SACW #1 | 16-18 Nov 2004 [Kashmir - India - Pakistan ]

[sacw]

South Asia Citizens Wire - Dispatch #1  |  16-18 November,  2004
via:  www.sacw.net

[1] Kashmir's Endless Autumn (Rehana Hakim)
[2] Bab-e-Pakistan -- one-sided memory


--------------

[1]

Newsline
November 2004

KASHMIR'S ENDLESS AUTUMN
Winds of change may be blowing across the 
subcontinent, but Kashmir's season of despair 
lingersŠ

By Rehana Hakim

Where or how does one begin? Three weeks of 
reflection after a five-day journey into 
"forbidden land" yield only one absolute truth: 
in Kashmir - Jammu, the valley and 'Azad' - there 
is no absolute truth.

            And in the myriad faces of the 
conflict that has spanned 57 years and claimed 
tens of thousands of lives, there are no winners.

           So where does one begin?

           At the very beginning of the first-ever 
trip in 57 years to Indian-administered Kashmir 
by a group of Pakistani journalists? That would 
be the meeting in Anantnag with Mehbooba Mufti - 
Kashmir's answer to Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto - 
the supremely confident and articulate daughter 
of Jammu and Kashmirs' chief minister, Mufti 
Mohammad Sayeed. Or does one start with the scion 
of the 'Lion' of Kashmir's family, the suave Omar 
Abdullah, who holds Pakistan responsible for most 
of J&K's travails. Does one focus on JKLF's angry 
young man, Yasin Malik, who accuses the 
"imperialist Punjabis" from both sides of the 
divide of deciding the fate of Kashmir without 
taking the Kashmiris' aspirations into account. 
Or should the curtain open to the APHC's Syed Ali 
Shah Geelani, who staunchly opposes reopening the 
bus route between Muzaffarabad and Srinagar 
because he believes it will dilute the Kashmir 
problem.

           Perhaps one should start at the other 
end of the ideological divide - at the camps of 
the Pandits in Jammu, who fled the valley after 
the latest insurgency erupted and who accuse the 
Pakistani media of never failing to report on the 
"excesses" on Kashmiris by the security personnel 
but ignoring the "genocide" of Pandits by the 
militants. Or should one just plunge into the 
heart of the issue: the homes of hundreds of 
those Kashmiris who have lost fathers, husbands 
and sons to security forces, to the freedom 
struggle or to militancy, and been left at the 
mercy of the state apparatus?

             Kashmir is tricky terrain. It's like 
walking a minefield. Passions and tempers run 
high. There is a high degree of skepticism, 
cynicism, and of suspicion - borne understandably 
of 57 years of a closed-door policy - when a 
delegation of 16 journalists sponsored by the 
South Asia Free Media Association (SAFMA) arrives 
in Jammu and Kashmir as guests of The Kashmir 
Times.

           The opening salvo is fired by Asiya 
Andrabi, leader of the Dukhtaran-e-Millat, a 
right-wing women's group that hit the headlines 
in 1992 for reportedly trying to implement their 
version of the Islamic code of dress and throwing 
acid on some women who refused to cover their 
faces.

            Speaking at an impromptu press 
conference at one of her many hideouts, Andrabi, 
who is currently a fugitive from the law, alleges 
that the visit is sponsored by the Indian 
government, and that the delegates are guests of 
pro-India political parties and the army. She 
demands to know why Pakistani journalists have 
been allowed to enter J&K, when Amnesty 
International and other human rights groups have 
been denied permission. Andrabi describes the 
visit as part of a "diabolical plan" for 
Musharraf's sellout on Kashmir. Andrabi is not 
the only one who has reservations about the trip. 
JKLF's Yasin Malik feels the delegation has 
compromised the legal status of Kashmir by 
travelling on Indian visas. The APHC's Syed Ali 
Shah Geelani is not pleased that Doda, Baramulla, 
Rajouri - the areas that have borne the brunt of 
the army's excesses - have not been included in 
the itinerary. And the Kashmir Bar Council takes 
the journalists to task for partaking of wazwan 
(Kashmir's gourmet cuisine) with state 
functionaries. In short, we are put on the 
defensive from the word go.

