K N Pandita
Thirty-four years of externally sponsored and internally abetted anti-India insurgency in J&K has not helped Pakistan attain its desired goal. Sporadic insurgency continues in remote mountain recesses or densely foliaged forests. It will also die down with security forces establishing the upper hand.
The impending election to the assembly is different from the elections held previously during or during militancy decades. We may recollect the days when the militants placed a television set by the polling station daring any voter to cast his vote and take the television set as a gift.
There was a time when the then-ruling PDP leader Mahbooba Mufti spoke the language of the militants and jihadis, and challenged the Union Government that if it did not change its Kashmir policy, not a single tricolour would be seen hoisted anywhere in Kashmir. But today, as the Election Commission has announced the dates of the election process to the 2024 assembly, not only the tricolour but also the flags of parties like Congress, BJP, and of independent candidates are fluttering throughout the valley side by side with the tricolour.
The people’s enthusiasm for taking an active part in the impending election is something to be seen to be believed. For the last three and a half decades of militancy, a Kashmiri Pandit dared not to disclose his name or identity because of the fear spread by the jihadists. Today we find them freely bringing out rallies to celebrate their festivals at prominent religious places and temples. Janam Ashtami, the birthday festival of Lord Krishna was celebrated with great enthusiasm and with usual rituals and song and dance. Not a single instance of violence was reported.
The BJP has given tickets to two Kashmiri Pandit candidates in Anantnag district. Reports are that the Apni Party, not a too-old party, has plans to give tickets to one Kashmiri Pandit candidate. This shows that the winds have changed and the local Muslim majority is not unsympathetic to the return and restitution of the Kashmiri Pandits. This is a healthy sign of change for cementing inter-community relations in Kashmir.
However, the disappointing aspect is the obstinacy and intransigence of traditional valley-centric political parties’ leadership that is unable to shake off the stereotype and reconcile to the fast-changing times. The more stubborn protagonist of anti-democratic and pro-conservative elements in Kashmir polity refuses to come out of an outdated and redundant mindset. They fail to assess the disastrous situation into which Pakistan has slid over the years. They fail to understand the destruction and chaos which Pakistan’s self-created terrorism and nihilism have brought her.
These elements, as we see, are mortally afraid of losing their grip on dynastic rule. They fail to understand the deadly blow which Modi’s popular and people-friendly policy has dealt to the dynastic, hegemonistic and egotistic deportment of their regimes. Those regimes survived by misleading the people, creating anti-national and separatist predispositions among the masses of innocent people and blocking their faculty of investigation. With the rapid spread of conventional and professional education among the youth in both rural and urban Kashmir, the concept of a modern scientific outlook on life and its affairs has taken root in their minds. The myths and fantasies, the myopia of separatist life patterns and the negative interpretation of Kashmir’s uniqueness (ill-phrased as Kashmiriyat), all have fallen one by one like autumn leaves.
But look at the absurdity of these redundant thinkers: they continue to sell the trash like restoration of special status, revival of Article 370 and 35-A, self-determination, greater Kashmir etc. to the masses of people through their toxic manifestos that reflect their putrid psyche. They fail to take a lesson from the Palestinian tragedy where a lone adversary has almost decapacitated the 57-member strong Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
These dynasts husbanding political parties have generally thrived on the ignorance and zealotry of the masses. Lack of proper education, reflected in the monopolization of conservative seminaries and zealotry disseminated by the ecclesiastics have immensely entrenched the dynastic rule and peoples’ contentious faith.
We find a sea-change in the thinking of Kashmiri youth. Apart from breaking the shackles of illiteracy, they have begun to argue the established concepts and beliefs, something that was akin to blasphemy till now. While the traditional politicians remain intellectually imprisoned in the Pakistani cage, the youth are looking with great interest and euphoria at the drastic changes that are taking place in the Saudi Arabian polity. Prince Salman has said that the hadith (recorded traditions) are not either devoid of serious errors or acceptable veracity. The Islamic youth that has opened the windows of modern science and technology for them regaled at such a world-shattering statement emanating from the very fountainhead of Islamic faith and civilization. Don’t think that this is a small incentive to the Kashmir valley youth, into whose heads fighting “kufr” and “idolatry” were laboriously drilled. The verdict of history that those who fail to feel the pulse of time perish with time is loudly knocking at the door of the self-seeking dynasts in Kashmir.
Nothing can hold back the youth of Kashmir from lending full support to much-delayed religious reformation and ushering in the scientific and technological credentials to it. Long back outstanding reformists like Sir Sayyid, Allama Iqbal, Kamal Ataturk and the rest of them had envisioned it. The election at hand is providing them with an opportunity to become masters of independent thinking, to keep pace with the changing world and to act responsibly for their upliftment and for the future generations of the people of Kashmir. They are marching along a path that forks into light and darkness. “la ta’sbu’d dahr ana fi ad dahr” (don’t be prejudiced against the time, I am in the time) goes the Arabic axiom.
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