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Why don’t Muslims and Christians unite?

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The coming together of the country’s largest religious minorities – both targets of Hindutva – is in their own and the nation’s interest, says a Christian priest

Islam and Christianity have much in common. Their respective followers need not, hence, be alienated from each other. But the truth is quite the opposite. Even those Muslims who attend the celebration of festivals like Diwali, says Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, president of the Islamic Centre in New Delhi, keep a distance from Christian festivals like Christmas. “What makes this all the more strange,” he says, “is that these very Muslims, when they need medical help, prefer to go, if possible, to a Christian hospital.”

There is an element of irony in this situation. People from both communities wish to be closer to each other. But they are also suspicious of each other. So they get stuck, and entertain distorted images of each other. Christians think of Muslims as a ‘closed’ community that cannot be reasoned with, while Muslims feel that Christians are self–absorbed and indifferent to their pain and plight. “I am amazed,” Prof. Tahir Mehmood, chairman of the National Commission for Minorities told this writer, “at the apathy of the leaders to the need for greater unity between the two.”

Inquiries reveal the following areas of consensus:

Muslim–Christian unity is the need of the hour: It is obvious that Muslims and Christians stand only to gain by co–operating with each other. Their current alienation aggravates their vulnerability. If any outfit, for example, wants to modify its anti–Muslim image, it targets Christian workers and their places of worship. If and when it becomes expedient to prove the contrary, Muslims will once again be targeted. It is high time we rejected the stupid notion that the enemy of our enemy is our friend!

It is attainable: From the scriptural and practical angles, there are more compelling reasons for these two religious communities to come together than to remain separate. For one thing, unity is of the essence for these two faiths. That is what supposedly distinguishes them from other religions — Hinduism, for example. As a matter of fact, this has been the main point of resentment against them. Now, it is absurd that Islam and Christianity swear by unity, but remain forever disunited!

But there are stumbling blocks that need to be reckoned with: These are historical, theological, sociological , and political.

lHistorical skeletons: The foremost stumbling block, according to Wahiduddin Khan, is the ‘baggage of historical memories’. There is, for example, the painful memory of the Crusades. There is also the feeling among Muslims that Christians were in favour of the British displacing the Mughal Empire.

l Theological bugs: Muslims are hurt that Christians do not accept the authenticity of their faith. While Muslims acknowledge Christ as a true Prophet, Christians regard Mohammed (Peace be upon him), as a false Prophet. Muslims also feel that Christians show double standards on the question of conversion. When a Muslim converts to Christianity it is hailed as a victory, whereas when the opposite happens it is seen as a defeat. It is also widely feared that if Muslims are allowed to intermingle freely with Christians, they could be drawn to that religion.

Christians, in turn, feel hurt that their brethren discount the divinity of Jesus. They resent the double standard in Muslims, claiming religious freedom for themselves, but denying the same to all others, especially to Christians, in countries where they are in power.

l Sociological and economic walls: According to Dr. Iqbal Ahmed, department of Urdu and Persian, St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, the reason for the distance between these two communities is the backwardness of Muslims. Most of them are so poor that they have to work from morning till night just to keep body and soul together. They are left with no time to interact with anybody else. Christians, in comparison, are better off. This social wall keeps them at a distance from each other.

l Political pitfalls: Muslims think of Christians as an indifferent community, whereas Muslims want a place in the political map of India. A Christian leader, preferring anonymity, pointed out that Christians are scared to be identified with Muslims as this could be politically costly to the former. Christians are not targeted by Hindus to the extent that the Muslims have been. They will make themselves far more vulnerable if they are seen to be sympathising with the Muslim cause, he felt.

“In politically sensitive issues,” says Dr. Anil, principal, St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, “Christians tend towards cautious neutrality. And that is the case not only in the political, but also in the inter– denomi-national context.”

Our disunity is imported and we don’t have to be bound by it: Neither of these communities from India was responsible, even remotely, for the Crusades. Indian Christian loyalty to the British Raj is largely fictitious. In real terms, Christianity is no threat to Islam in India, as far as conversions are concerned. Above everything else, the alienation between these two communities, says Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, is not only unfortunate but also unwarranted.

The Quran makes no mention of any enmity between the two communities. The Holy Book does urge upon Muslims to emulate positive Christian values like mercy and compassion. The Scriptures, which contain true religious guidance, rather than the shifting biases of history, should guide our choice and conduct.

No worthwhile efforts have been made in this direction: Perhaps there is a time for everything. The need to liberate India from the yoke of British domination made Gandhiji prioritise Hindu–Muslim unity. In the present–day context, Muslim-Christian unity could be as important as Hindu–Muslim unity then was. An earnest effort needs to be launched in this direction. What is the obstacle — the fact that the leadership of both communities has a communal outlook? Quite a few ordinary people from both communities suspect that it is the outlook of their leaders that keeps them apart. It amounts to an admission in real terms that commu-nalism charac-terises these faiths that claim to be universal.

To understand this anomaly, it is helpful to remember that the word ‘communal’ does not have in the univer- sal context the negative meaning it has in the Indian context. No univer-sal faith that is true to its essence can afford to be communal. Commu-nalism is an abdication of the universality of its vision and vocation. It denotes an incapacity to relate positively to the forces beyond one’s own faith. That disability is more natural to a territorial or tribal, rather than to a universal, religion. Therefore, Islam and Christianity should either give up their claims to universality or rid themselves of every trace of the communal outlook that keeps them apart.

It is relevant to note here that Islam and Christianity are ‘Semitic’ only in a limited sense. They are essentially universal. But this is a fact that both communities tend to forget. Universal faiths cannot entertain ethnic or other divisive mindsets. In the days ahead, it becomes all the more necessary to delve deep into the resources of their universalistic faiths in view of the emerging global order. The crucial fact is that only a universal spiritual vision will be adequate to equip us to negotiate the emerging global order.‘For’, not ‘against’!

Unity is neither good nor bad in itself. What really matters is on what we unite. Also, why we want to unite. Hate, it is assumed, is a powerful unifying force. Unity forged out of hate can only be a cause of destruction and greater disunity. It would be tragic if Muslim–Christian unity were to be envisaged along these lines. It will also be ironical because these communities have been used in recent years as hate- objects by fundamentalist forces to help forge unity in Hindu ranks. We are not strangers to the destructiveness inherent in such an enterprise, even when its popular appeal was mercifully very limited. The fact that this project has not ingratiated itself to the larger Hindu community is in itself a tribute to the spirit and culture of India and Hinduism.

So, we need to bear in mind the crucial distinction between “uniting” and “uniting against”. It is not gainst Hindus, or against anyone that the two communities need to unite. It takes very little hindsight to recognise that uniting against any force has been counter–productive. It is to build a united and dynamic India and to reinforce the principles of justice, righteousness and the essential oneness of all humanity that we need to unite. Such unity will not be restricted only to these two communities. Their unity could be a catalyst for greater national unity. The ultimate aim should be to substitute the culture of hate and alienation with a spiritual culture of love and constructive patriotism.

In this context Muslim–Christian unity assumes special significance. “These two great faiths,” reflects Prof. Mohammed Amin, formerly vice–chancellor, Hamdard University, “trace their origins to Abraham.” He goes on to add, “And the root of their discord rests here. So also the rationale for their possible unity.” According to the Bible and the Koran, Isaac and Ishmael, from whom the two communities have descended, were the sons of Abraham. Its a matter of some irony that the two could not get along well only because they were brothers! Moreover, Islam and Christianity are the two major world religions. Their interface has shaped much of modern civilisation and continues to be important for stability and peace in the world. The West prefers to project the Islam-Christianity interface in terms of an irreconcilable civilisational conflict. That is a malicious bias that we are not obliged to entertain or encourage.

