SACW | 31 Jan 2005

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Sun Jan 30 22:12:36 CST 2005


South Asia Citizens Wire   | 31 Jan.,  2005
via:  www.sacw.net

[INTERRUPTION NOTICE: Please note there will be 
no SACW posts between the period 1st - 5th of 
February 2005 ! ]

[1] Distorted histories and divisive myths have 
made the Kashmir conflict messier (Anuradha 
Bhasin Jamwal)
[2] Kashmir: So Close, Yet So Far (Zafar Meraj)
[3] India: Gujarat Crying and Dying for President's Rule (I.K. Shukla)
[4] India: On Saraswati Shishu Mandirs in Uttaranchal  (David Hopkins)
[5] Pakistan: Entries Invited for Third Annual Gender in Journalism Awards


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

[1]

Communalism Combat
January  2004 

PREJUDICE IN PARADISE

DISTORTED HISTORIES AND DIVISIVE MYTHS HAVE MADE 
THE KASHMIR CONFLICT MESSIER, MURKIER, ETCHING 
DEEP DIVIDES IN A LAND THAT ONCE BOASTED A RICH 
AND UNIQUE TRADITION OF SYNCRETISM

By Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal

Where does one begin the story of the Kashmir 
conflict? Does one begin at 1947 when India was 
partitioned and Kashmir became a bone of 
contention between the two new dominions - India 
and Pakistan? Or does one just wish away history 
with the blink of an eye and move on to 1989 when 
armed insurgents began to surface in the Valley? 
Or does one move ahead to newly created histories 
of prejudice framed by religious and ethnic 
divides - Kashmiri Hindus versus Kashmiri 
Muslims, Kashmir versus Jammu Dogras, Gujjars 
versus Paharis, and so on and so forth. The irony 
is that the story of the Kashmir conflict is read 
by most just where the chapter of prejudiced 
histories becomes more pronounced. The perils are 
that a conflict that was not essentially communal 
or regional in nature becomes more vulnerable to 
such divisions and polarisation. While the gun 
was introduced with the slogan of azadi and talk 
of a secular Jammu and Kashmir, it was 
essentially the government response through its 
various agencies and sponsored or patronised 
organisations that ensured that seeds of division 
and consequent fanaticism were sown.

The Kashmir conflict can be dated back to the 
partition of 1947; the violent conflict is also 
steeped in long years of historic wars between 
India and Pakistan fought over the land of 
Kashmir. But the insurgency operations and 
counter insurgency operations are a far more 
recent phenomenon that gained momentum in 1989, 
beginning first in the Valley. Ask a Pandit from 
the Valley about the genesis of the conflict and 
he will blame the Islamisation of the Valley and 
talk of the mass exodus of Kashmiri Pandits 
following threats to Kashmiri Hindus in the 
Valley. Ask any Kashmiri Muslim and he'd swear 
that the threats are vastly overrated and that 
the Pandits deserted them when the azadi slogan 
gained momentum in the Valley. The two 
diametrically antagonistic histories born in 
1989, when the gun arrived, have contributed in 
sharply dividing the two communities and shaped 
communal politics within and outside the ambit of 
the gun. The much-fabled Kashmiriyat, bonds of 
which every Kashmiri on both sides of the 
communal divide would love to eulogise, was the 
casualty. But if the bonds were so strong, why 
did they suddenly snap, the bullet piercing 
through age-old harmony?

It is necessary to first explore the genesis of 
the gun. Why did this come about? Was Islamic 
jehad a propelling force? It would be difficult 
to describe this genesis in a nutshell. And yet, 
for a cursory glance through the events that 
shaped the history of militancy in Kashmir one 
would have to begin in 1947 itself with the 
Instrument of Accession of Jammu and Kashmir 
State. Jawaharlal Nehru's unfulfilled promise for 
plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir followed by New 
Delhi's dictatorial policies and centralising 
control of the state had subverted all democratic 
institutions in Jammu and Kashmir. It was obvious 
that New Delhi could not implicitly trust any 
leader with a mass following in Kashmir, 
particularly one who questioned central policies 
or actions. Sheikh Abdullah was arrested, 
released, re-arrested and finally released on a 
number of occasions during the period between the 
Delhi Agreement, 1952 and the Indira 
Gandhi-Sheikh Abdullah accord of 1975. It was 
mainly government policy followed in New Delhi 
that led to the Sheikh's oscillation from the 
demand for plebiscite to a mellowed autonomy, an 
autonomy that had been totally eroded long before 
his death. The puppet regimes imposed in Jammu 
and Kashmir may have been mere extensions of this 
policy but they were nevertheless a clear signal 
to the only state in the Indian union with not 
just a Muslim majority population but also a 
disputed history that New Delhi was in no mood to 
set aside its bid to rule the state through 
autocratic policies.

That religion may have had something to do with 
this is not known. For even in the case of 
Pakistan, which administers one-third of this 
divided state, with a majority Muslim population, 
various governments of Pakistan ensured that only 
puppet governments took charge in Pakistan 
administered Jammu and Kashmir. However, religion 
was definitely being liberally used by India to 
convey the message that the people of Jammu and 
Kashmir were not to be trusted owing to their 
ethnic and community identity. This was the same 
state, the south of which burned like other parts 
of the subcontinent in 1947, but where in the 
north, in the Valley, Mahatma Gandhi saw a beacon 
of light. Not a single killing was reported on 
communal lines. Muslims and Hindus of Kashmir 
under the secular umbrella of the National 
Conference also rallied for peace in October 1947 
when raiders began their attack. Sheikh 
Abdullah's clarion call raised 15,000 volunteers 
and a peace brigade was formed as all of Srinagar 
echoed with slogans of "Sher-e-Kashmir ka kya 
irshad, Hindu-Muslim-Sikh Ittehad" and "Hamlawar 
khabardar, Hum Kashmiri hain taiyar" ("What does 
the Sher-e-Kashmir decree, Hindu-Muslim-Sikh 
Unity" and "Attackers beware, We Kashmiris are 
prepared").

