Part II: Chapter 14

KASHMIRI PANDITS AND COMMUNIST BETRAYAL

Despite shattering disintegration of Soviet state, there is no denying the fact that the Russian Revolution with the Marxist thought and ideology as its driving force was a momentous event with international impact and ramifications. The system as ushered in Soviet Russia divergent from and in sharp contradiction to the capitalist system with neck-break competition as its cardinal principle generated a new wave of optimism and blazed a futuristic hope for redemption from an exploitative imperialist yoke. The capitalist countries with booties from their colonies doling out lots of comforts even to the working classes suffered a shock when Marxian thought shot up in public estimation and came to be seen potentially viable to replace the decadent capitalist order. The communist parties in developed and developing countries gained amazing popularity and what was of tremendous significance was the magnetic attraction that the thinkers, theoreticians and scholars felt for the Marxist ideology and soviet experimentation in a system different from capitalist path.

The communist party of India owing its genesis to the impact of Russian Revolution functioned under the Soviet patronage and came to be seen as the propaganda machine of the Russians and their projected strategies. As India had been groaning and writhing under the ruthless British blood - sucking, the Indian National Congress had already spearheaded a struggle for liberation from the British hegemony and the communist party of India with its feeble political base had no option but to append itself to the congress on the assumption that the anti-imperialist struggle had to be strengthened and fortified by the broad mobilisation of patriotic forces. The communist party failed to take deep roots in India for the fact that it had no feel and appreciation of the enormous heritage of India and that was how its evaluation and perception of the Indian reality never harmonised and had no compatibility with the depths and psychology of India, more than most with its leviathan of culture and civilization. The same theme-song of "proletarian. Revolution" and "class struggle" with hatred as its cosmic principle were plucked out of the Marxian Book to shape the Indian reality for a revolution and crude attempts were harnessed to explicate the shaping processes of Indian history in the light of Marxist tenets distilling ersatz of the Indian substance anomalous to its tone and temper.

With the specific objective of expanding the base of communist ideology, a branch of communist party was also established in Kashmir under the leadership of Dr. N.N. Raina, who was the rallying point for all shades of communists and progressives. In Kashmir, the communist party had a negligible base and drew its support and sustenance mainly from Kashmiri Pandit intellectuals who had a strong tradition of education enabling them to measure new ideological trends and waves shaping out on international arena. The potent and only factor that impeded and nearly stifled the steady growth of communist ideology in Kashmir was the hide-bound Muslim mind indoctrinated and deeply steeped in "Kufra" and "narrowness of the spirit" shaping out into an absolute abhorrence to everything that is not Islamic. As the communists in India had set a precedent, the Kashmiri Pandit communists also functioned as a pressure group within National Conference, which had the same ideological goals and moorings as that of the Muslim Conference. The pre-1947 and post-1947 history of National Conference testifies to the fact of pursuing an anti-Kashmir) Pandit thrust and agcuda with the same overt and covert communal vigour as that of the Reading Room Party which finally incarnated into the Muslim Conference.

Sheikh Abdullah in his psychological dynamics had no love lost for Kashmiri Pandits but found their efficacy in thwarting the dominant role of Jammu Muslims whom he feared for their advancement in the field of education and also their articulation of politics through the clarity of language. The stark reality of Muslim backwardness coupled with parochialism had amply dawned on him at the Muslim conference convention at Jammu where the whole show was stolen by the Jammu Muslims. Though the Pandits had been the butts of his cynical malign and open hatred, yet he craftily used them to invest his anti-Maharaja campaign with a veneer of secularism and liberal political content. His superficial cries for Hindu-Muslim unity not flowing from his ideological moorings and convictions and his deep roots in the Aligrah Muslim University culture duped Nehru and the advanced sections from the Pandit Community. With the Sheikh's ascendancy in power the Pandits found him as no harbinger of the dividends of peace and amity and social solidarity and cohesion.

Much in the line of Ahmadiyas and Ahrars, the Muslim communists from Lahore and elsewhere descended upon Kashmir to add vigour to the communist ideology by ropmg In and forming contacts with the leaders of National Conference. The study circles where they flaunted their learning of the Marxist texts and the tactical line pursued by the Communist Party were largely attended by the Kashmiri Pandit converts to Marxism. As the Muslim League with its agenda of Pakistan as the destiny of Muslims had emerged on the political scene of India, communally besmeared Ideological content was provided to the National Conference to fight out the Maharja as representing the decadent feudal system, but not a word was said about the Muslim League as representing the same feudal and parochial interests. The strategy and socio-political framings as chalked out by the Muslim communists from the Punjab for political action was not the people of Jammu and Kashmir versus British Imperialism but the people of Kashmir versus Maharaja Hari Singh. Fazal Illahi Qurban and Abdullah Safdar pursued the same strategy in Kashmir with trappings of fixation as they felt satisfied that the ends of revolution were better served by pitting the Muslims against the Hindu Maharja in particular and Hindus in general.

