Be Calm in Adverse Circumstances-II

Hira Lal Gadoo

Then Sultan-Zain-ul-Abdin, son of Sultan W Sikander, came to occupy the throne; he reversed the anti-Brahmin policy by sending missions to different parts of India to persuade the migrant Brahmins to return to their homes. It 15, however, reported that the background to this change of heart was the fact that when he was taken seriously ill, Shree Bhat, a noted Hakeem of his times, treated him and soon the king became all right. He is known as a true liberal In fact, he was the builder of genuine secularism in Kashmir Thus he assumed the title of Batta-Shah" (the king of Battas or Pandits, which in course of time was shortened to Bud-Shah) Undoubtedly, the rule of this great king was marked by his immense respect and tolerance towards his Hindu subjects He manifested every desire to repair the wrongs inflicted on them by his father Sultan Sikander But thereafter Kashmiri Pandits did not live peacefully and happily. They came to suffer greater atrocities subsequently at different points of time. All the same, with the advent and expansion of Islam in Kashmir, an interwoven Hindu-Muslim culture gradually began to emerge The two communities influenced each other. Hindus learnt the Persian language and attained respectable scholarship in that literature However, after the rule of Shahmiris and Chaks, it were the Mughals who conquered the Valley in A.D. 1586. Kashmir then virtually lost its independence and became part of a vast empire of the Mughals. The Mughal rule was an era of consolidation and construction, but whatever was achieved by Kashmir during the reign of Akbar, Jahangir and Shajahan, was lost during the reign of Aurangzeb. Aurangzeb had imprisoned his own father Shajahan and starved him to death. He had got his brothers Dara Shikoh and Murad killed. He had badly insulted his own son Muazzim, who later ascended throne as Bahadur Shah. Aurangzeb had issued instructions to his governors to effect large-scale conversions so as to leave no Hindu unconverted. The Hindu temples were sought to be dismantled and mosques raised in their place. The Emperor did not want to see any person having a tilak (holy mark on the forehead) or janeu (sacred thread). It is said that the sacred threads of Hindus converted to Islam by Sher Afghan, the Governor of Kashmir, were countless as Aurangzeb had ordered mass conversions to begin from Kashmir. It was done because since Hindus of Kashmir were Pandits and highly erudite in ancient Hindu scriptures, if they accepted Islam other Hindus in the country would follow suit.

Teg Bahadur's Sacrifice

Under such horrific circumstances, the Kashmiri Brahmins decided to make a pilgrimage to Amarnath Cave and seek Divine intervention.. It is believed that while at the Amarnath Cave, a member of the visiting devotees, Pandit Kirpa Ram, had a vision in which he saw that they could be protected by Guru Teg Bahadur, the ninth guru in succession to Guru Nanak, founder of Sikhism. Guru Teg Bahadur was the saviour of the times. AK P. delegation left for Punjab under the leadership of Pandit Kripa Ram and reached Anandpur Sahib (Punjab). Terrified by the forcible conversions, this group of Kashmiri Pandits approached Guru Teg Bahadur in the summer of 1675 and sought his help and protection They narrated the most barbaric atrocities committed against them, and told him that they had come to seek his help and protection since they had no one to protect the honour of their womenfolk and their religion. Hearing their woeful tale, the Guru said to his son who was, playing nearby: "The sacrifice of a brave and great soul is needed". The little boy immediately said, "Holy self, please have mercy on them and arrange to do whatever is necessary to protect the Hindu religion."

Hearing these words, Guru Teg Bahadur felt satisfied that the welfare work initiated by him was in safe hands. He then bade the Kashmiri Pandits to tell the authorities that if "Guru Teg Bahadur accepts Islam, we also shall do so' Soon this news spread and reached Emperor Aurengzeb, and he issued orders for his arrest. After exhorting Brahmins of Kashmir not to get frightened in the then prevailing difficult times. he undertook voluntary journey to Delhi along with a few of his close followers, which included Bhai Mati Das, Bhai Dyala, and Bhai Sati Das. Before leaving Anandpur Sahib, the Guru ordained thirteen-year-old Gobind Rai as the next Guru.

