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Kashmir: Insurgency
and After
Veteran journalist, political activist and an author of renown on the subject, Balraj Puri’s Kashmir: Insurgency and After helps clear the cobwebs and understand all that ails the state in general and Kashmir in particular. Of course, there will be occasions when a reader will disagree with the author’s analysis and interpretation but then due respect should be paid to the fact that he was a member of the National Conference that was in its earlier incarnation closer to communism. This also explains his ignoring the communal massacres of Poonch and summing the events there as a mere revolt against the ruler. A few among us might also take umbrage to the fact that by and large the insurgency in Kashmir has been portrayed as indigenous, though there is evidence to the contrary. It is difficult to say whether by design or accident but Sheikh Abdullah, the chief protagonist of the tragedy of Kashmir, can be extensively scrutinised by a discerning reader as well as appreciate the dilemmas that he faced. The author quotes Durga Das on page 14, where he says that the Maharaja and Sheikh Abdullah "shared and worked in their own way for a similar objective, namely independent Kashmir". He also discloses that during his years of alienation from India, Sheikh Abdullah confessed to him that if his relations with the Maharaja had not been strained, then both could have "jointly worked for and achieved independent Kashmir". It was this Abdullah who was central to Nehru’s Kashmir policy and who, instead of working for the integration of the state with the rest of the country, pursued his own agenda. Soon after the Maharaja had released Sheikh Abdullah from jail, he declared that the accession of the state was secondary. The primary issue was freedom and formation of a responsible government—for enslaved race cannot decide its fate. Thus, it is obvious that though India was integrating hundreds of other princely states, it was only in Jammu and Kashmir that the issue of changing the order was being given precedence over integration and evolution of a new India. Ironically, even the issue of freedom and responsible government was given a short shrift soon after. On page 47, the author says that under the influence of communists, who during the Stalin era supported the idea of independent Kashmir, Abdullah ruled without "any constitutional checks and balances, without an Assembly or an opposition party ..." and when elections to the Constituent Assembly were held in 1951, the National Conference won all the 75 seats. This form of democracy was subsequently practiced by his successors till he himself set the record straight in 1977. This also brings to the fore the question of regional identity. The author has brought forth the historical background to the issue and has argued that the watershed in its history has been the year 1586, when with the conquest made by Akbar began an era of ‘enslavement’ of Kashmir by successive non-Kashmiri dynasties and not the widely believed conversion of the Valley to Islam. Somewhere along the line in the 19th century, an accident of political events had connived to create a political and geographical Jarasandh—the mighty king of Magadh in the Mahabharata who could only be destroyed by applying pressure in contrary directions. Inexplicably, in the glow of achieving freedom and having humiliated, marginalised and finally banished Maharaja Hari Singh from the state, Sheikh Abdullah, instead of winning over the people of Jammu, embarked upon the ill-advised policy of cutting them to size. Puri informs us that of the five ministers only one belonged to Jammu and with no base in the region, he did not even trust those whom he appointed as party functionaries. One can go on debating, like the egg and chicken debate, what triggered that chain of events which has made Jammu and Kashmir regions to become adversaries. But tragedy was bound to be the state’s fate when making the Dogras pay for the wrongs of history became the single most dominant passion. Puri has offered the unhindered extension of the processes of Indian democracy to the state as a solution, but the election of 2002, the elevation of a leader from Jammu to the office of Chief Minister notwithstanding, there are forces stronger than democracy that tear asunder the fa`E7ade of normalcy. It also needs to be remembered that without exception a person from the Valley would identify himself/herself as belonging to Kashmir and one from Jammu will not fail in proclaiming that he comes from Jammu and Kashmir! There can be no peace as long as this contradiction prevails, as the events over Amarnath Yatra now so tragically suggest.
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For
those who are used to seeing ‘Kashmir in turmoil’, it must have come
as a surprise to also see ‘Jammu in turmoil’ over an issue that had
earlier rocked Kashmir to such an extent that not only the political
parties of the Valley but also the separatist groups came together on
one platform. Same issue, contrary reasons, and once again Jammu and
Kashmir has regressed to the early 50s!