Of immense political significance was the arrival of B.P.L. Bedi and his European wife, Freda Bedi in Kashmir. They as communists from the Punjab pioneered a new communist Manifesto for Kashmir in the form of New Kashmir document, a pious statement of Marxist cliches, supposed to concretise the goals chat were sought to be achieved through the force of a struggle against the Maharaja. The role of two prominent Kashmiri Pandit communists Dr. N.N. Raina and late Moti Lal Misri was highly laudable in drafting the document, but was diluted and never recognised for their Hindu credentials by the National Conference which was principally a Muslim organisation preserving and battling for the Muslim interests at the expense of other ethnic and religious groups. The document of New Kashmir apparently egalitarian with an accent on minority rights was supposed to pave way for and establish a rational democratic order and with that end in view the communists organised and held study circles to acquaint the lumpens with the social and political content of the document and to their dismay the Sheikh swooped on them, de-legitimised them, got the study circles stopped on the plea chat they were propagating communism among the Muslim youth though the fact was that the Muslims by and large detested and shunned communism for its atheistic approach and premise.

The Kashmiri Pandit communists glued to the pursuit of guidelines issued out by party bosses deft in doling out cliches and off-ground phantasies were absolutely lacking in Hindu lore and orientation and passed for extreme liberals which trait of theirs was mix-understood, never swallowed and appreciated by orthodox Muslims mired in illiteracy and obscurantism. Liberalism as a cornerstone of Hinduism flaunted in an extremely backward society propped upon the tenets of bigotry encouraged an elusive mutual concourse weakening the resisting barriers that could have saved the Pandits from the Muslim onslaught. The rapport that developed thick and fast in the wake of Nehru's intervention dizzied the Muslims from an oblivion into an identity which till then was a missing quantum. The Pandit communists and many Pandits in National Conference without any commitment to the community, thus rootless, surrendered the will of the community to the Muslim majority and also through their closer inter-face with Muslims appeared to have contributed to the growth of pernicious trends which compromised and diluted the Hindu position of Pandits. As borne out by history, Hindus have perpetually-been the butts of Muslim onslaught and this fact of history was completely overlooked as nought and much to the chagrin of general Hindu opinion, such onslaughts and any piquant situation of communal dimension were brushed off in ambivalent and lack-lustre fashion and positions were taken as could be characterised capitulationary and uncouth defences were put up for the Muslim demeanour that has been absurd and irrational.

The Hindu communists bright people by all standards got a life-time shock, when few Muslim communists subscribing to the 'instinctive tilt of Muslim psyche for Pakistan' theory denounced them as reactionary Brahmans and anti-Muslim and made a concerted bid to capture the Communist Party though the Pandits as a matter of fact formed a bulk of its membership. They were beaten and thrashed, moneys on them snatched and looted, humiliated and put to crass contumely. The Muslim communists and hired goons in a joint operation looted and captured the Party run Book-shop at Lal Chowk, Srinagar and they say that the whole operation was the brain-child of Mohinddin Qarra, the oriole of Kashmir, in accompaniment with Pir Abdul Ahad, who in post-1947 scenario in his disgruntlement with Sheikh Abdullah broke away from National Conference and without any contrition formed Political conference with pro-Pakistan politics as its pivotal agenda. As expected the communist Party suffered a dip and a split on communal lines and dismaying as it is, the Pandit communists alert as they should have been failed to learn from the brash communalization of communist politics and continued with their unflinching loyalty to National Conference which their party bosses had regimented them to believe that Kashmir with its so-called radical programmes would lead to a communist revolution in India with waves flowing in from Red China.

Pandit Jia Lal Kilam, a signatory to the National Demand, had the grace and independence to lodge appealing protest against Sheikh Abdullah's utterances against the religion of Hindus and raised the issue in the working committee of National Conference and offered his resignation when the Sheikh unexpectedly thundered that he was first a Muslim and last a Muslim. The National Conference would have sundered apart had not Pandit Nehru intervened for a patch-up to save the ship from sinking. But the Pandit communists as per their history in Kashmir have maintained stony silence on issues of vital concern to the community though the fact was that they were taken for Kashmiri Pandits and if the rag came off, it was firmly suck back and when the state power moved against the Pandits wholehog, they were not left out for special treatment or even consideration and were mandalised and discriminated and met out a raw deal the same wise as the mass of Kashmiri Pandits were.