The Guru along with his aides was arrested on his way to Delhi. There were tempting offers made as well as threats of torture and death. His companions were subjected to great physical torture. Bhai Mati Das was sawed into two halves. Bhai Dyala was made to sit in a boiling cauldron. Bhai Sati Das was stacked in cotton pad and roasted alive. The Guru while witnessing all this sordid sight did not flinch in the least. At this the Mughal emperor offered another alternative to the Guru He told him, "If you are a man of God, perform a miracle." The Guru did not accept his release like that. Then the inevitable followed. The Qazi gave his fatwa (ruling). Jalaludin, the executor, sharpened his sword, and the Guru was beheaded in Chandni Chowk, Delhi, at the premises of Kotwali (Police post). It is reported that soon after his execution, Delhi was swept by a fierce and blinding sandstorm, the likes of which had never been witnessed. Taking the cover of the blinding storm, Bhai Jaita picked up the Guru's sacred head and dashed to Anandpur Sahib. Then Bhai Lakhi Shah, a Government contractor who had easy access to the Kotwali picked up the remaining part of the Guru's body and putting it in his cart loaded along with his sundry goods, rushed out of the town. Reaching the present site of Gurudwara Rakab Gunj, he set his house on fire with the Guru's holy body. This constituted an earth-shaking event in the history of the world.

The supreme sacrifice made by Guru Tegh Bahadur stemmed the tide of intolerance in the subcontinent and inculcated in the people respect for other religions.

However, after the fall of Aurangzeb, it was Bahadur Shah Zafar who ascended the throne, but he turned out to be a very weak, laid-back and whimsical ruler, and Soon the great Mughal empire saw its doom. In fact, within 46 years of the death of Aurengzeb in 1753, a general of Afghan invader Ahmad Shah Abdali, Ishaq Aqqasi, planted the Afghan flag on the ramparts of Akbar's citadel on Hari Parbat on the outskirts of Srinagar city. Meantime, the period of brutal tyranny, under the rule of Afghans, on Kashmiri Pandits, continued. The Afghan brutal cruelty crossed all limits when Hindus were tied up in grass sacks and were drowned in lakes and rivers. Hindus thus continued to be compelled to either flee the country or get killed or get converted to Islam Hindu parents destroyed the beauty of their daughters by shaving their heads or disfiguring them to save them from abduction and rape. It is believed that Afghans vastly violated the chastity of Kashmiri women. This to an extent is borne out by the typical Afghan features out of genealogy of most of the progeny, particularly of those Muslims whose Hindu ancestors, by and large, had been coerced to embrace Islam. It, however, needs to be taken note that with the exception of a few families who had come in with various Muslim invaders, all Kashmiri Muslims are converts from Hinduism, and their descendents. The oppression under the Afghan rule had become so unendurable that Kashmiri Pandits turned with hope to the rising power of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, who then ruled Punjab. With the advent of the Sikh rule, the people of Kashmir heaved a sigh of relief.

Later, the Valley of Kashmir had been ceded by the Sikhs to the British in lieu of indemnity imposed on the Lahore Durbar-the seat of power of the Sikh rule. The British had by then come to establish British Monarch's rule over the major portions of the Indian soil. The British sold Kashmir to Maharaja Gulab Singh on March 16, 1846, for a sum of 75 lacs of rupees. In this way the territory and the people of Kashmir was virtually sold to Gulab Singh by the British. Thus began the Dogra rule in Kashmir. And the State of Jammu & Kashmir was born.

The creation of the State in 1846, through the Treaty of Amritsar, was a master stroke of the British diplomacy in Asia. No doubt, Kashmir never became a part of the British-Indian domain, but the British allowed only minimum operational freedom to the Dogra rulers. In fact, the British created a buffer state of Jammu and Kashmir under the title of a' Sovereign State', to keep Russia at a distance from British India and to counter the Czarist 'menace' in Central Asia. In 1885, the first British Resident was appointed in Kashmir With this started the active British intervention in the State, and finally partial deposition of Maharaja Pratap Singh in 1889, and thus imperialist tangled-hold over Kashmir was complete. The fact is that for the British, Kashmir's real geographical importance lay in its northern frontier. It formed a vital listening post at the meeting point of Russia, China, India and Afghanistan in the high Himalayas. And ever since the 1840s, everything that the British did with regard to Kashmir hinged on the issue of how to secure this invaluable geographical asset. In 1930, the British-worried that the Maharaja of Kashmir was too weak to safeguard the security of the region-provoked disturbances and forced the Maharaja to lease out the key territory of Gilgat to them for a period of 60 years. But as India's independence and partition came around much before the lapse of the lease, the region was once again looking vulnerable to Anglo-American powers. After Maharaja Pratap Singh, it was Hari Singh who ascended the throne and became the Maharaja.

