FOREWORD

These above mentioned nasty characteristics of the RSS are in full flow in the case of the recent Hindutva hoodlums’ attack on Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) in the name of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. Here is a brief recap of the attack: The former Vice President of India, Hamid Ansari was to address students of AMU as part of awarding the life-time membership of the Aligarh Muslim University Students’ Union (AMUSU) ceremony on May 2, 2018. This programme of Ansari, the former VP of India had the clearance of the intelligence agencies and local state administration as per the protocol.

According to Ansari, his programme at AMU was publicly known and the authorities concerned had been officially intimated about the standard arrangements, including security for the occasions. Despite all this “the access of the intruders to close proximity of the university guesthouse where I was staying remains unexplained”.[iii] The Hindutva hoodlums justified the attack arguing that in AMUSU a photo of founder of Pakistan was displayed. Jinnah’s photo was there as he was conferred life-time member ship in the year 1938. It never bothered the Hindutva gang for more than 80 years but resurrected this issue as Hindutva rulers in power in UP were losing fast support of the common Hindus. Ansari, rightly said that precise timings of the attack on AMU and “the excuse manufactured for justifying it” raises serious questions. The Hindutva arsonists demanding removal of Jinnah’s portrait thought that nation did not know that Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, ran coalition governments with the Hindu Mahasabha in 1942-43, as we will see later. 

FEW FACTS ABOUT JINNAH WE MUST KNOW

It is pertinent to know the past of Jinnah before he became a prophet of Muslim separatism. He was a die-hard secularist and part of Congress leadership, including, Dada Bhai Naoroji, Gopal Krishan Gokhale, Annie Besant, MK Gandhi, Nehrus (Moti Lal Nehru and Jawaharlal Nehru), Maulana Azad, Sardar Patel and other such icons who led the freedom movement against the British rule.

Jinnah was not supporter of the militant activities against the British but when Bhagat Singh was jailed and judicial process to hang him started in his absence, he delivered a powerful speech against his trial in the Central Assembly (the then Parliament of India), on September 12, 1929. Jinnah said:

“the man who goes on hunger strike has a soul. He is moved by that soul, and he believes in the justice of his cause. He is no ordinary criminal, who is guilty of cold blooded, sordid wicked crime… I do not approve of the action of Bhagat Singh… I regret that rightly or wrongly the youth of today is stirred up… however much you deplore them and however much you say they are misguided, it is the system, this damnable system of governance, which is resented by the people,” [iv]

Earlier, in 1916, he was the leading defence counsel of Bal Gangadhar Tilak (a favourite of the Hindutva clan) in a sedition case against him; punishment for which could be death penalty. Jinnah won the historic case against the British government to the terrible humiliation of the foreign rulers.

Around 1935, there arose a serious religious conflict between Sikhs and Muslims of Lahore over possession of a religious site which was claimed to be a [shaheedee/of martyrs] Gurudwara and a mosque by Sikhs and Muslims respectively. The Muslim party approached Jinnah to fight legal battle on its behalf. Jinnah refused the brief and kept away from the case. He parted with the Gandhi led Congress in 1920-21, as former was against mass politics, specially, involving religious leaders in national politics. Congress tried to isolate him and instead of fighting back, he chose to take a path which led him to lead the same Muslim League which he had described as representative of feudal and aristocratic elements of the Muslim community. In his personal habits and religious beliefs, he could not be counted as a practicing Muslim. Incidentally, he did not know how to read or write Urdu, being proficient in English and Gujarati.

Importantly, when Jinnah was apostle of the Hindu-Muslim unity and stood for the freedom of a united India, he was denigrated by the Hindutva camp; Gandhi, Motilal Nehru, Azad being the other victims.     

HINDU NATIONALISTS AND NOT JINNAH PROPUNDED THE TWO NATION THEORY

Long-long before the appearance of Muslim advocates of the two-nation theory, Hindu nationalists had propounded this idea. Muslim League practitioners of the Two-nation theory were late comers. In fact, in this case, they borrowed heavily from the Hindutva school of thought.
 
BENGALI BRAHMINS WERE THE FIRST TO VUSUALIZE INDIA AS A HINDU NATION.

The ball was set rolling by Hindu nationalists at the end of the 19^th century in Bengal. In fact Raj Narain Basu (1826–1899), the maternal grandfather of Aurobindo Ghosh, and his close associate Nabha Gopal Mitra (1840-94) can be called the co-fathers of Two-nation theory and Hindu nationalism in India. Basu established a society for the promotion of national feelings among the educated natives which in fact stood for preaching the superiority of Hinduism. He organized meetings proclaiming that Hinduism despite its Casteism presented a much higher social idealism than ever reached by the Christian or Islamic civilization.

Basu not only believed in the superiority of Hinduism over other religions but also was a fervent believer in Casteism. He was the first person to conceive the idea of a Maha Hindu Samiti (All India Hindu Association) and helped in the formation of Bharat Dharma Mahamandal, a precursor of Hindu Mahasabha. He believed that through this organization Hindus would be able to establish an Aryan nation in India.[1] He visualized a powerful Hindu nation not only overtaking India but the whole world. He also saw,
 

Nabha Gopal Mitra started organising an annual Hindu Mela (fête). It used to be a gathering on the last day of every Bengali year and highlighted the Hindu nature of all aspects of Hindu Bengali life and continued uninterrupted between 1867 and 1880. Mitra also started a National Society and a National Paper for promoting unity and feelings of nationalism among Hindus. Mitra argued in his paper that the Hindus positively formed a nation by themselves. According to him,
 

 R. C. Majumdar, a keen observer of the rise of Hindu nationalism in Bengal, had no difficulty in arriving at the truth that,
 

 
ROLE OF ARYA SAMAJISTS

The Arya Samaj in northern India aggressively preached that Hindu and Muslim communities in India were, in fact, two different nations. Bhai Parmanand (1876–1947), a leading light of the Arya Samaj in northern India who was also a leader of both Congress and Hindu Mahasabha, produced an enormous anti-Muslim literature which stressed the fact that India was a land of Hindus and Muslims should be relocated.
 
Long before V. D. Savarkar (1883-1966) and M. S. Golwalkar (1906-73), who laid down elaborate theories of Hindu Rashtra allowing no place for minorities, it was Bhai Parmanand who declared in the beginning of the twentieth century that followers of Hinduism and Islam in India were two different peoples because Muslims followed a religion which originated in Arab lands. Parmanand specialized in writing popular literature in Urdu in which the main emphasis would be on Hindus being true sons of India and Muslims as outsiders.[1]As early as 1908–9, Parmanand called for the total exchange of Hindu and Muslim populations in two specific areas. According to his plan, elaborated in his autobiography,
 

 
Lajpat Rai (1865-1928), a renowned leader simultaneously of Congress, Hindu Mahasabha and Arya Samaj,
 

 
By 1924 he was more articulate in summarizing his Two-nation theory. He wrote:
 

 
Lajpat Rai proposed the partition of Punjab in the following words,
 

 
It may be noted that Muslim flag-bearers of Two-nation theory had fair knowledge of theories propounded by Lajpat Rai and others. However, instead of challenging this anti-national and anti-Muslim theory, they simply copied it.
 
HINDU NATIONALIST MOONJE, HAR DAYAL, SAVARKAR AND GOLWALKAR AS PROPHETS OF TWO-NATION THEORY

Dr. B. S. Moonje was another prominent Congress leader (who equally dabbled in organizing the Hindu Mahasabha and later helped the RSS in its formation) who carried forward the flag of Hindu Separatism long before Muslim League’s Pakistan resolution of March 1940. While addressing the third session of the Oudh Hindu Mahasabha in 1923, he declared:
 

It was sheer semi-illiteracy of Moonje that he presented England, France and Germany as justification for India for Hindus. The English, the French and the German identities had nothing to do with religions, these were secular identities of the people living in those countries.

Lala Har Dayal (1884–1938), a well-known name in the Ghadar Party circles, too, long before the Muslim League’s demand for a separate homeland for Muslims, not only demanded the formation of a Hindu nation in India but also urged the conquest and Hinduisation of Afghanistan. In a significant political statement in 1925, which was published in the Pratap of Kanpur, he stated:
 

 
All such ideas of declaring India as a Hindu nation and excluding Muslims and Christians from it were further crystallized by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in his controversial book Hindutva as early as 1923. Interestingly, he was allowed to write this polarizing book despite being in the British jail. According to his definition of the Hindu nation, Muslims and Christians remained out of this nationhood because they did not assimilate into Hindu cultural heritage or adopt Hindu religion. Savarkar decreed:
 

 
Savarkar, the originator of the politics of Hindutva, later developed the most elaborate Two-nation theory. The fact should not be missed that Muslim League passed its Pakistan resolution in 1940 only but Savarkar, the great philosopher and guide of RSS, propagated the Two-nation theory long before it. While delivering the presidential address to the 19th session Hindu Mahasabha at Ahmedabad in 1937, Savarkar declared unequivocally,
 

The RSS, following into the footsteps of Savarkar, rejected out rightly the idea that Hindus and Muslims together constituted a nation. The English organ of the RSS, Organiser, on the very eve of Independence (August 14, 1947) editorially chalked out its concept of nation in the following words:
 

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, a keen researcher of the communal politics in pre-independence India, while underlying the affinity and camaraderie between Hindu Mahasabha and Muslim League on the issue of the Two-nation theory wrote:
 

Ambedkar agonized by the evil designs of Savarkar regarding the Two-nation theory and Hindutva rhetoric over it, wrote, as early as 1940, that,
 

HINDU MAHASABHA LED BY SAVARKAR RAN COALITION GOVERNMENTS WITH MUSLIM LEAGUE

The children of Hindu nationalist, Savarkar ruling India presently are oblivious of the shocking fact that Hindu Mahasabha led by Savarkar entered into alliances with the Muslim League in order to break the united freedom struggle, specially, the 1942 Quit India Movement against the British rulers. While delivering Presidential address to the 24th session of Hindu Mahasabha at Cawnpore (Kanpur) in 1942, he defended hobnobbing with the Muslim League in the following words,
 

Hindu Mahasabha and Muslim League also formed a coalition government in NWFP also.

MUSLIMS AGAINST PARTITION OF INDIA

One of the greatest lies concerning Partition of India, continuously spread by the Hindutva gang is that all Muslims of India in unison demanded Pakistan and they got the country divided. This lie believed as truth by the Hindutva cadres has become the most important cause of persecution of Muslims in India. It is true that India was partitioned in 1947 due to Muslim League’s demand for a separate homeland for Muslims. And there is no denying the fact that the Muslim league was able to mobilize huge mass of Muslims in favour of its demand. But it is also true that very large sections of Indian Muslims and their organizations stood against the demand for Pakistan. These Muslims against Partition challenged the Muslim League theoretically and confronted the latter on streets. Such Muslims fought heroically, many times paying with their lives. The lie of culpability of all Indian Muslims for Partition continues to be spread not only due to the nasty anti-Muslim politics of Hindutva but also due to the fact that Indian Muslims are not aware of the great heritage of their ancestors who challenged the politics of the Muslim League, politically, religiously and physically.

Within weeks of the Pakistan resolution of the Muslim  League at Lahore, Indian Muslims organized MUSLIM AZAD CONFERENCE in Delhi (Queen’s Park, Chandni Chowk) between April 27-30, 1940 (it was to conclude on April 29 but was extended by one day due to tremendous participation and pressure of the work) with 1400 delegates from almost all parts of India attending it. The leading light of this conference was former Premier of Sind,  Allah Bakhsh who presided over the conference.  was one of such heroes.
 