What shall we do? As of today, even those who are cynical about bringing the two communities together agree that their unity has assumed unprece-dented and urgent importance. In order to make any progress at all in this endeavour, the following factors, among others, need to be grappled with.

The need to shift from the love of power to the power of love. The root of all divisions is the lust for power and the vested interests that grow out of it. The problem is not so much that religion and politics are inter-mixed. It is natural that they are for both impact on human existence and well being. The real problem is that religion and politics are wielded as instruments of power. The power game not only accumulates and concentrates, but also scatters and alienates. It intensifies enmity. The condition for promoting communal harmony is a paradigm shift — from spreading enmity to love of the neighbour. We need to substitute the divisive role of power with the cementing power of love.

The shift from religion to spirituality. It is basic to the nature of all religi-ous commu-nities that exclusive loyalties are inhe-rent in the faithful. While loyal-ty is a necc-essary aspect of community formation and integral to a sense of belonging, absolute loyalty turns a religious community into a protected area where non–members become trespassers. At that point, the gulf between religion and spirituality begins to widen. The mark of true spirituality is that it enables people to reach out to others (especially those who are different from themselves) in love. The love that must limit itself to those who are like us is weakening from a spiritual point of view whereas it is deemed quite the norm in the religious context. Then differences take precedence over deeper, inner similarities and shared values.

During times of decay, a religion will be dominated by divisive instincts. But that does not mean that religion is divisive. What it indicates is that the religion in question has lost its spiritual wholeness. It becomes necessary then to make an effort to enunciate its true spirituality so as to heal the wounds resulting from the ‘communal’ goals pursued by it.

Unity, religion and the Indian context:

Religious plurality is the essence of the beauty and richness of the Indian context. We are oriented in space rather than time. The time–oriented culture is more centred on unity, even uniformity; whereas a space –oriented culture is centred on plurality and diversity. But diversity, as Nehru emphasised, needs to be under–girded by unity. The ideal goal is ‘unity in diversity’. Nehru did not, alas, realise that this could only be a spiritual goal.

At any rate, we need to reckon that unity has not been a consistent feature of Indian history and culture. Rather, to the contrary. It is here that Islam and Christianity, imbued as they are with the spirit of unity, need to make a radical, patriotic contribution. That mission needs to be undertaken not from a spirit of superiority, but out of the eagerness to serve our country that we so fervently love.

The time has come for Christians and Muslims to realise in shame that they have failed miserably in this inspite of their presence and witness in the Indian context. The tenets of both religions urge us to be promoters of unity. The communal outlook is incompatible with this vocation. But fractured communities as they are at present, the Christian and Muslim communities themselves are lamentably divided. They are fragmented both vertically and horizontally—there is discontinuity between the agenda of the elite and the aspirations of the common man in both communities. Horizontally, the Christian community, more than the Muslims, is splintered along sectarian lines. Some of the Christian denominations are happier to be with people of other faiths than with the people of other denominations within their own faith.

As against this ground reality, a fictitious image of the two communities as highly united and mobilised has been cooked up and dished out to the credulous. This was done, as everyone knows, only to generate the pressure required to forge a sense of unity in the diffused Hindu ranks. But, in the interest of truth it needs to be confessed in shame that the assumption of inner unity within these faiths is a propaganda lie. If only it were true!

It is not in the interests of the members of these communities to be alienated from each other. On account of the distance between them, all sorts of irrational suspicions and distorted images spring up. Most importantly, this violates the very spirit of these two religions. A Christian, for example, is commanded to ‘love your neighbour as yourself.’ The Scripture does not qualify this Commandment to the effect that it should be obeyed only if your neighbour happens to be a Christian! The idea of the ‘neighbour’ does not admit any distinction at all.

The excitement in the Indian context is that your neighbour could be a Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Marxist, agnostic, friend, enemy, and so on. It involves a triumph over these categorisations. It is also signifies the ability to see the hurting humanity beneath these divisive labels. Such robustness is a necessary condition for communal harmony. Those of us who are interested in the future of our country and the future of our humanity need to insist that loving one’s neighbours is a more authentic expression of true religiosity than hating any of them in the name of God, mandir, mosque or church.

Unity cannot be born out of a vacuum.In order to unite we need:

l An agenda: a goal or purpose that we can pursue together. That could, for example, be the building up of a modern nation, vibrant and dynamic so as to meet the aspirations of her people and face the challenges of the New World Order. It could be the creation of an egalitarian society in which justice and righteousness is upheld at all costs. Or, it could be the development of these two communities so that their numerical weakness is neutralised, and so on.

lA commitment to truth: It is not an accident that all divisive projects and vested interests bank heavily on the propagation of lies. In spite of what we witness today, it is integral to the Indian cultural tradition and outlook that ‘truth alone wins; not falsehood’. Truth is also the foundation for unity. Every attempt to spread falsehood about one’s faith or community should be resisted with utmost vigour.

l A sincere effort to develop and empower people in general, and one’s own community in particular: It is in this respect that the current religious and political elite is wanting. It is as though the development of the common people is inimical to their vested interests. As long as this malady is not healed, there can be no hope for transcending communal barriers.What shall we do?

Apart from recognising the ideological and psychological barriers, there is also a need, as Maulana Wahiduddin Kahn emphasises, to approach the situation through various practical steps. His suggestions in this respect are outlined below:

lConstitute a joint team to examine the stumbling blocks for unity and dialogue between the two communities. l Set up a joint research centre to study issues pertaining to Muslim-Christian unity and to establish the rationale for promoting unity. l Evolve a common socio-politico-economic programme.

l Share the facilities available to develop each other — educational institutions, for example. It will send a powerful signal of goodwill if the educa-tional institutions that Christians have are made accessible to Muslims.

l Share each other’s festivals.

l Efforts should be made to increase the opportunities of inter-action between these two communities and to improve their know-ledge of each other.

In conclusion it needs to be affirmed that the time to address issues pertaining to Muslim–Christian unity has indeed come. But this task has to be approached not from a communal, but from a spiritual and patriotic outlook. It is not against anyone, but for the sake of, especially for the sake of, the nation, that the unity agenda needs to be vigorously pursued.

Such a pursuit should be founded on the truth that all religions are unique. It should also be enlivened by the hope that differences do not have to drive us apart. They can be transcended by the spiritual deepening and renewal of these two communities. When that happens, they would exemplify a culture of unity that could heal the many divisions with which our land continues to be wounded at the present time.

Archived from Communalism Combat, July  1998. Year 5  No, 45, Cover Story 1

Bred on hatred, ready for the Bomb

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Be it India or pakistan, the state, the mainline media, teachers and text- books, and the family connive to poison young minds

 

However different the focus and approach of over 28 different peoples’–level peace efforts between Pakistan and India in the past half century, it is not insignificant that scores of individuals and organisations involved in these efforts have, while owing allegiance to varied initiatives thrown up similar conclusions.

A common resolution at the end of every India–Pak peace conference is to work towards a winding down of the hate/hysteria consciously spawned about “the other” by the respective states of India and Pakistan, by large sections of the mainline media of both countries, and, most spuriously, by our respective text books and oral education in schools. The rather less visible but more permanent impact of prejudice and stereotype unleashed within the family is a factor that also needs to be taken into consideration.

The fact that the Pakistan-India rhetoric often gets blurred and confused into the dialectics of the Muslim–Hindu discourse with its own set of imposed prejudices is, in a sense, unavoidable given the peculiar circumstances behind the creation of both countries, a division of two nation states on communal lines. So, if Pakistan was sought and attained as a “land of the pure” for Muslims, post–1947, community lore in majority India, spawned consciously and systematically by Hindu right wing organisations like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Hindu Mahasabha, has created an army of young minds, prepared to hold and defend the motherland’s honour (from future divisions) for whom the country carved out was “Paapistan” (land of the sinner) and remains as such, sinister in design, even today.

