exercise; would it be conditional or unconditional?
This is pertinent because when India was divided
in 1947, the population figures were roughly 330, 27 and 30 million in India,
West Pakistan, and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) respectively. In terms of
area, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh constituted roughly 1.3, 0.3 and 0.06
million square miles respectively. Thus, population percentages were 85%,
15% and land percentages 75% and 25% for India and united West & East
Pakistan respectively.
Now - and this is critical - the united Pakistan
of 1947 was clearly intended to be for "all" Muslims of the subcontinent,
just as Israel was created for all Jews of the world. Thus, if all Muslims
of pre-August 1947 India had migrated to Pakistan, they could not have been
refused by the new Pakistani rulers. As an aside, scholars may like to examine
if the low status of Mohajirs (refugees) in Pakistan has a relationship with
the relatively low exodus of Muslims from areas that would remain in India.
For the Mohajirs had no local roots, came from a different ethnic, linguistic
and social milieu, and could not integrate with the entrenched regional cultures
of the provinces that comprised Pakistan on both flanks of Mother India.
Partitions in other parts of the world were
always accompanied by a carefully supervised exchange of populations. This
was the case with Greece-Turkey, Germany-Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria-Turkey,
Poland-Germany, Bosnia-Serbia and Croatia-Serbia, where full-scale exchange
of populations were organised, sometimes by the United Nations itself.
In the case of India, however, the British
appear to have deliberately botched things up, and the kind of supervised
population exchange that could have averted chaos and bloodshed simply never
happened. Between the sheer incompetence of Louis Mountbatten and the pomposity
of Jawaharlal Nehru, the partitioned-on-religious lines India was actually
left holding more Muslims than either Pakistan or Bangladesh! To digress once
again, this strengthens suspicions that the British manipulated the Partition
to secure military bases and strategic centres of power for the West, to counter
the rising power of the Soviet Union.
Thus, it turned out that India of 1947 was
forced to accommodate over 85% of the population (Hindus + Muslims who stayed
put) in 75% of her original bhoomi. Pakistan got a much better land deal.
This was a double injustice to the dismembered motherland.
It will be said that the father of Pakistan,
Mohammad Ali Jinnah, talked of a Pakistan where every religious community
could reside, and that he did not insist on Hindus and Sikhs quitting Pakistan
despite the horrendous ethnic cleansing in some states at the time. But that
seems to have been a diplomatic nicety, as Jinnah was the architect of the
Lahore Resolution of 1940, and the Great Calcutta Killing of 1946, which made
Partition inevitable.
Moreover, the situation today is radically
different. In 1947, Hindus constituted over 20% of the population in West
Pakistan and 36% in East Pakistan (Bangladesh). Today, ethnic cleansing and
forced conversions have reduced them to less than 1% in Pakistan and about
8% in Bangladesh. In sharp contrast, in India the Muslim population has risen
from about 10% in 1947 to nearly 14% today. So Pakistan and Bangladesh have
a disproportionate share of the original land vis-à-vis India.
In such a scenario, any talk of "azadi"
for Kashmir reopens the prickly issues of the 1947 Partition. Glibly suggesting
that disgruntled Muslims of Kashmir may be allowed to secede from India, taking
the State with them, means opening the door to a piece-by-piece dismemberment
of India. With time, Muslims in each district and state with press for freedom,
and intellectually-and-morally-challenged analysts will recommend the same,
till all is gone up to Kanyakumari.
Actually, Muslims of any state who feel they
can no longer live in India must invoke the 1947 treaty to walk into Pakistan
forever. It is the country that was created for them. India on her part should
demand that Pakistan and Bangladesh adjust the excessive land handed over
to them at Partition, and also that Bangladesh compensate India for the unending
influx of Muslims who are totally unhappy in that Islamic paradise. Will India's
brain-dead elites dare suggest that as all Bengali Muslims seem keen to return
to Mother India, we should have a referendum to annex that country and make
it again a province of India?
No chance - their Western 'friends' won't
allow such thought, let alone talk. And the ultimate accountability of all
anti-Indians in India is to London or Washington.
- The author is a senior journalist