The secular essence of the Valley was embodied in 
the Sheikh's words, when he addressed the people: 
"Today the raiders from Pakistan are a few miles 
from Srinagar. They are raising the slogan of 
Islam. It is open to you to be with them or to be 
with me. If you opt to be with me you must know 
that you have to live for all times on the 
principle that Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs are 
brothers. If that is the language of a 'kafir' 
you should raise your sword against me. If you 
want to raid or rape 'kafirs' I am the first 
'kafir' and you must start from my place and my 
family."1 

The holocaust that raged through certain states 
like Bengal and Punjab in 1947 "failed to have 
any echo" in the Kashmir Valley, which had a 93.7 
per cent Muslim population. The Hindus in the 
Kashmir Valley remained safe and protected even 
in the wake of communal killings of Muslims in 
the Hindu dominated Jammu region. Credit for this 
goes mainly to Sheikh Abdullah and his colleagues 
in the party.2 

If this was the picture of communal harmony in 
Kashmir in 1947, did it take five decades for the 
fabric of Kashmiriyat to be tarnished, or did 
this happen suddenly in the 1990s? Though the 
chasms between the two communities seem to have 
appeared suddenly, with both sides being caught a 
little unawares, a closer scrutiny of their 
prejudiced histories shows that cracks had begun 
to form long ago. Many did not realise this and 
many chose to overlook it as a passing phase. The 
Kashmiri Pandits formed a minuscule minority in 
the Kashmir Valley, being only about two to three 
per cent of the Valley's total population. The 
rest were largely Muslim, mostly Kashmiri 
speaking. The creation of the gulf between the 
two sides was shaped by several events and 
follies of history and the manner in which both 
sides interpreted these events. The story 
probably began some time in 1947 itself, with an 
incident in Baramulla:

"Left behind in Baramulla [on 27 and 28 October] 
were assorted groups of [Pathan] tribesmen from 
the North-West Frontier Province and, even, it is 
very possible, Afghanistan. Discipline was not 
the strongest characteristic of such men; and 
their officers experienced serious difficulty in 
keeping them under control, particularly when 
stories began to circulate of the arrival of the 
Sikhs (who had been generally accepted by the 
tribesmen as the greatest scourge of the Muslims 
in the communal massacres which accompanied 
Partition, and the legitimate foe in any jehad, 
holy war) at Srinagar airfield. The inevitable 
killing of Sikhs and Hindus in Baramulla, 
particularly merchants who had remained to guard 
their stock, now began to be accompanied by 
indiscriminate looting and a considerable amount 
of rape, applied as much to unfortunate Kashmiri 
Muslims as to the infidel. Usually these outrages 
did not lead to massacre; but in a few cases, 
where leaders completely lost control over their 
men, an orgy of killing was the result. This was 
certainly the case at St. Joseph's College, 
Convent and Hospital, the site of what was to 
become one of the most publicised incidents of 
the entire Kashmir conflict. Here nuns, priests 
and congregation, including patients in the 
hospital, were slaughtered; and at the same time 
a small number of Europeans, notably Lt.-Colonel 
DO Dykes and his wife, as well as the assistant 
Mother Superior and one Mr. Barretto, met their 
deaths at tribal hands."3 

The Baramulla affair has become central to the 
Indian or Kashmiri Pandit mythology about 
Kashmir. Events to the south of the Valley in the 
same state during the same period may also have 
shaped the sense of respective insecurities of 
both the Kashmiri Hindus and the Muslims. In the 
Jammu province, things went very differently. 
There, unlike every other part of the state, 
Hindus and Sikhs slightly outnumbered Muslims; 
and within a period of 11 weeks starting in 
August, systematic savageries, similar to those 
already launched in East Punjab and in Patiala 
and Kapurthala, practically eliminated the entire 
Muslim element in the population, amounting to 
500,000 people. About 200,000 just disappeared, 
remaining untraceable, having presumably been 
butchered, or died from epidemics or exposure. 
The rest fled destitute to West Punjab.4 

According to official records of the United 
Nations Security Council, Meeting No. 534, March 
6, 1951: "Shortly after the terrible slaughters 
in India, which accompanied Partition, the 
Maharaja set upon a course of action whereby, in 
the words of the special correspondent of The 
Times of London published in its issue of 10 
October 1948, "in the remaining Dogra area, 
237,000 Muslims were systematically exterminated, 
unless they escaped to Pakistan along the border, 
by all the forces of the Dogra State headed by 
the Maharaja in person and aided by Hindus and 
Sikhs"."

GK Reddy, a Hindu editor of Kashmir Times, said 
in a statement published in The Daily Gazette, a 
Hindu paper of Karachi, in its issue of October 
28, 1947: "The mad orgy of Dogra violence against 
unarmed Muslims should put any self-respecting 
human being to shame. I saw armed bands of 
ruffians and soldiers shooting down and hacking 
to pieces helpless Muslim refugees heading 
towards PakistanŠ I saw en route State officials 
freely distributing arms and ammunition among the 
DograsŠ From the hotel room where I was detained 
in Jammu, I counted as many as twenty-six 
villages burning one night and all through the 
night rattling fire of automatic weapons could be 
heard from the surrounding refugee camps."

The communal violence that gripped Jammu was not 
altogether one-sided. A large number of Hindu and 
Sikhs too were butchered in some parts of the 
region, particularly in Rajouri, Mirpur and areas 
now under Pakistani occupation. But the fact that 
there was an obvious bid by State forces to 
patronise the killings and victimisation of 
Muslims was a more glaring occurrence. Trouble 
was brewing in Poonch where a popular 
non-communal agitation was launched after the 
Maharaja's administration took over the erstwhile 
jagir under its direct control and imposed some 
taxes. The mishandling of this agitation and use 
of brutal forces by the Maharaja's administration 
inflamed passions, turning this non-communal 
struggle into communal strife. The Maharaja's 
administration had not only asked all Muslims to 
surrender their arms but also demobilised a large 
number of Muslim soldiers in the Dogra army and 
the Muslim police officers, whose loyalty it 
suspected. The Maharaja's visit to Bhimber was 
followed by large-scale killings in some areas of 
Poonch like Pulandri, Bagh and Sudhnoti with a 
large number of ex-servicemen and soldiers who 
had joined the British Indian Army and had served 
them in the Second World War raising a banner of 
revolt against the Maharaja.5  The events in 
Jammu province revealed that there was an attempt 
to change the demographics of the division. The 
1947 carnage left several Muslim majority 
populated villages in Jammu district alone 
totally Hindu or Sikh populated. In Jammu 
district alone, which is a part of the larger 
Jammu province, Muslims numbered 158,630 and 
comprised 37 per cent of the total population of 
428,719 in the year 1941. In the year 1961, 
Muslims numbered only 51,693 and comprised only 
10 per cent of the total population of 516,932. 
The decrease in the number of Muslims in Jammu 
district alone was over 100,000.6  That there was 
a design to change the demographics is 
demonstrated by another incident. Prime Minister 
of Jammu and Kashmir, Mehr Chand Mahajan told a 
delegation of Hindus who met him in the palace 
when he arrived in Jammu that now when the power 
was being transferred to the people they should 
better demand parity. When one of them associated 
with the National Conference asked how they could 
demand parity when there was so much difference 
in population ratio. Pointing to the Ramnagar 
natural reserve below, where some bodies of 
Muslims were still lying, he said, "the 
population ratio too can change."7 