           No, we are not representing Musharraf, 
Manmohan Singh, or the US; no, we have no agenda; 
no, we do not represent any government; no, we 
have no roadmap on Kashmir; no, we offer no 
solutions; no, we are not the UN 
Secretary-General.

             We are lambasted time and again for 
travelling on Indian visas, till an irritated 
Imtiaz Alam, SAFMA's head honcho, responds with: 
"How come you don't question Hurriyat leaders who 
travel on Indian passports?" That clinches the 
argument.

             Andrabi's tirade aside, no one, with 
any shade of political opinion, would miss an 
opportunity to meet a corps of Pakistani 
journalists.

             The 76-year-old Syed Ali Shah 
Geelani, often branded an ISI agent by the Indian 
media, meets us at the Tehreek-i-Hurriyat 
headquarters in Hyderpore. He remains firm on his 
stand: J&K's accession to Pakistan. He sees no 
other option. "An independent Kashmir will become 
a playing field for vested interests," he states 
in categorical terms. "There has to be a 
plebiscite in accordance with UN resolutions." He 
warns against an Afghanistan-like U-turn on 
Kashmir and even opposes the proposal of soft 
borders and free travel between the two Kashmirs. 
He fears it would dilute the Kashmir problem. 
"Even if India were to pave the streets of 
Kashmir with gold, it would not atone for the 
blood of its martyrs," says Geelani.

             Questioned about the differences 
within the APHC's ranks, he says there are none. 
"Only those people who violated the party's 
constitution by contesting in the 2002 polls were 
suspended." Told to prove his electoral strength 
by contesting an election, he says, "I will do so 
only under UN observers. The Indians would rig 
elections to embarrass me."

             Unlike APHC's hardliners, the 
moderate faction of the APHC, led by Maulana 
Abbas Ansari, accuses Islamabad of scuttling any 
peace moves by funding a plethora of agencies to 
foment trouble in Kashmir. "We never thought a 
symbol of political unity would be broken up by 
its mentor," fumes Abdul Ghani Bhat, the former 
Hurriyat Chairman. He says he tore up an earlier 
will in which he had expressed a desire to be 
buried in Pakistan. The Ansari group, however, 
claims to have a blueprint for a settlement of 
the Kashmir dispute which would be acceptable to 
all three sides and which would take into account 
the "sensitivities, security concerns, economic 
interests and national honour of all three as 
well as the functional togetherness of different 
regions of J&K."

             Sheikh Abdullah's son-in-law, G.M. 
Shah, a former chief minister of J&K who heads 
the JK Awami National Conference, proposes what 
he calls "the mother of all confidence-building 
measures" - an intra-Kashmir conference to hammer 
out a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

             The walls of the entrance to the 
house where we meet the J&K Democratic Front 
Party's Chief, Shabbir Ahmed Shah, are a 
testimony to the violence in Kashmir: pasted all 
over are snapshots of hundreds of bullet-riddled, 
tortured bodies of those killed in the valley.

             "India should stop custodial 
killings, release detained political activists, 
withdraw the Public Safety Act under which people 
can be detained for two years without any trial, 
set up a Kashmir Committee headed by a man like 
Vajpayee to carry the peace process forward, and 
it should include Kashmiris."

             Any implication that the militants 
have hijacked Kashmir's freedom movement are cast 
aside. "We are grateful to the militants for 
taking the Kashmir issue out of cold storage and 
pushing it centrestage," he says. "In any case, 
they are mostly locals and, those who are not, 
will go back home once the peace initiatives 
begin to show results. Before 1989, no one 
carried even a penknife. The Kashmir issue is a 
political issue and it has to be resolved 
politically," he says categorically.

