Zakhmoo Ki Zabani
Commented upon by
Prof. M.L. Koul
Author: Pandit Rishidev, Zanipora, Anantnag
Pages: 256 Price : Rs. 100/-
Pandit Rishidev who is a native of Zainpora, tehsil
Shopian, Kashmir has remained a political activist of long standing. The Muslim
communalists were as cruel to him as to Kashmiri Pandits in general even though
he had been deeply wedded to the cause of peasant welfare and upliftment.
Rishidev’s role in the initiation and implementation of purposeful schemes and
projects directly related to agricultural operations for increased yield has
been widely acclaimed even by his adversaries with communal motivations. Like
all Kashmiri Pandits he was driven out of his home and hearth and as a
consequence has been wallowing in exile for the past eleven years. His house at
Zainapora has been blazed by vandals drawing support from the local Muslim
population. In his 155-paged book titled as ‘Zakhmoo Ki Zabani’,
essentially a memoir, he has delved in the repertoire of his political
experiences with an attempt to put it in perspective. It is pertinent to put
that Rishidev in his political career spanning five decades, has had
affiliations with National Conference, Indian National Congress, Communist Party
of India, Democratic National Conference and Kashmiri Pandit organisations.
The ferocious loot, plunder and murder of Kashmiri
Pandits in 1931 has found many proponents who have invented the spurious thesis
of ‘political and economic oppression of Muslims by the ruling class and their
henchmen’ and justified the loot as the struggle of enslaved people against the
despotic rule, despite its aggressively communal complexion in its outward form.
To cover up the role of marauders a researcher in his thesis has shifted the
scene of bigotry and belligerence from Kashmir to Punjab with a view to tracing
its communal hue and motivation. In his vivid account of 1931 happenings
Rishidev has debunked the text-book formulations of ‘political and economic
oppression’, ‘victimized and enslaved people’ and ‘despotic rule’ and has
focussed on the communally tainted pathological mind that has been ruling roost
in Kashmir seeking satiation in infliction of atrocities of loot, arson and
murder on Kashmiri Pandit minority.
But, sad as it is, Rishidev, though having a bias for
Marxist ideology, has not put the 1931 loot in its proper perspective by probing
the role of political and communal forces that planned and executed the loot and
murder. He has spared the Reading Room Party which had forged links and
alliances with the British Political Department Ahmadiyas. The loot of Kashmiri
Pandits was part of a bigger game. The Britishers wanted the Maharaja to
abdicate his sovereignty over Gilgit which had emerged as a strategic point on
the chess-board of British politics in the region. Through loot Kashmiri
Pandits were punished for the expression of their patriotic sentiment when they
made a bonfire of foreign goods. The correspondence between BJ Glanay, L.E. Lang
and other British spies and Sheikh Abdullah was first splashed by the Blitz
issued from Bombay and found detailed analysis in the ‘Tragedy of Kashmir’, a
book authored by H.L. Sexena and banned by the Government of Jammu and Kashmir.
Ahmadiyas though hated and shunned as deviants from Islam had clandestine links
with the leader of the Reading Room Party. Punjab being their main operational
base they spent fabulous sums to fan out in Kashmir.
Despite giving some details about the horrendous loot of
1931, Rishidev has not probed the vicious role of Qadeer, a man from Peshawar
and a waiter in the employ of an English army officer. His sudden appearance in
the mosque of Mir Ali Hamdani, where Muslims had collected in considerable
numbers for a political act of choosing their representatives for an audience
with the Maharaja was not and could not be accidental. In fact, the whole game
plan was pre-thought and pre-planned. Qadeer’s venomous oratory which M.J Akbar
lauds ignited the communal trigger resulting in the loot, arson and murder of
Kashmiri Pandits throughout the Valley. To be more precise, Qadeer was an
Ahmadiya plant and the same was corroborated by Molvi Yousuf Shah, Mirwaiz of
Kashmir, who was interviewed by Ghulam Hasan Khan, an author on post-1931
political developments in Kashmir.
