Kashmiri
Nation- An Identity
Of Their Own
By Rizwana Abbasi
07 April,
2008
Countercurrents.org
Looking at the media headlines you will not fail to notice Kashmir popping up for tragic bursts on most occasions as against the idyllic scenarios in the travel features. On a lower keynote the world community recognises Kashmir either linked to Pakistan or as a part and parcel of India--- with none of its own Kashmiri identity and thousands of years of its glorious history.
The Kashmiri nation is wildly misunderstood and portrayed as militant and terrorist at worst or obscurantist, uncivilised, and passive at its mediocre best. Neither the legitimacy of the Kashmiri struggle is recognised nor the originality of its civilization identified. The history of the nation is undoubtedly as old as the era of Alexander the Great.
Throughout its tumultuous history, it has maintained its original status either as an independent state or as part of a federation. Unlike other states, whenever forced to join a new empire ruling the subcontinent, it joined it as a State in its own right without being subsumed into a sub-State. As an example of heaven on earth, it inevitably attracted the attention of every ruler of the subcontinent.
Being a Kashmiri, I would strongly maintain that Kashmiris are a civilised, adaptable, pragmatic and a rational nation and inheritors of the Central Asian and the Persian empires of yore. They have always preferred dialogue over violence, wisdom over ignorance, prudence over intolerance, flexibility over rigidity without compromising their principles and identity. The scholastic touch of Shah Hamadan and the Sufist touch of several other saints transformed the social and intellectual fibre of the Kashmiri nation.
Their non-violent struggle until the beginning of the 1990s bears testimony to their civility and faith in the peaceful resolution of even the most complex issues. But the Indian government failed to convince them through logic on the basis of secularist principles and tried to eliminate their will through violent means. Rape, torture, ruthlessness, genocide, demographic changes, plunder of the cultural heritage, destruction of property and destabilisation of peace were the tactics adopted by the Indian military and paramilitary forces. Those who had always believed in peaceful negotiations and rationalism were forced to alter their centuries’ old civilised temperament.
Through its media manipulations India has projected Kashmir as highly destabilising force at the regional and global level. It has wilfully and cunningly tried to misinterpret and misrepresent its hold on the people of Kashmir. India has tried to invent linkages with international terrorist networks. According to this projection, the original Kashmir struggle has been hijacked, or virtually hijacked, by certain outside fanatical groups committed to violence. The undermining of the traditional peaceful coexistence of Muslim and Pundits seems to epitomise the argument.
The Kashmiri nation stands divided in three parts -- with India, with Pakistan and with China. People talk of bilateralism and multilateralism, in total disregard of the will and full participation of the Kashmiri Muslim masses. All the human rights conventions, protocols and principles to which India might normally seem to be committed provided them the right to determine their future through a fair and transparent plebiscite. The logic of dividing Kashmir on the basis of convenience and expediency has neither been accepted by Kashmiris in the past nor is it likely to be accepted by them in the future.
The Kashmiri nation will never be impressed by the spurious gestures of secularism of Indian politicians or the radicalism of the Taliban. They have their own identity and a rich one at that. Kashmiris cannot sacrifice their coming generations at the altar of seemingly playful whims of successive Indian and Pakistani governments. The aggressive, parochial, myopic, chauvinistic attitudes of past regimes have delivered nothing to the Kashmiri nation except abject poverty, stagnation and marginalization and huge investments in defence. It is high time that both governments use the current CBMs as a good omen towards the resolution of the Kashmir Issue.
The mediators and negotiators must however refrain from dividing Kashmir on the basis of their convenience, thus compromising the age-old identity of Kashmiris. It is high time that the legitimate rights of the Kashmiri masses and their national status is recognised. The game of dividing Kashmir will otherwise lead to the most devastating repercussions for centuries to come. Similarly, a fictional independence of Kashmir would also introduce potentially horrendous consequences for world peace since landlocked Kashmir is surrounded by three nuclear weapons states. The presence of nuclear arsenals in the region, recent rapid defence developments of China and India, Indian ambitions to adopt an NMD system of its own, and its defence engagement with developed states such as the United States and Israel do not permit Kashmiris to maintain their independent status.
Nevertheless, independently, Kashmiris are able to survive on economic grounds as they belong to a rich land, which has four resources: water, forests, rich agriculture and mountains. A few days back, I held a meeting with Professor Nazir A. Shawl, executive director of the Kashmir Justice Centre, London. His substantial and visionary perspective on Kashmir is truly convincing. He has praised President Musharraf’s approach towards the resolution of the Kashmir issue and concluded that President’s four points towards the resolution of the issue are the only available option which do not undermine any of the nations’ rights. The Indian government must consider President Musharraf’s points as its top agenda to facilitate the Kashmir peace process.
The new regime in Pakistan needs to proceed further with President Musharraf’s Kashmir policy and engage the international community, to resolve this long-standing issue in order to maintain global peace and security. According to Professor Richard Bonney of the University of Leicester, “the British Government has a moral responsibility on this issue; after all, the borders of the two countries at the time of the partition were apparently changed over lunch by the then British viceroy Lord Mountbatten without realising the full ramifications.”
The international community must understand the Kashmiris’ right of self-determination and encourage India to come forward not just to the conference table but at long last to the ‘resolution of conflict table’. If the Kashmir issue is not resolved promptly, the growing expansion of defence capabilities in the region will have catastrophic results. In a war between India and Pakistan – a war which we are told is ‘unthinkable’, but which is still possible given the posture of the two armed forces and the political establishments -- Kashmiris will fall the victim of the first use of nuclear arsenals in the sub-Continent. This is an outcome which sixty years of fruitless negotiations to date ought to have taught us to avoid at all costs.
The writer
is a PhD student at the University of Leicester, UK
[email protected]