             The most passionate, and the most 
volatile of the separatists, is the Jammu and 
Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) Chairman, Yasin 
Malik. Unlike Shabbir Shah who breaks into a 
smile every now and then, the lean, wiry Yasin 
appears grim, pensive, angst-ridden. There is an 
impenetrable barrier of reserve. But as the 
38-year-old freedom fighter, who has spent 15 
years in jail, off and on, in Srinagar, Jodhpur 
and Tihar, begins to speak to the Pakistani media 
at the party headquarters in Maisuma, the reserve 
boils over into seething rage.

             There is overwhelming anger at the 
Kashmiris being left out of the dialogue process. 
"Are we a pack of animals?" he asks angrily. 
"This is not a border dispute between India and 
Pakistan that has to be resolved by its rulers. 
The solution has to be in consonance with 
Kashmir's aspirations."

             In the last 16 months, Malik has gone 
from village to village collecting signatures of 
the people of J&K demanding that they be allowed 
to determine their own future - 16 lakh 
signatures at last count. He accuses the Indian 
government of wanting to change the demographic 
character of J&K.

             Yasin is dismissive of the 2002 state 
assembly polls. "According to the Election 
Commission, the Chief Minister, Mufti Mohammad 
Sayeed, secured only 2,81,000 votes in the entire 
state. Besides only 20 per cent of the population 
participated in the polls, which means 80 per 
cent boycotted the polls on our call. So who was 
defeated?"

             He reads extracts from the works of 
the well known Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali's 
collection, A Country Without a Post Office 
(Shahid died of cancer at age 55 in the US), 
copies of which he gifts to all the delegates:

When the muezzin died,
the city was robbed of every call.
The houses were swept about like leaves
for burning. Now every night we bury
our houses - and theirs, the ones left empty.
We are faithful. On their doors we hang wreaths.
More faithful each night fire again is a wall
and we look for the dark as it caves in.

             Agha Shahid's father, the erudite 
Agha Ashraf Ali, a former professor of political 
history, is scathing in his comments, but his 
contempt is not reserved for India alone. He 
refers to India and Pakistan as the "pipsqueaks 
with their little bombs," and ends on a telling 
note: "Leave us to our own devices, we will 
manage. The Kashmiris will have the last laugh."

             In Srinagar, both expectations and 
passions run highŠ Every Kashmiri you run into at 
Srinagar's Broadway Hotel wants five minutes of 
your time; wants you to understand his trauma, 
his suffering, his pain; wants you to hear his 
story - and there are many, many stories. Stories 
of missing sons, abused daughters; stories of 
women whose husbands have gone missing and 
widows; abandoned orphans, destitute families and 
charred properties.

             Each more poignant than the other.

             There's Parveena Ahangar, whose son 
has been missing for the past 17 years. A college 
student, he was picked up by security forces from 
his house at three o'clock in the morning. Since 
then Parveena has been running from army 
cantonments to prison cells to government offices 
demanding to know the whereabouts of her son. She 
believes he's been killed. "At least, give me his 
body to bury," the mother cries in anguish.

             Ahangar now heads an organisation 
called Parents of Disappeared Persons (PADP). She 
takes Ary Televison's Syed Talat Hussain in a 
rickshaw to meet other parents of missing 
children. In her neighbourhood alone, there are 
apparently 60 such cases.

             At Syed Ali Shah Geelani's press 
briefing, a dozen or so women approach the female 
journalists. One of them holds The News' foreign 
correspondent, Mariana Baabar's hand and cries 
out aloud as she talks of how life has become a 
veritable hell ever since her husband decided to 
join the militants. She lifts her pheran (long 
Kashmiri outer garment) to reveal a big gash in 
her stomach. She accuses the security forces of 
torturing and tormenting her. "My young daughters 
are summoned to the army camp every now and 
then," she says. We are told to visit Doda, 
Baramulla, Budgam and Rajouri that are teeming 
with stories like hers.