The events in Jammu may have stirred up 
insecurities among the Muslims and Pandits of the 
Valley for different reasons. The Kashmiri 
Muslims may have felt threatened by the State's 
role in patronising violence against Jammu's 
Muslim population. Added to this was the fact 
that while the raiders who attacked Kashmir in 
1947 from the Pakistani side were notorious for 
loot, plunder and rapes, the policy of the Indian 
forces was not particularly sympathetic towards 
the Muslims. The Pandits had reason to fear a 
backlash for what happened in Jammu where Muslims 
were in a minority. The fears may have stemmed 
from a minority syndrome, which could to some 
extent have been natural due to their minuscule 
population in the Valley. But much of this fear 
stemmed from a history of the misplaced sense of 
persecution that Pandits began to feel especially 
after 1947 when the rule of the Hindu Dogra ruler 
was over and the state was ruled by a government 
led by a Kashmiri Muslim. The fears were 
misplaced on several counts. The Baramulla 
memory, one of the bitterest, was haunting for 
Pandits and Muslims alike because the raiders did 
not spare any community. Secondly, Jammu and 
Kashmir, despite its disputed nature, was for all 
practical purposes administratively a unit of 
India. The state was initially granted full 
autonomy barring three issues - external affairs, 
defence and communication. The presence of the 
Indian army, an epitome of security for the 
Pandits, itself ensured a smoother integration of 
Pandits with the rest of India and they were 
indeed a part of the larger Hindu majority. 
Besides, the New Delhi dominated politics that 
took hold in Kashmir in subsequent years was 
proof enough that Pandits had no reason to feel 
insecure where majority Hindu State-centric 
policies were to determine the fate of the land. 
Coupled with this was the State-sponsored bid to 
change demographics in 1947, followed by the 
Hindu nationalist demand to dilute Jammu and 
Kashmir's special status with their slogan of "Ek 
Vidhaan, Ek Pradhan aur Ek Nishaan". In fact, 
Hindu right wing leaders like Shyama Prasad 
Mukherjee and Balraj Madhok's repeated rhetoric 
questioning the safety of border villages where 
Muslims were in a greater majority was a greater 
source of insecurity for the Muslims than it was 
for the Hindus. Thirdly and more importantly, in 
1947, unlike elsewhere in the subcontinent, here 
it was the 97 per cent Muslims of the Valley who 
ensured full protection to the minority Hindus. 
But it seemed that one isolated event of 
Baramulla and exaggerated rumours were more 
likely to shape the psyche of the Kashmiri 
Pandits in years to come.

There were some more compelling economic reasons 
as well, making both the Pandits and Muslims reel 
under a minority syndrome. Sheikh Abdullah's land 
reforms had mainly affected the Pandits or the 
upper caste Hindus of Jammu province in whose 
hands the major portion of landholding was 
consolidated. A mere two per cent of Pandits 
owned 30 per cent of all landholdings in the 
Valley. The land reforms introduced by Sheikh 
Abdullah from 1948 to 1953, together with the 
spread of free primary education, had created a 
new class of ambitious Kashmiri Muslims. But no 
new institutions had been provided to accommodate 
these Muslims; and the older ones were 
monopolised by the minority Hindus who ran 
schools and colleges and had a disproportionate 
presence in the bureaucracy. Thus on the part of 
Muslims there was also a brewing resentment 
against Pandits who had a history of being 
over-represented in government employment as 
compared to the overall proportion of their 
population. They were better educated and 
occupied all top posts in the bureaucracy and 
other professional fields. Even as Muslims 
started making indents in various fields, taking 
a share of what was otherwise a monopoly of the 
Pandits, during the 1960s and '70s, the Pandits 
gradually began to slip into a syndrome of 
insecurity. They were aware of their minuscule 
minority and their history of monopoly, 
educational, professional and economic.

This feeling of 'dispossession', along with the 
interplay of rumours and some stray events that 
became part of a bitter collective memory, 
enhanced their insecurities within the Valley. 
Whether motivated by misplaced psychological fear 
or deliberate design, most of the rumours were 
exaggerated through a whisper campaign projecting 
the Pandits as victims and the Muslims as 
perpetrators. Several incidents such as the 
involvement of a group of five men with Pakistani 
agencies in the mountains of North Kashmir during 
the 1965 war, the murder of a Hindu youth in a 
downtown area and the damage to a temple in 
Anantnag in South Kashmir in 1986, were cited 
again and again to magnify the threat perception 
to Pandits. Kashmiris in the diaspora have been 
particularly active in engaging world opinion 
with this sort of perception. The Tiger Ladies: A 
Memoir of Kashmir, the memoirs of an expatriate 
Kashmiri woman, Sudha Kaul, is trapped in the 
same mindset. Despite its high literary merit, it 
talks of such myths as memories that are suddenly 
shaped into history without chronological 
details. This is a clever ploy as the writer 
jumps from the incident of 1965 to the militancy 
of 1989 as if the events are not just 
interrelated but as if there were no intervening 
period in between. Such myths that were only oral 
history became more prevalent after 1989. The 
perils here cannot be overemphasised as today 
these distorted histories from a community 
perspective are being handed down in written form.

In retrospect, several Pandits look back and 
recall that they had always felt secure amidst 
the presence of the Indian army, a presence of 
which most Muslims were wary. Their 'patriotism' 
towards India was their potential weapon against 
any Muslim domination or the threat that Muslim 
Pakistan would take their side. This is what 
essentially shaped the Pandit psyche in the years 
preceding the insurgency. Thus, when militancy 
suddenly surfaced, with reports that disgruntled 
Muslim youth were going across the Line of 
Control to receive arms training in camps set up 
by Pakistan, the fears multiplied. Added to this 
was the nationalist discourse going on at two 
levels - one at the government level and a 
parallel one at the Hindu right wing level. The 
killings of some prominent Pandits, including 
right wing leaders or men who had affiliations 
with the Hindu right wing like Tikalal Taploo, 
added fuel to the fire. The killings of all 
Muslims was eclipsed by the killings of the 
Hindus, projected more widely and with a twist 
both by the Pandit community, under the shadow of 
its growing insecurities, and the Indian 
agencies. The media happily played the role of 
force multiplier, this side or that.

When men from the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation 
Front (JKLF) began the armed struggle, it was not 
an Islamic jehad. Slogans of 'azadi' rent the air 
as the JKLF presented its vision of a secular 
Jammu and Kashmir, although aberrations by some 
over-zealous youth talking also of 
'nizam-e-Mustafa' and sloganeering from mosques, 
which has been a traditional manner of 
politicking in the Valley, cannot be ruled out. 
The first casualty of the struggle was a Muslim, 
Mohd. Yusuf Halwai, demonstrating that the 
targets were not only Hindus but also Muslims. 
Though in proportion to their population a larger 
number of Pandits were killed in this first phase 
of militancy, they were not killed because of the 
community they belonged to. There were other 
reasons behind the killings. The Kashmiri Pandits 
formed a kind of elite in the Valley; they had a 
large presence in the bureaucracy, both in the 
Valley and in Delhi, where government policy on 
Kashmir was often dictated by the fears and 
concerns of this tiny minority. Their connections 
with India and their relative affluence made them 
highly visible targets during the first few 
months of the insurgency in 1990.8  The myth of 
selective killings is further exploded by 
statistics. According to a report in The Times of 
India in 1993, quoting official sources, 
militants killed 1,585 men and women, including 
981 Muslims, 218 Hindus, 23 Sikhs and 363 
security personnel between January 1990 and 
October 1992. According to research by the 
Strategic Foresight Group, 29 Muslims were killed 
in 1988 in militancy related violence. There was 
no Hindu killing. In 1989 and 1990, six and 177 
Hindus respectively were killed, as against 73 
and 679 Muslims, besides six Sikhs. In 1991, the 
killings of Hindus are recorded at 34 and those 
of Muslims at 549. These killings are not Valley 
specific but hold good for the entire state. 
Moreover, these figures also include Hindu 
pilgrims or tourists killed in the state. The 
statistics reveal that at no point of time were 
more Hindus killed than Muslims. In fact, barring 
1990, Hindus formed a minuscule percentage of the 
total killings.9  In fact, the victimisation of 
Muslims is also greater in view of the 
large-scale atrocities by security forces.

