Kasheer- A Diabolical Betrayal Of Kashmiri Hindus

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The perception among Indian intellectuals is that the Kashmir issue lies at the heart of the discord between India and Pakistan. They are oblivious of the reality that even if India offered the whole of Jammu and Kashmir on a platter and prostrated in front of Islamabad, it would still not stop raking up new issues. Neither do they have the honesty to accept the roots of the problem. When the Supreme Court hands capital punishment to a terrorist and even rejects an appeal to reconsider, underhand attempts to protect the accused from punishment take centre stage. Such vote bank politics have become the lifeline of the democracy. Similarly, even in the matter of Pakistan and Kashmir, the same vote bank arithmetic assumes predominance. The country's first prime minister created the entire Kashmir issue by defying his colleagues and the advice of military experts. Yet his arrogance induced folly has never been accepted by the political party that had exercised a vice-like grip on power.

To embed the visuals of this complex problem into a novel and achieve a literary temper is the task undertaken by Smt. Sahana Vijayakumar. While dealing with a subject such as this, Indian writers usually revel either in their magnanimity of religious tolerance or beyond the skies Gandhian idealism; very few research and present harsh truths. Sahana belongs in this rare league. Due to Article 370, non Kashmiris cannot own properties in Kashmir. Therefore, no industrialist invests there. No employment is generated. The Central government is sustaining the people of Kashmir with the taxes collected from people in the rest of India. Feeding on that, the Muslims there are clamouring for azadi and pelting stones on the Indian soldiers. The Indian intellectuals holler to pour more and more money, pacify and win them over. Not thinking of solutions beyond the appeasement of the minorities, the government is floundering in the same endless dark alley. That said, tourism is providing the Muslims of Srinagar, an avenue to earn a few bucks. The Indian tourists, who return from touring a handful of safe spots shown to them, proclaim that all is peaceful.

To write this novel, a mere visit to the tourist spots is nowhere near adequate. One must roam the nooks and crannies of the back roads filled with grave dangers to personal safety. Men themselves are not safe. Women are even more vulnerable. Under these conditions, without getting cowed down, this writer connected with the very few Kashmiri Hindus that have "returned home" and living in ghettos, and witnessed all the places that bear testimony to thousands and thousands of religious conversion under intimidation, rape, murder and bloodshed. She has interviewed the Hindu elders, women, young lads and ladies, who till this day live in fear for their life. She has researched the details of Kashmir which was once the paragon of Indian culture and scholarship and indeed called the abode of Sharada, losing its kshaatra quality and meekly surrendering to the religion of the barbarians. One cannot write a novel of this nature without the guidance of Kashmiri scholars, a long and detailed study and personally imbibing the ghts and sounds of the places that have witnessed daily oodshed and continues to do so to this day.

The decade of the 80s was instrumental in the global T resurgence of Islam. While in the first half due to the manifold increase in the oil price, the Muslim majority countries of the middle east with their enormous oil deposits turned into oil exporters and began to earn billions of petrodollars overnight, the second half saw a large portion of that money spent on neutralizing secularism within those countries and Islamizing other countries. Playing a significant role in this process, both Saudi Arabia and Libya stood shoulder to shoulder, setting aside their internal differences. The Islamisation that began thus reached its pinnacle in the Iranian revolution of 1979. Every country in the Middle-East began to consider the victory of Ayatollah Khomeini, who fanned the flames of fundamentalism all over Iran, despite living in exile for fifteen years, as the model to emulate. The powerful wave of Islamisation that was born then, although it reached the shores of countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Indonesia and Malaysia, apart from those of North Africa, not many noticed the tremors it caused in India due to the force with which this wave slammed the neighbouring Bangladesh and Pakistan. On the one hand, dropping 'secularism' from its constitution in 1977, a ready to be Islamised Bangladesh, happily fell into the arms of Saudi Arabia, and on the other, Pakistan, which from the beginning was a bone of contention between fundamentalists and liberals, eventually fell into the hands of the former. It gratified itself with generous doles from Saudi Arabia and lost no time in pursuing an aggressive agenda of Islamising India.

The Kashmir issue must be viewed against this background. The issue cannot be understood without grasping the layers of traditionalism, reformism, secularism and fundamentalism within Islam. If the national government doesn't possess the objectivity to know its fact-based dimensions, it will never be able to grasp the genesis and progression of this problem. The minds that prefer not to look beyond the line of control will fail to perceive the reality within the borders. It is equally valid that the resolution to this problem will remain a mirage as long as such a mindset persists. If you began turning the pages backwards from the present migration and the genocide of the Kashmiri Hindus in 1990, it would take us to the pages of history chronicling the beginning of Islamisation. Therefore, the line that "we must forget the past and live only in the present," no matter who touts it, is not just immature and irresponsible; it stems from self-deceit.

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