Kargil: Threshold of Crusades

by Dr. MK Teng

The war in Kargil, contrary to the  view unexpectedly held by the Indian government and which found favour with those who claimed expertise on Indo-Pakistan relations, was not an isolated eruption of a border conflict or a military expedition of the Pakistan army across the Line of Control. In India, a prismatic sense of self-mortification prevails in the government, as well as in the minds of those who run it that there is always, a cause which has its origin outside the Muslim community for whatever, happens inside its folds. Perhaps, the right of self determination which Pakistan alleged, had been denied to the people of Jammu and Kashmir, was also an alibi, which had its origin in India, and which was perhaps, devised for the convenience of Pakistan. For the fact, that neither the transfer of power in the British India, nor the lapse of the Paramountcy in the States,  accepted self-determination for any of the peoples in India: those inhabiting the British India, which was divided and those inhabiting the India of the princely States. Indeed, the partition was a denial of the right of self-determination of the Indian people, who except the Muslims-a small minority in the Indian population, opposed the division of India.

For whatever, was accomplished after the partition to locate the blame for the communal divide, the censure fell, partly on the British and partly on the Hindus of India, who were erroneously believed to have determined the policies of the Government of India, providing a clean chit to the Muslim League and the Muslims of India: the real force which brought about the partition of India. Pakistan  cried hoarse and rightly that the Muslims in India and not the British had created the Muslim homeland for Pakistan, concieved as a major step in the direction of the freedom of the Muslim Umah. Indeed, the British acted as catalysts.

The objective of Pakistan was delineated by the Indian Muslims. Sir Mohammad Iqbal and Mohammad Ali Jinnah provided the ideological content to the Muslim movement for Pakistan, a fact, which is clearly revealed by the correspondence Iqbal had with Jinnah till his death. The major tactical manoeuvre the Direct Action, which overwhelmed the Congress leadership, and brought it down to its knees to accept the partition, was envisaged by the Muslims of India. The British did not divide India. The Muslim of India divided it.

Sooner than expected, however, a conscious effort was made, first, to put the blame for the partition of India on the British and after that was achieved, put a part of the blame on the Congress leadership. The Muslims in India could do no wrong, and therefore, they could not be accused of having done the wrong of dividing the country.

The Indian perspectives continued to be warbled and the separatist demand for a Muslim majority state of Jammu and Kashmir, to exclude it from the secular constitutional organisation of India on the basis of the Muslim majority character of its population looked for its rationale, not in Muslim communalism, which it blatantly reflected, but in the quest for a sub-national identity which was claimed to represent a secular ideal.

Much worse, the long secessionist struggle, spearheaded by the Plebiscite Front, in search for the self-determination of the Muslims, was insistently characterised as a movement which did not support Pakistan and the so-called two-nation theory of the Muslim League. The demand for a second Muslim state of Jammu and Kashmir, which the Plebiscite Front and the other secessionists organisation made, was justified as a secular movement because it did not underline this demand for the accession of the Jammu and Kashmir State to Pakistan, but claimed a second partition of India to create another independent Muslim state of Jammu and Kashmir. After the front leaders formally adorned the garb of secular patriotism in 1975 they were suddenly, hailed as the harbingers of a new age of secular history in India. However, they pursued their own agenda and as Afzal Beg, the President of the Front, had promised his cadres, that the Front would enter the government “to wreck India from within”, they followed their objectives with meticulous care and ruthless effect. The leadership of the militant flanks which launched the war of attrition in the state against India in 1989, came from the two generations of the Muslims, who were socialised to secessionism and Pakistan for two and half decades of the movement led by the Plebscite Front in the State.

The Muslim international underlined by the Islamic revolution provided the secessionist movement in the state, with a new basis for pan-Islamic unity and a new thrust for the achievement of the freedom of the Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir. A self conscious Indian leadership, driven by compulsions beyond ordinary human comprehension, sought to camouflage the fundamentalist, communal and separatist content of the Muslim militancy by offering theoretical explanations, like the “alienation syndrome”, “poverty” “unemployment” and of  course”, the inducement of Pakistan to misguide the Muslim youth”.