The major Muslim organizations represented in this conference were All India Jamiat-ul-Ulema, All India Momin Conference, All India Majlis-e-Ahrar, All-India Shia Political Conference, Khudai Khidmadgars, Bengal Krishak Proja Party, All-India Muslim Parliamentary Board, the Anjuman-e-Watan, Baluchistan, All India Muslim Majlis and Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadis. The Azad Muslim Conference was attended by duly elected delegates from United Province, Bihar, Central Province, Punjab, Sind, NWF Province, Madras, Orissa, Bengal, Malabar, Baluchistan, Delhi, Assam, Rajasthan, Delhi, Kashmir, Hyderabad and many native states thus covering the whole of India.[xxi] There was no doubt that these delegates represented “majority of India’s Muslims.”[xxii]
 

Apart from these organizations a galaxy of leading intellectuals of Indian Muslims like Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari (who was in the forefront of struggle against the communal politics of Muslim League, died in 1936), Shaukatullah Ansari, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Syed Abdullah Brelvi, Shaikh Mohammed Abdullah, AM Khwaja and Maulana Azad  were associated with this movement against Pakistan. Jamiat and other Muslim organizations produced large number of booklets in Urdu against Two-nation theory and in support of co-existence of Hindus and Muslims in India.

Allah Bakhsh, in his presidential address declared the Pakistan resolution as suicidal for Muslims as well as India. Stressing the inclusive nature of Indian society and polity he said:
 

ALLAH BAKHSH MURDERED BY ASSASINS HIRED BY THE MUSLIM LEAGUE

How many of us know that long before MK Gandhi’s murder by the Hindu nationalists, Allah Bakhsh was murdered on May 14, 1943 by professional assassins hired by the Muslim nationalist (Muslim League leaders) at Shikarpur town in Sind. Allah Bakhsh had become a symbol of unity amongst against the Muslim League and its demand for Pakistan. He needed to be liquidated as Gandhi had become the biggest stumbling block in the Hindutva project of converting India into a Hindu rashtra.

THE MUSLIM LEAGUE TERROR

All leading leaders of anti-Pakistan movement were physically attacked, their houses looted, family members attacked, mosques where they stayed or addressed Muslims were damaged, Shiekh-ul-Islam, Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madani was victim of violent attacks in UP and Bihar. Maulana Azad, Ahrar leader, Habeebur Rahman, Maulana Ishaque Sambhali, Hafiz Ibrahim, Maulana M. Qasim Shajahanpuri and many other leading ulama faced murderous attacks. At places  ulama were attacked with daggers causing severance of body parts, they were shot and office of the Jamiat at Delhi was set on fire. Momin Conference meetings were special targets of attack, its cadres killed and Conference had to warn the Muslim League of war.

According to a contemporary document,
 

HINDU NATIONALISTS WHO BELIEVED IN THE TWO-NATION THEORY PARADED AS INDIAN NATIONALISTS

Despite all these facts only Muslims are branded as guilty men of Partition and originator and perpetrator of the Two-nation theory. The leading Hindu nationalist leaders like Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Lajpat Rai, Madan Mohan Malviya, M. S. Aney, B. S. Moonje, M. R. Jayakar and N. C. Kelkar, Swami Shardhanand etc. (some of whom were also Congress leaders) did not subscribe to an all-inclusive India but were committed to the building of an exclusive Hindu nation. They believed that India was primordially a Hindu nation and should be nurtured as one. Nevertheless, they went around as great Indian ‘Nationalist’ leaders.

In fact, the majority community had the advantage of disguising their communalism under the cloak of nationalism. Take one glaring example, Madan Mohan Malviya. While he was President of the Indian National Congress which stood for a composite India, in 1909, 1918 and 1933 he also presided over the sessions of Hindu Mahasabha in the years 1923, 1924 and 1936. He was the originator of the most divisive slogan ‘Hindi-Hindu-Hindusthan.[xxiv] Despite his history of spreading communal hatred he continues to be known as a great Indian nationalist leader.

If Muslim leaders can be distinguished on the basis of whether they believed in a multi-religious India or in the creation of Pakistan as a homeland for Muslims, then the same distinction should apply to Hindu leaders. When we study Indian nationalism we are generally told that all Hindus were nationalists whereas there were few patriotic Muslims and the rest were with the anti-national Muslim League. In order to clear the air we need to define what nationalism meant in Indian context. If Indian nationalism had been about creating a multi-religious secular nation state, only those who shared this commitment would be called nationalist or patriotic. But this is rarely the case when we discuss communal Hindus or Hindu Nationalist leaders. Despite their being decidedly against a multi-cultural India, they are still held up as nationalist icons. The truth is that the Hindu nationalist leaders were decidedly anti-patriotic or anti-national, in precisely the same way as the Muslim League was.

In the same way that not all Hindu leaders were patriotic by this standard, not all Muslims were anti-patriotic. A large number of Muslim individuals and mass-based Muslim organizations opposed the Two-nation theory and the creation of Pakistan with all their resources, often laying down their lives. The saddest part is that the children of the Hindu nationalists, inheriting the politics of Two-nation theory  are ruling India. This ruling elite whose political ancestors like Moonje, Savarkar and Golwalkar played no role in the freedom struggle, cooperated with the Muslim League and the British rulers are questioning the patriotism of the Indian Muslims.

TASK FOR INDIAN MUSLIMS

The Indian Muslims instead of getting defensive against this onslaught by the anti-national Hindu nationalists, must aggressively challenge the propaganda against Muslims. The history is with them. Indian Muslims are children of those fearless Muslims who waged a glorious fight against the Muslim League and its demand for Pakistan. They did not agree to Pakistan but were helpless victims of a deal amongst the British rulers, the Muslim League and the Congress for partitioning India. The following statement of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the Frontier Gandhi to MK Gandhi in June 1947, after Congress had agreed to the partition of India, symbolized the pervasive sense of betrayal of anti-Pakistan Muslim. He wrote:

“We Pakhtuns stood by you and had undergone great sacrifices for attaining freedom. But you have now deserted us and thrown us to the wolves…”[xxv]

Whereas the children of Savarkar and Golwalkar who rule India today, hail from a heritage which propounded Two-nation theory and allied with Jinnah. The Muslims against partition of India had a solid case for not dividing the country on the basis of religion. Their resolve and commitment for a united democratic-secular India was clear from the following anti-Pakistan poem titled, ‘Pakistan chahne walon se’ (To those who want Pakistan) penned by renowned poet, Shamim Karhani which became Indian Muslim’s anthem against the Muslim League. Since Muslim League had converted the demand for Pakistan into a religious project, Shamim Karhani responded in the same vocabulary. Every Indian Muslim should be proud of it.

Humko batlao tau kiya matlab hae Pakistan kaa
Jis jagah iss waqt Muslim haen, najis hae kiya who ja.
[Tell me, what does Pakistan mean? Is this land, where we Muslims are, an unholy land?]
 
Nesh-e-tohmat se tere, Chishti kaa seena chaak hae
jald batlla kiya zameen Ajmer kee na-paak hae.
[Your slur has wounded Chishti’s breast; Quick, tell me, is Ajmer impure?]
 
Kufr kee vaadi maen imaan kaa nageena kho gaya
Hai kiya khak-e-najis maen shah-e-meena kho gaya.
[Can you say the precious jewel of Islam ‘Shah Meena’ has lost in the unholy valley of Infidelity?]
 
Deen kaa makhdoom jo Kaliyer kee abaadi maen hae
Aah! Uskaa aastana kiya najis vaadi mae hae.
[Is the place of high dignity at Kaliyar where Makhdoom (Master of Din/religion) is resting is an unholy valley?]
 
Haen imamon ke jo roze Lucknow kee khaaq per
Ban gaye kiya tauba-tauba khitta-e-napak per.
[Whether the Mausoleums/Shrines of Imams at Lucknow are built on impure land?]
 
Baat yeh kaisee kahee tu ney kee dil ne aah kee
Kiya zameen tahir naheen dargah-e-Noorullah kee.
[A deep sigh came out over your statement. Can you say the Shrine of Noor-ul-lah (at Agra) is not pious?]
 
Aah! Iss pakeezah Ganga ko najis kehta hae tu
jis key paany see kiya Muslim shahidon ne wazoo.
[Alas! You call the holy Ganga water impure, which was used by martyrs for the ablution (wazoo).]
 
Nam-e-Pakistan na le gar tujhko pas-e-deen hae
Yeh guzishta nasl-e-Muslim kee badi tauheen hae.
[Don’t take the name of Pakistan if you have least respect for your faith because demanding Pakistan is immense disrespect to our Muslim predecessors.]
 
Tukre-tukre ker nahin sakte watan ko ahl-e-dil
Kis tarah taraj dekhen gey chaman ko ahl-e-dil.
[Those who have a sensible heart cannot split the country and how will they dare to see a ruined and plundered motherland?]
 
Kiya yeh matlab hae ke hum mahroom-e-azadi rahen
Munqasim ho ker Arab kee tarah faryadi rahaen.
[Do you want us to remain devoid of freedom and lament like divided     Arabs?]
 
Tukre-tukre ho kay Muslim khasta-dil ho jayegaa
Nakhl-e-jamiat sarasar muzmahil ho jayegaa.
[By division Muslims will split and the tree of community will wilt.][xxvi]
 
پاکستان چاہنے والوں سے
– شمیم کرہانی
ہم کو بتلاو تو کیا مطلب ہے پاکستان کا
جس جگہ اِس وقت مسلم ہیں، نجس ہے کیا وہ جا
 
نیشِ تہمت سے تیرے، چشتی کا سینہ چاک ہے
جلد بتلا کیا زمیں اجمیر کی ناپاک ہے
 
کفر کی وادی میں ایماں کا نگینہ کھو گیا
ہے کیا خاکِ نجس میں شاہِ مینا کھو گیا
 
دین کا مخدوم جو کلیر کی آبادی میں ہے
آہ! اس کا آستانہ کیا نجس وادی میں ہے
 
ہیں اماموں کے جو روضے لکھنو کی خاک پر
بن گئے کیا توبہ توبہ خطہء ناپاک پر
 
بات یہ کیسی کہی تو نے کہ دل نے آہ کی
کیا زمیں طاہر نہیں درگاہ نوراللہ کی
 
آہ! اس پاکیزہ گنگا کو نجس کہتا ہے تو
جس کے پانی سے کیا مسلم شہیدوں نے وضو
 
نامِ پاکستاں نہ لے گر تجھ کو پاسِ دین ہے
یہ گزشتہ نسلِ مسلم کی بڑی توہین ہے
 
ٹکڑے ٹکڑے کر نہیں سکتے وطن کو اہلِ دل
کس طرح تاراج دیکھیں گے چمن کو اہلِ دل
 
کیا یہ مطلب ہے کہ ہم محرومِ آزادی رہیں
منقسم ہو کر عرب کی طرح فریادی رہیں
 
ٹکڑے ٹکڑے ہو کہ مسلم خستہ دل ہو جائے گا
نخلِ جمیعت سراسر مضمحل ہو جائے گا

——————————————
Shamsul Islam
For some of S. Islam’s writings in English, Hindi, Marathi, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, Punjabi, Urdu & Gujarati see the following link:
http://du-in.academia.edu/ShamsulIslam

The post Guilty men of the two-nation theory: A Hindutva project borrowed by Jinnah appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Interview with Maskoor Ahmad Usmani

The post I was Illegally Detained While I was Unconscious: AMUSU President appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The dispute surrounding Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s portrait from the Aligarh Muslim University has raked up many old controversies about the late founder of Pakistan.  In Indian version of the history, Jinnah has always been portrayed in bad light, and his contribution to the freedom struggle has been subverted. Historian Irfan Habib talked to Tarique Anwar about the genesis of the two-nation theory.

