Kashimiri Identity
By Navnita Chadha Behera
Himal Magazine
27 June, 2003The Kashmir problem has dominated the news from the Subcontinent for half a century, and the headlines have been fast and frequent since 1989 when separatist violence and military crackdown became the order of the day. While the Indian government buys time with standard promises of discussing the "quantum of autonomy" to be provided the people of Kashmir, Pakistani politicians use the Kashmir issue as a bully pulpit to prove their own nationalist credentials and to arouse passions against India, in their view the "occupying power".
Lost in the Indo Pak rhetoric and the breathless coverage of the militancy is the root cause of the problem, which has to do with recognising and legitimising a people's identity. And in Kashmir, there is actually more than one layer of identity. First, is the identity of the Kashmiris of the Valley, whose grievance against the Indian state forms the core of the present phase of turmoil in the state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). Then there are the numerous sub-identities within the state, which do exist, and whose proponents have their own set of grievances against Srinagar, and who complain that their problems have been eclipsed by the high profile demands of Kashmir Valley.
A resolution of the Kashmir problem is not possible if national level politicians fail to take account of the cultural self image of Kashmiris. By the same token, peace will not arrive within J&K if Srinagar based politicians do not understand the regional aspirations in the state's constituent units—Jammu and Ladakh. Thus, the Srinagar leadership which holds high the banner of Kashmiri cultural identity (Kashmiriyat) will be challenged in its turn to grant an adequate "quantum of autonomy" to the sub regional groupings.
The state of J&K is presently ideally placed to resolve both its external and internal problems at one go. For the first time after seven years of Central rule, the state has an elected government under Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, who seems sensitive to the need of the hour. In the same breath in which he demands self rule for J&K within India, since his election he has promised autonomy for Jammu and Ladakh. The future of J&K, it seems, will be decided upon the ability of Farooq Abdullah to deliver, which will in turn be partially determined by the understanding and support he receives from New Delhi.
Kashmiri and/or Muslim
Gulab Singh, a Dogra from the Jammu region, was made Raja of the State of Jammu by the Sikh ruler Maharaja Ranjit Singh in 1820. Within the next two decades, Gulab Singh conquered Ladakh and Baltistan. In March 1846, for his neutrality during the First Anglo Sikh War, the British under the Treaty of Amritsar granted Gulab Singh dominion over the Valley of Kashmir. Thus were the fates of Jammu and Kashmir first linked, as parts of a Dogra ruled princely state. Under the rule of the Hindu Dogras, Kashmir Valley's Muslim population faced religion-based discrimination. Their mosques and shrines were taken over by the government and they were treated as a subject race. The Valley's peasants were not allowed proprietary rights over land and had to provide forced labour. Taxes on the peasantry were high, and the oppressive bureaucracy was manned by outsiders—Dogras and Punjabis. Muslims were excluded from the military and from state services, and commerce was dominated by Dogras. Low level jobs went to the indigenous Brahmins, known as Kashmiri Pandits.
The discriminatory state policies promoted a sense of solidarity among the Muslims against the Hindus and a territorial consciousness among the Kashmiri Muslims against the Jammu Dogras. Over the course of a century, therefore, a sense of separateness based on ethno religious alignments developed—'Dogras versus Kashmiris' and 'Muslims versus Hindus'. The year 1931 saw the first organised mass agitation against the Dogra Maharaja Kashmir's Muslims. Although the political movement had socio economic roots, the Kashmiri articulated the all pervasive feeling of injustice in religious terms: the 'Muslim' majority being oppressed by a 'Hindu' Maharaja. The clarion call of "Nara Takbir, Allah o Akbar, Islam khatre mein", warning of the danger to Islam, activated the mass. The religious cleavage was further sharpened as the exhorted the Maharaja to crush the rebellion.
It was the British, however, who moved decisively and forced the Maharaja to suppress the 1931 agitation, which made the Muslim leaders realise that Hari Singh was but an instrument of the colonial power. They saw that the exploitative nature of the state had less to do with the ethno lineage of the Maharaja and more to do with British colonial interests. This understanding acted as a catalyst in the construction of a new 'secular' and 'regional' Kashmiri identity comprising of the oppressed sections of society irrespective of their regional and religious affiliations vis a vis autocratic Dogra rule and British imperialism. Accordingly, the Muslim Conference, the grouping which was leading the fight against the ruler, converted itself into the All Jammu and Kashmir National Conference in June 1939. In the mid 1940s, Sheikh Abdullah launched a "Quit Kashmir" movement, and articulated the National Conference's demand for responsible and representative government in J&K. The movement sought an end to Dogra rule and insisted on the right of the people rather than the Maharaja to decide on the future status of what was till then a princely state.