But the damage had been done. The minority 
syndrome, the perpetuated myths and baggage of 
distorted history that the Pandits carried, 
coupled with the killings, the sloganeering and 
mosque calls, which, like the Anantnag event of 
1986 when a temple was damaged, became the 
accepted generalisation. This was further 
compounded by the appointment of a new governor 
to the state, Jagmohan, and the consequent 
announcement of governor's rule. The exodus of 
Pandits from the Valley had become inevitable. 
For many, Jagmohan is seen as the man who 
engineered the mass flight. Whether this was true 
or not, Jagmohan did see the Kashmir problem as 
essentially a Muslim versus Hindu one, where 
Muslim was perpetrator and Hindu the victim. This 
was no strong departure from the myths those at 
the helm of affairs in New Delhi shared. In an 
interview to Current, May 1990, Jagmohan stated, 
"Every Muslim in Kashmir is a militant today. All 
of them are for secession from India. I am 
scuttling Srinagar Doordarshan's programmes 
because everyone there is a militant... The 
bullet is the only solution for Kashmir. Unless 
the militants are fully wiped out, normalcy can't 
return to the Valley."10  It was in early 1990, 
during Jagmohan's few months as India's appointed 
governor - and, some say, with his active 
encouragement - that most of the community of 
140,00011  Kashmiri Hindus left the Valley. 
Jagmohan had originally been made governor of 
Kashmir in 1984 by Indira Gandhi in order to 
dismiss Kashmir's elected government; he had 
served for five turbulent years during which his 
aggressively pro-Hindu policies further alienated 
Muslims in the Valley from India. His limited 
comprehension of the insurgency - as simply a 
limited law-and-order problem that could be 
swiftly contained - is apparent in his memoir 
about his time as governor of Kashmir. Many 
Kashmiris believe that he wanted the Hindus 
safely out of the way while he dealt with the 
Muslim guerrillas.12 

There is more evidence to suggest Jagmohan's role 
in the exodus. Senior Jammu-based journalist and 
human rights activist Balraj Puri writes in 
Kashmir: Towards Insurgency:

"The Jagmohan regime witnessed the exodus of 
almost the entire small but vital Kashmir Pandit 
community from the valley. Padma Vibhushan Inder 
Mohan (later he renounced the title) and I 
[Balraj Puri] were the first public men to visit 
Kashmir in the second week of March 1990 after 
the new phase of repression had started. Though 
the Kashmiri Muslims were in an angry mood, they 
heard us with respect and narrated their tales of 
woe. At scores of the meetings to which we were 
invited during our short but hectic visit, 
Kashmiri Muslims expressed a genuine feeling of 
regret over the migration of Kashmiri Pandits 
(KP) and urged us to stop and reverse it. 
Encouraged by the popular mood, we formed a joint 
committee of the two communities with the former 
chief justice of the high court Mufti Bahauddin 
Farooqi as president, the Kashmiri Pandit leader 
HN Jatto as vice-president and a leading advocate 
Ghulam Nabi Hagroo as general secretary, in order 
to allay the apprehensions of the Kashmiri 
Pandits. Jatto recalled that the Pandits had 
reversed their decision to migrate in 1986 after 
the success of the goodwill mission led by me. He 
expressed the hope that my new initiative would 
meet with similar success. A number of Muslim 
leaders and parties, including militant outfits, 
also appealed to the Pandits not to leave their 
homes; Jatto welcomed and endorsed their appeals, 
but soon migrated to Jammu himself. He told me 
that soon after the joint committee was set up, 
the governor [Jagmohan] sent a DSP to him with an 
air ticket for Jammu, a jeep to take him to the 
airport, an offer of accommodation at Jammu and 
an advice to leave Kashmir immediately. Obviously 
the governor did not believe that the effort at 
restoring inter-community understanding and 
confidence was worth a trial.

The experiment came under crossfire. The official 
attitude was far from cooperative. The rise of 
new militant groups, some warnings in anonymous 
posters and some unexplained killings of innocent 
members of the community contributed to an 
atmosphere of insecurity for the Kashmiri 
Pandits. A thorough, independent enquiry alone 
can show whether this exodus of Pandits, the 
largest in their long history, was entirely 
unavoidable."

There was an obvious bid to use the theory of 
Hindu victims suffering at the hands of Muslim 
guerrillas and their exodus, which the Hindu 
right wing called 'forced exile', as a political 
tool to demonise the movement for independence 
through a systematic war of propaganda unleashed 
by the government, the Hindu right wing and the 
elite Kashmiri Pandits. The displacement of 
Pandits from the Valley has been the prime tool 
of Indian officials, politicians and media in the 
propaganda war over Kashmir since 1990.13  There 
were two distinct kinds of displacement from the 
Valley. Those who were well off, mostly in 
government jobs, retained the rights to their 
salaries and looked for better career 
opportunities in Jammu or elsewhere in the 
country. And about 5,000 of those who left lived 
in shabby camps in the scorching heat of Jammu or 
Delhi. As the latter were left to their fate, 
there was a growing feeling that the community 
leadership, mainly the elite class, had betrayed 
their interests for the sake of vote-bank 
politics.

Pankaj Mishra writes about a Hindu, Gautam, whom 
he met in a camp. He had left his apple orchards 
near Baramulla in the north of the Valley in 1990 
with sixty-five rupees in his pocket to come 
here. There had been no water for eight days and 
the plastic buckets used for storage had begun to 
run dry. He said bitterly, "We are like a zoo, 
people come to watch and then go away." He felt 
betrayed by Jagmohan and the other politicians, 
especially the Hindu nationalists, who had held 
up the community as victims of Muslim guerrillas 
in order to get more Hindu votes, and had then 
done very little to resettle them, find jobs for 
the adults and schools for the young. He had been 
back to the Valley just once: he had been 
persuaded to do so by his Muslim neighbour who 
personally came to the refugee camp to escort him 
back to his village. The warmth between the Hindu 
and Muslim communities of the Valley - so alike 
in many ways for the outsider, so hard to tell 
apart - had remained intact, and had acquired a 
kind of poignancy after such a long separation.