Owing allegiance to communist politics Rishidev could be
one of those Kashmiri Pandit political activists who ideologically believed in
the efficacy of land reforms and liquidation of rural debts as twin measures for
retrieval of peasantry from economic backwardness. That was how D.P. Dhar who
rose to be a central minister was the first to surrender his lands to the Muslim
tenants without any consideration. Jia Lal Taimiri who was known for his
proverbial honesty and kept a vigilant eye on the corruption and kitties of
National Conference leaders and hence detested had also surrendered his lands to
the tenants much before the land grab had started. Taimiri was a socialist by
conviction. The Muslim leaders of National Conference vintage never emulated or
appreciated the extra-ordinary precedent set by the two prominent leaders of
Kashmiri Pandits. Instead what they did was to project the Kashmiri Pandits as a
community of exploiters.. The fact was that Kashmiri Pandits, not all, but some
of them like Muslims, were petty chakdars who had sold their precious assets and
ornaments to purchase land. In Mirpur the land was owned by the Muslim
land-lords who had been more cruel to their co-religionist tenants than their
counter-parts elsewhere. Curiously they were not projected as exploiters of
Muslims. Instead Hindu Mahajans pursuing the indigenous system of banking were
focussed as the ‘target group’ and ruthlessly harassed and looted by the ‘Jathas’
(groups) despatched from the Punjab by the Ahrars who had pretensions to
secularism and deserted the Congress ranks in the wake of the formation of
Muslim League for the avowed objective of a separate land for Muslims.
The Kashmiri Pandit communists and radical humanists as
the innovators of land reforms in terms of an ideograph never controverted the
malicious disinformation unleashed by the Muslim leadership of National
Conference against Pandit minority in general. The fact is that they were
rootless people mired in the quagmire of fantasy leagues away from any
commitment to the weal and welfare of the community. Unthinkingly and myopically
they pandered the politics of Muslim majoritarianism wedded to the idea of
entrenching itself in the state power in perpetuity. Sad as it is, they were
completely ignorant of their past history of gore and blood and failed to learn
lessons from history with a view to shaping their reasonable responses to the
challenges emerging for them as a vulnerable community. It was absolutely bad
politics as to have lent unqualified support to the forces of Muslim
sub-nationalism unfolding under an elusive facade of left-oriented programmes
and sham slogans. As is known to all and sundry consistency was never a virtue
of Sheikh Abdullah. He tried to draw maximum support from local communists and
communist leadership at national level when he told such elements that he was
following their road-map and implementing their cardinal programmes. In his
meeting with Loy Handerson he allayed his fears about his radicalism when he
told him that he implemented land reforms just to appease communists within
National Conference.
It was not for nothing that Sheikh Abdullah divulged the
land reforms plan in toto from the pulpit of National Conference much before it
was put in practice. The purpose was to tip off in advance all the Muslim
land-lords to negotiate with their Muslim tenants for showing their
land-holdings under self-cultivation or distributing the lands in excess of
standard ceiling among family kins. In the process religious affinities were
exploited to the hilt. Kashmiri Pandits were at a disadvantage as they
subscribed to a different faith. As a matter of prudence a Kashmiri Pandit
land-lord had distributed his broad acres among his family kins much before land
reforms gained momentum to dispossess a small minority. Later on the mutations
attested by the competent revenue authorities were ordered cancelled on the
intervention of Revenue Minister who was brazen in his religious prejudices.
The Land Reforms Committee nominated in April, 1948 was
stuffed with members who were rubber stamps. There was not a single member
equipped with thorough knowledge of all the contemporary models that had been
under experimentation in various countries of the world. Nor were the services
of a reputed economist borrowed to make the exercise rational, fair, meaningful
and purposeful. Why were not the Soviet-type co-operative and collective farms
accepted as a model? Why were not the Brazilian and the Chinese models
considered for implementation? In fact, no studies were made on scientific
lines. No blue-print was spelt out. No long ranging discussions were held with
respect to the whole exercise. The communists made a ridiculous suggestion to
involve ‘peasant committees’ for the stipulated grab. The nominated members felt
proud to mouth panegyrics to the new age lord donning the authority of the
chairman of the committee. Dissent if any was dubbed as treachery. The chairman
alone knew the contours and shades of the plan and modalities of its execution.
The members getting Rs 200/- p.m. were required to repose full faith in the
omniscience of the chairman. The Pandits on the committee were silently told
that in view of the plebiscite being held under UN supervision mass of peasants
had to be won over for India and giving them land on a platter could be the best
bait. This was how Pandit resistance if any to the absurdities of the executive
fiat was eliminated.
