Mudasir Ahmed Yatoo
(This piece is written in response Mr. Mujahid Mughal’s article, ‘Proclamation of Independence’, and the letters from readers regarding the same.)
When I was reading the responses from fellow readers to Mr. Mujahid’s article, I got reminded of my conversation with Professor Dan Shechtman here in Tohoku University Kawauchi Hagi Hall (Conference Hall of University), wherein he made up one nice preposition. The preposition was that drawing up nasty and ludicrous inferences/conclusions is an art and everybody cannot do it. However here it looks to me that the responses and inferences of Mr. H N Ticku, Dr. Kulvir Gupta and Dr. Suresh Chander fall even outside the category of ‘nasty inferences/conclusions’.If I or for that matter, any other sane being rephrases the central theme of Mr. Mujahid’s piece, the result will be something like ‘lamenting the inability/failure of separatist leadership for building a just society’. This theme runs throughout the whole piece and every word and sentence smells of it. The ironic part of the story is that nobody among the responders seems to comprehend that. Along with some disagreements, I do find a few arguments of Mr. Mujahid’s very much tenable. However, I will justkeep them aside and look only into responses from the seemingly well-read readers/responders.
The president of Sanaskar Organization comes up a horrid observation that J&K is not a secular entity. Ido not exactly know what secular notion he is actually talking of, given that we have there two prominent philosophies of secularism there. One, what the people now call is ‘Indian notion of Secularism’ and the other is Western notion. And from technical point, J&K fits well into both categories, albeit loosely. The Indian concept of secularism of equidistance of religion from the state,and the Western notion of separation of Government institutions from all religions and religious institutions are certainly there in J&K; and by that J&K is plainly a secular body. He further goes on andholds religious leaders like Mr. Geelani and his team (only Mr. Geelani is given as example of religiousleader) as responsible for degradation of morality in state, but unfortunately forgets to mention whatrole he himself has played in morality development of state.Mr. Ticku and Dr. Gupta open up their responses with huge amounts of praise on Mr. Mujahid, and bythat it makes me to fathom that they actually themselves believe on the ideals Mr. Mujahid is repeatedly stressing upon in his piece. However to my surprise, most of the part of Mr. Ticku’s and Dr.Gupta’s reaction smells of outright communalism, which has been itself an important concern of Mr. Mujahid’s article. Infact this self-incongruity has become the hallmark of our fellow beings there in J&K. Dr. Gupta puts the onus of ‘forced migration’ on these separatist leaders and Mr. Ticku goes one step further and adds all Kashmiris, to be apt Kashmiri Muslims and says they all acted in tandem and forced migration of Pandits.
Dr. Gupta also talks of ‘killings of thousands of Kashmiris’ but I am not clear whether he includes in it those who were killed by security forces, although I am inclined to believe he doesn’t. The exodus of Pandits is a very complex issue and the happenings in the milieu of that time made it more convoluted.And coming up with such over simplified observations is not going to do any good but just works negatively to communalize the surroundings. We still have living testimonies from the senior Indian administrator Mr. Wajahat Habibullah of groups of Muslims appealing to him to stop the Pandits from leaving, which has led him to advise to the then Governor Jagmohan or de facto ruler of J&K that a television broadcast be made advertising the request of hundreds of Muslims to their Pandit compatriots not to leave the valley. Ironically, Mr. Jagmohan did not agree to this suggestion.
Instead he made several pronouncements that reassured Pandits that if they did decide to leave,refugee settlement camps had been set up for them and also that leaving civil servants among the Pandits would continue to be paid their salaries. Mr. Sumit Ganguly, a political scientist, talks of further one more significant factor- that Jagmohan had also announced that his Government would not be ableto assure the safety of our Pandit brethren, if they decided to remain in the valley.
However, we also have living testimonies of large number of Pandits suggesting that there were threats given out to them both individually and obliquely to the community as a whole from militant groups.Given the above testimonies and observations of political scientists, it is safe to conclude that therewere possibly components of both circumstances which worked in forcing the departure of the Pandits from the Valley.
Furthermore, exaggerating the things by writing lakhs of Kashmiri Pandits is not serving any bodies cause. It just adds more salt to the wound and nothing more. If not exact numbers, we have at least approximate number of Pandits living in valley before 1990. The most appropriate census available to us is the 1941 census in which Pandits were counted and listed as a distinctive group of Kashmiri Hindus,puts the number of Pandits as under 79,000. Using the scientific demographic methods, the number of Kashmir Pandits in the Valley in 1990 comes out around 160,000. When we deduct the number of Pandits, who voluntarily left the state between 1947 and 1990, and the number of Pandits who stayedback in the Valley; the number of Pandits who were the victims of exodus rounds up to 100,000. So writing lakhs of Pandits is very unfortunate and also a misleading exaggeration.
Now, having put few of the related things in perspective above, I, as a Kashmiri, Kashmiri Muslim to be precise, do acknowledge that exodus of our Pandit brethren from valley is a disgrace still dangling on our (Kashmiri Muslims) faces and it can be remedied only by bringing the Pandit community back with deference and guarantee of security of life of our Pandit associates. This assurance of security is theliability of Kashmiri Muslims and it must emanate from the civilian residents of Valley first and then Government.
I conclude by saying that let us resolve to get away from this communal prism and try to look at things through a balanced and coherent prism, then only we can hope for the dawn, with birds of future singing in melodious and harmonious voice rising to mountainous heights in our beautiful state.
(The author is Research Masters(Material Chemistry Tohoku University, Japan.)
(muda.amu@gmail.com)
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