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Kashmir:
Kashmiri Pundit View-point
By
Jagan
Kaul
In view of the active political,
religious, financial and emotional involvement of the Pan Islamic
movement and Pakistan, the otherwise very simple Kashmir issue has
become complex and explosive in its character. Through 3
full-fledged wars and a decade old proxy war, India and
Pakistan,
have lost thousands of people, trillions of rupees and unprecedented
opportunities to improve the standard of life of their respective
citizenry. Under these circumstances proposing a rational solution
to this vexed problem needs a brief examination of its
background.
At the dawn of independence, the Pakistani
tribals, aided and abated by the Pak-army, under the command of Maj.
Gen. Akbar Khan, invaded Kashmir. The invaders did not move speedily
as they accorded a higher priority to kidnapping, rape, loot, murder
and plunder. In her book "Halfway to Freedom" Margaret Bourke-White
has given a full account of the plunder.
By this crusade Mr.
Jinnah had hoped to reap a double benefit: Ist. to get rid of the
tribals from NWFP who could not be trusted being the followers of
the Frontier Gandhi and 2nd to bring Kashmiris led byAbdullah to
their knees.
Faced with a Pakistani aggression on Oct. 26,
1947,The Maharaja applied for his state's accession to India. The
Governor General of India, Lord Mountbatten, accepted the instrument
of accession the following day making way for the Indian army to
repulse the aggressors from Kashmir. This is how under the new
arrangement designed by the British, Kashmir became an integral part
of modern India. However, this decision backed by Abdullah and NC
was unacceptable to Mr. Jinnah. From that time to the present
Pakistan's obsession with Kashmir has grown
incrementally.
The break point, from the non-Muslim minority
perspective, came when the West assembled and funded a
fundamentalist Muslim army called "Mujahideen." It was composed of
religious zealots and intolerant radicals from the Islamic world.
The Reagan administration is said to
have provided $5 billion as
the seed money for setting up this religious based militant force.
The main objective of these Jihadists was to fight against the
Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Pakistan became the HQ and
therefore, the beneficiary of this multi-national Islamic
force.
Being the guiding light and the main recruiting field
of the Mujahideen, Pakistan successfully used this army on both
sides of its borders. Her expansionist plans had two targets. To the
west the Mujahideen radicals, who by now had become the Taliban
enjoying full support of the Al Qaeda, were used to capture
Afghanistan from the Soviet occupation. Towards the
east
anti-Indianism and anti-Hinduism being its "national doctrine"
Islamabad managed to infiltrate thousands of its recruits into
Kashmir for subversion and possible occupation. Thus was born the
decade old proxy war against India.
With external help the
Pathans of Pakistan launched a relentless campaign for ejecting the
Soviets from Afghanistan. On realizing that the West and the Islamic
world had caught up to them the Soviets quickly withdrew from Kabul.
Thus afforded an easy yet unprecedented victory to the Taliban. This
victory boosted the morale of both Pakistan and its creation, the
Taliban.
Pakistan naturally saw an excellent opportunity of
expanding its control through its twin campaign. In an effort to
stabilize their regime founded on the Wahabi principles the Taliban
killed large numbers of the ethnic minorities in Afghanistan and
expelled the remainder from their traditional dwellings. In this
ethnic clean up untold atrocities were committed yet the
international community was denied access to see any of this
carnage. We have seen how the cannons of the Taliban obliterated
the3rd and 5th century statues of Lord Buddha. This same treatment
was used on all non-Muslim places of worship. Similarly the
remaining Hindus,
Sikhs, Buddhists and Christians were either
killed or expelled while the foreign missionaries were simply
imprisoned under the provisions of the Sharia.
On the Kashmir
front, their campaign became a civilizational-cum-communal war in
which the Pandits, Sikhs, Buddhists and Christians were targeted for
"ethnic cleansing" and "genocide". This protracted assault on the
non-Muslim minorities constituting almost 25%population has
completely destabilized their world through often-repeated mass
massacres and terrorist acts. In this unholy war, close to
70,000people have been killed.
In fact, during the past
decade "September 11th" has visited India many a times and the
resultant "reign of terror" has forced more than half a million
non-Muslim Kashmiris into the exile. Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and
Christians in their totality, exactly as it was done in Pakistan and
PoK, were driven from this region. The followers of the elusive
Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda have forcibly and illegally occupied
their movable and immovable properties, businesses, jobs, lands and
professions. More than25,000 of their houses and close to 100 Hindu
temples were vandalized, looted and burnt and in some cases
converted into mosques. Thousands of
women and children were
kidnapped and raped. In the Kashmir valley alone, 500 hundred Hindu
girls remain unaccounted for. Even today these terrorized and
homeless minorities live like nomads and "kurds" with their
political, social, economic and religious rights
systematically
shrunk.