Pakistan’s text books manipulated history and even systematically demonised any evidences of composite cultures or united struggles or shared allegiances of region or language outside religion. But ours have not been unblemished either. If the shared history of several thousand years was sought to be overlooked by the systematic attempt to Islamise history in Pakistan, a process during which even the word ‘Hindu’ was demonised, our own systematic efforts, at one level more subtle, at another as crude, have not been unblemished.

Columns on these pages in the past have dealt with the demonisation of today’s Indian Muslims and the marginalisation of other minorities through, among other things, the systematic manipulation and distortion of historical events (“invasions and attacks by Mohammedans” among other things) and images to suit the Hindu communal design. For today’s argument, however, I shall restrict myself to the Pakistan-India discourse and attempt to show how even “superior and magnanimous India’s text-books” have not just been singularly wanting but served the overall purpose of both nation states post–1947 — that is, keeping hate sentiments on the boil. A book of national songs (“Hamare rashtra geet”) used in schools and recommended in the curriculum in New Delhi and some parts of Uttar Pradesh has two songs that bear mention. One, called Pakistan ki jhanki (A glimpse of Pakistan) and the other titled Pakistan ki history (The history of Pakistan.) seek to whip up sustained contempt and aversion to a neighbour, “a country of the devil carved out of the motherland.

Hamara Itihas aur Nagrik Jeevan, (Our history and civic life), the part 3 text book for schools in UP has a chapter, number 13, on “Our Neighbouring Countries.” After lamenting at the outset of this section that poverty, famine, drought and disease are the outcomes of war, the first para concludes: “at the time of the 1962 Indo–China and 1965 and 1971 Indo–Pak wars, it is evident that it was because of the selfishness of the leaders of our neighbouring countries and their expansionist policies that they declared war on our great, peace–loving nation and disrupted our progress.”

In the sub–section in the same chapter that deals with Pakistan particularly, the text book reads: “Pakistan is our closest neighbour. Before Independence, a part of India…To date, the history of Pakistan is one of sectarian strife, political assassination, individual aggrandisement and conflict….. Fundamentalism, fanatical sloganeering and mass hysteria have marked Pakistan’s governance. Its leaders have used such sloganeering to divert the attention of their toiling masses from real issues…India has always believed, and followed a policy that it is only through friendship and co–operation that India and Pakistan can progress. Even today we carry the hope our relations with Pakistan improve and both developing nations grow with speed towards prosperity.”

Do these words display scant honesty to facts and a fair share of superiority? Has the Indian leadership always been magnanimous in extending a hand of friendship to the land and people across the border? Was the 1971 war launched by Pakistan? Did former prime minister Indira Gandhi and now Atal Behari Vajpayee never use the forever convenient “external threat” to let loose a fear psychosis, win an election, declare Emergency, test the bomb?

Our hope however is the minds of the young. The great thing about young minds is their hyper–activeness, their abiding curiosity, their desire to shock and scandalise and — what may defy any such demonising efforts eventually — their ability to pursue a strand of thought that challenges them to take a fresh or new direction. The rider however is that one makes sustained and consistent efforts to open channels of communication with them.

That has been my experience with Aman, the South Asia studies and Peacepals programme. Launched on a hunch with the abiding support of Mrs. Gomti Venkateshwar, former principal of the Bombay International School, Mumbai and Mr. Sami Mustafa, principal of the Centre for Advanced Studies, Karachi, we have together ensured that over 75 children between Karachi and Mumbai are in regular touch with each other. Writing letters, asking questions, having arguments and disagreements even… but communicating.

How did we begin? It was close to August 1996, the onset of the 50th year of Independence for both countries. Through my research for Khoj, the secular education module that is being compiled, and my obsession for different facets of the struggle for Independence against the British, gross lacunae in our printed text–books had begun to stare me in the face.

Believe it or not, despite half a million lives lost and over eight hundred thousand persons displaced during partition, followed by a half century of reflection on the tragedy, our text books and our teachers had nothing more than trite phrases laced with the ever-prevalent prejudice to offer to future generations on Partition.

A period that had caused unimaginable trauma and displacement, scarred lives, distorted visions, even reassured some with hope in humanity. But we refused to impart fair and even–handed knowledge to our children. Formation of the Muslim League, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Lahore Declaration, Direct Action Day — these are the four sub–heads with three paras each that we deal with the entire period. The result? Confusions, question marks, ripe condition for manipulation and prejudice coming from other sources to breed.

We were going into the 50th year of independence of both countries. What better start to the next 50 years than opening up a channel of communication between some children of India and Pakistan. Freeing them of “our”, “the adult” burden that we have been forcing them to carry all these years, and allowing them, as all genuine learning should, to make their own choices, ask their own questions, make up their own minds.

I asked one batch of the children at BIS in Mumbai if they would like to write to children in Pakistan, become penpals with them. On two conditions, was the startling, but actually predictable, reply: Provided you first do a module on Partition — why, how, what happened? And Kashmir — why and what is happening with us? Done. We had a detailed discussion on the two subjects requested and animated, excited and endless discussions that followed. Only after that did the Peacepals exchange begin. It is, fortunately, still continuing.

What is as heartening is that through CC’s Learning pages and Khoj pull-out (it will resume next month), the message of Aman has spread to a wide network of readers. And youngsters — who have joined in the Aman exchange, desirous of a friend across the border, perturbed by the latest round of hate–mongering which has reached unprecedented proportions with the testing of nuclear bombs by first India and then Pakistan — write to us every month.

Apart from Syed Hasan Zia Rizvi of Class VII’s touching poem that we reproduce next month on the Khoj pull–out pages in full, Aahana Nivedhita’s prompt and short letter is telling (see quote). After outlining her address, her hobbies etc, she pours her heart out.

We share your concern and sense of disquiet, Syed Hasan and Aahana. And if the little that we are attempting helps stem your distress and emboldens you to share your feelings that appear to swim against the tide, our efforts would have been meaningful. That’s when we may together realise that it is we who speak for the majority, not they.

Archived from Communalism Combat, June  1998, Year 5  No. 44, Learning

Will Jammu go to the Kashmir way?

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Some among the Kashmiri pandit who had to migrate from the valley earlier are wondering whether they will be forced to move again

 

Will history repeat itself and will there be another migration? Some residents of Jammu are seriously pondering these questions.The fear is not entirely baseless. And the reasons are more than one. Recently, the circulation of some anonymous letters to a few Kashmiri Pandit families —living in Trikuta Nagar, a posh locality in Jammu city and Dwega Nagar (Bantalab), situated on the outskirts of city — asking them to vacate their houses, has sent shivers down the spines of Pandits re–located here.The recent threats are reminiscent of similar ones received by Kashmiri Pandits in 1989–1990 when each family had received threatening calls, letters and even notices in the local papers asking them to leave the Valley. (The Hizbul Mujahideen’s open threats asking KPs to leave within 48 hours were published in a local Urdu paper, Al Safa). Fearful of their safety then, they had left. Similarly, the once sleepy town of Reasi in Jammu is agog with activity these days as a number of people from villages like Dharmari, Armas etc. in the upper reaches of Udhampur district are migrating to Reasi to escape the wrath of the militants.

The entire hilly belt, spread over 1,000 square kilometres, was rocked by the massacre of 28 persons on the night of April 17 when militants struck in village Prankote. This incident was the first of its kind in the trouble–torn state. When militants had earlier attacked Sangrampura, Wandhama (January 25, 1998 when 20 KP residents were killed) and Gool Gulabgarh earlier this year, the killings had not been so bestial as in Prankote that fateful night. Not a single bullet was fired but the hapless villagers were killed with sharp-edged weapons and even burnt alive. Since this incident, there has been some migration of the Hindus living in that region. Anywhere from 300-1,000 families have already migrated from this belt in the upper reaches of Jammu after the April 17 massacre.