Sheikh Abdullah now formulated the people's right of self determination in terms of a "cultural nationality" even though earlier he had conceptualised it in regional and more secular terms, roping in "all communities in the State including Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs". The Kashmiri self-image promoted by Sheikh Abdullah, however, was not the only player in the field. The aboriginal Muslim identity continued to provide an alternative rallying point for those who believed that Hindus and Muslims were two separate nations. In the early 1940s, a revived Muslim Conference demanded, among other things, the reservation of services for Muslims in proportion to their population, the abolition of laws prohibiting cow slaughter, withdrawal of the Devanagari script from state schools, and amendment of the Hindu Personal Law of Inheritance.
This tussle for primacy between the Kashmiri and Muslim identity was still on when the British transfer of power and the Doctrine of Paramountcy left the fate of J&K state in the hands of Maharaja Hari Singh. According to the Doctrine, after the British transfer of power to India and Pakistan, the British suzerainty over the princely states lapsed and all rights surrendered to the paramount power would revert back. This allowed the states, for one thing, to decide their own future course of action in relation to Partition. Before Hari Singh could decide on the question of accession, raiders from Pakistan invaded Kashmir in October 1947. The Maharaja sought India's military help and after signing the Instrument of Accession on 26 October 1947, New Delhi sent troops to Kashmir. A military confrontation ensued and a ceasefire line has since divided the state of Jammu and Kashmir into two parts.
Incomplete Without Kashmir
The 1947 division of Jammu and Kashmir also marked the territorial bifurcation of the two contending identities. The Mirpur, Muzaffarabad and Poonch areas, strongholds of the Muslim Conference where the Islamic identity was most ascendant, came under Pakistan's control. Kashmir Valley and the Jammu region, where the Kashmiri identity was popularised by the National Conference, was retained by India. This division also had linguistic and religious dimensions. Punjabi was the main language in Mirpur and Muzaffarabad, whereas the Valley Muslims mostly spoke Kashmiri. While Kashmiri Islam was eclectic and had Sufi leanings, Muslims outside the Valley were mostly traditional Sunnis. All too quickly, the Kashmiri and Muslim identities also got closely linked to the 'national' identities of the two countries created by Partition—India's secular nationalism and Pakistan's Islamic ideology. For India, Kashmir served as a powerful symbol of its secular nationalism, by showcasing a Muslim majority region choosing to live and prosper within a Hindu majority country. Conversely, Pakistani nationalism saw Kashmir as integral to its Islamic identity: if a Muslim majority area contiguous to Pakistan remained in India, the original justification for a Muslim state would be weakened. Since each country considered itself to be 'incomplete' without Kashmir, the ideological conflict lingered over the decades.
As for the Kashmiri leadership, led by Sheikh Abdullah it opted for India. The democratic, federal and secular nature of the Indian state was more compatible with the Kashmiri vision of their own state as conceptualised in the Naya Kashmir manifesto than the feudal, autocratic and religiously driven Pakistan. The manifesto, which had been released by the National Conference in 1944, proposed a blueprint to fulfil the vision of a "new Kashmir".
Sheikh Abdullah realised that Jawaharlal Nehru's concept of a pluralistic Indian identity offered much better political space for protecting and nurturing a Kashmiri identity, whereas the Pakistani leadership had made it clear that any ethnic or linguistic aspiration would have be to be subordinated to the Pakistani state's Islamic personality. This was a discussion the National Conference itself had transcended years ago. Nehru, for his part, was keen to retain Kashmir within the Indian Union in order to establish his thesis of an Indian nationalism that was independent of religion. This served to counter both the "two nation theory" of Pakistan and Hindu nationalism at home. In those early years after Partition, and with no inkling of the continuous turmoil that would visit J&K, Sheikh Abdullah and Pandit Nehru supported and reinforced each other.