Pandit Jia Lal Taimiri, a veteran politician without a blemish, cultured and soft-spoken-was highly detested for the eye he had on scams and kitties of N.C.Ministers. Nothing deterred him from setting a brilliant and inimitable precedent when he openly confronted and opposed Sheikh Abdullah for the appointment of Mohammad Sultan at the expcuse of P.N. Ganju on religious grounds and considerations. A Gandhian to the core, Taimiri tailed to digest the injustice and staged a dharna at the National Conference Headquarters demanding the withdrawal of unjust orders by the Sheikh who as a doyen of secularism and nationalism lost no time in axing and weeding out Pandits thus paving way for ethnic cleansing. Not emulating the example of Taimiri the Pandit communists not only maintained intriguing silence, but also formed a part of National Conference gendarme in the execution of a policy of blatant communalism by the State with Sheikh Abdullah telling the Pandit young men though competent and qualified to go to greener pastures available for them in rest of India. The minorities were put on the hit-list of the government, were harassed and tyrannised and driven into dire straits. Had the Pandit communists followed to the dot the Taimiri precedent, it would never have been in conflict with the Marxist dicta and doctrine.

The Pandit Communists and also the Pandits drawn into the dragnet of National Conference after dissolving their parent body might not have been conversant with persecutionary history of how the Muslim intolerants with their prejudices subjected them to a pogrom which had no semblance of a human face, how a genocide was triggered off to transmute the religious complexion of Kashmir and how the Hindus had been forced to march out of their native abode five times to say the least. The dispensation incarnated from the forces with a fanatic and sectarian visage could not on a sudden vie with catholicity of outlook and secular demeanour. How was it that the loot of 1931 and again the loot of 1932 were totally ignored and blotted out of focus? How was it that the dismal and gory drama of 1947 with all the ingredients of a crusade was painted rosy despite its murkiness?

The Pandit Communists following the behests of the Communist Party of India played a vigorous role in laying bare Sheikh Abdullah's hobnobbing with the Americans who been deeply aware of the strategic importance of Kashmir in the Himalayan water-shed and hence a focus of their not too benign attention. In their unstinted support to the new dispensation led by Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, the Communists created the fronts and fortified the forces to put up an ideological battle against the instrumentalities of destabilization and national insecurity Kashmir as an official organ of the Communists in Kashmir published editorials and lead-articles that highlighted and put forth a reasonable analysis of the game-plan of Imperialist powers to wrest Kashmir from the Constitutional organization of India to establish its independence as a requirement of cold war politics of Dullesian vintage. Over the years with changes taking place in Kashmir politics the Communist Party in keen earnestness to craft its politics to the needs of the scenario back-tracked from the Central Committee resolution on Sheikh Abdullah who in all clarity of language was accused of having fallen into the Imperialist dragnet. Jyoti Basu as the Chief Minister of West Bengal in his address to an audience at College of Education, Srinagar declared that the dismissal of the Sheikh's government in 1953 was illegal and unwarranted forgetting that he was a party to the whole contents of the resolution as a Central Committee member. It was an act of opportunism and Communists are essentially opportunists pursuing the same politics of the art of possible for a toe-hold here and a foot-hold there through a flaunt of phoney and artificial slogans to perpetuate their rule in some burrows.

Sheikh Abdullah with a deep Streak of vengeance and vindictiveness in his personality wits in no mood to forgive the Pandit Communists for their so-called betrayal in 1953. But aware of their political fertility and acumen as Pandits, he invited a brilliant thinker of the stature of late Moti Lal Misri to participate in the people's Convention hastily organised as a political gimmick to smoothen his highway for a somersault ensuring his ascendancy to the seat of power and also to dole out fake and false impression that he was convinced of the absurdity of the Plebiscite Front politics of which he was the pioneer and innovator too. Despite opposition from many quarters the Sheikh was hastily and even impolitically under a quaint arrangement installed as the leader of Congress Legislature party and in the wake of quirks and heaves of history he entrenched himself as the elected Chief Minister of the State and the weapon used was to feign illness to invoke public sympathy. And dismaying as it is, he launched a diatribe against the Pandits by labelling them as 'Fifth Column', a Muslim calumny and canard motivated by his antipathy towards the Pandit Communists formulating his distasteful role in the formulaic phrase of 'unconscious votary of imperialism'.

