Men, Matters & Memories
M L Kotru
Potentially loaded times for this part of the world. At home we continue to pass through uncertain times, politically, socially and economically, the ruling party’s assertions to the contrary notwithstanding.The Nobel laureate Amritya Sen tore his hair apart in Kolkatta and in New Delhi the other day bemoaning the appalling poverty of the masses. But the statisticians at the Planning Commission and the Finance Ministry were unwilling to share his dark thoughts.
Sen at one of his public encounters with the Planning Commission Deputy Chairman, Montek Singh Ahluwalia almost pointed an accusing finger at the latter over what he obviously considered to be an attempt at playing the percentage game. And in the midst of it all, the nation continues to battle it out with its daily dose of big time corruption, brought into an uncertain focus by the former Telecom Minister Raja, wanting to spill the beans before the Joint Parliamentary Committee examining the contours of the multi -multi million scam. Raja, obviously,believes that his case has gone unrepresented or, at the very least, has not been properly presented.
Kashmir continues to be on the boil over two weeks after Afzal Guru’s hanging in Delhi’s Tihar Jail. Strikes bandhs and government-imposed curfews continue to be the order of the day in the predominantly Muslim valley, unseasonal snowfall adding to the problems of the lay citizenry which must of necessity depend for most of its daily needs on uninterrupted supplies via the Banihal land route from the rest of the country.
The sulking population may not have moved towards the separatist groups like the two Hurriyats but separatism is finding new adherents with the mainstream parties including the ruling National Conference- Congress alliance and the People’s Democratic Party reduced to a state of helplessness. The ruling alliance has suffered hugely in terms of public trust; there are not many takers for the view that the alliance was ignored by Home Minister Shinde when the decision to hang Guru was made.
The PDP of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed has attempted to make the right noises, supportive of the popular mood, but the urban masses in the valley are hardly convinced. To top the discomfort levels there are minor irritants like the reported rejection of one of the men recommended for appointment as one of the five new judges of the Kashmir High Court. Interested parties appear to be making an issue of it, that the one not accepted has been faulted for his having been a member of Kashmir Bar Association.The Bar Association has over the years been sympathetic to the separatist cause. So what, it is asked.
Now, you may or may not remember the name Mushtaq Latram but I do. During my visits to Kashmir in the 80s I had seen this young man hanging around with people associated with the then nascent JKLF. His morning ‘adda’ used to be the Srinagar coffee house which was almost next door to the hotel where I usually stayed at. If memory serves right he was involved in the explosion at the coffee house, one of the very first in Srinagar. Mushtaq was released along with Maulana Masood Azhar and Omar Saeed Sheikh the Pakistani terrorists in exchange for passengers of flight 1C-814 hijacked by the militants from Kathmandu to Kandhar in Afghanistan.
Mushtaq had mostly remained in anonymity in the POK capital of Muzaffarabad and has only now declared his intent to resume the armed struggle in Kashmir of which he had been an original initiator. So Latram adds to the pantheon of Yaseen Malik, another founder of JKLF, Maqbool Butt and Afzal Guru. Butt was hanged and buried at Tihar over two decades before Guru. Together, the two dead and the two living militants(Yaseen says he has adopted non-violence as his creed), provide another point of reference for future Kashmiri militants in the valley.
My intention originally was to examine the general state of unrest around us in India, namely, the unusual move by the Nepalese politicians to induct the country’s Chief Justice as the head of an interim government in the landlocked country as a prelude to the long overdue elections to the Constituent Assembly there. The Nepalese themselves have questioned the propriety of involving the country’s highest judicial office in running the affairs of the State, particularly when the same court has before it cases pending against some of those (including at least one prime minister),the very politicians who want the Chief Justice to the head government.
Over there in the East we have Bangladesh in turmoil with thousands taking to the road- giving Dhaka a Tehrir Square of its own-to press for the death to all those leaders, including senior Islamists, who had opposed the creation of Bangladesh after the Pakistanis were thrown out of the eastern wing of that country in 1971. The movement is insisting on the conversion of the life sentence passed against the Jamaat-i-Islami leader who had opposed the birth of Bangladesh to death by hanging. And to think of it, it all started with the current Prime Minister, the daughter of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was forced by her party to initiate legal action against all those who opposed the creation of Bangladesh.
Off the Tamilnadu coast we have good neighbour Sri Lanka seething with anger, directed at New Delhi, over the malicious campaign against it launched by Indian Tamilians who accuse the island country’s government of having carried out a genocide of Sri Lankan Tamils.
The latest phase of the anti- Sri Lanka campaign in Tamilnadu centres round the killing in cold blood of the LTTE leader Pribhakaran’s teenaged son by the Sri Lankan army. What has added fuel to the fire is a documentery showing, among other things, the bullet ridden body of the boy.
To the west of our border, in Pakistan, we have more terrorism, factional warfare between Shias and Sunnis and the continuing political tussle between the poll-bound political parties, the judiciary and an army holding its cards close to its chest.
The Shia-Sunni problem, an old one that dates back to the pre-partition days, has acquired singularly sinister proportions in Pakistan during the past three decades. Sunnis attacking post-Friday prayer meetings in Shia mosques has become as much of a routine as the killing of innocent civilians by the Pakistani Taliban in the Pakhtunkhwa province along the Afghan border.
Only last week the Shias had refused to bury 82 co-religionists killed in a Quetta mosque by the Sunnis. The Government in Balochistan may have fallen as a consequence but it has by no means added to the Shias’s confidence.
And the Shias, must I remind you, are as good Muslims as any. Unlike the Ahmediyyas who were declared non-Muslims under a Z.A. Bhutto edict, enlarged by military dictator Gen. Ziaul Haq, the Shias don’t need a “certificate” from the Sunnis. Iran, by whose power and dedication to Islam, most Sunnis swear, is a predominantly Shia State. But in Balochistan, regardless of their numbers, they obviously fail to meet the loyalty test.
Hence the large-scale resettlement in Bloachistan of the Pushtuns and the Punjabis, the country’s largest province thus virtually converted into an occupied region. Interestingly, the much tom-tommed Gawdwar port in Balochistan which was built with Chinese help has been transferred to its builder; the Chinese will operate the port, thus gaining direct access for the first time to the region. This obviously poses new strategic problems for the countries of the region. Pakistan which had undertaken its construction as a major gift to the Baloch people, has in the event only proved its worth as a “all-time friend” of China by making gift of the port to it. It falls into a pattern , beginning with the construction of the Karakoram highway which cuts across Kashmir’s former Gilgit province. Sia Chin was supposed to be another Pakistani gift for the Chinese except that they couldn’t prise India out of the world’s highest battlefield.
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