Kashmir and Muslims  --- A Lost Opportunity

A N Dar

(Shri A.N. Dar, former Editor-in-Chief National Herald New Delhi, does some plain speaking about the role of Muslims in India in relation to religion-based insurgency in Kashmir The Janata Dal leader, Syed Shahabuddin, thinks that the only course open to Muslims in India is to maintain an air of ignorance about Kashmir Shri Dar clarifies his stand further in the interest of India's secular polity. We reproduce hereunder the three articles carried by "Hindustan Times", New Delhi, in March-April 1995 Editor)

It should ordinarily be wrong to analyse how a certain community should behave in a crisis. that affects the country as a whole. In a secular society one cannot lay this down. One should judge how the nation reacts and not look from one community to the other But there are problems when as an exception the attitude of various sections can be analysed. Take the Babri Masjid demolition. This is the kind of a question which should invite a discussion on how the Hindu mass should have reacted to it. It could well be argued that Hindus should have shown tremendous dismay over it. Another rare question that can be asked is how Muslims of India should have reacted to the secessionist movement in Kashmir.

Not that the Indian Muslims are a class apart. They have to act and think as the rest of the country does. Their reaction to the separatist slogans raised in Kashmir has to be in tune-and in fact is so-with the national view. This is all to the good. But the question that has been raised in Kashmir does touch Muslims in the other parts of the country. This is because the basis of the trouble in Kashmir is the propaganda that Muslims there should be independent or should join Pakistan because they cannot remain part of the Hindu majority secular India.

Counterblast

This is where the Muslims in other parts of India come in. They had to tell and prove to the Muslims in Kashmir that they are safe in India whose majority is made of Hindus. This would have been a major counterblast against the communalist propaganda unleashed on the Muslims of Kashmir by Pakistan to separate them from the mainstream of Indian life.

Muslims in the rest of the country had to play a major role in countering it. The Kashmir problem called for a big role by the Muslims in India to teach the Muslims in the State that they are happier being a part of India than if they had been in Pakistan. This could be said only by Muslims in the rest of the country. No other community could do this. The Indian Muslim leadership, from Shahi Imam to the Indian Union Muslim League, from Shahabuddin to Tayabji, had to be part of a force which should have told the common Muslims of Kashmir that they were being misled by the communal propaganda from Pakistan.

Antidote

This would have been the best antidote to the communal propaganda offensive launched by Pakistan. The Government could not play this role. That would be official propaganda. The security forces who defend the country were surely not in a position to do it. This was not their work. This work had to be a popular movement launched by the Muslim mass in India. In saying so, are we placing too much responsibility on the Muslim citizens of the country? Is this fair Muslims? The doubt is legitimate. But this is a role which only they could have taken up. Only their affirmation and their deeds would have mattered and gone to the hearts of the separatists in Kashmir.

It is sad to think that the Muslim leadership, if there is one in India, let this opportunity slip out of its hands. Perhaps it did not realise the value of this role. Had it done so, the future of Muslims in India would have remained solidified against any inroads made into it by the rightist religious opinion. Had it opposed the separatist elements in Kashmir, it would also have beaten back the Hindu communal elements in India. This would have done great good to the furthering of the secular cause in India.

This role did not have to be played by making a few statements here and there. Not enough. Not even by leading a demonstration against the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi. Too routine. The problem that had risen in Kashmir was too big to need only such action. When the terrorist movement started in Kashmir, Muslims in big numbers should have gone from various parts of India to tell the Muslims of Kashmir that they were being led astray by the separatists. This should have been a mass movement. Only then could it have been possible to carry conviction. But it did not occur to any of them to do that.

This was a sad omission. It would have helped Kashmir as well as the rest of the country. Perhaps under Pakistani inspiration such a movement would have been subjected to violence. It would have done to the Muslims who came from the rest of the country what was done to the Pandits and the pro-India Kashmiri Muslims. Even one such sacrifice would have furnished a piece of hope for secularism. For instance, some of the Indian Muslims who died in Kashmir at the hands of the militants, like the Vice- Chancellor of Kashmir University, Mushirul Haque, have done great good to the secular movement in the country.

Casualties

Many Muslims, perhaps more than Hindus, have died in Kashmir at the hands of the militants but their being Kashmiris makes it a different question.

The movement we are talking of had to come from the Muslims from the rest of the country..

It is the Muslims from the other States who should have taken it upon themselves to teach the separatists in Kashmir that their life was safe with India and their religion would not be jeopardised. Their voices should have been loud and clear. They should not have been afraid of dying for the cause. Kashmiri Muslims needed this assurance at a critical time in their lives. They needed it from the minorities in the rest of the country. But they did not get it from the very people who could have done it with great effect, the mass of the Indian Muslims. They should have gone to Kashmir in big numbers, taken out processions, held meetings and denounced the separatist propaganda. That was the need.

Solidarity

It this had been done, it can even be said that the Babri Masjid demolition might not have taken place. The religious fervour over the masjid would have died down in India. Anyone raising a shrill cry against Muslim institutions would have been shouted down. The Muslim masses would have given such an impression of their solidarity with the secular ideals in Kashmir that no Hindu rightist individual or organisation would have been able to take it out against them. The Hindu mass of the country would have recognised the contribution and seen to it that the Muslim feeling did not suffer in any way. This is not said in the sense of a quid pro quo. This is said for creating the right feeling in the country.

It is truly sad that we should be talking in terms of Hindu and Muslim reactions. But Kashmir needed an assurance from the Muslim masses from the rest of the country that the propaganda against Indian secularism made by Pakistan in Kashmir was wrong. The only instrument was the Muslim opinion in India. It did not take up the challenge. Some day it would be regarded that as an opportunity to strengthen secularism and put Kashmir on the right course was lost. We have to criticise the Indian Muslim leaders for it. They belong to all parties and all shades of opinion.

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Courtesy:- A.N. Dar and June 1995 Kosher Samachar