Courtesy: Newsclick.in

The post Savarkar First Spoke of the Two-Nation Theory: Irfan Habib appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Photo credit: The Nation

In light of the recent commotion created by some Barelvi clerics, which the federal government bungled up with its characteristic incompetence, it is time that someone speaks out the truth about the Pakistan movement and its ideology. Let me say without mincing words: Pakistan was created in negation of principles of secular democracy.

Barelvi clerics had spearheaded the All India Muslim League’s campaign for Pakistan ahead of the 1945-46 general elections. A handful of Deobandis led by the followers of Ashraf Ali Thanvi (who died in 1943) including Shabbir Ahmed Usmani also supported the demand for a separate state for Indian Muslims. However, the main Deobandi party, Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, led by Hussain Ahmed Madani advocated a vision of wataniyat or nationalism that was fore grounded in territory, rather than religious identity.

Madani warned that even if the Muslim League manage to win a separate state, it will inevitably be a state dominated by some sect of Islam — there could be no such thing as a Muslim or Islamic state of all Indian Muslims because the latter were notoriously divided into sects and sub-sects. Another prominent religious scholar, Abdul Kalam Azad also shared similar sentiments. His speeches are available on YouTube on the question of Muslims’ in a post-British India.
In my opinion, those who say that Pakistan, as it exists today, is not Jinnah’s Pakistan, are missing the point. Jinnah may not have anticipated that his two-nation theory would lay the foundation of a state in which the organic relationship between Islam and the state would result in the rule of the ulema. However, he could not have been unaware of the fact that the religious establishment, including Barelvi clerics, saw the state he demanded and won as having been established in the name of Islam.

Read more on Daily Times, Pakistan.
 

The post While most Deobandis opposed the idea, Barelvi clerics spear-headed the movement for Pakistan appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Given India’s bloody communal past, it should not surprise us one bit to discover that the ongoing Uttar Pradesh Assembly election has been belatedly polarised between Hindus and Muslims. This is because India, particularly Uttar Pradesh, has always had a strong communal undercurrent, which at times breaks to the surface in irrepressible tides of blood that bathe its cities and towns.

Partition was an example of it: competitive politics built around the idea of separatism triggered a veritable holocaust in which countless perished. The idea of separatism gained wide currency because it was a manifestation of the socio-cultural cocoons in which Hindus and Muslims lived, their interaction rife with suspicion.

The bloodletting during Partition spawned the hope that our politicians would seek to bridge the gap between communities, not widen it, eschew communal mobilisation that enhances the degree of separation existing at a point of time between them. Crafting a riot is the most effective method of communal mobilisation, which the Indian political class took recourse to within a decade of the first general election in 1951-’52.

From Jabalpur in 1961, often cited as the first big riot post-Partition, we have erected several tombstones mourning the blood spilled in Hindu-Muslim violence. On these tombstones are etched the names of Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Bhiwandi, Tellicherry, Meerut, Moradabad, Biharsharif, Bhagalpur, Jaipur, Bombay, Gujarat, Muzaffarnagar, etc. Add to this the tension and violence under which much of North India reeled during the three stages of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement – the shilanyas yatra of 1989, Bharatiya Janata Party leader LK Advani’s rath yatra of 1990, and the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992.

By comparison, the current communal polarisation in Uttar Pradesh pales into insignificance. Yet media reports have lamented the division between Hindus and Muslims, and noted, with alarm, the reluctance of Hindus to vote for Muslim candidates and vice-versa. But even this trend isn’t new. This is why Muslims are rarely fielded from constituencies in which their community is around 10% or so.

For instance, the Congress thought it prudent to field Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad from the Muslim-dominated Rampur in India’s first Lok Sabha election, much to his dismay. The maulana believed he wasn’t just a leader of Muslims, but of the nation as such, deserving of support of all. He had, after all, battled the Muslim League during the great Partition debate of the 1940s. His own self-assessment was rudely undermined in Independent India’s very first tryst with democracy.
 

Changing role of communalism

This backdrop raises the question: Why is it that communal polarisation of relatively low intensity today alarms us more today than it did in previous decades? The short answer to it is that the role of communalism and the popular perception of it have changed since the late 1980s.

Until then, in what is called the era of Congress dominance, riots were localised and strategic. They were localised in the sense that they affected a district or two-three constituencies. Many of these communal conflagrations were triggered even then by Hindu rightwing groups, at times though in connivance with Congress leaders. Either the Congress-led administration was inept in controlling them or deliberately allowed it to teeter out of control, as so many Commissions of Inquiry in their reports concluded.

These riots were strategic in nature because it was a ploy of local Congress leaders to polarise the electorate to bolster their chances of notching electoral victories. But these did not constitute the meta-narrative of Congress leaders, neither at the State nor the national level. They didn’t portray the riots as an expression of justifiable Hindu assertion, and a method of showing Muslims their place.

In fact, the Congress leadership, whether hypocritically or otherwise, expressed apologies and sought to atone for riots through such measures as formation of peace committees, which aimed to repair the broken relationship between Hindus and Muslims. It was their way of ensuring that if the separateness between the two communities couldn’t be bridged, it wasn’t at least widened beyond what it was. For all these reasons, riots did not have the kind of resonance that, say, the 2002 anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat had.
 

Play
 

The only exception to the localised, strategic nature of riots in the era of Congress dominance were the anti-Sikh riots of 1984. It was pan-India. Congress leaders were implicated in fomenting it. Congress administration was guilty of idly watching Sikhs being killed with impunity. Then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi even sought to rationalise the pogrom against Sikhs through his infamous quip: “When a big tree falls, earth shakes.”

Yet, after weeks of insanity and intemperate remarks or, as some would rather say, after securing a brute majority in the Lok Sabha in the 1985 elections, the rhetoric of the Congress no longer dripped with venom against Sikhs. Subsequently, it was seen to have atoned for its guilt by appointing Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister. On August 12, 2005, that is, 20 years later, Singh apologised to the nation in the Lok Sabha, “because what took place in 1984 is the negation of the concept of nationhood in our Constitution”.
 

Ideological communalism

By contrast, communalism and riots for the Bharatiya Janata Party, as this writer argued in a piece in the Hindu in 2013, are elemental aspects of the Sangh Parivar’s politics. Its ideology is predicated on articulating and redressing the real or imagined grievances of Hindus, which have their provenance in the medieval past or in contemporary times in which contentious issues have been manufactured.

The BJP’s ideology seeks to pit the Hindus against Muslims until the former’s grievances are addressed. But these cannot be addressed to the satisfaction of the BJP and its followers because the list of grievances is inexhaustible. Is it possible to assuage sentiments seemingly hurt by tales cherry-picked from centuries of Muslim-rule, deliberately delinked from their historical context and often fictionalised or exaggerated?

Then again, the Ram Mandir issue has been festering for long. But should it be resolved in the times to come, demands for relocating mosques abutting the Krishna and Shiv temples in Mathura and Varanasi will be raised. Apart from these pan-India Hindu symbols, disputes over places of worship having state-wide significance have been imagined – for instance, the Bhagyalakshmi temple located at the base of the Charminar monument in Hyderabad, the Babu Budangiri-Guru Dattatreya shrine in Karnataka, and the Bhojshala complex in Dhar, Madhya Pradesh.

In addition, foot soldiers of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh have sought to appropriate graveyards and shrines which scarcely have resonance beyond a district or two. Not only this, fertility rates, a Uniform Civil Code, the triple talaq practice, the Enemy Property Act, in fact anything having a faint whiff of Muslim-ness or the community’s opposition to it, is turned into examples of insult to Hindu pride and unjustified pampering of Muslims.
In other words, the Sangh’s ideology aims not only to maintain the separateness of Hindus and Muslims, but to also erect a barbed wire-fence, so to speak, between them. Unlike the strategic and localised communalism of Congress, that of the BJP is ideological and pan-India and does not seek closure. Because the BJP’s endeavour is to make permanent the separateness between Hindus and Muslims, the communal polarisation in Uttar Pradesh, relatively of a lesser intensity than experienced in the past, appears so menacing.

True, the Sangh’s ideology dates to its very inception in 1924. But its influence on the Indian psyche was marginal until 1989, when the Ram Janmabhoomi movement boosted its political fortunes and clout. Acquisition of power enhances manifold an entity’s capacity to spread its defining ideas, palpable in the link between the BJP’s rise and its growing ideological influence.
 

Middle-class support

But it is also true that the BJP’s ideological influence might not have acquired such salience but for the conversion of a large segment of the Hindu middle class to the cause of Hindutva, directly or indirectly. As such, the middle class around the world believes it is responsible for transforming society. To the Indian middle class, dominated by the Hindu upper caste, the decision to introduce reservations in jobs in 1990 seemed a setback to its agenda of transformation, not least because it sliced half of the cake that had been theirs until then.

In its anxiety, it lurched towards the BJP and its Hindutva philosophy. For one, this was because among all parties supporting reservations, the BJP was the most reluctant, manifest even as recently as in the 2016 statement of the RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat that suggested revisiting the policy of affirmative action. For the other, Hindutva’s lure for the Hindu middle class-upper caste stemmed from the possibility of that philosophy becoming a lightning rod to unite the Hindus for overcoming caste cleavages and countering subaltern assertion.

Economic liberalisation expanded the middle class, further enhancing its clout. Yet it was also gnawed by anxiety. As eminent sociologist Yogendra Singh, in an interview to Scroll.in last year, said,
 

“By nature, global studies show, that the middle class is the most nationalist class. It is also the most narrow-minded in its nationalism. This is because…it resents any force which it thinks (or threatens to) disrupt its agenda of transformation. Anxiety is a natural consequence of it… Its anxiety, in turn, inspires it to promote (narrow-minded) nationalism.”
 

Apart from the fear of subaltern assertion, the anxiety of the middle class was fanned by secessionism in Kashmir and Punjab, where religious minorities are in majority, and because of Pakistan sponsoring heinous terror attacks. Already partial to Hindutva, the middle class found in its narrow nationalism an antidote to their insecurities and anxieties.

Its members are opinion-makers whose influence is disproportionate to their numbers. It is the same middle class which, 30-40 years ago, spearheaded the agenda of bridging the separateness between communities. It is the same middle class which now thinks otherwise. No doubt, the Indian middle class isn’t a monolith – students and teachers of, say, Jawaharlal Nehru University or Ramjas College, are as much part of it. Yet it is perhaps not wrong to say that a substantial section of the middle class is now wedded to Hindutva.

The Hindutva section in the middle class isn’t apologetic or ashamed of its beliefs and feelings, openly voicing what till now had lurked beneath the surface or deliberately suppressed. Hindutva is a badge of conservative politics worn unabashedly, with pride, an observation which so many report in horror on meeting acquaintances and friends from the past. This feeling is similar to what journalists experience on listening to lawyers or doctors or academicians or engineers openly voice their hatred for Muslims, busting the myth that communalism is exclusively the passion of the poor and illiterate.
 

But all this wouldn’t have mattered for one unprecedented development during the Uttar Pradesh election campaign. For the first time in India’s electoral history, a prime minister has sought to enhance the degree of separateness between Hindus and Muslims. This was indeed the motive of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s allusion to qabristans and shamshan ghats, as was also of BJP president Amit Shah, Modi’s most trusted lieutenant, when he coined the acronym Kasab to represent the Congress, Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party.