Many of the influential, better-placed Kashmir Pandits, victims of the forced migration from the Valley earlier, see this as one more step in the well–planned strategy of the ISI and other Islamic forces to wipe out the community ethnically from the valley. J.N. Koul, President of All India Kashmiri Samaj (AIKS) who is also the president of SOS Villages of India, feels that what is happening even in the Jammu region now is also part of the Pan–Islamic movement.
“They are planning to wipe out areas of Hindu–domination and thus make a comfortable place for themselves to live”, he says. The KP leaders who gathered at Chandigarh on May 2 to participate in a two–day zonal conference were aware of the fact that anonymous letters had been received by a few KP houses in Jammu. “We know about it but we do not want to publicise it because then it will create a feeling of insecurity among the Hindu community,” said H.N. Jattu, a KP leader. He added that after their organisation has ascertained all the facts, they will be taking the matter up with the Administration. On the question of the return of the KPs to the Valley, however, Jattu remains sceptical. He feels that whenever any concrete step is taken towards the return of the Pandits, some militant–inspired incident occurs.

Does this mean that the people in the Valley do not want them back or that those now in control of the movement are blatantly communalising the issue? The KP leadership is of the belief that the situation has become sharply communalised, a fact manifest in the recent selective massacres. The government, in their opinion, has been shockingly silent, allowing Hindus to become victims to the nefarious designs of Islamic forces.

The Jammu and Kashmir Human Right Commission, which has recently submitted its report to the state government on the Wandhama massacre, had observed that serious security lapses were responsible for the carnage. The JKHRC has also recommended security cover for the Kashmiri Pandits, who live in the Valley. KP migrants settled in Jammu are also being resented by the local Dogras of Jammu who clearly see them as competing for resources and power.

“Even the people of Jammu do not want Kashmiri Pandits in Jammu though we are contributing to Jammu’s economy,” says Jattu. “How do we know that it is not local Jammuites who are responsible for these anonymous threats to KPs asking them to leave their houses? Only after we ascertain the truth of who is behind them will we explore the steps to be taken.”

Panun Kashmir (PK), a Kashmir Pandit organisation that has been consistently demanding a separate homeland for Kashmiri Pandits, long before any militancy was evident in the state, categorically rules out any question of a return of KPs to the Valley. Apart from a separate homeland for KPs in Kashmir, there demands includes statehood for Jammu and Union Territory status for Ladhakh. This organisation has allied itself with the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra and the BJP at the Centre, contributing to the further communalisation of the dialogue.

PK leaders, Dr. Agnishekhar and Dr K.L.Chowdhary say that the question of the Pandits’ return must form part of a board–based discussion with Indian political leaders from every spectrum and thereafter with National Conference leaders. “We need to know whether the Indian nation wants us or not? Does the nation think that our survival is paramount for national interests?” asks Dr Ajay Chrangoo, vice-chairman and head of the political affairs wing of Panun Kashmir. He has represented the community and PK at many human rights conferences abroad.

But the more marginalised Pandits and other Hindus living in camps at Nagrota and Muthi in treacherous conditions, however, are quite critical of their own leadership. These ordinary Pandits who are not part of any organisation and do not identify with the more elitist PK feel strongly that leaders belonging to the All Party Hurriyat Conference and the Kashmiri Pandit community residing in the camps should be invited to discuss the issue together if the issue of their return is to be seriously pursued at all.

For them, the clearcut stand taken by various sections of the leadership in the Valley in unequivocally condemning the massacres offers a ray of hope as do the visits of both Mohammed Yasin Mallick and Shabir Ahmed Shah to the sites of the carnage (even attending the funerals) in Jammu.
The Valley even observed an entirely successful hartal to protest the selective killings and prominent Kashmiri nationalist leaders clearly condemned the actions of the militants.

But for PK and Dr.Chrangoo the fact that it took the Indian government about six months to recognise that an exodus of Pandits had taken place in 1990 is still a sore point. For him and the PK, their migration is still perceived as part of an engineered campaign to displace the Pandits out of the valley. Similar designs may be afoot in Jammu,” he feels.

While speaking to this correspondent, Shailendra Aima, member, working committee of PK and editor of Kashmir Sentinal, a fortnightly published by PK Foundation, revealed that representatives of his organisation were invited for discussions with central and state leaders soon after the Wandhama carnage. The PK demand for a separate homeland for KPs, within Kashmir, was discussed at length and an outcome can be expected soon, he said. He refused to go into the details of the meeting for “it may jeopardise the whole exercise”. Aima did say that he hoped it may bring out some results.

The writer is a Jammu–based journalist.

Invitable logic

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The communalisation of the militant movement was a forgone conclusion

GUEST COLUMN

For which state in the country is India—Constitutionally speaking — not a “secular” republic? The answer, which is bound to surprise, is Jammu and Kashmir. This particular aspect of the Indian state, as described in the Preamble to the Indian Constitution, doesn’t apply to Jammu and Kashmir, To put it simply, India is not a secular state as far as Jammu and Kashmir is concerned.This for a state which inspite of being Muslim–dominated joined the Indian Union assured of its ostensibly secular principles. This, for a state, which during the communal holocaust accompanying Partition remained entirely peaceful making Mahatma Gandhi see a ray of hope in the sub–continent. This for a state which did not see any semblance of communal tension when the Babri Masjid was demolished. Yet today, civil society in Kashmir stands thoroughly polarised and fragmented.

Even though the more gruesome aspects of communalisation have become visible only recently, the communalisation of the militant movement was a foregone conclusion. If anything, what is surprising is that the change in the character of the ethno-nationalist militant movement that started in 1989, took so long to happen. Everybody involved with the politics of Jammu and Kashmir — be it the government of India, the state government, militant organisations, indeed, even the people of Kashmir—has contributed to the communalisation of the movement in the valley. Before we look at the different factors that helped foster this development it might be worthwhile to look at how the entire movement came to become structurally bound towards being communal.

In analysing the growing influence of communal forces within the state, it is important to recognise that the state of Jammu and Kashmir comprises of three distinct regions: the Muslim–dominated valley, the Hindu–dominated Jammu province, and the Buddhist–dominated Ladakh. This cross-classification of geography and religion made the state highly vulnerable to communal tensions.

The only feature that had kept communalism at bay in a state apparently so obviously prone to it was the high level of ethno–nationalist sentiment that prevailed atleast in the Valley. The feeling of ethnicity and imagined nationalism blurred the religious distinctions to a significant extent. During the peak of militancy from 1989 right until 1993 even, there were no community–based killings in Kashmir for the militant movement was almost entirely directed against the Indian State.

But in the need to combat militancy which was threatening the stability of the Indian nation state, different arms of the State machinery, ensured that the distinction between the State and civil society was obliterated and the struggle for self–determination was presented and perceived as a revolt against the Indian (implicitly assumed to be, Hindu) society. The lines were thus drawn by the actions of the state and the first impact was that Kashmiri Pandits, a minority in the Valley, felt insecure and threatened.