There may be some stories - of neighbours 
occupying homes of Pandits - but conversely there 
are also stories of how Muslim neighbours have 
looked after the property of Pandit friends and 
neighbours. In Tulamulla, it was a Muslim family 
that lit the lamps at a famous temple shrine 
considered sacred by the Pandits. In some cases 
there are stories of flight necessitated by the 
threats Pandits received in the initial years of 
militancy because envious Muslim neighbours 
wanted to grab their property. But equally, there 
are also cases of a Muslim neighbour grabbing the 
property of a Muslim or a Pandit neighbour 
grabbing the property of a Pandit. A middle-aged 
Pandit in a Kashmiri camp on the outskirts of 
Jammu I met a year ago, Krishan Lal mentioned how 
he had been persuaded by a relative, also a 
neighbour, in his village in Tangmarg in North 
Kashmir, to shift out. They had planned to leave 
together but the neighbour backed out at the last 
moment. His son was killed in militancy related 
violence some years later. Krishan Lal said, "We 
heard he was involved with some group." His Hindu 
neighbour continues to live in their ancestral 
village 14 years after Krishan Lal's flight. 
Krishan Lal's house and small restaurant are 
today in the neighbour's possession, who visits 
Jammu occasionally to tell him that his property 
is in safe custody but his own return may not be 
safe. Visit the migrant camps or visit rural 
Kashmir, villages where Pandits had a substantial 
presence, and one hears stories with wide ranging 
reasons on why Kashmiri Hindus fled or how they 
managed to stay put due to the efforts of good 
old neighbours. A senior journalist in Kashmir 
talked of one Pandit family near Tangmarg who 
decided to stay on till 1991, when the few other 
Hindu families in their village also shifted out. 
They decided to follow suit but were stopped by 
Muslim neighbours. The neighbour's son, in the 
Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, assured them of protection. 
They continue to stay there till date.

The exodus itself may not have damaged the bonds 
of Kashmiriyat as much if the propaganda 
machinery on Islamic jehad started by the State 
and the Hindu right wing, which was becoming a 
force to reckon with in the '80s, had not roped 
the displaced Kashmiri Hindus into their fold. 
Several Pandit organisations that were floated 
during or after the exodus and several elitist 
Pandits became a pliable tool in the hands of 
such propagandist tactics. The bitterness on the 
other side was a reaction. The timing coincided 
with the gradual decline of the Jammu and Kashmir 
Liberation Front after the arrest or killing of 
its top brass and Pakistan's conscious decision 
to strengthen the hands of the Jamaat-e-Islami 
backed Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM). Pakistan wanted 
more control in Kashmir politics and the JKLF's 
independent approach could have been detrimental 
to its interests as compared to the HM's 
pro-Pakistan agenda.

But first came the propaganda with its 
exaggerated statistics of Pandit killings and the 
number of those displaced. Statistics show that 
there couldn't have been more than 160,000 
Pandits in the Valley at the time of the exodus. 
But figures were inflated to 4 lakhs as many of 
those already settled outside the Valley also 
began to register themselves as displaced. 
Kashmiri Muslims resented the growing propaganda 
against them all over India, and which they saw 
Kashmiri Pandits as being party to. Pakistan's 
plan in replacing the JKLF with the HM at this 
juncture may not have succeeded so well had the 
gulf between the two communities not widened so 
much. For even today the sympathies and 
aspirations of most Muslims in the Valley still 
lie with the independence ideology. The shift 
from secular Islam to jehadi Islam may not have 
triggered the large-scale displacements of Hindus 
from Kashmir but the latter may have played a 
part in popularising the jehadi groups during the 
early '90s. Kashmiri Pandits did not figure in 
the HM's game plan to Islamise the Valley. Most 
Pandits had fled by the time the HM entered the 
picture as a dominant group in separatist 
politics. But its warning - 'Kashmiri Pandits 
responsible for duress against Muslims should 
leave the Valley within two days' - published in 
the Urdu daily Alsafa on April 14, 1990, was 
critical in triggering a fresh exodus. 
Subsequently, it warned the Pandits against 
returning to the Valley because they had joined 
hands against the enemy forces, referring to 
India. The HM declared that Pandits would be 
allowed to return only after they had proved 
themselves to be part and parcel of the movement. 
The essentially Hindutva-centric approach on 
Kashmir in India, especially during the '80s when 
the BJP and its allies were becoming a power to 
reckon with, was being complemented by a jehadi 
Islamic approach from Pakistan. Kashmir was the 
chessboard and the victims on both sides, swayed 
by the burden of their prejudiced histories, 
were, but naturally, the Kashmiris - be it the 
Hindu or the Muslim.

Both New Delhi and Islamabad's intentions to reap 
the harvest of engineered divisions on communal 
and ethnic lines did not stop at the Valley, 
which had become a successful experiment for both 
sides. In the early '90s it continued in the Doda 
region, where, unlike the Valley in 1989-91, 
militant groups carried out massacres on a purely 
selective basis. While the militant operations 
were designed to create communal polarisation 
between the Hindus and Muslims, the State's role 
complemented these designs by scuttling all 
efforts at joint community initiatives. Instead, 
armed village defence committees were created to 
provide arms training and .303 rifles mainly to 
Hindus. The army crackdowns in Doda also created 
further divisions. In the first half of the '90s, 
army crackdowns to trace militants in Doda, which 
has a 55 per cent Muslim and 45 per cent Hindu 
population, followed a deliberate pattern. People 
were asked to come out of their houses and the 
soldiers asked them to identify themselves. The 
Hindus were asked to form a separate queue and 
sent back after just a dose of abuse. The Muslims 
were often also beaten up. Thankfully, despite 
much provocation, Doda did not go the Kashmir 
way. But the bid to play politics of division 
amidst the conflict continues, now in the twin 
border districts of Rajouri-Poonch, where active 
militancy surfaced in the second half of the '90s 
though the two districts were popular routes of 
infiltration for militants in the first phase. 
The divisions here, unlike in the Valley and 
Doda, are not so much religious but mainly on 
ethnic lines. Rajouri-Poonch has an interesting 
demographic pattern. While the districts have a 
majority of 80 per cent Muslims, in the two major 
towns of Rajouri and Poonch the Muslims form a 
minuscule minority of 20 per cent. Most of the 
Hindus in these two districts have settled in the 
towns. Much of the militancy here is concentrated 
in the rural areas. The forces thus play on the 
Gujjar Muslim versus Pahari Muslim divide, 
projecting the former as a 'patriotic' victim and 
the latter as perpetrator at the behest of 
Pakistan. In recent years several village defence 
committees formed in these two districts have an 
overwhelming Gujjar domination. Such engineered 
divides boded ill for the Valley. If this carries 
on unchecked, Rajouri and Poonch may fast slip 
into the same mould. And, as in the Valley, the 
damage will then be irreversible.