Homo Indicus
After 1947, in the Indian context, the dialectic of Kashmiri self image evolved not only in relation the 'national' Indian identity but also in relation to the budding regional and religious sub identities of the Dogra Hindu majority Jammu, and Tibetan Buddhist majority Ladakh. With the abolition of Dogra rule, the seat of political power in the state of J&K shifted to the Valley and Srinagar town. However, unlike the Valley population, the leadership of Ladakh and Jammu favoured a full integration with India. They resented what they saw as an inadequate share in the J&K's new political dispensation. The two regions did not have independent political representation (except through National Conference channels) in the state's Constituent Assembly, which created a political structure with power concentrated in the Valley.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Pandit as Kafir
The new secessionists also succeeded in changing the basic character of the Kashmiri identity and distinguishing between 'Kashmiri Muslim' and 'Kashmiri Pandit'. There was no security for the latter once the Hizbul Mujahideen announced their goal of creating a Nizam i Mustafa (Islamic state) in the Valley, and the mosques issued the ultimatums to Hindus, "Agar Kashmir mein rehna hoga, Allah Allah kahna hoga" (If you want to continue to live in Kashmir, you will have to pray to none but Allah). Targeting the Pandits who manned the Central government offices, the Jamaat i Islami party declared a war on "Kafirs—the Batta, the first symbol of India in Kashmir". Batta is a local word for 'Brahmin' and is used derogatorily to refer to Pandits.The Indian government's inaction or inability to provide security to the Kashmiri Hindus and its acquiescence to their leaving the Valley, only facilitated the divide. The result of Hindu baiting by the militants was the exodus of 260,000 Pandits. Their experience has now, on the rebound, politicised Kashmiri Pandits along religious lines. In seeking the support of political groups in Delhi and elsewhere, they now characterise themselves as the original indigenous people of Kashmir. They present newly revived accounts of centuries of religious, linguistic and political persecution by Muslim rulers and quote from the Rajatarangini, a 12th-century work on Kashmir's history. They claim that the original Sharda script of the Kashmiri language was destroyed when the language was forcibly Persianised. More recently, says the Pandit leadership, successive State governments have delimited election constituencies in such a way that it is impossible to send a Pandit candidate to the State Assembly. In order to secure their distinct identity, therefore, the Pandits have placed a demand for a separate homeland for the Kashmiri Pandits. This Panun Kashmir (Our Homeland) would comprise areas to the east and north of river Jhelum in Kashmir Valley. The Pandits seek Union Territory status for this homeland, with full application of the Indian Constitution.
Jammu and Ladakh
Ever since the failure of the Praja Parishad movement in the early 1950s, the religious identity of Jammu's Dogra population has been subdued. Instead, it is their regional aspirations which are being put forward through different political platforms. Balraj Puri, a contemporary of Sheikh Abdullah's, has since the 1950s been pleading for more internal autonomy for Jammu. His Jammu Autonomy Forum, which was a secular organisation, argued that while the special status for J&K should be retained, the unitary structure of the state must be scrapped as it was the root cause of intra regional inequities. The Forum proposed a five tier constitutional setup in the state that would include regional, district, block and panchayat levels, with a high degree of internal autonomy conferred upon each tier.
An alternative proposal, supported by the Bharatiya Janata Party, has been put forward more recently, to set up a statutory Autonomous Regional Council for Jammu along the pattern of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council. The Council would be a democratically run political agency to guide the socio economic development of the Jammu region. Meanwhile, a new political organisation called the Jammu Mukti Morcha has recently raised the demand for a three-way division of the State into Jammu, the Valley and Ladakh. Some analysts believe the Morcha is a creation of the Central government, to be used as a bargaining chip in its negotiations with the Kashmiri leadership on the overall question of the state's autonomy. The Jammu region is fractured by yet one more layer of sub regional ethno lingual identities. The Gujjar are a predominantly nomadic Muslim tribe who form the third largest community in the state after the Kashmiri Muslims and Jammu Dogras. Gujjars were first politicised in the 1970s when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi cultivated them and propped them up as a possible counter weight to the Valley Muslims. The first step in this direction was the recognition of the Gojri language and allocation of time on J&K radio for its programmes. The Gujjars' quest for a Scheduled Tribe status under the Indian Constitution, which provides recognition and some privileges, however, took a long time to achieve and was finally granted only by the Chandra Shekhar government, in 1991.
The coddling of the Gujjars, in turn, provided the stimulus for the politicisation of the Pahari speaking population in Rajouri and Poonch districts. This time, not one community but a mix of Rajput Muslims, Kashmiri Muslims, Hindus of different castes and Sikhs have come together under a single linguistic banner. They seek recognition of their common Pahari language, and Scheduled Tribe status for all its speakers. In the meantime, the six million Dogri speaking Dogras of Jammu district continue their long standing stir to seek inclusion of their language in the Eighth Schedule. In Ladakh, whose Tibetan culture is even further removed from Kashmir Valley than the various communities of Jammu, the politicisation of the regional identity started soon after the transfer of power in J&K to the Valley's leadership in 1948. At various times, the Ladakhis demanded union territory status or centrally administered rule like the one which existed for the North Eastern Frontier Agency.
Sheikh Abdullah's response to these autonomy demands was to try and divide the Ladakhis on the basis of religion. He created two districts, the Buddhist majority Leh and the Shia Muslim majority Kargil. This helped politicise the religious component of the Ladakhis' identity and later created a communal divide between the Buddhist and Shia Muslims which shook the roots of Ladakh's centuries-old legacy of co existence. Leh's Buddhist leaders charged the Kashmiri Muslims with proselytising in Ladakh. The Kashmiris' domination of the tourism and handicraft trade was also greatly resented. In 1991 92, the Buddhist population came out vociferously against Kashmiri Muslims and pointedly enforced a social and economic "boycott" against them.