With no less than the prime minister and the president of the ruling party seeking to retain if not exacerbate the degree of separateness between Hindus and Muslims, Muhammad Ali Jinnah must be laughing in his grave. After all, it was his logic that the separateness of Muslims and Hindus is unbridgeable – a condition of living in which minds and hearts are forever divided. This is why even the low-intensity communal polarisation of Uttar Pradesh frightens so many.

Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist in Delhi. His novel, The Hour Before Dawn, has as its backdrop the demolition of the Babri Masjid.

This article was first published on Scroll.in

The post Jinnah must be laughing in his grave over what Modi and Shah said about qabristans and Kasab appeared first on SabrangIndia.

 
It is now or never in Kashmir

“Kashmir may be conquered by the force of spiritual merit but not by the force of soldiers.” – Kalhana Pandit

So total has been the loss of hegemony of Kashmir’s elected representatives, in government and in the legislature, over the last two months, and so desperately brutal the recourse to coercive subjugation of fearless young anger on the streets of the valley, that if ever there was a time to say resistance to authority (sic) deserves to be rewarded with what it seeks, it is now. If the prospect, that is, of the secession of the valley – since other parts of the state of Jammu and Kashmir desire, contrarily, not secession but more complete integration with the union of India – were not fraught with incalculable negative consequences not just for India and Pakistan but for the inhabitants of the valley itself. 

To that I shall return. 

Just the other day the home minister of India made two significant averments in Parliament. One, that the union recognises that the accession of the state of Jammu and Kashmir was a “unique one”; and two, that apart from all else, the republic and its successive governments had failed to keep promises made to the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

 Since the time for pussyfooting about Kashmir is conclusively at an end, it would help to flesh out these two averments beyond the minister’s en passant mention.

 A unique accession

It will be recalled that the two conditions agreed upon as the signposts for India’s pre-independence princely states, as determinants of whether they would accede to India or to Pakistan were the religion of the majority within the states and the contiguity of the states to either dominion. 

In this context, the three states of Hyderabad, Junagadh and Jammu and Kashmir offered interesting paradigms. Where the first two had Muslim rulers but majority Hindu populations, Jammu and Kashmir had a Dogra-Hindu ruler but a majority Muslim population. Of the three, Jammu and Kashmir, being also contiguous to Pakistan, had the clearest case for accession to Pakistan. 

But the ruler of Kashmir, Maharaja Hari Singh, desired accession to neither of the two new countries and wished to remain independent. Having succeeded in signing what was called a “Standstill Agreement” with Pakistan, it was his hope to do the same with India. Except that the fates intervened in the shape of a precipitate invasion of the state he ruled by tribal warriors from the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, with that state’s active support and involvement, in late October 1947.

With next to no means of his own to meet, let alone defeat the invasion, he found himself constrained to appeal to India for military help and thus sought accession to the Indian dominion. In a letter dated October 26, 1947 addressed to the then governor general of India, Lord Mountbatten of Burma, the maharaja wrote:

“The mass infiltration of tribesmen drawn from distant areas of the North-West Frontier… cannot possibly be done without the knowledge of the provincial government of the North-West Frontier Province and the government of Pakistan. In spite of repeated requests made by my government, no attempt has been made to check these raiders or stop them from coming into my state… I have no option but to ask for help from the Indian dominion. Naturally they cannot send the help asked for by me without my state acceding to the dominion of India. I have accordingly decided to do so and I attach the Instrument of Accession for acceptance by your government.”  

This much from a Hindu ruler who was reluctant to join even a Hindu-majority India but for the fact that circumstances had forced such a decision upon him. And yet, even on acceding, the Instrument of Accession that he signed stated that the accession in no way bound him to “acceptance of any future Constitution of India” (Clause 7) and that “Nothing in this instrument affects the continuance of my sovereignty in and over this state” (Clause 8). Stipulations that to this day continue to colour the fraught history of tensions between the union and the state.

As a result, Article 306A was adopted in the Draft Constitution and in course of time became the much-talked-about Article 370 in the final Constitution of India. Most significantly, the “special status” thus accorded to the state of Jammu and Kashmir, backed by the then home minister of India, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (who said to the Constituent Assembly that “in view of the special problems with which the government of Jammu and Kashmir is faced, we have made a special provision for the constitutional relationship of the state with the union”), was accepted without demur also by Syama Prasad Mookerjee, a member of Jawaharlal Nehru’s cabinet who was later to become the most vociferous and disruptive voice of the Hindu right wing. We will come back to this later. 

But the best part of the “uniqueness” lay elsewhere, namely in the heroically principled declaration of allegiance to a prospectively secular and democratic Hindu-majority India by a Muslim Kashmiri leader of a Muslim-majority state, Sheikh Abdullah. 

Internally, within the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, a popular movement for the overthrow of the maharaja’s rule had been underway for two decades before 1947, precipitated by the events of July 1931 when some 21 popular resisters were gunned down by the maharaja’s police force in front of a courthouse. The incident marked a watershed in the state’s political affairs and led to the formation of the “Muslim Conference” which came to be led by Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, a postgraduate from the Aligarh Muslim University who was denied a teaching post in the state by the maharaja’s regime at a time when the number of educated Kashmiri Muslims could be counted on one’s fingertips. 

Within mainland India, although the Muslim League had come a cropper in the 1936 elections to the provincial assemblies (held under the Government of India Act of 1935), between that loss and 1946 the party under Mohammad Ali Jinnah made huge strides among Muslims in the states of Punjab and Bengal. It was during this time that Jinnah was to make fervent arguments to Abdullah urging that the Kashmir Muslim Conference join forces with Jinnah’s League and support the Pakistan resolution which the League had passed in 1940. 

By then Sheikh Abdullah was undisputedly the tallest leader of the valley and indeed the entire state. Remarkably however, despite the Kashmiri maharaja’s decidedly anti-Muslim regime, and though Abdullah had himself forged the “Muslim Conference”, and despite the fact that Jammu and Kashmir was a Muslim-majority state, he came to reject the two-nation communal thesis of the Muslim League and instead declared his preference for the secular-democratic struggle that the Indian National Congress under Gandhi and Nehru had been waging against colonial rule as he converted the “Muslim Conference” into the “National Conference” in 1938. This was done some nine years before the partition of India and the tribal invasion of Kashmir. 

‘What the Muslim intelligentsia in Kashmir is trying to look for is a definite and concrete stake in India’ – Sheikh Abdullah

In these years Abdullah repeatedly gave voice to his convictions. Arguing that the matter of accession could not be left to the whims and fancies of rulers but must reflect the voice of the people, he gave public expression to the popular Kashmiri view in a speech at a historic rally (some three weeks before the tribal invasion) on October 4, 1947:

 “We shall not believe in the two-nation theory which has spread so much poison [referring to the communal killings that had been underway in the Punjab and in Bengal]. Kashmir showed the light at this juncture [Gandhi was famously to say that the only light he saw amidst the darkness of communal killings was in Kashmir where not a single incident took place]. When brother kills brother in the whole of Hindustan, Kashmir raised its voice for Hindu-Muslim unity. I can assure the Hindu and Sikh minorities that as long as I am alive, their life and honour will be quite safe.”

Following the maharaja’s proclamation of March 5, 1948 announcing the formation of a popular interim government, Sheikh Abdullah took over as prime minister of the state. The very next day he told a press conference:

“We have decided to work with and die for India… We made our decision not in October last but in 1944 when we resisted the advances of Mr Jinnah. Our refusal was categorical. Ever since, the National Conference has attempted to keep the state clear of the pernicious two-nation theory while fighting the world’s worst autocracy” (The Statesman, March 7, 1948).

On December 3, he spoke at a function held by the Gandhi Memorial College in Jammu: “Kashmiris would rather die following the footsteps of Gandhiji than accept the two-nation theory. We want to link the destiny of Kashmir with India because we feel that the ideal before India and Kashmir is one and the same.” 

These ideals – secularism, democracy, an end to feudal land lordship – were the basis for the adoption of the “provisional accession of the state to India” by the National Conference in the month of October 1948. 

The betrayal

Although the accession and Article 370 of the Indian Constitution which conferred a “special status” on Jammu and Kashmir had, as stated above, received approval from both Patel and Syama Prasad Mookerjee, a new situation was to develop as the Abdullah government launched its ‘New Kashmir’ manifesto which was founded – among other extraordinarily progressive pronouncements, equal status of women in education and employment being but one – on the promise of giving land to those who tilled it. 

Thus disregarding Clause 6 of the Instrument of Accession (“Nothing in this instrument shall empower the dominion legislature to make any law for this state authorising the compulsory acquisition of land for any purpose” and should land be thus needed, “I will at their request acquire the land”), Abdullah declared a maximum land ceiling of 22.75 acres, set up a land reform committee and set about distributing surplus land thus acquired to those who were the actual tillers of the soil. Abdullah was to rub home the point that such land reforms would never have been possible in a feudal Pakistan. 

This was trouble royal. 

Most of the land was then in the possession of Hindu Dogras and most of the tillers were Muslim Kashmiris. 

Thus it came to be that the material loss of land holdings was sought to be converted into a communal question through the opposition now to Article 370 by a newly organised forum called the Praja Parishad which came to be led by the very Mookerjee who had been a willing party to the adoption of the article as a member of the union cabinet.

 According to the provisions granting “special status” to Jammu and Kashmir, the state was to have its own Constitution for which it would form its own Constituent Assembly. When elections to the Constituent Assembly took place in 1951, candidates picked by Abdullah’s National Conference won all 75 seats. The assembly met on October 31, 1951. In his address to the assembly on November 5, Abdullah outlined the major items on its agenda: 

• To frame a Constitution for the governance of Jammu and Kashmir; 
• To decide on the fate of the royal dynasty; 
• To decide whether any compensation should be paid to those who had lost their land through the Big Landed Estates Abolition Act; 
• To “declare its reasoned conclusion regarding accession”. 

Abdullah noted: “The real character of a state is revealed in its Constitution. The Indian Constitution has set before the country the goal of a secular democracy based upon justice, freedom and equality for all without distinction. This is the bedrock of modern democracy. This should meet the argument that the Muslims of Kashmir cannot have security in India where the large majority of the population are Hindus. Any unnatural cleavage between religious groups is the legacy of imperialism… The Indian Constitution has amply and finally repudiated the concept of a religious state which is a throwback to medievalism… The national movement in our state naturally gravitates towards these principles of secular democracy.”

Security forces in Kashmir: Bloodthirst unquenched

And, of Pakistan, he said:

“The most powerful argument which can be advanced in her favour is that Pakistan is a Muslim state and, a big majority of our people being Muslims, the state must accede to Pakistan. This claim of being a Muslim state is, of course, only a camouflage. It is a screen to dupe the common man so that he may not see clearly that Pakistan is a feudal state in which a clique is trying by these methods to maintain itself in power… Right-thinking men would point out that Pakistan is not an organic unity of all the Muslims in this subcontinent. It has, on the contrary, caused the dispersion of the Indian Muslims for whose benefit it was claimed to have been created [a prescient observation that is said to have been earlier voiced by Maulana Azad in an interview given to the Urdu magazine Chattan in 1946, a year before partition].” 

Abdullah considered the third option of independence (Kashmir as an “Eastern Switzerland”) and concluded as follows: 

“I would like to remind you that from August 15 (the day of Indian independence) to October 22, 1947 (when the tribal invasion began) our state was independent and the result was that our weakness was exploited by the neighbour with invasion. What is the guarantee that in future too we may not be victims of a singular aggression?” 