 

That they should have felt so was but natural. But what was of utmost significance was that this sense of insecurity was legitimised by the state government, which at that point of time was controlled by the governor, Jagmohan Malhotra (now a BJP MP). By legitimising the fear of the minority and providing them with logistical support to move en masse out of the Valley, the ethnic movement was communalised almost instantly. The other operational factor that heightened the communalisation of the militant movement was the complete decimation of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, again by the Indian State. Even though the JKLF was fighting for secession, it was avowedly secular in its outlook. The decline in the mass and muscle power of JKLF resulted in the control of the secessionist movement going over from a secular leadership into the hands of Islamist organisations, most notably the Hizbul Mujahideen. Once the (JKLF) loss control of the movement in the Valley, its communalisation was imminent. The fall of JKLF and the consequent rise of the Hizbul Mujahideen was partly related to the fact that the Indian security forces managed to completely eliminate the top rank leaders of the JKLF by 1993 while a similar assault could not be carried out against the Hizbul Mujahideen.Apart from the deliberate acts of the Indian State, the JKLF’s loss of base also had to do with its own ideological failure, thereafter. Bereft of arms, the JKLF was not radically different from any mainstream regional political party, especially the National Conference. Looked at closely, the pristine agenda of the National Conference for autonomy is very close to the concept of azaadi that the JKLF had been propagating. In that sense, it did not envisage a very innovative change in the system.

On the contrary, the Hizbul Mujahideen offered the people of Kashmir a new system based on the principles of Islam — Nizam–e–Mustafa. Without getting into the desirability of such a system, what it offered the people was a change from the existing system that hadn’t delivered. The groundwork for this had already been done through schools set up by the Jamaat–i–Islami in areas where state schools did not exist.

This is turn changed the contours of militant activity which had been confined to the urban part of the Valley. Militant activity shifted to the plains of Doda and Kishtawar (and from thereon to Udhampur) which had a strong presence of other communities, unlike in the Valley where Kashmiri Pandits were in a minuscule minority. And by 1993, they had almost completely left the Valley.

With militancy losing much of its gun power and the writ of the state being re–established, its continuation hold was sought to be ensured through the targeting of the vulnerable minorities in areas outside the Valley like Prankote in Udhampur.

As pointed out earlier, with the activity shifting to the plains, there was a sense of normalcy returning to the Valley. A trickle of Kashmiri Pandits started coming back to the Valley especially those from the rural areas. With the character of the rural area having changed in the last seven years — Sufist Islam (known as Rishism in the Valley) having given way to more regimented and ritualistic and perhaps even more aggressive forms of Islam— the communal element started getting primacy over the ethnic element that had earlier dominated.
This change in the basic feature of Kashmir will take not only time but also an enormous amount of genuine effort backed by political legitimacy to reverse it. This doesn’t seem likely in the short run as the continuation of militancy even in the form of a virulent communalism suits the interests of those who are ruling the state — be it the army or the civil authorities.

(The writer is resident editor, Business Standard, Mumbai).
 

Who loses in the head-count?

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The migration of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley, after they had received threats in the name of Hizbul Mujahideen (published in local papers) in 1989-’90 remains one of the major tragedies of the Kashmiri situation. According to the office of the relief commissioner in Jammu, 28,561 families (about 1.5 lakh people) have registered with them as migrants. Of these families, 25,215, i.e., nearly 89 per cent, are Hindu, 1,468 are Muslim, 1,803 are Sikh and 75 are ‘others.’ Registration entitles the migrants to relief and rehabilitation.However, the state government’s own estimate of total migrants is 60,000 families, that is, close to 3,00,000 people. The camps in and around Jammu city house 90 per cent of the migrants. There are also camps in Udhampur at Kathua. There are still 8-9,000 Kashmiri Pandits living in the Valley in the face of all odds.

One bitter resentment of the migrant is that while each refugee gets only Rs 450 per month upto a maximum of Rs. 1800 per family, a surrendered militant is given as much as Rs. 2,400 per month! Kashmiri nationalist leaders claim that 70,000 innocent Kashmiris and Jammuites have fallen victim to the movement since 1989 (two-thirds due to state violence, the rest through the actions of the militants). Other independent groups put the estimate of the total loss of life closer to 25-30,000. About 60 per cent of the KP migrants — self-employed, small businesspersons and traders — have been the real sufferers. So also 25,000 Kashmiri Muslims, at least, who have also moved out of the state out of fear but do not enjoy any of the monetary benefits offered to state government employees and even medical students of the more affluent KP community.

Thirty-forty per cent of the migrant KP community all over the country has certainly faced the tragedy of being displaced. But medicos of the J and K state government, who draw a salary of Rs.1,500 per month continue their private practice. Many states, among which Maharashtra is one, have reserved seats for (KP) migrants in professional colleges.
 

State and the valley

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COUNTER–INSURGENCY sarkari militant groups patronised by the Army, the Border Security Force(BSF), the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and the Indo–Tibet Border Police (ITBP) have let loose a reign of terror in the Valley, before and after the elections.Farooq Abdullah’s National Conference made two promises during its election campaign: disarming the sarkari militant raj and restoration of the J and K’s pre–1953 status vis–a–vis New Delhi. Protecting people from the excesses of the armed forces was also implied. But arbitrary acts of the armed forces, appear to have actually increased after the formation of the civilian government.

Why? The decision of the state government to totally renege on its promise, opting instead to ‘regularise’ the sarkari militants by appointing them to the ranks of Special Police Officers or security officers for ministers and VIPs! Some have also been recruited into the SOG (Special Operations Group), also called the Special Task Force (STF) of the J and K police. This action amounts to putting the stamp of law on their illegal deeds. The victims of these sarkari militants have included journalists, lawyers, writers, teachers, human rights’ activists, cadre of the Jamaat–e–Islami and Hurriyat leaders. Ordinary civilians have been subjected to rape and torture.Several gross cases of human rights violation, rape and torture have been documented by several Indian human rights groups. Officers of the Indian army have been indicted in many of these cases. Even today, there are 60,000 army personnel Alongwith the BSF, CRPF, ITBF and the J and K STF, the figure is anywhere in the region of 1-1.5 lakhs
 

My mind went mad for a day

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Elderly Sikhs on the Indo-Pak border share moving accounts of revenge to award-winning writer, Suketu Mehta 


Illustration: Amili Setalvad

Attari is the closest town to the border at Wagah. The train to Pakistan passes through Attari station, a mile away from the Wagah road crossing. It lies on the Grand Trunk Road, the legendary artery of northern India that comes down from the Khyber Pass, runs through Lahore just twenty miles away into Pakistani territory, and continues all the way to Calcutta. I sat at an open–air cafe next to the border crossing on this road, watching the sporadic traffic go by — trucks and the ramshackle conveyances of travellers taking the land route through Asia, beat-up four wheel drive cruisers that could use a wash.

I was talking to a 70–year–old Sikh man I will call Gurdev Singh, a large-framed farmer and sometime Congress Party politician, with huge moustaches and a fondness for his nightly peg of whisky. He started telling me what he did one day 50 years ago when his mind went mad.

Gurdev Singh said all the madness happened in the five to six months of terrible suspense it took to realise that Lahore would be on that side, Amritsar on this side. As a youth, he remembers that Lahore was so close to Attari, he used to be able to bicycle there in an hour. At the time, there were no all–Muslim or all–Sikh towns in Punjab. The lives of all three communities, and their residential spaces, were deeply enmeshed with each other. When Partition occurred, it was as if all the Catholics in New York City had to suddenly migrate to New Jersey; the process of extrication, of separation, proceeded street by street, house by house.

He told me about the trains. Attari is the first stop on the Indian side. Gurdev Singh used to go to the station to give buttermilk and water to the refugees. Three times a week a train would come from Pakistan. It was loaded with bodies. Gurdev Singh would drag the bodies off the trains and perform mass cremations —once he had sixteen people on one pile, and performed a common service for all of them. They had to loot a Muslim’s timber shop for the wood. Three times a week Gurdev Singh saw what the Muslims had done to Hindu and Sikh men, women, children.

