AN OPEN LETTER TO SUDHEENDRA KULKARNI
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Dear Mr. Sudheendra Kulkarni,
This is refers to your Indian Express column: Thinking aloud – Sep 19, 2010:
Kashmiriyat, Pakistaniyat and Indutva
You have every right to present the historical facts as you read them and interpret them. However, it is sometimes important that you should keep your mind open to contrary opinions on the subject in discussion.
I have serious differences on your presentation of the facts.
You write:
For all his greatness and sterling service to the nation, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, our first Prime Minister, failed to show the kind of steely firmness and statesman’s foresight that were required to effect the complete integration of the whole of Jammu & Kashmir with the rest of the Indian Union in 1947-48. His failure left behind an unfinished agenda of India’s Independence, which Pakistan cunningly interpreted as an unfinished agenda of India’s Partition. After all, Pakistan’s claim on Kashmir is nothing but an extension of the Two-Nation theory that carved it out as a separate Muslim nation. The theory was conceived by a communal mindset and successfully executed by causing a communal holocaust. And, truth to tell, Pakistan’s birth was mid-wifed by a colonial power that did not want to quit India before dividing it. India could not foil the triumph of this poisonous theory only because of the weaknesses of our national movement. We cannot have any excuse to let it triumph again.
GM writes:
I would question your idea of the unfinished business of partition.
If land grab was the unfinished business of partition, why Nehru and Congress leadership agreed to the partition of India in the first place?
I would put it, that Congress leadership agreed to partition and the idea of throwing all Muslims out, so as to rule India with a free hand according to their own Idea of India.
(Others later, like Bhutto and even Mujeeb too were prepared to cede territory to rule their parcel of land, with a free hand.)
For Congress, the 30% Muslims in United India would have been constant headache.
When British colonialist insisted to partition India, as you correctly said, for their own reasons, as they wanted to hold on to their Indian connections in some way so as to safeguard their future strategic interests in the Great Game being played against emerging Soviet Russia and when Nehru refused to have any link with the Crown, British used Jinnah’s demand for Pakistan as an excuse to ‘keep a part for us’ (as Churchill advised Lord Wavell – refer to Narender Singh Sarila’s book: The Untold story of India’s partition).(Even Jinnah could not believe his sudden windfall. The partition proposal went through within a brief period from mid 1946 to August 1947.)
Nehru and Patel were helpless in coming to terms with British and had to accede to British terms to gain independence for a ‘truncated India’.
They found merit in getting a cleansed India --- cleansed from a 30% Muslim presence in Indian armed forces and a proportionate presence in all security agencies. (Patel is reported to have got detractors on his side, by promising that in time, we will take back all area ceded to Pakistan. But that was just a ruse. Patel was aware that the land given to Jinnah had no resources to become a nation and it is only US and UK funding that propped that country.)
In all this monkey business, Muslim masses suffered. Their total strength of around 30% in Undivided India, in any democratic set-up would have given them the leverage to fashion India in a more multicultural Idea of India, than the Hindutva’s Idea of India, that Sunil Khilnani laid out.
You have tried to use Indutva, as a dishonest exercise to camouflage the Hindutva part of the fundamental formation. India for all practical purposes, is not a secular country, but a bigoted Hindu nation, that the 3% Brahmins have come to dominate and virtually own!.
The minority oligarchs are so entrenched that they were ripe for take over by stronger colonizing powers that were fully aware of the illegitimacy of Brahmin rule in India. The entry of US, through both Brajesh Mishra and Narasimha Rao, is most serious subversion of India and would once again make India a slave nation, in the full grip of western imperialists. And the greatest danger to the Brahmin hegemony will come from its ostracization of Muslims that will be picked up once again by the western colonialists to stage another big regime change in India. Once again they will resurrect a new Jinnah and through that vehicle rid Brahmins of their control on India. Brahmins will lose, but so will India.
If history should teach any lessons to the people of India, especially to the ruling minority, it is to warn them against the repeat of the same partition game and force them to come to terms with Muslims and not marginalize them as they did prior to partition. Muslims will suffer, but India too could not remain what its will-wishers and nationalists would rightly aspire to.
In this context, India should move fast to redress the grievances of Kashmiri Muslims and try to put the Musharraf plan in immediate action, as that is the best vehicle to wipe out the mistakes of the past and open a new chapter for a new vigorous subcontinent, that can come up as a powerhouse, on its own volition, and not as a satrap for the fast deteriorating economies of the West, out to suck the blood of the less defended, so as to ensure their own survive. India united against the colonizer cannot continue to give a raw deal to 450 million Muslims of the sub-continent. It must think and plan on global scale and not remain shackled to its parochial and pathological compulsions.