On a personal level, in most cases, traditional 
bonds of Kashmiriyat between neighbours and 
friends still exist as they did even in the 
initial period of militancy, and even though in 
the collective memory there is bitterness on both 
sides. But it is difficult to keep building on 
the hopes imbued by such personal bonds; bonds 
demonstrated for instance when Kashmiri Pandits 
visit the Valley every year during the famous 
Khir Bhawani festival at a Hindu shrine. Let down 
by their community leaders, many Pandits living 
in relief camps avow that they still maintain 
good relations with their old Muslim friends and 
neighbours, who also occasionally visit them from 
Kashmir. But as one such camp inhabitant, a man 
in his forties, Gopi Krishan says, "We know them, 
but do we know their children, they have not 
grown up amongst us. Who knows what is on their 
minds?" His words echo the fears of those on 
either side of the divide.

(Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal is executive editor, Kashmir Times).

Notes
1Navnit Chadha Behera, State Identity and Violence: Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh.
2PS Verma, Jammu and Kashmir at political crossroads, New Delhi 1994.
3Alastair Lamb, Incomplete Partition: The Genesis 
of the Kashmir Dispute 1947-1948, Roxford 1997.
4Ian Stephens, Pakistan, New York 1963.
5Public lecture, 'Partition of 1947, some 
memoirs' by Ved Bhasin, organised by SAFHR, Jammu 
University, September 2003.
  6India, District Census Handbook, Jammu & Kashmir, Jammu District, 1961.
7Public lecture, Ved Bhasin.
8Pankaj Mishra, Kashmir: The Unending War.
9Cost of Conflict between India and Pakistan, 
Report, International Centre for Peace 
Initiatives.
10Victoria Schofield, Kashmir in Conflict: India, 
Pakistan and The Unending War, New York 2000.
11Estimate of population of Hindus in Kashmir Valley in 1990:
The 1981 census in the Kashmir Valley records 
125,000 Hindus (1981 Jammu and Kashmir Census 
Report). Taking the 30 per cent increase in the 
total population over the period 1971-1981 and 
extrapolating it to the period 1981-1990, we get 
an estimated total Hindu population of the Valley 
in 1990 as 162,500.
12Pankaj Mishra, Kashmir: The Unending War.
13Sumantra Bose, Kashmir: Roots of Conflicts, Paths To Peace.

______


[2]

Newsline
January 2005

SO CLOSE, YET SO FAR
HAVING CROSSED THE LOC TO TRAIN FOR THE JIHAD, A 
NUMBER OF DISILLUSIONED DROPOUTS LANGUISH IN 
MUZAFFARABAD.

From Zafar Meraj in Muzaffarabad

Divided by the over 700 kilometer long border 
known as the Line of Control (LoC), the two 
halves of Jammu and Kashmir state, one called 
Azad Kashmir, under the control of Pakistan, and 
the other known as Jammu and Kashmir, under 
Indian administration, have a lot in common. In 
both parts of the state there is an overwhelming 
desire for azadi and a return to peace.

            Muzaffarabad, the capital of Azad 
Kashmir, is a small place compared to its 
counterpart on the Indian side, Srinagar. 
However, what is similar between the two is the 
lush green landscape, defined by rivers and 
mountains.

             When I reached Muzaffarabad as part 
of a journalists' delegation from the Indian side 
of Kashmir on November 22, I virtually forgot 
that I was in a 'foreign' country and had to 
undergo the cumbersome process of obtaining a 
visa and special permission to visit Azad 
Kashmir. The people, the surroundings, the 
atmosphere were no different from home.

           Had it not been a visit organised by 
SAFMA, however, I would have had to undergo a 
long wait before getting clearance to enter 'Azad 
territory.' There are people on both sides ,who 
have been waiting for decades to cross the LoC to 
meet their kith and kin, but their desire remains 
unfulfilled.

            As I was checking into Sangam, said to 
be the best hotel in Muzaffarabad, someone called 
out to me "Zafar sahib, remember me, I am Fayaz 
(name changed), from the old Srinagar locality of 
Zainakadal. My elder brother was your classfellow 
and I have met you with him." It took me a moment 
to recognise Fayaz, who had aged visibly. Fayaz 
was part of a 20-member group of youth from 
Srinagar, who crossed the 'khooni lakeer' or LoC 
in the mid '60s for arms training in Azad Kashmir.

             Like the others, Fayaz was inspired 
by the desire to liberate his homeland from the 
clutches of the Indian army. However, he seemed 
disillusioned. "I rue the day I crossed the Line 
of Control (LoC). I had big dreams of freedom for 
my motherland, Kashmir. But soon after I landed 
in Muzaffarabad, after giving the slip to Indian 
soldiers guarding the LoC, it dawned upon me that 
I and hundreds like me had fallen victim to the 
designs of some vested interests. They wanted to 
ensure every advantage for themselves in the name 
of jihad and were not interested in the wellbeing 
of the people at large," said Fayaz, tears 
welling up in his eyes.

           Fayaz complained that he and his 
colleagues were ill-treated because they believed 
in Kashmir's freedom from both India and Pakistan 
and did not support the idea of a merger with 
Pakistan, as "our masters here wanted." In less 
than three months they left the camp and have 
been wandering around Azad Kashmir since.

            At the hotel, Fayaz was joined by 
other young men, all from the Indian side of 
Kashmir, with a similar story to tell. For them, 
journalists from Indian Kashmir were something 
special. "We are meeting someone from there 
(Kashmir) after many years," they said. Local 
authorities, on hearing about the presence of the 
'rebels,' swung into action and tried to prevent 
the boys from meeting us as a group. Their 
repeated requests for a formal meeting with their 
Kashmiri brothers was turned down. Eventually, 
the police were called in to prevent them from 
entering the hotel. Even visiting journalists 
were asked to verify their identity at the 
entrance of the hotel all the time we were in 
Muzaffarabad.

           However, the boys somehow managed to 
meet us in twos and threes to narrate their tale 
of woe. Dejected by their experience in Azad 
Kashmir and homesick, they wanted to return as 
soon as possible. However, they realised that 
crossing the LoC had become almost impossible. 
"We are ready to face interrogation if we are 
allowed to go back," said Idrees Ahmed (name 
changed). When asked whether he would go as a 
militant, he shot back, "No, not at all, gone are 
those days, we want to live a peaceful life." His 
colleague, Jameel Ahmed, echoed his views and 
added, "(President) Musharraf is making friends 
with India to seek a solution to the Kashmir 
issue, why should we go as militants."

             A senior officer of the Azad Kashmir 
government confirmed that any movement across the 
LoC was completely forbidden. "We stand committed 
to put a stop to the cross-border movement and, 
moreover, we know for sure that if these boys are 
permitted to go back, they will be shot dead by 
Indian soldiers."