The Hindu and Sikh refugees started coming from the West, filling Attari with their stories. Mukunde Shah is an 85 year-old cloth merchant with a thriving shop in Attari. He is Sikh, but wears no turban and his hair is shorn. One night fifty years ago a group of Muslims came to his parents’ home in Nathkalod, in what is now Pakistan. They asked for their spears, to, they said, protect them. When his parents turned over their weapons, the Muslims skewered thirteen people in Mukunde Shah’s family, including both parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles. Mukunde Shah was working in a kiln at the time, and his four children and wife were also spared.

“We grabbed our hookahs and ran,” Shah told me. I was puzzled; of all the things to take from a life’s accumulations, why hubble-bubbles? Then he explained: they disguised themselves as Muslims, who are fond of the opium–and–tobacco mixture; Sikhs are forbidden to smoke. That is when Mukunde Shah cut his hair.

When Mukunde Shah got to Attari he moved into a house vacated by a Kashmiri Muslim. He has since prospered in the cloth business, and also owns sizeable property. “When I remember that time I hope that no one goes through that again.” He touches his earlobes, a form of prayer. “When we survived it was like a second birth.” One day during Partition, Gurdev Singh said, an old Sikh man in a village near Attari, out on a walk to buy milk, was murdered by some Muslims. Gurdev Singh was a student then, a “leader-type,” as he refers to himself. Ten Sikh men, four from Gurdev Singh’s family, gathered to seek vengeance. Before they went on their expedition, they went to the gurudwara, the Sikh temple, and took an oath not to kill or molest women and children. Then Gurdev Singh put on his armoured vest. He took a revolver.

They went to the Muslim part of the village. One member of their band grabbed a Muslim woman, but he was reminded of his oath by the others. Seventy–five thousand women were abducted during Partition; most of them were never returned. They were converted to the religion of their captors and stayed on, their captors gradually becoming their only known families.

Gurdev Singh did not tell me what happened next. “My mind went mad for one day,” is all he would say. The next morning, he brought along a friend. Balbir Singh (I have changed his name, too) was another of that band of ten men. He looked at a map in the lobby of the tourist hotel at the border.

It was a large map of undivided Punjab, Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s Punjab. “Even now the heart…” he started saying, and his eyes reddened, his voice thickened. He is a thin, dignified man with a white turban, dressed in simple but clean clothes — a faded white shirt, navy-blue trousers, neatly pressed. He has done well with his wheat and rice farms. He has a daughter in the US, and a son in Toronto, and has travelled there, marvelling at the friendship between Canada and the US, the free trade over the border.

When the columns of Muslim refugees came trudging down the road from Amritsar, remembered Balbir Singh, they would stop by his wells and look. Very hesitantly they would ask, can we come and get a drink of water? “It upset me that there should be so much fear that they could not ask for water.” There was a woman not much older than him. The paddy was being cultivated at that time, the green fields flooded with water. She put her face straight into the field to drink the water, and died right there. Balbir Singh also remembered the very old man that came down the road, walking on all fours, his incapacitated wife on his back, so that they made a sort of human cart. The convoy had to leave them behind. They were too slow.

On the day after the massacre, Gurdev Singh’s father asked him why he, a strapping 21–year–old man, looked so sad. He had been watching the Muslim women and children going over the border, people he had grown up with. “Pieces of my heart are going across,” said Gurdev Singh to his father

Finally, Balbir Singh told me what happened the day their minds went mad. He repeated, as a prelude, what Gurdev Singh had stressed. “When the old man was killed, nobody could hold back. But we didn’t touch any woman or child.”

“There was much junoon (madness). It lasted fifteen to twenty days. When we heard that injured bodies, dead bodies were coming in the trains people were going crazy. Then when the old man was killed, nobody could hold back.” They got guns, swords, spears, scythes. Then they went to the Muslim village. “It lasted just a few hours. At most two people killed the old man, so we should only have looked for them.”

Balbir Singh knew some of the people in the village — they were his classmates. He was looking out for them. But they were not there; so Balbir Singh did not have to make the terrible choice of whether or not to save his colleagues. The Sikhs rounded up the Muslim men, and gathered the women and children to one side. “We killed one third of the people in that village. About 50–60 men were killed in those few hours. The women and children were put to one side but they were watching; they were screaming. In some places there was fighting, but they weren’t begging for mercy — by that time everyone knew that asking for mercy was meaningless, there wasn’t much being said.”

Balbir Singh was weeping profusely by now, his handkerchief going now to one eye, now the other. It was obvious that he was saying some things for the first time; at this point, he was not even talking directly to me. “I don’t get angry on anybody else but myself. I didn’t sleep all that night, I didn’t stop thinking about it for a single minute. That’s the worst memory for me.”

What happened to the survivors, I asked him. “Then they walked to Pakistan. I’ve never met any one of them after that — not even my classmates, the ones who got saved.”

Gurdev Singh retained his equanimity during this account of the massacre. “We took revenge here, they took revenge there,” he shrugged, talking about the mirrored atrocities on both sides of the border. He does not seem to be much affected now by whatever he did then. But on the day after the massacre, Gurdev Singh’s father asked him why he, a strapping 21–year–old man, looked so sad. He had been watching the Muslim women and children going over the border, people he had grown up with. “Pieces of my heart are going across,” said Gurdev Singh to his father.

The first few days, Balbir Singh thought people would go and come back after the dust had settled. “I grew up with them. They were my family. I am very sad that the separation happened because the family got divided — the family of Punjab.” But at that time, he says, the leadership of both countries did not encourage the migrants to return to their homes. “After all, look at the lands we left there. If anyone had given us a promise we would be safe we would have gone back.”

But a great sense of trust had been lost. People of the majority community, on both sides, would offer to escort their friends to the border, and then kill them. “It was difficult to kill people from their own villages,” people they had grown up with, Balbir Singh explained. So they would make an arrangement with their co-religionists from other villages. They would send the refugees on their way, promising them safety, and inform the next village about their movements. “We’ll send them on their way and then you kill them.”

Sometimes, the same people that might massacre Muslims in another village would also at great personal risk escort Muslim friends or neighbours from their own village to the border. Gurdev Singh points to the border crossing. He himself brought Muslim friends here so they could go over safely. He had guns.

Balbir Singh’s uncle lived in Gujranwala, in Pakistan. It was close to Partition, and a Muslim mob had gathered to hunt down his uncle’s large family. So his uncle went to a Muslim friend’s house, a landlord, who had seven sons. The mob found out where they were and they surrounded the house and demanded that the landlord give up the Sikhs. The landlord came out and told the mob he had seven sons, seven guns, and a thousand cartridges. They would only get his guests, he declared, after the thousand cartridges had been fired, and after he and all his sons were dead. The mob dispersed.

That night, the landlord’s sons rode their horses across the border and contacted the Indian army. A Gurkha regiment came in a truck and took Balbir Singh’s uncle and his family away. Many years later, when his uncle’s daughter got married in India, an honoured guest was the Muslim landlord that had saved them.

Balbir Singh’s uncle lived in Gujranwala, in Pakistan. It was close to Partition, and a Muslim mob had gathered to hunt down his uncle’s large family. So his uncle went to a Muslim friend’s house, a landlord, who had seven sons. The mob found out where they were and they surrounded the house and demanded that the landlord give up the Sikhs. The landlord came out and told the mob he had seven sons, seven guns, and a thousand cartridges. They would only get his guests, he declared, after the thousand cartridges had been fired, and after he and all his sons were dead. The mob dispersed.

The complex calculations of who should be killed and who should be saved went on within deranged minds. There was one world before, and there was another world after. But in between, there was just the junoon. This is how Balbir and Gurdev explain what they did. This is also how Mukunde Shah, the cloth merchant, made peace with his demons, explained to himself why the Muslims wiped out his family. “That was a time of josh — passion. It didn’t just happen to me, it happened to the whole nation. When I think of that I don’t feel bad.” How does a man live with having murdered his neighbours? Balbir Singh’s way of atonement has been through a constant searching out of the Other, a series of highly emotional meetings with his former enemies. He has crossed the border no fewer than three times since then, a feat whose magnitude can be appreciated by any Indian trying to get a visa at the Pakistani embassy in Delhi — the lines begin at four in the morning; then the application is sent to Pakistan for a two-month review. On his trips, he tries to meet his former neighbours, the Muslims from Attari whom he had a hand in driving out.