             We hear the sorry tale of Pattan, an 
entire village which was burnt down as 
"retribution" when some army personnel were 
killed. Another village, we are told, was torched 
when the security forces found a militant holed 
up in one of the houses in the area.

             "Is it fair to punish an entire 
village because a militant has sought refuge in 
one home?" says an angry Kashmiri shopkeeper. "In 
many cases the militants don't enter our homes 
with our permission. They just barge in." He 
recalls the time when a group of eight militants 
forced their way into his house, when he was away 
at work. His sisters were forced to vacate their 
room. "The visitors, from Jaish I suspect, didn't 
harass anyone, but they mounted their guns, and 
stayed and prayed through the night. Before they 
left early the next morning, my family made 
breakfast for them and they insisted on paying 
for a pack of butter they had asked my brother to 
get from a corner shop. But till the time they 
were there, my family was on tenterhooks."

             Suddenly, our hitherto forthcoming 
shopkeeper is struck by the realisation that 
talking to us might cost him dearly. "Please 
don't reveal my identity," he pleads. "If the 
security forces find out, they will lock me up on 
charges of harbouring terrorists." His fear is 
palpable. As is the fear of a hotel employee who 
looks around to see if anyone is listening as he 
informs me about his son, a college student, who 
was constantly being approached by militants to 
join the freedom movement. He pulled his son out 
of college and found him employment elsewhere. 
"Please don't disclose my name," he beseeches "or 
else I'll be in deep trouble."

             In Kashmir, the battle lines are 
drawn: 'Either you are with us - the militants or 
the security forces - or you are against us. And 
whichever side you are on, prove it.' There is no 
sitting on the fence, no such entity as neutral 
observer. One is constantly looking over one's 
shoulder to see who's eavesdropping. "But some 
Kashmiris have learnt the art of survival," says 
a Delhi-based reporter. "They'll give the ISI or 
a Pakistani one story, they'll gave RAW or an 
Indian another."

             However, at Srinagar's Kashmir 
University with 4,000 students on the roll, there 
is just one storyŠ

             SAFMA's Imtiaz Alam throws a simple 
question at the 20 students who have been chosen 
for an interface with SAFMA delegates: If they 
had to choose between India, Pakistan and 
independence, what would they opt for?

             "Total independence" is the 
overwhelming response. They don't wish to merge 
with either India or Pakistan. "Firstly we'd like 
a reunification of the Indian and 
Pakistan-administered parts of Kashmir, plus the 
part that is with China, and then we want 
independence." But even as they speak, around 50 
to 60 students carrying placards raise slogans of 
"Azadi ka matlab kiya? La illaha illalah," 
"Pakistan Zindabad," and "Jeevay, jeevay 
Pakistan." Some say they want 'Nizam-e-Mustafa.' 
Asked whether they know what it implies in 
practical terms, they are vague.

             The students complain to Pakistani TV 
anchors, Talat Hussain of Ary, Munizae Jahangir 
of Geo and Mujahid Barelvi of Indus TV, on 
camera, that they were not informed about the 
Pakistani media team's visit and that their 
university's principal unilaterally decided on 
the list of students and faculty members who 
would be allowed to meet the journalists. The 
number of protesting students swells to roughly 
300, all wanting to be heard. The media team has 
to be moved to the main auditorium of Gandhi 
Bhavan next door to hear them all.

             The anger here pulsates through the 
hall. They want azadi, azadi, azadi. "Politics is 
not allowed on the campus," Kashmir University's 
vice chancellor had said earlier in response to 
my query. But obviously you can't drown the cry 
of freedom.

             Asked if the faculty has done any 
definitive study on the Kashmir question or 
examined possible resolutions of the dispute, 
Professor Noor Mohammed Baba, head of the 
political science department, acknowledges that 
no such study has been possible because of the 
"pressures from both sides - the government and 
the militants. Everyone has gone through a 
traumatic experience and free expression is not 
possible."

