Part II: Chapter 3

SPONSORED TERRORISM

A canard of "sponsored terrorism" has been set afloat and given widest possible currency by some defence experts earning tremendous support from Government of India with a view to concealing and confusing the hard realities in Kashmir. As per the canard, the Muslim discontent actually born out of religious hatred and fanaticism culminating in total revolt against the Indian presence in Kashmir is to be attributed to Pakistan and its manoeuvres. The theory as it stands practically spells out a ruse to obfuscating the Indian failures in Kashmir and absolving the internal saboteurs wherever they be operating under varied nomenclatures dubious in intent and content. The fact remains that Pakistan militarised the Muslim revolt against India, but there were internal forces both religious and political which were to a large measure directly responsible for brewing and fermenting the revolt. It can be safely averred that violence tinged communal was not generated and unleashed because of intervention from Pakistan. It, in reality, is and remains a part and parcel of the rubric of Islamic ethos and cultural model. There is a massive network of the Muslim organisations and outfits operating under religious cover to indoctrinate and communalise the Muslim mind for establishment of a Muslim state cleansed of non-conformist religious groups. A plethora of religious schools operating under government patronage and funded by oil-rich gulf states have been igniting and fanning religious discord and hatred with a view to establishing an exclusivist culture of Islam steeped in intolerance and distrust. Right from 1947 all shades of governments not known for their vision and initiative but harbouring commitments to parochialism and myopia have initiated the process of Islamisation which have concomitantly bred and promoted violence and unleashed the forces of separatism and extra-territorial forays and flights. It is Islamisation only that has poisoned and sharply cut at the roots of tolerance and mutual amity and accentuated and widened the Hindu-Muslim divide and generated violence which ultimately paved the way for ethnic cleansing.

Violence as an offshoot and expression of Muslim fanaticism, brutality and intolerance has been holding an absolute sway over the religious and political milieu of Kashmir for long and what Pakistan did was to brace up and sharpen the teeth of the violence perpetrators operating without any check or restraint in the name of Islam by lacing them with lethal arms and sophisticated weaponry. Islamisation as seen in the context of Kashmir came to broaden its horizons and sight new destinations and perspectives by establishing a linkage with the forces of religious bigotry and militarised fundamentalism in Pakistan and other Muslim countries. Religious violence vitiating and poisoning the entire scenario preceded the intervention from Pakistan and other Islamic countries. It will not be wide off the mark if it be put that insurgency in Kashmir has foreign content with an ample amount of indigenous blend.

The brutal violence perpetrated on the Kashmiri Pandit minorities in the holocaust of 1986 by the "lawless lizards" perpetually clamouring the same refrain of Islam in danger was the culmination of the entire spectrum of Islamisation which had set its sights on waging a bigger battle for redempting Kashmir from the so-called Indian yoke and annexing it to the transnational Muslim front with commitments to a new perceived role. Violence was hurled on the minuscule minority when Zia-ul-Haq nicknamed as Zia the whip in Kashmir, suddenly died in a plane crash in his own Country. Al Aqsa Mosque was reportedly desecrated and damaged somewhere in Palestine as a result of the perennial religious discord and animosity between the Jews and the Muslims and the happening proved highly expensive for the Hindu minorities in blood and treasure. A book brought into Kashmir by a European missionary allegedly containing an imaginary photograph of the Prophet was suddenly discovered on the dusty shelves of a library and Muslims parting ways with the demands and requirements of sanity targeted the Kashmiri Hindus by hurting, maiming and cursing them and stoning their entire habitations. Pakistan lost a match or won a match and Hindus in both circumstances had to face violence, privation and suffering. Mast Gull, a Pakistani awash-buckler, hailed and applauded by the locals as their saviour and a guest from Pakistan was responsible for putting the Chrar mausoleum to flames and Muslims established startling records as the ruthless marauders when the Hindu habitations with their left-behind properties were burnt and razed to the ground. Violence as an ingredient of Muslim pathology was only aggravated and harnessed to the hilt by Pakistan which has not reconciled to the historical reality of Jammu and Kashmir as a part of the Indian state.