The first secretary of the Land Reforms Committee, a
Kashmir, a senior-most Revenue officer, took no time to resign from the
committee when he was apprised of the content and methodology of the land
reforms as the exercise was officially trotted out. He shocked the chairman of
the committee by candidly telling him that he could not be a party to an act
which prima facie was illegal. The Muslim policy as it was then, so it is now
was to involve a Kashmiri Pandit for implementation of the executive fiat of a
sensitive nature. A frantic hunt was launched and the man picked up was a mere
matriculate, pliant and senile, career conscious and myopic. He slavishly
followed the dictates of his new found masters. When he was asked to bend, he
went whole hog for genuflection. The way land reforms were implemented, it
virtually ended in the wresting away of land from Hindus and its transfer to the
Muslims. To have his own pound of flesh, he meekly approached the powers that be
for his elevation to the position and status of the Financial Commissioner. A
vehement ‘no’ from the then Prime Minister of the state sent a chill down his
spine. The Kashmiri Pandit, perhaps, was ignorant of the resolution of the
Muslim Conference submitted to the Maharaja in which among other things it was
clearly spell out that no Kashmiri Pandit should be appointed to the
key-positions in the state administrative apparatus.
The Emergency Administration and the Interim Government
lost no time in embarking upon the loot of the landed properties. Both were
headed by Sheikh Abdullah who chose himself for the echelon and people were
afforded no chance to express their pleasure or displeasure. The land grab
process started when there was no elected legislature, no supervening
constitution spelling out a forum for redressal or restoration of basic rights
if encroached upon. It was a total vacuum which was fraudulently exploited to
snatch away landed properties that were either purchased or legally inherited.
The new bosses having been appointed to the positions at the helm had yet to
establish their representative character under a constitutionally spell-out
democratic process. The loot of landed properties was nearly complete till 1952
when the constituent assembly was constituted under a facade of elections which
did not grant any political space to the opposition groups present in the state.
The bankruptcy of the political leadership in the country became evident when
the list of fundamental rights as incorporated in the Republican Constitution
was not allowed full-scale application to the citizens of Jammu and Kashmir with
a view to facilitate the processes of loot being perpetrated on the bonafide
citizens of the country. The State High Court as appointed by the highly
detested ruler of the state dithered in establishing rule of law under a fear
psychosis generated by the Emergency and Interim Government lineage-lords. In
fact, the accession issue was used, as a weapon of blackmail to weaken the
resolve of the Central government to establish the full-dimensional sovereignty
of the Republican Constitution over the State of Jammu and Kashmir. The then
Indian leadership was shaken in their roots when the five members of the J&K
state refused to bring the state under the purview of the Republican
Constitution. One of the five members was a Hindu from Jammu.
Rishidev is reticent on many issues which have been
raised from time to time in relation to the content and methodology of the land
reforms. He does not confess that the Land Reforms Committee as constituted
under an executive fiat was a mere eye-wash. He does not even dilate upon the
differences that had divided the leadership of the National Conference on some
of the basic issues relating the land reforms. He does not even tell us that the
will of the chairman of the Land Reforms Committee was the ultimate arbiter. He
is silent on the issue of the standard ceiling which was fixed at 182 kanals of
land and does not convey as to why and how it was kept open for future
tamperings to destabilize a vulnerable minority. He does not seem to be aware of
the fact that soon after the abolition of the Big Estates Act of 1952 no fewer
than 10,000 Kashmiri Pandits bid adieu to their land of genesis in search for a
pittance elsewhere.
There are some more vital issues which Rishidev has
failed to ponder and clarify for guidance of the posterity. How was it that the
ceiling was fixed With an individual as a unit of cultivation, not a family? Did
he know its implications? It meant that a family was allowed to have as many
times the amount of ceiling land as the number of sons in the family and their
father. It also meant that they could possess as many times the portions of
exempted lands like bedzars, safedzars et al. It cumulatively meant that a
family was deliberately allowed to own a big landed estate. Rishidev, Dr NN
Raina, Moti Lal Misri, DP Dhar, Shyam Lal Saraf and those Kashmiri Pandits who
declared.
Source: Kashmir
Sentinel
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