PATRIOTISM MADE PANDITS A TARGET
There are numerous reasons why these
Islamic terrorists elected to target the non-Muslims, particularly
the Pandits. The foremost among them were:
a) They believed
that the Pandits by virtue of having given 3 strong Prime ministers
to India i.e., Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi
represented India's power elite. And if this power elite was
uprooted, dislodged and dispersed from its traditional habitat that
will
result into an irreparable loss to the Indian political
culture, which could inevitably lead to the collapse of Indian
political system;
b) The Pandits in Hindu hierarchy being the
authors and philosophers of many of the great Hindu scriptures
occupied a very high place in the Brahmanic culture. The destruction
of their society in Kashmir not only eliminates a strong and loyal
pro-India segment of the local population but would also be an
ultimate humiliation for the Hindus of India considered by Pakistani
rulers as their enemies;
c) additionally they were strong
supporters of J&Ks accession to India and therefore, accused of
wanting the consolidation of Indian power over the Muslims in the
state; d) they were also accused of being a fifth column aiming at
sabotaging the Muslim secessionist movements;
e) Lastly, they
stubbornly opposed the primacy of Islam and therefore, were a
stumbling bloc in the way of the complete Islamization of the
state.
On the Indian side, political expediency and the vote
bank politics apart, the political landscape of the country had
radically changed. Those in power were the life long opponents and
in some cases enemies of the Nehrus and Gandhis. Not understanding
fully the traits, traditions and survivalist methodologies of the
Pandit society residing in a relatively hostile environment, they
considered every KP a Jawahar, Indira and/or Rajiv. Accordingly they
were neither protective nor helpful at a time of high crisis in the
Pandit history. The new rulers in ND showed cold shoulders and
ignored the "ethnic cleansing" of the Pandits; Instead of exposing
the terrorist violence as an ideological struggle essentially
fundamentalist in its outlook aiming at integrating Kashmir with
Pakistan the Indian leaders made concerted efforts to conceal the
real import of the Muslim subversion in Kashmir. A
dis-informationcampaign was carried out not only to punish the
Pandits for their so-called Nehru-Gandhi connection but also to
cover the ugly face of
Muslim communalism and separatism in favor
of the ruling class's version of secularism.
CALIPHATE:
From the non-Muslim perspective the
militancy in Kashmir is any thing but a freedom struggle. The People
who are engaged in this insurrection came from about 3 dozen Muslim
countries and so did their funds, trainers, organization and
planners. This fully establishes the foreign
connection of the
so-called Jihad. The declared goal of these Jihadistsis to establish
a caliphate; the Qauranic concept of a world government based on
moral principles laid down in the Sunnah. They urge Muslims world
wide to strive for caliphate, as, without it, Islam is incomplete.
Even Siraj Wahaj, a U.S. black convert to Islam declared in the
recent past that "if only Muslims were clever politically, they
could take over the United States and replace its constitutional
govt. with a caliphate. If we were united and strong, he said, we
would elect our own emir and give allegiance to him. Take my word if
8 million Muslims unite in
America, the country will come to
us."
Islamic fundamentalists have launched a Jihad against
the entire on-Muslim world. This Jihad is being fought on 3
different fronts. a) war against secular or nominally Islamic govts.
b) The war against all nations who are either on the fringe of the
Islamic world or who have substantial Muslim minorities, and c) war
against the predominantly on-Muslim Western countries and the US. In
its implications the "caliphate doctrine" is just like the
"communist internationalism" aiming at converting the world to fit
its ideological and behavioral mold. Therefore, even if Kashmir is
handed over to them, the terrorist movement towards Islamization of
the world will not end. To build an international organizational
structure both above and underground, millions of petro-dollars are
being spent. OBL, who heads the Al Qaeda in about 60countries,
controls a kitty of about $ 300 million. There are many more hidden
treasures in the Middle East aiding the movements of converting the
infidels to Islam. To further illustrate this point two weeks ago
Saddam Hussein declared a reward of $25,000 to each family producing
suicide bombers against the Jews of Israel.
The Pandits and
non-Muslim minorities of Kashmir have immensely suffered at the
hands of the terrorists. Their unique community, culture, religion,
traditions and way of life must be saved. That objective can be
achieved only when the threat of Islamic terrorism against
them
spearheaded by OBL and Musharraf is eliminated. At this
point Musharraf has an additional 50,000 Al Qaeda and Taliban
Jihadists who escaped from Afghanistan and melted into the Pakistani
nation available to him. If this terrorist force and the "Jihad
culture" created by 10,000 Madrasas in Pakistan is not neutralized
the Islamic terrorism will explode the Indian subcontinent like the
Mount St. Helen.
The Pandits firmly believe that Pakistan's
illegitimate regime will not change its ways and in order to improve
the chances of its survival it will play with fire by using masses
of the Islamic terrorists in Kashmir. Since Sept. 11 the US forces
have been deployed in Azerbaijan,
Uzbekistan, Afghanistan,
Georgia and Philippines to fight terrorism. Furthermore, Washington
has given Israel the freedom to wipe out terrorism in her neighbor
hood. Similarly:
a)
India should be given freedom and support for neutralizing the
terrorist out fits and their training camps in her
neighborhood.
b) UN and US should direct Pakistan to vacate its
aggression against Kashmir and return the control of the occupied
territories to the state govt. at Srinagar.
c) To save the
minorities from the terrorist tyranny India should be directed to
initiate the political reorganization of Kashmir ensuring a
"homeland" for the ousted minorities and equal political empowerment
of Dogras, Pandits, Buddhists and Muslims in their domains with
full
application of the Indian constitution.
We strongly
believe that this is the most realistic, historically and legally
correct and justifiable way of solving the Kashmir issue without
giving yet another victory to Taliban and Al Qaeda hosted by
Musharraf in Pakistan.
Text
of the speech delivered by the author at the UCLA
conference held on 14th of April,
2002. The author is a prominent Kashmiri Pundit leader based in
America.
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