By sabotaging Musharraf deal with Vajpayee, L. K. Advani will be remembered as the enemy no. 1 of India.
That man’s ego gets better of his judgment. Again and again he has succumbed to his narrow mindset and in fact weakened the foundations of India by his narrow-minded obsessions. He should be last person to offer any objective advice on Kashmir.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
Kashmiriyat, Pakistaniyat and Indutva
Posted: Sun Sep 19 2010, 01:39 hrs
As India experiences yet another edition of a self-inflicted cyclical crisis in Kashmir, it is impossible not to be reminded of the profound truth of the Urdu couplet by Muzaffar Azmi: Yeh Jabr Bhi Dekha Hai Tareekh Ki Nazron Ne, Lamhon Ne Khata Ki Thi Sadiyon Ne Saza Payee (History is witness to mistakes that were committed in split seconds for which entire generations had to pay the price for centuries). For all his greatness and sterling service to the nation, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, our first Prime Minister, failed to show the kind of steely firmness and statesman’s foresight that were required to effect the complete integration of the whole of Jammu & Kashmir with the rest of the Indian Union in 1947-48. His failure left behind an unfinished agenda of India’s Independence, which Pakistan cunningly interpreted as an unfinished agenda of India’s Partition. After all, Pakistan’s claim on Kashmir is nothing but an extension of the Two-Nation theory that carved it out as a separate Muslim nation. The theory was conceived by a communal mindset and successfully executed by causing a communal holocaust. And, truth to tell, Pakistan’s birth was midwifed by a colonial power that did not want to quit India before dividing it. India could not foil the triumph of this poisonous theory only because of the weaknesses of our national movement. We cannot have any excuse to let it triumph again.
It is perhaps too much to expect the Congress leadership to publicly acknowledge Nehru’s original mistake. But the nation certainly expects it to publicly declare that its government will never surrender before the demand of Kashmir’s secession in any form. The absence of such a categorical articulation of its resolve has created much confusion and concern in the minds of ordinary Indians, besides encouraging many vocal liberals in the media and public life (who are Congress supporters) to ask: “What’s wrong if Kashmir secedes? If Kashmiris want azaadi, why should we forcibly deny it to them?” Myopia of this kind will surely make India pay a higher price for safeguarding its national unity in the future than it has done so far.
Is there any philosophical, historical, social or cultural legitimacy for the demand for azaadi? None. On the contrary, Kashmiriyat, the so-called distinctive identity of Kashmir or the Idea of Kashmir which is routinely touted as the legitimiser of the demand for its independence from India, actually cements its unbreakable bond with India. Harmonious co-existence between Muslims and Hindus, and the spiritual-cultural syncretism between the two faiths, is the quintessence of Kashmiriyat. This syncretism has been celebrated by all the great personalities in Kashmir’s history—from its greatest Sufi mystic Sheikh Nooruddin (Nand Rishi), its greatest poetess Lal Ded (Lalleshwari), its greatest ruler Zain-ul-Abidin (Bud Shah), to its greatest 20th century poet Ghulam Ahmad Mahjoor, who wrote: “Muslims are milk and Hindus sugar; Mix milk and sugar in sweet accord/As Kashmiris you share the same land, ethos; Don’t alienate one another for naught”.
But, then, what is so unique about this Idea of Kashmir? Isn’t equal respect for all faiths also the cornerstone of Indutva or the Idea of India? (I have deliberatively avoided using the term Hindutva, which has acquired restrictive and communal connotations.) The Idea of Kashmir, therefore, is nothing but a subset of the Idea of India. Indeed, both are the antithesis of Pakistaniyat. For it is the Idea of Pakistan—and also the Reality of Pakistan —that has denied dignified space for both non-Muslims and ‘minorities’ within the Muslim community. It will be the death knell for Kashmiriyat if it succumbs to Pakistaniyat.
At a time when there is a mountain of evidence to show that Pakistan-sponsored jihadi campaign has completely taken over the azaadi campaign in Kashmir, any weak-kneed response by the UPA government to this secessionist challenge would be disastrous. Those who are attacking our armed forces, and their mentors across the border who are plotting these attacks, must be dealt with in a manner adequate to the task of safeguarding India’s unity. Of course, the response of the governments in New Delhi and Srinagar should also be adequate to the task of alleviating the suffering of our sisters and brothers in Kashmir (including the displaced Kashmiri Pandits), as behoves a nation that protects and cares for all its people.
With unyielding firmness towards the enemy, active empathy towards our own brethren in Kashmir, and limitless perseverance that the mission of nation-building always demands, India will certainly succeed in defanging the evil snake of secessionism.
sudheenkulkarni@gmail.com
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