All this notwithstanding, the Hindu right-wing assault also began to gather force as it launched the Jan Sangh (precursor of today’s Bharatiya Janata Party, the BJP) in 1951 – the year that the Jammu and Kashmir Constituent Assembly was established. The newly formed Jan Sangh was headed by none other than Syama Prasad Mookerjee with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh lending its leaders Atal Bihari Vajpayee and LK Advani in support. 

As stated earlier, stung by the redistribution of land holdings, the Hindu right wing sought to make the terms of the accession the issue and, defying the democratic-federal principles enshrined both in the Constitution of India and in their reflection in the trust reposed therein by Abdullah, it announced a programme ostensibly aimed at strengthening national unity. At its first session the Jan Sangh called for: 

• An education system based on “Bharatiya culture” (read Hinduism); 
• The use of Hindi in schools (in the knowledge that other than Kashmiri, Urdu was the language predominantly used by educated Kashmiri Muslims. Indeed from about the first decade of the 20th century, the wholly artificial cleavage between Hindi and Urdu had begun to be deployed by communalists on either side to press their claims to “true” national allegiance);
• The denial of any special privileges to minorities;
• Full integration of Jammu and Kashmir into the Indian union.

On the other side, in letters exchanged over a period of time between Abdullah and Nehru, an agreement between the state and the union was taking shape. This contract, which came to be called the Delhi Agreement 1952, stated: 

• Commitment to Article 370; 
• That the state legislature would be empowered to confer special rights on “state subjects” (a right that had been won through the anti-maharaja struggles of 1927 and 1932 – a form of privilege restricted to permanent residents of the state in property ownership and jobs); 
• That Kashmir would have its own flag although subordinate to the union tricolour; 
• That the sadar-e-riyasat (later, the governor of the state) would be elected by the state assembly but would take office with the concurrence of the president of India; 
• That the Supreme Court of India would “for the time being” only have appellate jurisdiction in Jammu and Kashmir; 
• That an internal emergency could only be applied with the concurrence of the state legislature. 

The Hindu right wing’s riposte to this took the form of a slogan around which the Jan Sangh sought to mount its attack on the terms of accession later that year:

“Ek desh mein do vidhan,

Nahin chalengein, nahin chalengein”

(We will not accept two Constitutions, two flags, two prime ministers in one and the same country).

This communalist right-wing putsch against the principles on which the state had agreed to accede to India began to find resonance within sections of the Congress party as well. Much to Nehru’s chagrin, his candidate for the first president of India, C. Rajagopalachari, was rejected in favour of Rajendra Prasad (who was soon to lock horns with Nehru on the Hindu Code Bill and go to the Somnath temple, once ravaged by Ghaznavi and other chieftains of old, to effect renovations at state expense – a move wholly in conflict with the secular foundations of the republic). 

When the Indian home minister speaks of keeping promises to the Kashmiris, these promises have a much wider ambit than the question merely of amending the vile Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act which allows even the lowest-ranking army man to shoot to kill without accountability

Other collateral tendencies also began to surface, such as bespoke scant regard on the part of the union of India for the federative principles. In his despondent letter to Maulana Azad dated July 16, 1953, Abdullah complained about the usurpations underway in contravention of the terms that had been agreed upon: 

“We the people of Kashmir regard the promises and assurances of the representatives of the government of India, such as Lord Mountbatten and Sardar Patel, as surety for the assistance rendered by us in securing the signatures of the maharaja of Kashmir on the Instrument of Accession which made it clear that the internal autonomy and sovereignty of the acceding states shall be maintained except in regard to three subjects which will be under the central government [namely Defence, Communications and External affairs].” 

And: “When the Constituent Assembly of India proceeded to frame the union Constitution, there arose before it the question of the state. Our representatives took part in the last sessions of the assembly and presented their point of view in the light of the basic principles on which the National Conference had supported the state’s accession to India. Our viewpoint drew appreciation and Article 370 of the Constitution came into being, determining our position under the new Constitution.” 

Abdullah pointed out that although it had been agreed that the “accession involves no financial obligations on the states”, such demands were being made and that “the changes effected on several occasions in the relationship between India and Kashmir greatly agitated the public opinion”. 

And on the other source of perceived menace: “A big party in India [the Jan Sangh] still forcefully demands merger of the state with India. In the state itself, the Praja Parishad is threatening to resort to direct action if the demand for the states’ complete merger with India is not conceded.” 

Abdullah’s anguish at what appeared to be gathering storms on two fronts – the subversion by the union of the terms of accession and a Hindu communalist putsch to undo Article 370 – found poignant expression in a speech he was meant to deliver to an Id gathering on August 21, 1953 (12 days after his government was dismissed and Abdullah was arrested and incarcerated). In it, he wrote: 

“[T]here is the suggestion that the accession should be finalised by a vote of the Constituent Assembly… It is the Muslims who have to decide accession with India and not the non-Muslims… The question is: must I not carry the support of the majority community with me? If I must then it becomes necessary that I should satisfy them to the same extent that a non-Muslim is satisfied that his future hopes and aspirations are safe in India. Unfortunately, apart from the disastrous effects which the pro-merger agitation in Jammu produced in Kashmir [the valley]… the Muslim middle class in Kashmir has been greatly perturbed to see that while the present relationship of the state with India has opened new opportunities for their Hindu and Sikh brothers to ameliorate their lot, they have been assigned the position of a frog in the well… What the Muslim intelligentsia in Kashmir is trying to look for is a definite and concrete stake in India” (emphasis added). 

As I mentioned earlier, the die had been cast and his great friend Nehru had him arrested on suspicion that he had been hobnobbing with the Americans to garner support for Jammu and Kashmir’s secession from the union and its declaration of independence. And though there may have been grounds for such a suspicion, no evidence has so far been forthcoming. 

But read Abdullah’s lament quoted above and hear it exactly echoed in Kashmir today, there is in it nothing more or different than what informs the frustrated Kashmiri youth who are at this minute agitating in the valley, willing to confront police bullets for their cause. 

It is another matter that long years later, in 1974, Abdullah signed an accord with Indira Gandhi, the then prime minister of India, which stipulated among other things that: “Parliament will continue to have power to make laws relating to the prevention of activities directed towards disclaiming, questioning or disrupting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India or bringing about secession of a part of the territory of India from the union…” 

Thus when the Indian home minister speaks of keeping promises to the Kashmiris, these promises have a much wider ambit than the question merely of amending the vile Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act which allows even the lowest-ranking army man to shoot to kill without accountability. 

Throughout these turbulent years of conflict never once has any government of India sought to formulate schemes whereby talented Kashmiri Muslims, products of an educational explosion – all thanks to Abdullah’s New Kashmir programme – could be made to feel not just safe in the heartland but like valued assets in the ongoing narrative of national “development”. Not to mention the communal lens through which Kashmiri Muslims continue to be viewed by Indian society at large, an old malaise made dangerously trenchant in the era of “terrorism”. 

And paradoxically, the more that strong-arm methods and vicious prejudices fail to deliver the desired results, the more the state means to persist with them. And now that a glimmer of recognition appears to have dawned within policy establishments, the present-day incarnation of the old Praja Parishad and Jan Sangh are back to the same old perfidy, robbing the secular democratic sections within the Congress chiefly of any will or courage to disregard Hindu right-wing communalism and do right by Kashmir.

Azadi – Cry for freedom

Over the last two months some 51 teenage Kashmiris screaming for secession have been killed by police bullets in the valley. 

Let us for the moment ignore the legalities of the question (in respect of the Sheikh Abdullah/Indira Gandhi accord, for instance) and the hard reality that such secession will never be approved by any political establishment in India or any government of the day or be accepted by Indians at large. Let us assume for the moment that the parts of Jammu and Kashmir that do not want secession can be persuaded that the valley of Kashmir be granted independence and sovereignty and let us consider the possible consequences of such secession: 

• Following such a declaration, demands for azadi could gain legitimacy in other states, Manipur, Nagaland and Assam, to name a few, and would be hard to deny once a precedent has been set;
• A Hindu communalist backlash could possibly engulf India, rendering the lives of Indian Muslims vulnerable and leading to demands that India be declared a Hindu state, since the secession of the valley would have proved that the two-nation theory was correct after all; 
• Within Pakistan, first the Baloch and then the Sindhis might take heart and set themselves the objective of freedom from Punjabi ethnic dominance through secession; 
• Within the valley, a Bangladesh-like situation might well emerge, namely a struggle among those who will wish to retain a secular democratic state and those who might argue for an Islamic state. It is well to remember that of Bangladesh’s 40-odd years of independent nationhood, brought about under the leadership of the Awami League on secular principles, some 30 years were to see the communalists in power. It is only recently that the Supreme Court of Bangladesh has struck down the controversial fifth amendment to the Constitution and thereby reverted to disallowing any religion-based party formations. But this welcome move comes after much blood has been spilt. 

I have often been accused of exaggerating the Sufi-secular orientation of Kashmiri Muslims and of sentimentally misreading acts of personal and individual camaraderie and brotherhood displayed by Kashmir Muslims towards visiting Pandits as representative of the totality. I have once been kindly described as a “jihadi lapdog” (see Google). But all this notwithstanding, it remains a fact that at the time of the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits from the valley in 1990, a strident campaign was in evidence as loudspeakers in mosques blared calls that the “Nizam-e-Mustafa” (Islamic statehood) was at hand, that the Pandits must hasten their exodus from the valley but take care to leave their women behind. You will also hear people speculate that one of the reasons why elements within the valley do not at bottom wish the Pandits to return home en masse is that they do not wish an Indian “fifth column” to be reinstated there; with them gone, the idea of an Islamic state is more closely approximated. Much as the Jews in Israel, for instance, who fear the return of Palestinian refugees into what was once their homeland. 

I must confess to having another sort of experience during recent visits to the valley, namely the chagrin with which any mention of “Kashmiriyat” (denoting the good old syncretic ways of Kashmiris) now tends to be received there. Indeed I recall being at a seminar at the university in Srinagar where a senior academic read a short “paper” titled ‘Kashmiriyat’ only to rubbish the concept – albeit without much substance. “Kashmiriyat” is now seen as something of a trick used to deny the fact that Kashmir is in essence Islamic, a notion that finds increasing expression in textbooks on history and culture as the pre-Islamic period (roughly up to the 14th century AD) is sought to be erased. 

Other disturbing trends appear to be surfacing as evidenced by an incident in Pulwama not so long ago when a Sikh Kashmiri was surrounded and asked to recite the Islamic Kalima, failing which some of his hair was cut off. It must be said however that the incident, uncharacteristic in the extreme, drew condemnation from all sections of the Kashmiri leadership. 

Thus while some residual Kashmiri Pandits who have never left the valley continue to be protected by their Muslim neighbours, and their weddings and funerals are organised with customary syncretic brotherhood, and although periodic visits by Pandits living in camps outside the valley to age-old Hindu shrines in the valley are greeted with warmth, after the near total evacuation of the Pandits, it would be wrong to aver that the impulse to forge a sovereign and independent valley into a theocratic state was no more than a baseless surmise. 

Be that as it may, what would the security logistics of the new state be, bordering as it does Russia, China, Pakistan, Afghanistan and, following its proposed secession, India as well? To return to what Sheikh Abdullah had said with regard to this option (of Kashmir as an “Eastern Switzerland”), how would the new state tackle these vulnerabilities? 

And can it be said that the imperialist from you-know-where, already stationed in countries nearby, would not then presume that at long last the valley was his for the taking, with all the Afghanistan-like consequences that could follow, both in terms of turmoil and cultural defilement?