             The university has had its share of 
problems. The early '90s saw the departure of a 
major chunk of the faculty, primarily comprising 
the Pandits, who were highly educated. They 
couldn't withstand the pressures of the volatile 
political situation. They were among the three 
lakh Pandits who left the valley in the wake of 
what they say was a "calculated genocide" to 
drive the Pandits out of the valley. Only 18,000 
Pandits chose to stay behind. "The community's 
unity has been lost," says a Muslim teacher. "We 
never thought in terms of Muslims and Pandits, 
but the violence has pulled us apart. A cultural 
erosion has taken place."

             As we drive into Muthi, a 10 km drive 
from Jammu, crowds carrying placards denouncing 
the violence against Kashmiri pandits dot the 
landscape. This is one of the 500 camps spread 
all over Jammu, where displaced Kashmiri Pandits 
have taken sanctuary.

             They live in tiny, 10x10 one-room 
tenements, each with a small kitchenette, but 
communal bathrooms. The affluent among them have 
moved to Delhi, Mumbai and other cities.

             Shouting, screaming men converge on 
us from all sides as we settle down, amidst much 
jostling and pushing. They are livid at having 
had to leave the comfort of their homes and live 
in squalor. They blame the Pakistan government 
for continuing to sponsor cross-border terrorism 
and militancy in Kashmir. The Pakistani media is 
also ticked off for highlighting human rights 
violations by security forces in Kashmir, but 
failing to mention "the barbarism perpetrated by 
militants."

             "This amounts to ethnic cleansing," 
says Ashwini Kumar Chrangoo, chief of the Panun 
Kashmiri Movement, an organisation for displaced 
Kashmiri Pandits.

             Separatist leaders, however, allege 
that it was the J&K Governor, Jagmohan, who 
manoeuvered the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits 
from Srinagar and communalised the issue. Says 
the Democratic Freedom Party's Shabbir Shah, "We 
have asked the Pandits to return to the valley. 
We will protect them with our lives."

             But the mood in the camp is one of 
fury. "We are not ready for another migration. We 
want a separate homeland within the valley, 
carved from the north and east side of the Jhelum 
valley." And they say that they too want to be 
included in the talks on the Kashmir issue.

             They have a parting request to make: 
they want the Pakistan government to take steps 
to renovate the Sharda temple, an ancient shrine 
of Kashmiri Pandits in Azad Kashmir, and make it 
possible for them to visit it. The queue of 
people wanting to visit family, friends and 
religious sites on the other side of the divide 
is long... and growing.

             Ram Lal, 88, grabs hold of Tahir 
Naqqash, Dawn's correspondent in Muzaffarabad, 
and enquires about friends he left behind at the 
time of Partition: Lassu Ju, Wali Ju, Usman 
Bhoriwalla. Ram Lal lived in a refugee camp in 
Muzaffarabad for five months. A Pathan saved his 
10-month-old daughter from a fire. The girl is 
now a professor - and 57-years down the road, 
Lal's heart is still full of gratitude. He 
anxiously awaits the start of the bus service 
between Muzaffarabad and Srinagar.

             As does Daljeet Singh, an employee of 
the Food Corporation of India, who hails from 
Chakothi Village in Muzaffarabad. He has named 
his house in Nanak Nagar, 'Chakothi,' after his 
82-year-old father's village. His father refers 
to the house as "Chakothi, sone di kothi" 
(Chakothi, house of gold), as he regales his 
grandchildren with stories of his village where 
he was a numberdar.

             Naqqash himself is meeting his 
family, including his maternal uncle, for the 
first time. How was the reunion?

             "Very emotional," he chokes, "we 
barely talked. We simply held hands and cried." 
Naqqash's father, who died three years ago, lived 
in Srinagar till 1956, and in his last days would 
often ask his son; "Bus chal rahi hai? Main ghar 
jaana chahta hoon." (Is the bus service 
operating? I want to go home).