In 1931 a movement for an independent Kashmir began under the aegis of the Muslim Conference (later in the year 1939 name changed to National Conference to give the organization a national character) under the leadership of Sheikh Abdullah (his ancestors were Kashmiri Brahmins). Actually, the Sheikh had a Master's degree in Chemistry from Aligarh University, and arrived at the political scene of Kashmir as a frustrated young man in quest of a job that would do justice to his education. But the deteriorating economic situation and ever increasing competition for Government jobs left him with rancour and malignant hate against Maharaja Hari Singh's rule in particular, and perhaps against the KPs in general since they dominated the Dogra Maharaja's 'riyasat (kingdom) then. No doubt Kashmiri Pandits were fitted into the Maharaja's administration, which was generally perceived as an oppressive regime, but they were minor clogs in the administration. The oppressiveness of KPS has not only survived into our times but has received regular support from people who mattered, particularly after independence, and thus became a part of political correctness. Sheikh Abdullah, in a reference to these times says, in his autobiography "Atishe-Chinar" (translated into English by Khushwant Singh), that the word 'Pandit' was synonymous with the ruler. To lend substance to this view, he says that Kashmiri Pandits are addressed by villagers as 'Mahara' an abbreviated form of 'Maharaja'. But PN. Dhar in his noted book "Indira Gandhi, the Emergency and Indian Democracy" terms such an understanding as a gross misunderstanding. According to him, the fact is that juniors address seniors as 'mahara' if they are Pandits and as 'haz' -an abbreviated form of 'hazarat', if they are Muslims. 'Mahara' and 'haz' are nothing more than polite and respectful forms of address used in ordinary parlance. They do not signify a servile attitude, as insinuated by Sheikh Abdullah. As a matter of fact, it is reported that it was not local Pandits but Punjabi Hindus who dominated the administration. Their domination started with the appointment of Diwan Jawala Sahai, a rich Punjabi from Aminabad, as the first Prime Minister whose office remained hereditary for many years. He had earned this bonanza for the help he had rendered to Maharaja Gulab Singh in putting together the sum of seventy-five lacs of rupees, which, as stated earlier, he had to pay to the British Government as a price for the Kashmir Valley. It was natural that the Diwan and his family should prefer to bring into the administration their own people, whose loyalty they could trust implicitly. This created a Punjabi Hindu ruling class in the State. There wasn't much social intercourse between Punjabis and Kashmiris. Punjabis settled in clearly demarcated areas of the city of Srinagar. They called local Kashmiri Muslims 'hattos', a contemptuous term used for menials or coolies. The resentment of Kashmiris against growing Punjabi Dogra domination gave birth to the demand of "Kashmir for Kashmiris'', which has, however, undergone several mutations: From the exclusion of outsiders (non-state subjects) in the matter of getting employment, acquiring property in the State to special status for the State under Article 370 in the Constitution of India, and now the demand for azadi. It is, however, believed that for some of the ills at least that the KPS came face to face with later, were of their own making. Perhaps they lacked far sight, in time and space.

With the arrival of Sheikh Abdullah on the scene, he went on to set up reading rooms and study circles where small groups of educated Muslim youth discussed politics. It was from the reading rooms that a powerful movement arose which attracted the educated unemployed and the common poverty-stricken peasantry. It was around this time, that the Muslim demand for proportionate employment in the State services received a positive response from the Government. A Commission was appointed under Bertrand Glancy to look into popular grievances. Later an agitation against his recommendations, which recommended a better deal for educated Muslims, was started by KPs, who feared loss of jobs to them. This trend received encouragement from Kashap Bandho, a Kashmiri Pandit leader who had spent the formative years of his life in Punjab.

(To be concluded)

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Courtesy:- Hira Lal Gadoo and January 2009 Koshur Samachar