Loot, arson and vandalism were an accepted ethos of Kashmir prior to the declaration of proxy war and the state governments have played an actively collaborative role to nourish and cultivate the religious forces of bigotry and prejudice working cumulatively to quench dissent, liquidate the pluralistic fabric of Kashmiri society and more than most to establish the absolute sway of Muslims over politics and economy of the state. Under the secular garb Islam has been installed as the state religion and that is how the Muslim onslaught on Hindu religious places has been fine-tuned into a state policy to establish ascendancy of Islam. Islamic fundamentalism has been initiated and nurtured at the state level. So has been secessionism coupled with subversion.

The twin forces of religious bigotry and separatism have been on the same wavelength and operating in tandem adding immeasurably to the steam-roller image of Islam. The state apparatus infested with die-hard subversives and moles transformed Kashmir into Nazi dominated Germany doling out the same treatment to the native Kashmiri Pandits as Jews were meted out in Germany, persecuted and liquidated. Assault upon their persons, their inherent freedoms, their constitutional guarantees and their cultural heritage was installed as a centre-stage of political and religious strategy. The cultural authoritarianism that goes with Muslim precedence, monolithic political culture and separatism has patently ordained that anything that cannot be Islamised cannot be tolerated. The state policy as devised and determined by the dominant Sunni Muslim politics has been predominantly suffused with anti-Pandit venom and animosity and resonant with decibels for threats and sword-rattling against them without any visible let up. Farooq Abdullah the maverick yelled, "Your bodies will be lying in Srinagar and your tattered clothes will reach Delhi" and he was giving last touches to the hatched Muslim conspiracy to herd out Pandits from their home-land to live the plight of refugees in their own country.

The secessionists having lost political power in 1953 not only hobnobbed with Pakistan, but were said to be in receipt of hefty sums of money from that country to feed subversion and political instability and to patronise terror groups that had been sprouting from time to time at the behest of Pakistan. Whether in or outside the corridors of power the Muslim political leadership as a matter of calculated strategy has been maintaining overt or covert contact with the ruling circles in Pakistan through Kashmiris and other contacts settled in that country who have been frequently visiting Kashmir on crucial junctures and to state the obvious has been responsible for mysterious fires and thefts, umpteen acts of subversion and sabotage designed to mobilise and garner maximum support for separatist cause. Secessionism was fed by the top leaders of the Plebiscite Front for twenty years and when rehabilitated and handed over political power for purposes of political expediency and convenience through senseless accords and alliances, they lent credibility and sanctity to the politics of secessionism and anti-national acts and added new dimensions to it by founding a Muslim state practically outside the pale of India. It was made amply clear that their options are either independence or Pakistan and if they forego the choices, their only outstanding option is to be outside the constitutional and political organisation of India, and this is the summum bonum of greater autonomy.

The Central Governments have not only turned a Nelson's eye to the militarised fundamentalist developments in Kashmir, but allowed them to grow and expand in recognition of the Muslim majority complexion of the stated Compromises with the chronic Muslim secessionists and arch-votaries of independence with known links with and allegiance to the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front were stitched out for short-term political gains and goals. Print media not lagging behind made incessant projections about the Islamist forces working through Madrasas and mosques fast veering round a struggle that had Pan-Islamic motivations and character and extra-territorial dimension. The movement unleashed by Al-Jehad had been propagating and giving wide currency to the concept of "Islamic revolution" as the only path to wrest away Kashmir from the grip of the Indian Kafirs. The dominant Muslim population despite deep-seated religious rivalries and schisms could be visibly seen aflush with the Khomeini brand of Islamic revolution and the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, Mahaz-i-Azadi, the Liberation League and other separatist outfits made their debut in the political skies of Kashmir as direct off-shoot of the Islamic radicalisation and communalisation. Pakistan proved prompt and deft at constantly monitoring political developments, broadened its perspectives and set its sights on bigger goals. Where India lost Pakistan gained a tremendous political mileage. No tab was maintained on anti-India forces maintaining stranglehold of the government apparatus and the principal political formation within the state. Nor were poetical developments of far-reaching import carefully monitored. When signals were loud and clear about the growing menace of terrorism, it was flip-flopped and given a short shrift. The governor on the scene faxed "Today is late, tomorrow will be too late", but the Prime Minister immured in his ivory tower, pampered and flattered by the whiz kids surrounding him, not bitten by ground realities, consigned it to the waste-paper basket refusing to heed the signals presenting an altered scenario.