             The channels of communication between 
the two Kashmirs have been abysmal. In fact, the 
minute one landed in Srinagar, telecommunication 
links with Pakistan died. Even the satellite 
phones of Ary and Geo correspondents wouldn't 
work.

             One learnt that Jammu and Kashmir's 
residents could make International Subscriber 
Dialling (ISD) calls to anywhere in the world - 
except Pakistan. The Indian Defence Ministry 
withdrew the facility after the border buildup in 
June 2001 and people wishing to make calls to 
Pakistan had to drive down to Lakhanpur or 
outside the state. The status quo remains.

             Mobile phones have been allowed in 
the valley only recently, but the service is 
hampered by the usual glitches. Newspapers are 
full of letters complaining about dead mobiles. 
In the area of Boulevard and Dalgate, for 
instance, mobiles had been dead for three weeks, 
with the "network busy" signal coming on each 
time anyone dialled.

             Finally, the governments of the two 
countries are beginning to consider the proposal 
of allowing travel between the two Kashmirs. But 
differences remain over the documents to be used: 
while the Pakistan government proposes travel on 
UN documents, so as not to compromise Pakistan's 
position on the LoC status, the Indian government 
insists that visitors travel on the passports of 
their respective countries.

             Not everyone views the concept of 
soft borders and free travel between the two 
Kashmirs favourably. APHC's Syed Ali Shah Geelani 
maintains that the move is designed to dilute the 
Kashmir problem. He fears that once 
people-to-people contacts begin, the dispute will 
be consigned to the backwaters. "We have not 
sacrificed a hundred thousand lives, just for 
opening up the borders," says Geelani angrily. 
The PDP chairperson, Mehbooba Mufti, disagrees 
vehemently. "It's not just about an international 
border, it's about a people. If I had my way, I 
would say no documents at all. There is a human 
dimension to this tragedy that needs to be dealt 
with urgently. Moreover, the bus travel would 
boost our respective economies too. Our crates of 
Sopore apples should be able to fetch cash 
instead of guns."

             J&K Chief Minister Mufti Sayeed's 
daughter, Mehbooba, an MP and President of the 
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is among the more 
articulate young voices emerging from Kashmir. 
Clad in an abaya, with a scarf covering her head, 
she seems perfectly at ease and fully in charge 
in an all-male domain. A colleague refers to her 
as 'mahi munda.'

             Mehbooba Mufti maintains that the 
valley is becoming safe for its residents and 
that they can actually step out after sundown, 
never mind that the dak bungalow in Anantnag, 
where she meets us, is teeming with hundreds of 
security personnel, and an APC with a jamming 
device is parked nearby. "My father's 'healing 
touch' policy is actually working," she says. "He 
has ordered the release of all those people who 
are languishing in jail despite completing their 
terms. Additionally, security personnel who were 
guilty of excesses against innocents are being 
taken to task."

             The PDP President impresses with her 
candour and steals a march over her father. As 
does Omar Abdullah, who leads the main 
opposition, the National Conference. Unlike his 
father, Farooq Abdullah, often referred to as the 
"disco chief minister who spent more time 
hobnobbing with Delhi socialites and Bollywood 
queens than he did with his constituents," Omar 
("drop-dead gorgeous" by at least one young 
colleague's account) appears extremely focused. 
And he does not mince his words when he says that 
in his view the Kashmir problem is largely of 
Pakistan's making.

             "We grew apples, we grew peaches, we 
grew pears. We didn't grow guns," he says 
angrily. "A neighbour took advantage of our sense 
of alienation, disillusionment, disenchantmentŠ 
and a people who were peace-loving have turned 
violent." He laments the loss of his party 
workers at the hands of people "who came from 
across the border." Ask if state terrorism is 
justified, and he retorts, "What came first - the 
terrorists or the state perpetrators?" But 
Kashmiris want independence, you say. Does his 
party too? "I do not want to promise anything 
that we cannot deliver, we don't sell dreams we 
cannot fulfill. Our vision has to be grounded in 
reality."