The first time Balbir Singh went to Pakistan was 1956. An entire convoy of vehicles came to the border to receive the Attari group, he says, 25-30 trucks, five to seven buses, cars. They were the Muslims that had been driven out. The group from Attari had to stay at each of their houses in turn, and nobody took money for lunch or dinner, or money for petrol.

But on that trip, he says, “the younger generation looked at us with a certain amount of hatred.” Balbir Singh’s wife’s village was in Pakistan. When he and his wife went back there, he said, “They knew I was the son–in–law of the family; they just held me and burst out crying.” He met the people that had worked in the household of his wife’s family. “Whatever money they had, they just emptied their pockets and gave me.” This is a tradition — the returning son–in–law is always feasted and feted by his in-laws. “After all these years”, he says, “my wife was still a daughter of the village.”

In 1980, one of Balbir Singh’s cousins went to Pakistan, and Balbir asked him to look up his best friend before Partition, a Muslim who was so close to him that he would eat a chicken that Balbir had cooked, even if it was not halal, prepared according to Muslim dietary laws. The Muslim friend received the cousin with great hospitality, and then asked him a favour. Would he bring Balbir Singh to the border? He wanted to meet him once.

The cousin went back to Attari and passed on the message. Balbir Singh went to the border at the appointed time. “All the security men said, you must be mad. You can’t meet.” Across the fence, Balbir Singh, after 33 years, saw his friend, who rushed forward, only to be pushed back by the Pakistani security men far beyond the fence. Balbir saw that his friend was straining against them, weeping.

At first Balbir turned back, but a relative who knew the soldiers intervened on his behalf. So Balbir Singh went forward with two of his youngest children beyond the fence and his friend came forward to meet him after thirty-three years. They embraced each other; they were overwhelmed and there was no point in talking. What could be said? How does one condense the highlights of three decades? His friend was crying, but Balbir Singh was determined not to. Balbir Singh apologised — for not having brought all of his children to show his friend. “I said I’m sorry. My two girls are married in different villages; I didn’t have time to get them all here to show you.”

Then the soldiers separated the two men and his friend went back into Pakistan and Balbir Singh started walking slowly back into India. He was stopped by agents from the Intelligence Bureau, and they asked him, “Who were you talking to?” “To my brother,” Balbir Singh answered. How can that be, they demanded, he was Sikh, the man who came to meet him was Muslim. “I said that’s exactly what I mean, he’s my brother. He has land on that side, I have land on this side, that’s why we’re separated. The intelligence men said don’t fool us. I said I’ve told you what I told you, I have said what I said, he’s my brother.”

Again, in 1982, Balbir Singh crossed the border. He went with his daughter to a village on the other side where a group of Muslim brothers from Attari had settled. Some of them were wrestlers; they went there and became sweet–sellers and made three good houses. But now there was only one of the brothers left. Balbir Singh and his daughter went to the old man’s house for dinner, and talked with the sweet–merchant’s entire family late into the night about the village.

In the morning when they woke up the old man said, “I’m going to tell you something…” and then all his grandchildren rushed forward and interrupted him. “We’re going to tell you what he’s going to tell you. He’ll say I had a dream last night that I was in Attari. Uncle, every morning when he wakes up he says he’s met this person in Attari, that person in Attari.” This was in 1982, 35 years after the old man had left his village. At least in his waking life.

If the border were opened up tomorrow, said the old man to Balbir Singh, his children would drive there, because they had cars. “But I’ll still beat them because I’ll run so fast.”

Then the soldiers separated the two men and his friend went back into Pakistan and Balbir Singh started walking slowly back into India. He was stopped by agents from the Intelligence Bureau, and they asked him, “Who were you talking to?” “To my brother,” Balbir Singh answered. How can that be, they demanded, he was Sikh, the man who came to meet him was Muslim. “I said that’s exactly what I mean, he’s my brother. He has land on that side, I have land on this side, that’s why we’re separated. The intelligence men said don’t fool us. I said I’ve told you what I told you, I have said what I said, he’s my brother.”

I looked for Muslims in Attari and found none. They had all fled. I looked for signs of their presence, those that lived here all these centuries. Gurdev Singh pointed out to me the houses they had inhabited, their quarter. Then he led me to the place he used, until quite recently, to come every day to pray at. It is a grave — the tomb of the fakir Gulab Shah.

Gulab Shah was Muslim. The light green building sits tranquilly in a grove of fruit trees. Peering inside the window of the structure, I could see the oblong tiled tomb of the saint. A coin was placed on it; on the far wall was a recess for a lamp, lit every day, and a can of fuel to supply it. An electric chandelier flickered uncertainly above. Every Thursday, people come from all the surrounding countryside to ask for favours at the tomb; that an ailing child might get better, that an examination might be passed. The worshippers are all Sikh and Hindu. “There are no Muslims here,” said Gurdev Singh. There used be a Muslim fair held here, a huge one with thousands of people coming from all over. “We took it over from them after Partition.” This shrine is not unique. All over the Punjabi countryside are the tombs of Muslim holy men, maintained and venerated by Sikhs and Hindus. Attari has a full-time keeper of the Muslim tombs, Arjun Singh, a man who claims to be 111-years-old.

This is the faith that Mahatma Gandhi called sanatana dharma, the timeless, tolerant faith of the Indian countryside, where it is no contradiction to worship at the shrine of a religion you have killed people for belonging to.

It is a common desire among those displaced by Partition to make the return crossing, to try to go home again. The Pakistani writer Intizar Husain, whom I met in Lahore, told me that for 50 years he tried to get a visa to go back to India, particularly to the village he was born in, Dibai, near Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh. Although he has been living in Lahore since 1947, most of his fiction is set in Dibai. Like the old Muslim exile from Attari, he had also been having a recurring dream.

“I go there, to my home, and am wandering among the houses. Those lanes, those palaces. The terraces where we flew kites,” and then he described his house for me, constructing it lovingly in the air with his hands. “The Muslim quarter began at our house. The terraces of the Hindu houses were so close that at Diwali time I would reach across, steal oil–lamps from their terraces, and bring them home.”

Thirty years later, at the invitation of a literary gathering in Delhi, Husain was able to get a visa to go back. He was at Aligarh, and then made an impulsive decision to revisit Dibai. Driving toward the village, he saw the trucks all along the road, the phantom convoys of Partition. As they came into the village, he couldn’t believe how much it had changed. There used to be a pilgrim’s hostel. Where was the hostel? Where was the hospital? Everything had become a bazaar. He looked for his house, but the geography of home had changed. His companion said, why don’t you ask someone? “I said I have come to my own town. I am not going to ask someone else for directions.” Husain got out and wandered the bazaars but could not locate his birthplace, and something in him would not let him ask a stranger for guidance in the territory of his own childhood, his own dreams. Frustrated, he got back in the car, and drove back to Aligarh. “I still haven’t gone back.” I asked Husain why there were no museums, no memorials to that time. He responded, “It is good that the killings are not memorialised, that there are no pictures of those times.” I found this curious, coming from a writer whose entire body of work deals with “those times.” What tormented him, he seemed to be saying, was his generation’s burden alone. What use would it be to rake up the past, to keep harping on the atrocities of Partition? If the current generation could only forget what his generation went through, then maybe they could start talking to each other.

There are millions of Partition stories throughout the subcontinent, a body of lore that is infrequently recorded in print or on tape, and rarely passed on to the next generation. All over the map of the subcontinent, there is an entire generation of people who have been made poets, philosophers, and storytellers by their experiences during Partition.