Not to mention the kind souls from Pakistan’s wild western provinces, many in fact now resident in the country’s main city centres? How might the Kashmiris resist their call to a jihadist embrace, in disregard of the time-honoured ethnic Kashmiri prizing of exclusivity and identity? And if they were to become more insistent even after a polite “no”, who would come to the aid of the Kashmiris? 

Kashmiris grow more insistent every day as the current imbroglio continues that jobs, development, opportunities, are not the real issues. Yet in time these might indeed become issues of great magnitude for a prospectively landlocked valley lacking both monetary and infrastructural resources. These resources may then have to come from other places with all the attendant implications, whether the donors are the Saudis, the Yankees or the Chinese. Altogether, a pickle in the making.

The road ahead

If these be not unfounded considerations, what is to be done?

It is time that the question was addressed with some candid concern. 

A good beginning would, I think, be made if all the contending parties recognised that Kashmir is a problem that may never be resolved to the satisfaction of all parties. And it would be wrong to think that this avowal is merely a pre-emptive ploy. I doubt that time will prove me wrong. 

Let me say at once that the two options which seem closest to the heart of the contending parties – the union and the agitators – I see as non-starters. On the one hand there is the Indian state’s wish that things will drag on as before until exhaustion seals a fait accompli and on the other hand there is the desire, however fervent, of the young agitators for a country of their own in the valley. 

The first is bad not only because such a fait accompli is unlikely in the extreme but also because it belies the founding pretensions of the republic of India – chiefly its claim of “unity in diversity”. And it reinforces a sentiment widely felt even beyond the valley, that the Indian state, especially after the beginning of the neo-liberal era in the 1990s, has become increasingly impatient of both secularism and democracy and wholly inimical to the rights of the majority of Indians who to this day feel they have, in Abdullah’s words, no “definite and concrete stake in India”. This applies to the lives of India’s tribal populations, to Dalits and to minorities of varying description on a differentiated scale of neglect. In this context, if the Indian state believes that sooner or later the Kashmiris will tire and turn around, it is only fooling itself. 

And the second is a bad option because, as suggested earlier, secession of the valley would be fraught with negative consequences for all parties in the dispute and for the subcontinent as a whole. 

These recognitions return us willy-nilly to salutary reflections on the possibility of recuperating and refurbishing the covenant of the federative promise and principle – something on which the state’s accession to the union had been based in the first place, setting a uniquely outstanding example both in terms of plurality of citizenship and of political partnership in opposition to totalitarian impulses in both areas. 

This Kashmiri still thinks that the aforementioned Delhi Agreement of 1952 still offers the most workable and fair point of engagement. With the caveat – which with the advantage of hindsight any cool Kashmiri would recognise – that extending the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of India and the Election Commission of India to Jammu and Kashmir, far from impinging on the state’s autonomy, would in fact be credible guarantee of protection from excesses and denials. 

As for the majoritarian nationalists, they are as much a menace to the rest of India as they are to any attempt at a fair solution in Kashmir. That being so, the Indian state and civil society must needs muster the strength and the will to defy and overcome their shenanigans if the nation is to be saved not so much from the Kashmiris as, first of all, from them. 

It is good, better late than never, that the prime minister has made some moves of the sort suggested here. Let his government and society at large understand fully that it is now or never in Kashmir, and thus avoid slipping into another decade-long siesta after the ongoing violence inevitably lulls. 

As for Pakistan, I am tempted to simply nod in assent to the words of Sheikh Abdullah before the UN Security Council when he went there to plead India’s case in February 1948: “I refuse to accept Pakistan as a party in the affairs of Jammu and Kashmir state. I refuse this point blank.”

After what Pakistan has done to its own people over the decades, this refusal seems entirely appropriate. What the people in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir choose to do, how they decide their fate, is best left to them. Significantly, a 2009 Chatham House poll showed that some 58 per cent of Kashmiris favoured the formalisation of the Line of Control between the two parts of Kashmir as the international border between India and Pakistan. This is as it should be. And once that happens, human and other commerce between the two Kashmirs can be put on a sound international footing, all ambiguities and hassles removed. 

If initiatives along the lines of those mentioned above are not undertaken soon, it may be pointless to write anything further on the subject of the Kashmir problem. Neither reason nor analysis nor conjoint effort will then sort it out, only a conflagration that could lead who knows where.

Note

Literature on Kashmir is mind-bogglingly plentiful and I have sought to look into as much as time and tide allow. But, for purposes of this piece, I wish to record my indebtedness to three authors on Kashmir, chiefly – Prem Nath Bazaz, Balraj Puri and MJ Akbar, on whose work I have drawn with abandon. The interpretations thereof being entirely my responsibility.

Archived from Communalism Combat, July-August 2010, Anniversary Issue (17th).Year 17, No.153 – Cover Story 1

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Jinnah Institute releases its second report on the sorry state of religious freedom in Pakistan

Discrimination and violence against minorities and vulnerable communities in Pakistan poses a grave threat to society, and a change in mindset is needed to ensure that the life, dignity and rights of minorities are protected. This was the fundamental assertion made at the launch of Jinnah Institute’s latest report, ‘State of Religious Freedom in Pakistan” and the screening of its documentary “Strangers in Their Own Land” aired at the Marriott Hotel, Islamabad on January 19 (2016).

The report, which is the second report in a series on religious freedom, examines the state of Muslim and non-Muslim minorities in Pakistan through quantitative and qualitative research based on reported incidents on discrimination and violence, along with interviews and focused group discussion with vulnerable communities across Pakistan.

Speaking on the occasion, Jinnah Institute President Senator Sherry Rehman noted that while discrimination against minorities is part of a larger regional trend across South Asia, this was no justification for the distressing state of religious freedom in Pakistan. She called on all stakeholders to recognize the real and present danger posed by prejudice, bigotry and exclusionary practices towards the state’s vulnerable citizens. She emphasized the need of incorporating Quaid-e-Azam’s August 11 speech in curricula to ensure that future generations uphold the principles of a tolerant and plural Pakistan. As such Senator Rehman welcomed Jinnah Institute’s report, and painstaking research that included over 100 interviews, as an important step in the country’s quest for a tolerant and inclusive society.

Ali Dayan Hasan, who supervised and edited the report, noted that the state’s response to discrimination has become more nuanced in recent years. He noted that it was important for policy think-tanks in Pakistan to speak to minority rights issues in indigenous voices. Executive Director Christian Studies Centre, Jennifer Jag Jiwan took the opinion that bigotry, prejudice and bias cultivated the space for discrimination against marginalized groups. Religion is just one of several vectors responsible for discrimination in Pakistan. It is the foremost responsibility of any state to protect its citizens and not discriminate when it comes to different groups.

Ramesh Kumar Vankvani, MNA Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), noted that the Supreme Court in its seminal June 2014 judgment has given a roadmap to the government for ensuring that the rights of minorities in Pakistan are upheld according to the Constitution. He lamented that despite the passing of a year and a half, the SC judgement had yet to be implemented in its entirety. He highlighted that curricula reform was also essential to cultivate societal change.

Human rights advocate Tahira Abdullah praised the report as a significant contribution to the debate on minority rights. She urged the government to convene an inter-provincial meeting of education ministers to ensure that hate material is expediently removed from curricula across Pakistan.

Forced marriages, abductions and rape of Hindu girls were the overriding concerns of the Hindu community of Pakistan.  In 2015 alone, at least ten incidents of forced conversion, one case of rape and abduction, and two cases of desecration of worship places were reported. Shia Muslims continue to face some of the gravest consequences of religious intolerance in Pakistan

The report notes that recent years have witnessed an escalation in the persecution of minority communities in Pakistan. Faith-based violence and discrimination against non-Muslims is only half the story. Over time, extremists have also targeted Muslims from the minority sects of Islam. During the period, 2012-2014 at least 351 incidents of faith-based violence were reported across Pakistan. 43 attacks of varying intensity targeted the Christian community; seven churches were damaged; and 14 people were charged with blasphemy. 39 Ahmadis lost their lives in faith-based killings; the highest number of targeted killings were carried out in Sindh and Punjab. Little improvement was noticed in the socio-cultural attitudes of majority Muslim sects towards Ahmadis in Pakistan. Mass desecration of the Ahmadi graveyards was also reported.

Forced marriages, abductions and rape of Hindu girls were the overriding concerns of the Hindu community of Pakistan.  In 2015 alone, at least ten incidents of forced conversion, one case of rape and abduction, and two cases of desecration of worship places were reported. Shia Muslims continue to face some of the gravest consequences of religious intolerance in Pakistan. During 2012-2015, 23 attacks on the Imambargahs and 203 targeted killings took place. In addition, 1304 lives were lost in bomb blasts.

Until the launch of the National Action Plan (NAP) in December 2014, there was no high-level policy by the state to tackle the menace of faith-based violence and discrimination, even now progress on safeguarding minority groups remains uneven. Civil society, human rights advocates and sections of the media have been highlighting faith-based violence; and there were some gains made too. For example, the Supreme Court delivered a landmark judgment in 2014 on minority rights, and a young Christian Rimsha Masih was acquitted of blasphemy in 2013. Similarly, the National Commission for Human Rights has been activated with a retired judge as its head, however its powers and remit remain limited.

The report highlights the following recommendations, among others, to improve the status of minorities in Pakistan:
1.   A parliamentary committee should undertake a review of constitutional provisions that spur discrimination against minority groups including the oaths administered to the office of high level officials of the state.
2.    The National Commission on Minorities should be given authority to take suo motu notice of discrimination and violence against minorities, with the ability to pursue public interest litigation to protect the fundamental freedoms enshrined in the Constitution.
3.     The implementation on the June 2014 Supreme Court judgement should be carried out in its entirety and the progress of provinces monitored diligently.
4.     Full implementation of job quotas for minorities and protection of businesses owned by non-Muslim groups.
5.      Hate speech and hate campaigns need to be curbed by further strengthening existing legislation and policies.
6.       Curriculum reform through inclusion of messages of religious tolerance, and shunning of violent methods against non-Muslims is urgently required in support of the Supreme Court ruling.
7.       Intensive training of police forces across all provinces to ensure that they are equipped to deal with faith based violence in their areas with sensitivity.

Click here for full report in PDF format.

(Source: http://jinnah-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Minority-Report-2016.pdf)

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On a summer morning this July in Srinagar, tear gas from the troubled streets of Batmaloo began to roll into the first-floor home of Fancy Jan. The 24-year-old went to draw the curtains to screen the room from the acrid smoke, her mother told a reporter later, then turned away from the window and said: “Mummy, maey aaw heartas fire (my heart’s taken fire, mummy)”. Then she dropped dead, a bullet in her chest, the casual target of an anonymous soldier’s rifle. Fancy Jan was not a ‘stone-pelter’. She was a bystander, like many of the 50 people killed in the last two months. She is not the first woman to be shot by the security forces in 20 years of the troubles. But her random death, almost incomprehensible in the presumed safety of her family’s modest home, coincides with a vigorous unsettling of the way women have been represented in this conflict.

