A thank-you to Radha Rajan and Vigilonline for giving Vicharamala a home. These are thoughts on issues of current interest [my comments – as an Indian citizen – within square brackets], including instances of some double standards of our public figures, especially in the construction of Indian identity (all those Macaulayan myths, and the hypocrisy that is Nehruvian secularism) – Krishen Kak
Kashmir Sentinel, Jan 2003
http://www.kashmirsentinel.com/jan2003/15.html
[extracts from:]
“Flawed Secularist Argument-I Kashmir-The tumbled crown of Indian Secularism”
by Dr. Ajay Chrangoo
…..For nearly five decades Kashmiris were described as ‘unique’ people, who rejected the two-nation theory of Jinnah. The ethnic-cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus from the only Muslim-majority province of India has debunked the claim that Kashmir was the crown of Indian secularism, or a secular oasis in the communally torn subcontinent…..Congress leaders had rejected the two-nation theory but accepted the partition. Accession of Kashmir to India for Congress leaders was a matter of pure expediency on three counts. One it deflected the criticism that Congress had accepted partition of the country on two-nation theory basis.
Secondly, it allowed Nehru to fight his factional battles within Congress to outmanoeuver Hindu nationalist lobby of Sardar Patel, BC Roy and GB Pant.
Thirdly, Congress wanted to cultivate Muslims as a votebank. Muslim minority in UP and Bihar had strongly supported the Pakistan movement…..
Glorifying Sheikh Abdullah and Kashmiris for their nationalism and secularism became a matter of expediency for the Indian political leadership. Clean chit to the Kashmir political leaders encouraged separatist blackmail and emboldened them for pursuing destabilization process of Kashmiri Hindus in Valley and people of Jammu and Ladakh. In early years when such great leaders like Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru tried to focus Nehru’s attention on the destabilization schemes of Sheikh Abdullah’s government, he snubbed him saying, “I have not done accession for Kashmiri Pandits.”
The expediency of Congress leadership was also exploited by alienated westernized secular Indian elite to fight its turf battles with those forces who wanted positive engagement with the genius of Indian civilisation……
The exodus of the Pandits intermittently from 1947 till the mass exodus in 1990 is the result of a carefully drawn plan of ethnic cleansing. This passed on as ‘Kashmiriyat’. Dr Farooq Abdullah government’s strong Pandit-baiting in 1983-85 period and totally hostile attitude against exiled community, aimed at destroying Pandits’ roots for ever in Kashmir is in itself an eloquent commentary on subtleties of communalisation process in the ‘secular crown’ of India.
Modern Muslim elite and mainstream political groupings in Kashmir have not lagged behind fundamentalists in fomenting communal hatred against religious and ethnic minorities. It is this leadership that is busy pursuing apartheid against displaced Kashmiri Hindus and is creating obstacles in Pandits’ complete and sincere return. Its public posture on Pandits’ return is for the consumption of Indian public.
The writer is the Chairman of Panun Kashmir
Koshur Samachar, New Delhi, Aug 2003
[from Editor’s Mail:]
…..So many temples in the district of Anantnag were looted, burnt and desecrated with the precision of an army like operation in early 1986. I am a witness how the witnesses belonging to minority [Hindu] community were influenced by the prosecutor not to depose against the accused as they had to live, in any case, with the majority [Muslim] community. And all were declared hostile. Even Farooq Abdullah who, in the aftermath of the incident, made a whirlwind visit to Khanabal, Anantnag, declared that if India kept a whole lot of military personnel at your (Hindu’s) gates, still minority had to live at the mercy of the majority community.
Harji Lal Jad, Advocate
[And it hasn’t changed at all. V’mala-15 noted the lackadaisical attitude of some statutory guardians of “secularism” to the plight of the Kashmiri Pandits. As correspondent Lalit Koul points out, even Prime Minister AB Vajpayee did not care to say a few words of sympathy for the Nadimarg victims of terrorism when he visited Srinagar. He visited Jammu but never cared to visit victims of terrorism in camps.
DN Mishra was quoted in V’mala-15. Elsewhere in that article he notes that “those who are talking of a return of the Pandits back to the Valley should remember that the Islamists have never allowed the reverse migration.”
That is exactly what Nehruvian secularism wants. So Ananya Jahanara Kabir can write “I did not expect Kashmir to be so normal…..it is incumbent on the rest of India to respond with empathy and openness” (“Kashmir: rebuilding an identity”, The Hindu Magazine, Sept 14, 2003, p.1). Such sentimental tripe masks the unyielding historical reality that nowhere, but nowhere, has Islam voluntarily allowed kafirs to live as equals, and that over 600 years or so Muslims have finally for all practical purposes converted Kashmir into a dar-ul-Islam. Now KPs and other Indians are welcome – as tourists, and Nehruvian secularists applaud that as a return to normalcy.
V’mala-9 showed how Nehruvian secularists treat the “ethnic cleansing” of the KPs as an art form. To that they add the deracination from Kashmir of the KP community as a return to normalcy and a boost for tourism.
Such “secularism” is not just grotesque; it is downright obscene. Francois Gautier fgautier@satyam.net.in and FACT deserve the highest credit for their efforts to expose Indian negationism by setting up a Hindu Holocaust Museum.
On negationism, see Koenraad Elst, “Negationism in India: Concealing the Record of Islam”, available from Voice of India, 2/18 Ansari Road, New Delhi 110002, tel 2327-8034, fax 2328-2047. Or ch.6 of Francois Gautier, “Rewriting Indian History”, http://www.indiaresearchpress.com]
Krishen Kak 