             NC stands for maximum autonomy within 
the Indian constitution. "We will strive for the 
kind of autonomy the state enjoyed originally 
under Article 370 in 1952," says Omar. However, 
if the composite dialogue throws up anything 
else, we will not stand in the way." He sounds a 
note of caution: "You have to include all 
factions of the APHC. You can't split the party 
and talk to just one group."

             The battle over India's 'atoot ang' 
(integral part) and Pakistan's 'shahrag' 
(lifeline) has extracted a heavy toll: 100,000 
dead, among them 18,251 militants, 4,471 security 
personnel and 15,121 civilians according to 
unofficial estimates. Sand-bagged bunkers, olive 
green trucks, APCs, barbed wires and cocked 
rifles have become a part of the landscape. As 
have the Border Security Force (BSF), the Central 
Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and the Jammu and 
Kashmir Police. Among them is the young, 
attractive Zohra, mother of two, who we run into 
at the Jammu Women's police station. She joined 
the police force after her husband, a driver in 
the police force, was killed by militants.

             Life couldn't be easy for the forces 
either: the 'enemy,' whatever his colour, is 
unrelenting. There have been suicides, nervous 
breakdowns, desertions, and reports of 
service-men pulling the trigger on fellow 
officers.

             But the brunt of this never-ending 
tragedy has been borne by the ordinary Kashmiri. 
Human rights groups produce list upon list of 
persons who have been picked up either by the 
security forces or the militants and disappeared 
in the black holes of Jammu and Kashmir. Here 
there is an all-pervasive rage, and alongside a 
sense of hopelessness, a sense of a helplessness, 
a feeling of having been betrayed by those who 
perforce control their destiny: India, Pakistan, 
and the Kashmiri leadership. Says Muslim Jan, an 
educationist, "My soul has been destroyed. I feel 
a void within. Each time a euphoria is created, 
but the reality is different - it's not a step 
towards the grand narrative. A low intensity 
conflict can upset the apple cart any time."

             Azadi, it seems, is still a long way 
from Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali's dream for 
his country without a post office...

"We shall meet again, in Srinagar,
by the gates of the Villa of Peace,
our hands blossoming into fists
till the soldiers return the keys
and disappear. "

- Agha Shahid Ali

'The Country Without A Post Office'



______



[2]