Flaunting the credentials of a progressive, G.M. Sadiq maintained a close rapport with the Pandit Communists whom he used at will as a support-plank to foment and perpetuate his self-promotion and self-aggrandisement in pre-1953 and post -1953 political scenario. With no mass appeal, but still wielding political power under all dispensations, he as a matter of first choice dictated by religious culture embarked upon an antediluvian policy-path of formalising the wanton discrimination against the Pandits by the issuance of a satanic government decree purporting religion-based quotas in recruitment and admissions to the study programmes. Superseding the orders brazenly and clandestinely issued and implemented, the said-order practically reserving the whole pie for the Muslims proved the first convoluted exercise in generating Islamic paranoia about the Pandits who as the branded enemies of Islam had to be expelled to the Siberia of the Indian plains.

Writes Koul, "The order proved a land-mark in the history of discrimination and relentless elimination of the Kashmirian-Hindus. Violative of the Constitutional provisions, the orders were outrageously communal making religion as a determining factor for entry into services and admissions in professional colleges. What was shocking that such orders were issued at the behest of G.M. Sadiq who had pretensions to secular and progressive credentials.

Harkrishen Singh Surjeet once known as an Akali Communist and now as a dubious power broker has been overseeing the functioning of his Party unit in Kashmir and directing its affairs prior to the split of the Communist Party and continued with the over-lordship even after the Party floundered into groups and sub-groups. His Jaunts between Delhi and Kashmir undertaken with the objective of proliferating and strengthening the base of C.P.I (M) unit in Kashmir and his successes and failures in this behalf are within the knowledge of people interested in political affairs. As is common knowledge, his sphere of activities in Kashmir has been limited to a house in Khanyar, Srinagar, which is owned by Yusuf Zargar, a Muslim activist, but a comrade in Communist parlance. It was at the same house situated within the tangle of narrow lanes and byelarlcs of the locality that Comrade Surjeet dilating on the political scenario of Kashmir was said to have expressed his shirking doubts about the relevance and efficacy of Art. 370 and was said to have advocated its repeal. The meeting though not largely attended was suddenly wound up when hundreds of Muslims lying in wait surrounded the house and lapidated it and let loose a barrage of abuse and curse against the owner of the house and filthily denounced Surjeet, his Party and the atheistic philosophy of Marx in so loud tones as to rend the sky.

The Scene was set for manhandling the Comtrades. But, before Comrade Surjeet could be bashed and thrashed in the native Muslim fashion, his partyrmen, pale and panting, led him out of the house through the back-yard door merging into the labrynthine of lanes and drains to the house of a Kashmiri Pandit, late J.L. Dhar, not a comrade, where he cooled his heels and felt safe and secure and reassured. Invested with an exceptional capacity of mind and intelligence, Surjeet should have promptly measured the trend of ominous events shaping in the secular skies of Kashmir and despairing as it is he without touching the hornet's nest maintained wooden silence and thought it highly prudent and sagacious not to broach the subject with the powers that be then at the Central capital and perhaps fearing loss of face concealed the incident fraught with nefarious designs of ominous proportions even from ills own party circles to which he was responsible if responsibility is a principle informing the Communist politics. The Muslims who had surrounded the house as the venue of Communist activists and had virtually bayed for their blood were the same fanatic brigands churned out from the Madrasas functioning as the seminaries of fanaticism and bigotry and upholding the agenda of converting the valley into a haven of Islam through its annexation with Pakistan.

Aware as every cawing crow is of the tact that Kashmiri Pandits as a distinctive religious minority have been expelled from their native birth-place lock, stock and barrel by the armed Muslim killers earning not covert but overt support and collaboration from large sections of Muslim majority, but comrade Surjeet set on the trail of faceless opportunist refuses to identify and cognise the stark reality and call a spade a spade. If he does, the apple-cart of hollow secularism as conceived and practised in the country will turn turtle and that is why he and his party as votaries of the same phoney secularism have not polically necessary and expedient to issue out a single statement on the cruel expulsion of the entire Hindu minority from the Muslim Kashmir. He can be unflinching in his support to the creation of Mallapuram, a citadel of Islamic Sevak Sangh, but he cannot afford pay even lip-service to the cause of the three lakh Hindu refugees wallowing in dust and dirt lest it should taint his secular image which in fact is nothing more than a mask to conceal his anti-Hindu motivations.

Writes R.Venugopal, "How many of them (Communists) remember that in the mid-forties EMS led processions of Muslims in Kerala along with the late A.K.Gopalan shouting 'Pakistan Zindabad' and 'Moplistan Zindabad'. A few will know now how he got the revered Gandhian, Kaliappan, arrested for trying to re-build a temple just because the Muslims objected to it. It was he who distorted the Mopla rebellion in 1921 into an agriculturists' fight against landowners.

EMS had the honour of equating communism with anti-Hinduism which was taken up by all other leftists and so called progressives of our country."