             Azad Kashmir Prime Minister Sikandar 
Hayat Khan has offered "every possible 
assistance" to the Kashmiri youth to help them 
settle down, but the situation on the ground is 
far from encouraging. Many of these boys are 
engaged in small time jobs, selling fruit and 
readymade garments on the roadside to support 
themselves. The authorities pay them an allowance 
of just 750 rupees a month. "Giving us 25 rupees 
a day is a cruel joke," said Mukhtar Ahmad (name 
changed), an engineer by profession who comes 
from a village in the south of Kashmir. He too 
was lured by the slogan of jihad and left his job 
in 1993 to join the 'mujahideen.' "I was the only 
person in my village who owned a Maruti car in 
the early nineties. I come from a well-to-do 
farmer's family and we have a big orchard that 
brings in revenue of over four lakh rupees a 
year," he said. "Here I am living a faqir's life".

            Like Fayaz, Mukhtar too was keen to 
return to his home to lead a normal life. He was 
fully aware of the fact that once he crossed the 
LoC , he would be apprehended by the Indian 
soldiers. Even if he did not fall victim to their 
firing, he would definitely land in jail. " I 
know this well, but I still want to go back to my 
home and live with my family. At least I will not 
have to line up every month, like a beggar, to 
receive 750 rupees."

             "I have to pay 3000 rupees rent and 
another thousand for electricity and other 
essential services. We are not even registered as 
refugees. I make ends meet with great 
difficulty," complains Imtiaz who works as a 
roadside vendor.

             Having left the training camps, these 
young men are now virtually stranded in 
Muzaffarabad, living outside the camps set up by 
the authorities for refugees coming from the 
Indian side of Kashmir, mostly from the border 
areas of Karnah, Gurez and Keran.

             The refugees have been provided with 
small hutments in Manakpayeen and some other 
areas of Muzaffarabad, and are given basic 
facilities like free rations, free electricity 
and education. On the other hand, says Shoukat, 
who hails from Srinagar city. "We are living a 
miserable life. We have no status at all. We are 
not mohajirs (refugees) nor can we claim to be 
citizens of Azad Kashmir. We are suffering from 
an identity crisis." Khalid Hussain Bukhari, now 
in his mid-thirties, was too young to know what 
'azadi' meant, when he crossed the LoC along with 
50 other boys as a JKLF trainee. "I soon gave up 
and now want to return home," he said. His 
parents live in Zainakote, a locality on the 
outskirts of Srinagar. "Meri sarzameen ko salam 
kehna, (Salute my native land)," he said when we 
left the Azad Kashmir University campus. Bukhari 
said that many of his compatriots from the Valley 
are depressed and homesick.

             However, he does not regret joining 
the militant movement, saying that it was the 
need of the time. "We had to make India accept 
that Kashmir is a disputed area and the people of 
the state have the right to decide their future," 
he said, adding, "things have changed a lot since 
then. Today everyone talks about peace and I too 
want that peace should be given a chance." He was 
of the view that those who claimed to lead the 
"freedom movement" were not sincere. "When we 
arrived here, we were received with open arms. We 
were provided with good food, comfortable shelter 
and everything else but then the mood changed and 
we have been left in the lurch," Bukhari said.

             Some of the young men got married in 
Azad Kashmir but it is difficult for them to 
provide for their families. "Even our wives are 
ready to go back to Kashmir with us," said Ali 
Mohammad, who hails from Patan village in north 
Kashmir. He wanted us to plead their case with 
the government in Srinagar to gain permission to 
return and "live a peaceful life."

             The majority of the boys were highly 
critical of the militant leadership based in 
Pakistan, saying that the top commanders and 
senior militants enjoyed all the luxuries of 
life. "Their children are settled here. They have 
expensive cars to ride and palatial bungalows to 
live in," said Hanif Haider of the Refugee 
Welfare Organisation. Haider, who runs the Jammu 
and Kashmir Human Rights Movement, said that a 
few years back the government snapped the power 
supply to their camps. "When we protested we were 
lathi-charged," he says

             However, a government official 
dismissed the allegation saying, "there was some 
internal feud leading to the police action."

             Haider said that the NGO Siddique 
Welfare Trust has helped them from time to time. 
Surrounded by a dozen frustrated youth, he asked, 
"Who is responsible for making their lives 
miserable'? We need to fix the responsibility." 
He added that the Kashmir problem needs to be 
resolved in consultation with the people from all 
the five regions which existed on August 14, 
1947. "We will not surrender our right to 
freedom," he asserted.

             Altaf Ahmed, Assistant Relief 
Commissioner in the Azad Kashmir government, 
maintains that the Kashmiri youth preferred to 
live outside the refugee camps. "They don't like 
to live in these conditions," he said.

             During a visit to the Manakpayeen 
camp set up along the banks of the river Jhelum, 
refugees told visiting journalists about the 
"atrocities and brutalities" inflicted on them 
back in Kashmir that forced them to flee their 
homes. "It was impossible to live there," claimed 
Raja Izhar Khan, coming from a border village in 
Keran sector with a population of six thousand 
people. "We want to go back but our homes stand 
destroyed and we may not be able to return till 
azadi," he said.

            Muhammad Ashraf Khan, a police officer 
at Keran, spent six months in army custody, 
charged with murder. "Actually, the murder was 
committed by Indian soldiers and as a policeman I 
tried to discharge my duty but they held me 
responsible for the murder," he alleged. 
According to Altaf, there were as many as 15 
refugee camps in 'Azad Kashmir' where 4, 350 
families live. Nine of these are at and around 
Muzaffarabad and every registered refugee is 
being looked after, he says.

______


[3]

GUJARAT CRYING AND DYING FOR PRESIDENT'S RULE

I.K. Shukla

Law and order - wise Bihar may not be the model 
state. Which Indian state is? True, all of them 
can really use a lot of law and order, not noise, 
but the norm. And, not only to remove Rashtriya 
Janata Dal government from power, but long after 
that, on a permanent basis. Bihar governments 
before Rabri Devi's were no less corrupt and 
criminal-infested. Those seeking to replace it 
have proved their eligibility through humongous 
corruption and brutal oppression.

But the racket piercing the sky now about law and 
order having gone haywire in Bihar is both 
obscene and abjectly opportunistic. Take Atal 
Bihari Vajpayee. He becomes a huge cutout of a 
joker
calling for the President's rule in Bihar. And, 
why is his moral ire stirred so vigorously? 
Because of kidnappings of children? Vajpayee, 
unless pitiably in the grip of irreversible 
dementia, euphemistically now called alzheimer's 
disease, could care less for the kidnapped 
children. Does he care for the statistics on 
kidnappings? He need not, because it would 
confirm him as somnolent and certify him as 
amnesiac. Delhi and other states leave Bihar far 
behind. But it would not deter our prime 
poetaster nor make any dent in his sensibility as 
a human or as an Indian citizen. The moment one 
swears allegiance to RSS one becomes lesser 
Indian, least human.

He showed no such compassion in the case of 
Gujarat where hundreds of Muslim boys and girls 
were torched alive in 2002 holocaust, infants 
speared and tossed in fire. He was not moved by 
gangrapes of Muslim women in hundreds followed by 
their murders and bonfires . He did not allow his 
moral sensitivity to squeak, nor his concern for 
law and order bleat even once. He stood strong 
not by the victims of the carnage unleashed by 
Hindu fascists, but by the killers and criminals 
with his silent acquiescence and solid approval 
(his Goa fulmination against Muslims not being 
singular). In Dangs he had chastised the nuns for 
failing to remove shards of window panes broken 
by Hindu fascists. He expressed no sympathy for 
the Christian victims of saffronazis.