Daily Times
November 17, 2004  |  Editorial

BAB-E-PAKISTAN -- ONE-SIDED MEMORY

Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi 
announced Saturday that the foundation stone of 
the Bab-e-Pakistan monument would be laid on 
March 23, 2005. The monument would be constructed 
on a 110-acre site on the Walton Road in Lahore 
where the largest refugee camp was established 
after the 1947 partition for the Muslims 
displaced from India. With President Pervez 
Musharraf as chief of the Bab-e-Pakistan 
governing council, the project costing Rs 800 
million would be completed in quick time. It will 
contain the main monument, gardens, headquarters 
of the boy scout movement, and a high school each 
for boys and girls. A library devoted to the 
Pakistan Movement will also be housed in the 
Bab-e-Pakistan complex.
Like all symbols of nationalism the 
Bab-e-Pakistan will make us relive the painful 
birth of the state of Pakistan. It will 
commemorate the killing of thousands of innocent 
Muslims as they made their way across Indian 
Punjab, the rape of the refugee women of Amritsar 
where the Muslim community was butchered by 
Sikhs. There will be pictorial depiction of the 
bedraggled millions who streamed across the newly 
drawn frontier and kissed the soil of their new 
homeland. Bab-e-Pakistan will remind us of the 
sacrifices the Muslims of India made for their 
new homeland. It will follow the earlier 
Bab-ul-Islam, namely Sindh, where the Arab Muslim 
commander Muhammad bin Qasim defeated a Hindu 
local ruler to bring Islam to the part of India 
which is now Pakistan.
Every nation has a monument representing the 
"painful birth syndrome" which is supposed to 
keep nationalism alive as an instrument of 
uniting the various regional identities within a 
country. (Bab-e-Pakistan, too, will represent all 
the four provinces.) Perhaps the most tragic 
depiction of this syndrome took place in the 
Balkans where in the 19th century whole 
populations were moved several times with 
accompanying communal mayhem. The Balkan 
nationalism at the beginning of the 20th century 
came to be based on the memory of this suffering. 
The last decade of the 20th century saw the 
genocide the preservation of this collective 
memory brought to the region. It was at a 
"painful birth" monument at Kosovo that Serb 
dictator Milosevic swore revenge against the 
Muslims of old Yugoslavia for which he today 
faces trial at an international court. A monument 
at Dhaka commemorates how a West Pakistani army 
killed "millions" in East Pakistan.
Pakistan and India have bad memories of the 
partition. Stories of migration from both sides 
have been recorded. They are touching in the 
extreme and highlight the inhumanity to which the 
two communities descended during the 
pre-partition riots. It was a tale of the wicked 
few driving the innocent majority into the trauma 
of dislocation and death. It is no use putting a 
political gloss on the events of 1947. The 
memoirs of partition are too solid a legacy to 
sweep under the carpet. Now that India and 
Pakistan are about to embark on peaceful 
coexistence after an epochal war of fifty years, 
shouldn't we introduce a motif of non-communalist 
humanity in the over-all theme of Bab-e-Pakistan? 
We should not concentrate only on the suffering 
of millions of those who came in; we should also 
remember the suffering of the millions who had to 
leave. If Bab-e-Pakistan comes up without the 
political bile secreted since 1947 by the 
textbook nationalism of India and Pakistan, it 
will stand forever. If not, it will fail the test 
of time, because evil is not eternal and its 
celebration is even less durable.
The first touching evidence of the suffering of 
'the other side' is recorded in Jinnah Papers: 
Pakistan, Pangs of Birth, Volume Five (15 August 
to September 1947), ably put together by ZH 
Zaidi. These were the papers found in the office 
of the founder of the nation, Quaid-e-Azam 
Muhammad Ali Jinnah. They tell a story that 
Bab-e-Pakistan should include as one of its 
themes. There are letters written to Jinnah by 
Sikhs and Hindus in distress trying to leave a 
riot-torn Pakistan. The real massacres started 
first in East Punjab and the UP. When the Muslims 
heard of them in West Punjab they unfortunately 
decided to imitate the savagery, which did them 
no credit. Interesting letters in the volume from 
Indian Sindhi president of the National Congress 
JB Kripalani and his wife tell Jinnah about how 
the Pakistani officers were stripping the Hindus 
crossing over to India of their belongings. Mrs 
Kripalani actually submitted an eyewitness report 
from Hyderabad describing how the Hindu refugees 
were being looted.
If Jinnah Papers provide one side of the picture, 
there is the Indian side too, and it has recently 
been highlighted by Mushirul Hassan in his book 
India Partitioned: The other Face of Freedom. No 
one in India and Pakistan can deny that the 
Partition of 1947 was a trauma. The large mass of 
people involved in this two-way exodus was 
permanently damaged by it. Remembering it is not 
such a good thing if it intensifies the hatred 
India and Pakistan have nurtured for each other. 
It is for this reason that Bab-e-Pakistan is not 
such a good idea, unless it stands aside from the 
politics of Partition and focuses on human 
suffering. In fact, history in South Asia has 
been moulded negatively by this "separatist" 
recall. In Pakistan, the refugee joined up with 
the Punjabi to frame a tough anti-India ideology; 
in India, the refugee has eventually given birth 
to the BJP, the party that lives on hatred, with 
top leadership drawn from refugees from Sindh. 
The only way the Partition recall can be useful 
is if its presentation indicts both the 
communities. If Babe-e-Pakistan has to be built, 
let it represent suffering of all refugees from 
both sides. *



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Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on 
matters of peace and democratisation in South 
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit 
citizens wire service run since 1998 by South 
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