Murder Most Foul

M L Bhat Editor Koshur Samachar  

The destruction of the over five hundred year old shrine of one of the greatest of humanism, after the great Lallaleshwari, in Kashmir be termed as a gruesome murder of humanism. The foul murder must be condemned in the strongest possible terms, although no words, however sharp and strong, can easily heal the deep wound thus inflicted on the ethos, the very soul, of Kashmir. The shrine at Charar-e-Sharif housing the mortal remains of the great Sufi saint, call him Nunda Rishi, Sahzanand or Sheikh-ul-Alam, had, with the passage of time, become the shining symbol of Kashmir, of its long history of humanism, of its love for humankind and its respect for human dignity, irrespective of any consideration of caste, creed or colour, long before the word "secularism" was coined in modern times. This in spite of the occasional aberrations that this philosophy of life propounded by the great sons of Kashmir suffered at the hands of religious bigots and zealots at various items during the recent past.

It was in 1990 that this philosophy received a deadly blow when Islamic fanatics, abetted and inspired by Pakistan, forced over three hundred thousand Hindus out of Kashmir. They did this in the name of what they called azaadi for Muslims of Kashmir and the supremacy of Islam over everything else, including the very ethos of the land. After this, the destruction of the symbol of this ethos was only a question of time, and the fanatics have done it.

The most unfortunate aspect of this entire sordid tragedy is not that it has taken place but that the powers that be did not understand the real and the long- term implication of what was done to the Hindus of Kashmir in 1990. They started inventing reasons for the happening and lost their way in the process. They blamed the then Governor, Shri Jagmohan, for motivating the Hindus to leave. They gave out selectively that the Hindus were forced out as they had occupied all the key posts in the State administration and had been doing everything possible to leave the Muslims semi-starved, illiterate and what not. In fact these powers, helped by the so-called champions of civil liberties, intellectuals, journalists, etc. tried to strike at everything and anything possible to blame the Hindu minority of Kashmir for what had happened in Kashmir, without, of course going to the root of the problem. The root is there for all to see now that the blow has been given to the very symbol of what they had been calling Kashmiriyat to which, according to them, the Kashmiri Hindus had turned their back.

It is also for all to see that in this process of imputing motives and castigating the scattered and shattered Hindu minority of Kashmir for no fault, the administration in J&K, supported to the hilt by the leadership at the Centre and its non-official assistants and story-planters, forgot its first and foremost duty of restoring normalcy in Kashmir by isolating, suppressing and eliminating the gunmen and the gun-culture implanted and nourished by Pakistan. The present J&K Governor has, since his installation in the high chair by a coterie about this time in 1993, been talking only of holding elections in the State without doing anything to make the ground level for the purpose. It seems that his brief is confined just to the holding of elections to the exclusion of everything else.

Not unnaturally, the terrorists have felt emboldened to continue their rampages and depredations with more vigour and more ease, knowing it very well that the administration, pre-occupied as it is in pursuit of its single-point programme of holding election at any cost, would leave them alone and free to continue with their mission unhampered. The incompetence of the administration, presided over by the Governor, General K.V. Krishna Rao, is amply proved, if any proof were at all required, by the fact that he wasted one full day in New Delhi briefing the Prime Minister about what he was doing about elections in the State while the entire picturesque and historical town of Charar-e-Sharif was burning. The ignoramuses handling Kashmir, including General Krishna Rao, seem to have convinced themselves that they could handle Charar-e-Sharif in the manner in which they tackled the issue of the Hazratbal Dargah in Srinagar some eighteen months back. They forgot that, not to speak of its hired henchmen, even Pakistan could not think of damaging the Hazratbal shrine because of its association with the Holy Relic of Prophet Mohammed while the Charar-e-Sharif was just a local issue involving only the Kashmiris, the Kashmiri Muslims particularly.

It is high time for the Government to have a fresh look at its Kashmir policy, if it has any apart from promising the moon to Kashmiri Muslims for the past forty years, evolve a more effective strategy to combat terrorism the. e, and do first things first if it is interested in saving Kashmir for the nation and its polity.

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Courtesy: M L Bhat Editor Koshur Samachar and   April-May 1995 Koshur Samachar