At the same time, Leh's leaders felt that Kargil was getting favourable treatment from Srinagar, and the State government, in turn, used the Kargil population as a counter weight to the Buddhists' demand for regional autonomy. When the Kargil Muslims opposed the Leh Buddhists' demand for Union territory status, the latter imposed a social and economic boycott of Shia Muslims. The movement spearheaded by Buddhist youth turned violent, it seemed, because they saw it as the only means of drawing the Centre's attention to their situation. In October 1993, the Ladakh Buddhist Association dropped its demand for Union Territory status in favour of a tripartite agreement for constituting a popularly elected Autonomous Hill Council for Leh district. The Council was finally established in May 1995, while the district of Kargil is yet to make up its mind on the issue.
Job for Farooq
Elections for J&K's State Assembly were held in August September 1996 after a long gap of nine years, and the National Conference of Farooq Abdullah—the Sheikh's son—won with a comfortable majority. These elections, and a previous exercise which elected six MPs from the state to the national Parliament, now provide a viable political mechanism with which to tackle the Kashmir issue. The moment is also propitious as militancy is at its lowest ebb since 1989. The National Conference has always stood for Kashmiriyat and its unqualified victory in the Assembly elections may well mark the beginning of the marginalisation of the religious component and re assertion of the Conference's cultural ethos. However, the Chief Minister faces great odds; first and foremost, the challenge posed by the political leadership of the All Party Hurriyat Conference, which rejected the polls, and the militants who could wreck the best intentioned plans. Besides, the bitterness among the Kashmiri Pandits against Kashmiri Muslims runs deep.
It also remains an open question whether Farooq Abdullah will be able to overcome the political resistance within the Valley to his plans to provide internal autonomy to the Jammu and Ladakh regions while keeping them within J&K. However, he has made a start. On 19 October, he announced his plan for "equal and judicious" power-sharing among the three regions of Jammu, Kashmir Valley and Ladakh, to be implemented within a year. The Chief Minister has also set up a committee headed by Karan Singh—the philosopher politician who happens to be the son and heir of Maharaja Hari Singh—to examine the whole gamut of issues relating to political autonomy at the sub regional, regional and state levels. Besides the question of Srinagar's relations with the regions, is the all important matter of building bridges between the Kashmiri identity and the Indian identity. Both, Srinagar and New Delhi face a difficult task but this may well be their last chance to try to work out a formula. Farooq Abdullah is India's best bet in J&K. His position on J&K being an integral part of India has been unequivocal and consistent throughout his political career. Within the Valley, he still enjoys the people's support as the leader of National Conference, the only party with a grassroots support base. The Centre must, therefore, without further delay honour its commitment to grant maximum internal autonomy to J&K. There is, after all, near total national consensus in India on the matter, with the exception of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Autonomy is crucial not only to re establish the credibility of Farooq Abdullah in J&K state politics but also that of the Indian state among the Kashmiri people. While analysing what it means to be Kashmiri, it is also important to take a second look at what it means to be 'Indian'. For, 50 years after Independence, the Centre and the 'establishment' which sets the national agenda must learn to be comfortable with the fact that India is a mosaic of often overlapping cultures, populated by people who tend to have multiple identities. The political expression of regional aspirations in such a country, therefore, cannot be seen any more as a threat to national unity. Finally, there is the Indo Pak factor which tends to keep the Kashmir issue hostage. New Delhi must realise that Kashmir cannot serve as a symbol of secularism if the Kashmiris are being kept within India against their will. Islamabad should understand that Kashmir's accession to Pakistan will hardly justify its Islamic ideology, for when it comes to the crunch Kashmiris identify more with their ethno cultural identity than with Islam.
State Policy
There are, thus, three levels of inter linking identities at play on the Kashmir stage. The national 'Indian' identity, by not giving adequate political space to the Kashmiri 'regional' identity, sharpens the latter's sense of self awareness. While the Kashmiri identity seeks 'maximum' political autonomy from the larger Indian identity, it is reluctant to share that political space with the 'sub regional' identities—those subsumed within Jammu and Ladakh. This, in turn, sharpens the self image of the people of Jammu and Ladakhi. The circle of inter linkages becomes complete when the sub regional identities in Jammu and Ladakh seek to align themselves with the national ("Indian") identity. In all this, it is the policy of the state—in the first instance, that of the Indian nation state and then that of J&K state—which provides the key variable to this making and unmaking of identities.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------N.C. Behera is with the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.