Until the other day, Kashmiri women were little more than a convenient set of clichés, shown as perpetual bystanders in houses that overlook the streets of protest. When seen outside of that protected zone, they were cast as victims, wailing mourners, keening at the endless funeral processions. For an occasional frisson there is the daunting image of the severely veiled Asiya Andrabi, chief of the Dukhtaran-e-Millat, a women’s group whose high media visibility seems inversely proportional to the modest numbers who adhere to their militant Islamic sisterhood. In black from head to toe, Andrabi always makes for good television, her arms and hands concealed in immaculate gloves, only her eyes showing through a slit. For the Indian media her persona insinuates the dark penumbra of Kashmiri protest, signalling the threat of ‘hard-line’ Islam, a ready metaphor for ‘what-awaits-Kashmir-if…’

But now an unfamiliar new photograph of the Kashmiri woman has begun to take its place on newspaper front pages. She is dressed in ordinary shalwar kameez, pastel pink, baby blue, purple and yellow. Her head is casually covered with a dupatta and she seems unconcerned about being recognised. She is often middle-aged and could even be middle-class. And she is carrying a stone. A weapon directed at the security forces. Last week, in a vastly underreported story, a massive crowd stopped two Indian Air Force vehicles on the highway near Srinagar. At the forefront were hundreds of women. The airmen and their families were asked to dismount and move to the safety of a nearby building. Then the buses were torched. This is not a rare incident: women are everywhere in these troubled times in Kashmir, and not in the places traditionally assigned to them. They are collecting stones and throwing them and assisting the young men in the front ranks of the protesters to disguise themselves, even helping them escape when the situation gets tough.

The government’s narrative of ‘miscreants’, of anomie and drug-fuelled teenagers working as Rs 200 mercenaries for the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, has meanwhile started to appear faintly ridiculous. A more reasonable explanation is being proffered to us now: it is anger, we are told, the people of Kashmir are angry at the recent killings and that’s why the women are being drawn in. That is true but only partially. For this is no ordinary anger but an old, bottled-up rage, gathered over so many years that it has settled and turned rock-hard. That accumulated fury is the stone in her hand. To not understand this, to fail to reach its source – or fathom its depth – is to be doomed to not understand the character of Kashmir’s troubles.

Two events will provide useful bookends for this exercise. In February 1991 there was an assault on Kunan Poshpora village in North Kashmir, where a unit of the Indian army was accused of raping somewhere between 23 and a hundred women. And then, a troubled 18 years later, the June 2009 rape and murder of two young women in Shopian, South Kashmir. In the case of Kunan Poshpora, bypassing a judicial inquiry, the government called in the Press Council of India to whitewash the incident, allowing its inadequate and ill equipped two-member team to summarily conclude that the charges against the army were “a massive hoax orchestrated by militant groups and their sympathisers and mentors in Kashmir and abroad”.

The travesty of the investigations into last year’s Shopian incident involved innumerable bungled procedures and threw up many glaring contradictions till the government of India roped in the Central Bureau of Investigation to put a lid on it. They promptly concluded that it was a case of death by drowning. (In a stream with less than a foot of water.) The case remains stuck in an extraordinary place: charges have been filed against the doctors who performed the post-mortems, against the lawyers who filed cases against the state, against everybody except a possible suspect for the rape and murder, or the many officials who had visibly botched up the investigations.

In the absence of justice, the space between Kunan Poshpora and Shopian can only be filled with the stories of nearly 7,000 people gone missing, of the 60,000 killed and the several-hundred-thousand injured and maimed and tortured and psychologically damaged. The men of this society took the brunt of this brutalisation. What of the price paid by the women? It is when we begin to come to terms with their decades-long accretion of grief and sorrow, of fear and shame, that we will begin to understand the anger of that woman with the stone in her hand.

The current round of protests will probably die down soon. The mandarins of New Delhi will heave a sigh of relief, tell us that everything is normal and turn their attentions to something else. But only their hubris could blind them from noticing what we have all seen this summer in Kashmir. This is not ordinary anger. It is an incandescent fury that effaces fear. That should worry those who seek to control Kashmir. 

 This article was published in The Times of India on August 8, 2010; http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Archived from Communalism Combat. July-August 2010, Anniversary Issue (17th).Year 17, No.153 – Cover Story 2

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Even as the ‘Brotherhood in Saffron’ pretends to appropriate the Mahatma’s legacy, assassin Nathuram Godse’s admirers in Maharashtra – the birthplace of the hate-Gandhi ideology, and Gujarat – the birthplace of the Mahatma – continue their campaign to vilify him and glorify the villain

(The article reproduced below was first published as a pamphlet in Gujarati, in response to two controversial plays, ‘Mee Nathuram Godse Boltoye’ and ‘Gandhi virudh Gandhi’. The pamphlet has since been translated into seven Indian languages. The English version has only recently been put out on the website, mkgandhi–sarvodaya.org). 

The killer of Gandhiji and his apologists sought to justify the assassination on the following arguments:   

• Gandhiji supported the idea of a separate state for Muslims. In a sense he was responsible for the creation of Pakistan.   
• In spite of the Pakistani aggression in Kashmir, Gandhiji fasted to compel the government of India to release an amount of Rs. 55 crore due to Pakistan.   
• The belligerence of Muslims was a result of Gandhiji’s policy of appeasement.

​Scrutinised in the light of recorded history these prove to be clever distortions to misguide the gullible. Gandhiji in those days was very active in the rough and tumble of politics. The proposal for partition of the country and violent reaction against it generated tensions which ultimately resulted in sectarian killings on a scale unprecedented in human history. 

For the ethnic Muslims, Gandhiji was a Hindu leader who opposed creation of Pakistan on sectarian grounds. Ethnic Hindus looked upon him as an impediment to their plan to avenge the atrocities on Hindus. Godse was a child of this extremist thinking. 
The assassination of Gandhiji was a culmination of decades of systematic brainwashing. Gandhiji had become a thorn in the flesh of the hardcore Hindus and in course of time this resentment turned into a phobia. Beginning with the year 1934 and over a period of 14 years, on as many as six occasions, attempts were made to kill Gandhiji. The last one by Godse on January 30, 1948 was successful. The remaining five were made in 1934, in the months of July and September 1944, September 1946 and 20th January 1948. Godse was involved in two previous attempts.  
When the unsuccessful attempts of 1934, 1944 and 1946 were made, the proposal regarding partition and the matter regarding release of Rs. 55 crore to Pakistan were not in existence at all. The conspiracy to do away with Gandhiji was conceived much earlier than the successful accomplishment thereof. The grounds advanced for this heinous crime are clever rationalisation to hoodwink the gullible. The staging of the play entitled, ‘Mee Nathuram Godse Boltoye’ is clear proof of the fact that the mindset that led to Gandhiji’s assassination has not disappeared from our national life. 

A civil society is wedded to the democratic method of resolving differences through frank and open debate and evolving a working consensus. Gandhiji was always open to persuasion. Gandhiji had invited Godse for discussions but the latter did not avail of this opportunity given to him. This is indicative of the lack of faith in the democratic way of resolving differences on the part of Godse and his ilk. Such fascist mindset seek to do away with dissent by liquidating the opponents. 

The Hindu backlash was as much responsible for the creation of Pakistan as the sentiments of ethnic Muslims. The hard core Hindus looked down upon the Muslims as misguided malechcha (unclean) and came to believe that coexistence with them was not possible. Mutual distrust and recriminations led the extremists among both the groups to regard Hindus and Muslims as different nationalities and this strengthened the Muslim League’s demand for partition as the only possible solution to the communal problem. Vested interests on both the sides stirred up the separatist sentiment and sought to justify their hate–campaign by clever and selective distortion of history. It is indeed a matter for serious concern for the nation that this mentality has not disappeared even today. 

Poet Mohammed Iqbal who wrote the famous song ‘Sare jahan se achcha Hindostan hamara’ was the first to formulate the concept of a separate state for Muslims as early as 1930. Needless to state, this sentiment was, in a sense, strengthened by Hindu extremists. In 1937, at the open session of the Hindu Mahasabha held at Ahmedabad, Veer Savarkar, in his presidential address asserted: “India cannot be assumed today to be unitarian and homogenous nation, but on the contrary there are two nations in the main – the Hindus and the Muslims.” (Vide Writings of Swatantarya Veer Savarkar, Vol. 6 page 296, Maharashtra Prantiya Hindu Mahasabha, Pune). 

In 1945, he had stated: “I have no quarrel with Mr. Jinnah’s two–nation theory. We, the Hindus are a nation by ourselves, and it is a historical fact that the Hindus and the Muslims are two nations”. (Vide Indian Educational Register, 1943, vol. 2, page 10). It was this sentiment of separate and irreconcilable identities of the followers of these religions that led to the formation of Pakistan. 

In complete contrast to this mentality, throughout his life Gandhiji remained an uncompromising advocate of the oneness of God, respect for all religions, equality of all men and non–violence in thought, speech and action. His daily prayers comprised verses, devotional songs and readings from different scriptures. All people, irrespective of their allegiance to different religions, attended those meetings. Till his dying day, Gandhiji held the view that the nationality of fellow citizens was not in any way affected by the fact of their subscribing to religious belief other than yours. During his life, on more than one occasion he strove for unity and equality among Hindus themselves, as well as amity among Hindus and Muslims, even risking his life. The idea of partition was an anathema to him. He was given to saying that he would sooner die than subscribe to such a pernicious doctrine. His life was an open book and no substantiation is necessary on this score. 

Under Gandhiji’s leadership communal amity occupied the pride of place in the constructive programmes of the Congress. Muslim leaders and intellectuals of national stature, like Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Maulana Azad, Dr. Ansari Hakim Ajmal Khan, Badruddin Tayabji, even Jinnah himself, were in the Congress fold. It is natural that the Congress opposed the proposal for the division of the country. But as a result of the incitement on the part of the lumpen elements among the Hindus and Muslims a tidal wave of carnage and lawlessness engulfed the nation. 
Faced with the breakdown of law and order in Sindh, Punjab, Balochistan, North–West Frontier Province and Bengal, Congress lost nerve. Jinnah adopted an inflexible attitude. Lord Mountbatten being motivated by the time–limit given to him by the British Cabinet used all his powers of persuasion and charm to steer all the leaders to a solution quick and yet acceptable to all; but the adamantine attitude of Jinnah made everything except partition unacceptable.   

Beginning with the year 1934 and over a period of 14 years, on as many as six occasions, attempts were made to kill Gandhiji. 

Faced with such a scenario Congress found it difficult to keep up its morale. Gandhiji conveyed to Lord Mountbatten on April 5, 1947 that he would agree even if the Britishers made Jinnah the Prime Minister and left the country as it was. Instead, Lord Mountbatten succeeded in getting the Congress to agree to partition. 

​Gandhiji was in the dark about it; he was shell–shocked when he learned about it. The only remedy available to him was fasting unto death to dissuade his followers from acquiescence to a ruinous course of action. After sustained soul searching he came to the conclusion that in the prevalent situation such a step on his part would further deteriorate the situation, demoralise the Congress and the whole country. 

The factors that weighed with him were the importunate demands of a rapidly changing national scenario and the non–existence of an alternate set of leaders of proven nationalist credentials.  

The most perplexing and yet pertinent question is that Jinnah was the most vocal protagonist of Pakistan and with the intentional or otherwise efforts of Mountbatten he succeeded in carving it out. Then, instead of making the two his targets, why did Godse select one for murder who vehemently opposed the idea of partition till the resolution by the Congress accepting the partition of the country was passed on June 3, 1947 and Pakistan became a fate accompli? Is it that, as Savarkar put it, he had no quarrel with Jinnah and his two–nation theory but he and his apologists had real quarrel with Gandhi and Gandhi alone? 

It is necessary to point out an aspect of Gandhiji’s personality that made him the source of unabated distrust and dislike in the eyes of hardcore Hindus. 

Though he was a devout Hindu, Gandhiji had most amicable and warm relations with many who did not belong to the Hindu fold. As a result of this exposure he had developed an eclectic religious sense based on oneness of God and equality of all religions.Caste divisions and untouchability prevalent among the Hindus distressed him immensely. He advocated and actively encouraged inter–caste marriages. Lastly, he blessed only those marriages wherein one of the partners belonged to the untouchable castes. 