The Janata government, which owed much to the most irridentist leadership of the Indian Muslims, for their support in the elections, blamed everyone, except  the Muslims, for the militant violence in Kashmir. They blamed the Hindus in Jammu and Kashmir as well as in India for having scuttled the aspirations of the Muslims to autonomy, political participation and economic prosperity. They blamed the successive Congress governments of having rigged the elections in the State to userp political power and oppress the Muslims. The Congress which returned to power  after the Janata broke up, gave its own version of the eruption of the Muslim militancy in Kashmir and with an abject sense of self-condemnation, blamed its own leadership of having deprived the Muslims in Kashmir of the autonomy which their illustrious predecssors had promised them. Some of the Congress leaders carried their argument to absurd extremes, claiming that the crusade carried on by the militants and their Muslim supporters in Jammu and Kashmir, did not support the two-nation theory, on which Pakistan was based and the version of the Islamic Revolution the militant regimes in Jammu and Kashmir advocated was basically secular in character, and upheld the “tradition of tolerance and amity”, of the Muslim society in Kashmir.

The Congress government indeed, had no qualms to inform the National Human Rights Commission that half a million of Hindus had migrated out of their homes of their own volition, visibly seeking to convince the Commission that the Muslims in Kashmir were in no way involved in the ethnic cleansing of the Hindus from Kashmir. The Congress leaders avoided to refer to the genocide of the Hindus and their ethnic cleansing from Kashmir, lest they be rightly understood or misunderstood for what they said. For a long time, the Indian government and the Indian leadership, reluctantly referred to the complicity of Pakistan in the war of attrition in the State, using vague and often misleading chiches, to evade an indictment of the Muslims whether in
Jammu and Kashmir or in Pakistan.

The Indian Muslims, who had stakes in the secular integration of the Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir in the constitutional organisation of India and who vigorously supported the secularisation of the state and society in the rest of India vigorously aplauded the demand for Islamisation of the State under the garb of its sub-national identity. They insisted upon guarantees to secure the Muslims in India against the religious precedence of the Hindu majority and demanded the enforcement of the right to equality and right to protection against discrimination on the basis of religion. But they opposed the secularisation of the Jammu and Kashmir State and its integration in the Indian political structure. While secularism was necessary to protect the Muslim minority in India, religious precedence of Islam was necessary to protect the Muslims majority in Jammu and Kashmir, the only Muslim majority State in India.

The violence, with which the Muslims backed up their demand for Pakistan in 1946, when the League launched the ‘Direct Action’ campaign, was characterised  by Jinnah himself as the Muslim struggle for freedom from India. The long war of subversion unleased by Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir, is not different in its objectives as well as its character from the ‘Direct Action’ campaign, which led to the partition of India. The Muslim struggle in Kashmir is relatively a wider phenomenon and involves the commitment of the Muslim international with Pakistan as one of its epicentries to force a second partition on India, and cut off its northern regions, Jammu and Kashmir, followed by the planes of the Punjab and hills of Himachal Pradesh and make way for the Muslims to expand eastwards. Expansion to the east which the Nazis in their time, claimed for Germany as the inevitable Drag Natch Osten’, has ominous forebodings for India. Pakistan is an ideological state, and not different from the ideological states, fascism, nazism and communism reared. India is on the frontline of  the Muslim expansionist movements towards the east.

The eruption of the military activity in Kargil, which Pakistan claimed was a part of the crusade in Kashmir, carried by the Muslim Mujahideen represented the Islamic international, should leave no one in doubt about its objectives. The Kargil war, is a part of the long war Pakistan is waging against India to grab the Jammu and Kashmir, with a measured purpose: the de-Sanskritisation of the Himalayan frontier to integrate the Himalayas in the Central Asian Complex, which is dominantly Muslim. The Islamisation of the warm Himalayan hinterland, would ensure the emergence of the Muslims as the main power in Central Asia. And once they establish their power over Central Asia, they will extend their sway over South Asia and South East Asia. Placed along the soft frontiers of Russia as well as the turbulent Muslim majority border states of Western China, including Sinkiang, they would be able to force a realignment of power in Asia. The de-Sanskritisation of the Himalayas is the most crucial achievement Pakistan seeks to accomplish. For if the Himalayas are lost, the entire northern India will lose its geo-strategic defences against the invasion from the north.

Kargil is not an isolated act of military activity of Pakistan. For the ideological state of Pakistan, the soldiers of its army, the Afghan Taliban, the Sudanese and the Arab Mujahideen, are all pioneers of the Muslim crusade, indistinguishable from the Mujahidin raised from among the Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir. Kargil war is an integral part of the ideological war, which Pakistan has carried on against India for the last five decades. Crusade is the character of an ideological state and Muslim crusade in Jammu and Kashmir should be viewed as a real threat to the national security of India. Kargil is a warning of the growing danger, India is faced with in its north. Ideological crusades assume varied forms, and the liberation armies, which lead the crusades follow their own agenda. They are not subject to the civilisational values, which India claims to be the basis of its secularism. The genocide of Hindus and their ethnic cleansing from Kashmir has amply proved that.

Source: Kashmir Sentinel