He did not call for President's Rule for Gujarat 
then, nor has he ever done since, even as the 
criminals there remain unpunished, the victims 
remain still persecuted, and even as law and 
order remains a sham and a big scandal there. For 
him to cry wolf in respect of Bihar is 
disingenuous, to say the least. What he could not 
achieve then,viz., dismissal of Bihar government 
of Lalu Prasad Yadav, he pines and whines to 
achieve now. Yadav has a point when he attributes 
the kidnappings to his political rivals. There 
are many ways to settle political scores.

Lalu Prasad and his RJD have earned the eternal 
wrath of BJP and its gang of HinduTaliban for 
pre-empting Advani's mischief in Bihar. Yadav had 
showed pluck and determination by disallowing 
Advani's Blood Yatra entering Bihar and blazing a 
trail of death and destruction. It was Lalu 
Prasad who opted to respect and abide by the 
Constitution by guaranteeing safety of the 
citizens of the country, in this instance, the 
minorities in general, and Muslims in particular. 
Thus Bihar remained unscarred by BJP's crimes 
nation-wide. When BJP proved its antecedents and 
credentials as India's enemy, RJD proved its 
patriotism by upholding the Constitution against 
its avowed violators.

Atal is part of the conspiratorial vendetta 
against Yadav relentlesly pursued by the 
saffronazis ever since. He sounds hollow, he 
looks ever more like a pipsqueak, and ever more 
like a ventriloquist's stuffed dummy. Vajpayee 
showed no respect for the Constitution itself, or 
he would have recommended President's Rule for 
Gujarat. He proved pathetically and ignobly 
enough to be RSS's PM, not India's PM. He 
deserves to be impeached for this deliberate 
lapse and dereliction of duty. He miserably 
failed and shamed the nation. He outdid Narasimha 
Rao (collusion in Babri's demolition) by going 
one better in quietly watching Gujarat drenched 
in blood, charred in fire. Rao escaped ignominy 
of impeachment by his death betimes. No such 
lucky windfall or escape hatch needs to be 
allowed to Atal.

The other vocal crusader for law and order in 
Bihar now is George Fernandes. He who became 
famous, among other deeds, for his declaration in 
parliament that rape is not an outrage since it 
has been always happening. This moral 
perspicacity, he believes, makes him especially 
qualified to howl holy horror at law and order in 
Bihar. Setting himself above both Constitutional 
and political norms, he pontificates that Bihar 
is fit for President's Rule. Bihar may be fit for 
President's Rule. But not for George's reasons. 
He knows, without BJP (his NDA partner) in power, 
he would be reduced to a big nullity. And, people 
may start asking where does he get all the money 
from?

Atal excels his own clowning. Now he wants UP 
also under President's rule. The unstated reason 
is that Mulayam Singh has not surrendered to 
saffronazis either as a criminal partner or as a 
surrogate. Had he been helpful to BJP, as the 
late J.P.Narayan was, or as the ex-CM Mayawati 
was in the recent past, he could be suffered. Not 
otherwise. Not in UP, with Ayodhya, and even with 
Uttaranchal sliced out of it for BJP's benefit.

UP is too big to be lost. It can still make or 
mar the political fortunes of the parties at the 
centre. Hence, control of the state by the BJP in 
partnership with communal fascists overt and 
covert is a dream it cannot live without. 
Demographically, BJP's constituency in UP is 
small in terms of caste and communal equations. 
But Dalits and minorities can be roped in via 
bribery and intimidation. Thus a minority (BJP) 
rule can be foisted on UP as majority rule. 
Mulayam Singh Yadav is in the way. He can be 
removed by President's rule.

To benefit the saffronazis, Congress as partner or cheering from the sidelines.

Unfortunately, the Congress in its pique at 
Mulayam Singh for his past perfidy of betrayal 
(handing over the Central government to BJP at 
George's instigation and thus promoting the 
communal polarisation in the nation), has, 
shortsightedly and vindictively, joined BJP in 
demanding the ouster of Mulayam Singh government 
by President's rule. This is puerile, and peevish.

Congress is again falling in the rut of helping 
Hindu fascism forge ahead with this ill 
considered move. Indira Gandhi had done it and 
the bitter harvest was Bhindranwale and Blue 
Star. Rajiv did it in the case of Ayodhya 
(providing the HinduTaliban with an perennial 
item on their fascist agenda and thus aggravating 
the communal divide)  and against V.P. Singh 
(Mandal agitation with its immolations and 
casteist configurations coalescing in BJP's 
favor).

Congress did not call for President's Rule in 
Gujarat in 2002 nor afterwards even in the face 
of glaring and constant violations of law and 
order, suborning of justice, and criminalisation 
of polity, communalisation of bureaucracy and 
police there. It would be highly reprehensible 
for it to pretend law and order in Gujarat is 
hunky dory calling for no intervention by the 
center in the form of its dismissal and 
installation there of President's rule, but it is 
precarious in UP and Bihar.

This myopia will cost Congress dear, both in the 
short and long runs. Let it wake up if not with 
any ideological pretensions, at least with the 
facts on the ground. It should not drift to its 
own extinction, helping BJP. It should avoid this 
kiss of death.

29 Jan. 05

_______


[4]


30 Jan 2005

ENTRIES INVITED FOR THIRD ANNUAL GENDER IN JOURNALISM AWARDS

Entries are invited for third annual Gender in Journalism Awards 2005 for
two Pakistani print media journalists.  The awards have been instituted by
the Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF) with the support of The United Nations
Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), Islamabad. 

Articles published between January 31, 2004 and December 31, 2004 are
eligible for the awards.  The last date for the receipt of entries is
February 28, 2005.  The awards will be announced on May 3, 2005.

One award will be for excellence in gender sensitive reporting and will be
open to both male and female journalists.  This award will recognise models
for excellence and best practices in coverage of gender related issues.  The
second award will be for outstanding coverage of any issue by a female
journalist.  This award will recognise the competence and contributions of
women to journalism who are role models for women entering or planning to
enter the profession.

News, columns, articles, and features publishers in Pakistani print media
during 2004 will be eligible for the Rs. 25, 000 Gender in Journalism
Awards.  Journalists and writers may nominate their own work, or editors and
others may nominate writings they feel promote the objectives if the awards.

English or Urdu translations must be attached to the entries that are in
other languages.    A panel of eight media professionals will judge the
entries.  The entries should be sent to:

Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF)
Press Centre,
Shahrah Kamal Ataturk
Pakistan

Tel.:		(92-21) 263-3215, 263-1123 
Fax:		(92-21) 221-7069
Emails:	genderawards at pakistanpressfoundation.org
            	ppf at cyber.net.pk


_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

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