Any person over 55 or 60 in Delhi or Amritsar or Lahore has stories to tell of that period, even if they were not themselves dislocated then. And for those who have been displaced from their birthplaces against their will and at an early age, the impression of home is all the more vivid and sharp; it haunts their dream–lives, and their minds are the battleground between the need to forget and the need to remember.

(The writer was awarded the Whiting Award for exceptional American writers in October 1997 for his piece Mumbai published in a special issue of the English journal, Grantha, to mark 50 years of India’s freedom. He visited the Wagah border in June 1997.)  

Bias on record

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Dongri 1 to Police Control: Two military trucks have come carrying milk and other rations, led by Major General (retired) Syed Rehemtullah. Therefore, a crowd has gathered at IR road near Bhendi Bazar, please send some more men.

(Voice): Why the f—are you distributing milk to them laandyas (abuse for a circumcised person)? Do you want to f—their mothers? Miyan (Muslim), bastards live there.

Dongri 1, (agitated): There are lots of police here. Let them distribute milk.

Voice: Why are you distributing milk to them? Are you doing them a favour or what?

V.P.Road to Control: A mob has gathered outside Maharashtra garage, Ghas galli, Lamington road with the intention of setting it on fire. Send men.

Voice: Must be a laandya’s garage. Let it burn. S— don’t burn anything that belongs to a Maharashtrian. But burn everything belonging to a miyan, the bastards.

(Excerpts from transcripts of police wireless messages taped by Teesta Setalvad between January 10 and 18, 1993)
 

Archived from Communalism Combat, March  1998, Year 5  No. 41, Cover Story,

Where is your Allah now?

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The police force in Bombay, in Maharashtra and all over India must not forget that they are Hindus first and policemen thereafter,” Bal Thackeray pronounced at the Vijayadashmi Day rally at Shivaji park, Bombay, in October 1993. The Maharashtra government and the Bombay police chose to turn a deaf ear to such blatant communal incitement of policemen.

In sharp contrast to official lethargy in prosecuting and punishing those responsible for the December – January riots was the alacrity with which the Maharashtra police handled the serial bomb blasts which killed over 300 people in the metropolis in March, 1993. It was only to be expected that the law and order machinery nab the culprits, conduct interrogations and prosecute them. But it did much more. In the name of investigations, hundreds of relatives, friends and even casual acquaintances — men and women, young and old — of the suspects, were illegally detained for days and badly tortured.

To cite just two instances: Rehmat Sayed Ali Kadri: About 70 years in age, she is the mother of Shabbir Kadri, an accused from Mhasla in coastal Maharashtra who is absconding. She was illegally detained first at the Mhasla police station and later at the Mahim police station in north central Bombay. Her daughter and daughter-in-law (with a 10-month-old son) were also kept behind bars.

Said Ms. Kadri: “For 15 days, all three of us were dragged by the hair every day, beaten and verbally abused. The 10-month baby was starved of any food. We were repeatedly humiliated. Shabbir’s father was stripped and paraded before us. ‘Where is your Allah now? Forget him. say, Jai Sri Ram,’ they used to shout.

The Haspatel family: On April 13, 1993 with much fanfare, the Maharashtra police revealed that they had unearthed 16 “projectiles” (rocket launchers) from a home in Walwat village on the coast. the “projectiles” were proved to be spindles used in a local yarn factory.

But for 10 days before that, the two male members of the family, Iqbal (65) and Mobeen (17) had been detained and tortured daily. Also illegally detained, verbally abused and humiliated for five days were two women from the family — Zubeida (55) and her daughter-in-law along with her 18-month-old baby. Senior police officials assisted by a woman constable beat the family, stripped the men and paraded them before the women every day. Mobeen, who had been cured of epileptic attacks for over ten years started getting renewed attacks after being subject to “parrot torture” for four hours every day. “You have to stop saying Allah. Or you will have to go to back to Pakistan,” is the most common refrain they heard from policemen in the lock-up.

(The victims spoke to Teesta Setalvad during a video-taped interview soon after their release)

Archived from Communalism Combat, March  1998, Year 5  No. 41, Cover Story,

Isn’t it awful how we refuse to learn from our mistakes?

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On the day (February 16) he presented his 700-page report to the Maharashtra government on the findings of the officially appointed commission to investigate the communal riots of December 1992-January 1993 and the serial bomb blasts of March 1993, Justice B.N.Srikrishna spoke to Communalism Combat, in an exclusive interview. What his main findings were, the judge would not say except to emphasise more than once that the findings must be made public so that we all learn from the errors of the past. And, Justice Srikrishna did agree to share with us the Epilogue to Chapter VII of the commission’s report. We reproduce below excerpts from the interview with Teesta Setalvad and the epilogue:

How do you feel at the end of the whole exercise?
For all these years, sitting in this chair, being witness through real-life accounts to all that had taken place in Bombay, was an awful churning. Many times I felt angry and depressed. But now with the report submitted I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is a job well done. I feel relieved and satisfied.

Do you feel that your report will make any difference, effect any changes, be accepted by the government?
How can I say? That is the job of the wider public to ensure. So many worthwhile judicial commissions have sat in the past. Have their recommendations made any difference? All I can say is that every effort must be made to see that it is made public and that we all, the state included, learn from the grave errors of the past.

On many occasions during the commission’s work, you used harsh words against the police, even lost your temper?
Why remind me of that? It was impossible as a human being not to react. I was faced with victims who went through unspeakable horrors. That’s why the constant churning that I could not but experience. But more on that after the report is made public. As I am sure that it must be.
Just two days ago there were serial bomb blasts in Coimbatore. It has come two-and-a-half months after a terrible communal carnage. Does it not seem like a repeat of what happened in Bombay five years ago? Isn’t it awful how we refuse to learn from our mistakes? Its like the situation in any family. There is this younger brother whom I beat again and again till he is pushed to the corner. So much so that he is pushed to the wall. A point is reached when he can’t and won’t take it any more, he rebels and then he will take the help of any outsider to get back at me. That’s what happens. Anywhere.

Epilogue to Chapter VII of the Srikrishna report submitted to the Maharshtra government on February 14, 1998
The voluminous evidence produced before the Commission strikingly brings home the stark reality that the beast in man keeps straining at the leash to jump out; frictions, irritations and disputes based on colour, race and religion are but excuses.

The commission has noticed that most of the violent communal riots during December 1992 and January 1993 took place in areas called Prem Nagar, Shanti Nagar, Gandhi Nagar and so on. That vicious communal violence on such scale should occur in the land of ‘Ahimsa Paramo Dharmah’ and Mahatma Gandhi, only shows that the message of love and brotherhood preached by apostles is not internalized. Unless that is done, the spectre of communal violence would haunt the city again and again.

The Commission sincerely hopes that the calamitous events of December 1992, January 1993 and March 1993 would serve as eye openers and lead to introspection and that all concerned attain the maturity to accept constructive criticism and mend their ways. For, in the immortal words of Ramayana: “Sulabhaah purushaa rajan satatam priya vaadinah Apriyasya cha pathhyasya vakta shrota cha durlabah” ( Persons pleasing in speech are easy to find; it is difficult to find one who speaks or listens to the bitter, but wholesome truth).

Finally, before parting, the Commission would reiterate the ringing exhortation of Shankaracharya:“Tvayi Mayi chaanyatraiko Vishnuh, Vyartham kupyasi mayyasahishnuh” (The same God resides in you and me; why then be needlessly angry with me !!).
Mumbai Dated 14th February 1998 Justice B.N. Srikrishna epilogue:
 
Archived from Communalism Combat, March  1998, Year 5  No. 41, Cover Story

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