Vested interests amongst high caste Hindus viewed this reformist and other religious programmes with bitter resentment. In course of time it developed into a phobia and thus he became an anathema to them. 

The matter regarding release of Rs. 55 crore to Pakistan towards the second instalment of arrears to be paid to it, under the terms of division of assets and liabilities, requires to be understood in the context of the events that took place in the aftermath of partition. Of the Rs. 75 crore to be paid, the first instalment of Rs. 20 crore was already released. The invasion of Kashmir by self–styled liberators with the covert support of the Pakistani army took place before the second instalment was paid.

While the government of India decided to withhold it, Lord Mountbatten was of the opinion that it amounted to a violation of the mutually agreed conditions and he brought it to the notice of Gandhiji. To Gandhiji’s ethical sense the policy of tit for tat was repugnant and he readily agreed with the Viceroy’s point of view. However, linking his stand in this matter with the fast he undertook, as we will see in the following lines, is an intentional mix-up and distortion of facts of contemporary history. 

The fast was undertaken with a view to restoring communal amity in Delhi. Gandhiji arrived from Calcutta in September 1947 to go to Punjab to restore peace there. On being briefed by Sardar Patel about the explosive situation in Delhi itself he changed his plans and decided to continue his stay in Delhi to restore peace with the firm determination to “Do or Die.” 

The influx of Hindus from Pakistan who were uprooted and who had suffered killings of relatives, abduction and rape of women and looting of their belongings had created an explosive situation. Local Hindus who were outraged by the treatment meted out to their Hindu brethren and the anger of local Muslims against reports of similar outrages on their co–religionists in India made Delhi a veritable witches’ cauldron. 

This resulted in killings, molestation, torching of houses and properties. This caused deep anguish to Gandhiji. What added poignancy to this was the realisation that it happened in India itself just after an unique incident in the history of mankind: doing away of the shackles of a colonial regime by non–violent means. 

It was with this background in his mind that he undertook a fast unto death to restore communal amity and sanity in Delhi. And, as if to allow the critics of Mahatma Gandhi a chance to mix–up and manoeuvre, the decision of the government of India to release Rs. 55 crore to Pakistan came during this period of his fast. 

The following facts dissolve the much–touted thesis that Gandhiji had fasted to bring moral pressure on government of India to relent:    

• Dr. Sushila Nair, as soon as she heard Gandhiji proclaim his decision, rushed to her brother Pyarelal and informed him in a huff that Gandhiji had decided to fast till the madness in Delhi ceased. Even in those moments of inadvertence, the mention of 55 crore of rupees was not made which clearly proves that it was not intended by Gandhiji.  
• Gandhiji’s own announcement about his resolve in the evening prayer meeting on 12th January did not contain any reference to it. Had it been a condition, he would have certainly mentioned it as that.   
• Similarly, there was no reference to it in his discourse on 13th January.   
• Gandhiji’s reply on 15th January to a specific question regarding the purpose of his fast did not mention it.  
• The press release of the government of India did not have any mention thereof.   
• The list of assurances given by the committee headed by Dr. Rajendra Prasad to persuade Gandhiji to give up his fast did not include it.  

We hope these facts would put the Rs. 55 crore concoction at rest. 

With regard to the last allegation regarding appeasement of Muslims, it should be conceded that a certain amount of antagonism between Hindus and Muslims existed in the nation. The colonial power cleverly exploited it during its reign and inevitably the division of the country came into being. Long before Gandhiji appeared on the national stage sagacious leaders like BG Tilak had started attempts to secure the participation of Muslims in the nationalist struggle.

Under what came to be known as the Lucknow Pact, Lokmanya Tilak, Annie Besant and Mohammed Ali Jinnah evolved a formula under which the Muslims would get representation greater than what would be justified on the basis of the percentage of Muslim population. The frank and bold statement of Tilak defending the Pact is an eloquent refutation of the charge that Gandhiji began the policy of appeasement of Muslims.

The author of the play, Mee Nathuram Godse Boltoye, Pradeep Dalvi, described the order of the Maharashtra government banning the staging of the play as an attack on freedom of expression. This is a travesty of truth and a perversion of the fundamental right guaranteed by the constitution. 

The constitution also provides for ban on the abuse of this freedom; vide its section 19(2). The implications of what Dalvi and his ilk profess requires to be carefully analysed. Under the guise of defending the freedom of expression, what they are seeking to do is to advocate the right to murder those who do not agree with them. They seek to spread hatred and violence. They want to propagate the pernicious doctrine that under certain circumstances the murder of the opponent becomes an act of religious sacrifice. 

It is revolting to find that the heinous murder of one who was a living embodiment of non–violence, peace and love and who was as defenceless as a naked, new born child should be made a scaffolding for a neo–fascist doctrine. 

​Godse is no more but the mindset that gave birth to such distorted philosophy is unfortunately still with us. One can dismiss what he did as an act of a lunatic bigot. Assassination by itself is not as wicked as the attempts to rationalise, justify, masquerade it as a religious act. Permitting such plays to be staged amounts to permitting mis–education of our children. Only sane response to such insidious propaganda is unequivocal rejection thereof.           
 

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"The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence"

Adolf Hitler, in Mein Kampf.

The history of India over the past century unfolds like a chronicle of civil war. India was partitioned, the segment re-partitioned. "Internal enemies" were identified and massacres unleashed. No solutions were found. Today, communal myths possess nuclear bombs. There are lines of control everywhere – in villages, cities and in hearts. Barbed wire, iron gates and security guards abound. Flagpoles of religious places compete with each other for height. Society is awash with fear. Thanks to the guardians of "identity", outraged sentiment seems to be on the rampage – battling over cricket pitches, books, films and paintings.

Humanity possesses a natural tendency for remembrance and its transmission. For those interested in ideals of progress history is a laboratory of social theory. It is also the terrain of Identity, a category that sits uneasily with human equality, and has taken millions of lives. History as the maidservant of a cause undermines its own disciplinary procedures. No history is free of tendency, and historians’ convictions undoubtedly affect their output. However, just as the Euclidian point is essential to geometry, the search for truth has to remain an ideal, even if an unattainable one, for history.

This is a painful commitment, because historical materials defy dogma. None of us like our beliefs being challenged. Gandhians do not want to be reminded of the repercussions of the Khilafat movement or the Congress’ attitude to the 1946 naval mutiny. Communists are defensive about the stance of the CPI in 1942 and the Adhikari resolution supporting Partition. Admirers of Savarkar do not advertise the fact that he assisted the British war effort, was not averse to Mahasabha participation in the Muslim League ministry of NWFP in 1943, and was a main accused in the Gandhi murder trial. The Pakistan Ideology Act restrains Pakistani historians from questioning the two-nation theory or writing a non-tendentious account of Jinnah’s career. The RSS might not like to be reminded that in May 1947 the Akhil Rajya Hindu Sabha under J&K RSS chief Prem Nath Dogra, passed a resolution on Kashmir stating that "a Hindu state should not join secular India". Or that Sardar Patel accused RSS men of celebrating Gandhi’s assassination. Trotskyists don’t dwell on Bolshevik military action against the Kronstadt sailors in 1921, Stalinists don’t remember state terror and mock trials in the USSR. Nazi apologists don’t recall the Holocaust and Zionists suffer amnesia about the terror unleashed by the Haganah and Stern gangs in 1948. Japanese historians are defensive about the massacres in Nanking and Shanghai and some day Chinese historians will forget that China waged war on Vietnam in 1979 in tandem with the USA.

For some ideologues, the past is a saga of victory and defeat. The fear of ambivalence is characteristic of them and in their hands, history is pure polemic. Savarkar’s speech to the Hindu Mahasabha in 1942 described 17th century India as being "a veritable Pakistan", with "Hindustan being wiped out", and the 18th century witnessing the march of Hinduism. This anachronism is repeated in a Pakistani textbook of 1982, which teaches that in the 16th century, "`Hindustan’ disappeared and was absorbed in ‘Pakistan’". The distortions extend to contemporary analysis. Time summed up the history of the 20th century as a victory of "free minds and free markets over fascism and communism" (December 31, 1999). Along with Clinton’s essay it misrepresents the Allied victory in World War II as an American one, ignoring the role of the Red Army and the fact that the USSR lost over twenty million dead, compared to less than 3 lakh Americans. This is History as the paean of megalomania. I do not believe that all viewpoints are equally biased, or that history provides no lessons. From the welter of partiality, we may glean truths and hope – but only if our profession is motivated by respect for human experience, and not just "Hindu" or "Muslim" experience. The historian has to be an iconoclast or risk becoming a propagandist.

In an attempted refutation of Bharat Bhushan’s article The Other Italian Connection (HT Feb 18), K.R. Malkani (Feb 23) states that the RSS was founded before Moonje visited Italy, that its heroes were Indians, and that Gandhi also met Mussolini. Here is an example of history as polemic. It was the militaristic mind-set of fascism, not its specific heroes that inspired Moonje. All ultra-rightists had their own "national" heroes. Mussolini seized power in 1922, and his impact was evident by the time the RSS was founded in 1925. And whereas Moonje was greatly impressed by Mussolini, Gandhi told the latter that his state was "a house of cards", and took a dim view of the man – "his eyes are never still". Moonje’s trip was not an innocuous replica of Gandhi’s.

Defending the recent withdrawal of the ICHR volumes, government protagonists aver that the authors reduced Gandhi to a footnote. It is ironic that persons sympathetic to the politics of Gandhi’s assassin repeatedly take refuge behind Gandhi’s memory. Let us address the issue differently. Gandhi was a proponent of ahimsa. Hinduttva’s proponents believe that Hindus are too pacific – even cowardly, and need to become militant. Their heroes are those whom they identify as warriors. Their constant evocation of wounded sentiment as a justification for "direct action", prompt us to ask the government to clarify its position on violence. Should sentiment be elevated to a level superior to the needs of civic order and criminal justice? Is it surprising that a retired CBI director is so fond of the Bajrang Dal, an organisation known more for muscle than mind? That a former union minister encouraged the intimidation of a film unit? That the vandalisation of the BCCI office was condoned by a Chief Minister who saw no reason for a police case? Is it their case that Naxalite violence is wrong but violence unleashed by outraged sentiment is acceptable? Do they have the courage to say so explicitly?

The assault on the mind is the most dangerous feature of the current situation. Mushirul Hasan was attacked for suggesting that the ban on Satanic Verses be lifted. (A prominent Congressman incited that campaign). Asghar Engineer is beaten up for questioning the Syedna’s powers. Whatever happened to the rights of minorities within minorities? Demands are voiced – rather belatedly – for a ban on Dante’s Inferno. Film screenings are disrupted. Literary commentaries on the Granth Sahib result in threats of excommunication. (How brave our militants are!). And when we need a discussion on the rule of law, we indulge instead in literary criticism, film appreciation etc. Surely the point ought to be whether bad authors and filmmakers have a right to remain alive, with their bones intact. Whether the government can ensure a peaceful resolution of conflicts or if musclemen may run amuck because they have high connections. Gandhi rendered Hindus nirvirya and napunsak, said Godse. I beg to differ.

Gandhi had greater physical courage than most politicians in his time – and not many of today’s luminaries would venture forth without protection after three attempts at assassination. His ahimsa was a name for restraint, without which no society may survive and no institutions gather strength. Let us stop flaunting our boringly delicate sentiments, and address the deliberate inculcation of revenge and hatred. Those who care about human survival can see their future in the mirror of history.

(This article are fisrt publish in The Hindustan Times.)

Archived from Communalism Combat, April 2000. Year 7  No, 58, Editor's Choice

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