Prafull Goradia
To overcome the gulf in Kashmir, everyone should understand one another so
that the Government does not keep going round the mulberry bush
A Kashmiri acquaintance recently described the situation in Kashmir as a
continuation of the Indo-Pak conflict by proxy. The soft locals fear that their Valley
will soon be filled with outsiders, whereas tougher Kashmiris look at the abolition of
Article 370 as an opportunity to prolong the fight.
At least from the time of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan of Aligarh fame, the belief that the
British dispossessed Siraj-ud-Daulah of Bengal, Tipu Sultan of Mysore and Wajid Ali
Shah of Awadh, has lingered. The feeling also is that when the British Crown left
India, it should have the courtesy to “return it to us”. Homeland and New Medina was
the cause of Partition. This was also MA Jinnah's decoy for British ears in 1946-47.
Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad firmly opposed the partition of India because in a
hundred years, India would have had a Muslim majority. In 1983, a Pakistani
journalist visited Tehran to interview Iran's religious dictator Ayatollah Khomeini, in
connection with the celebrations around Pakistan Day, namely March 23. The
interviewer's final question was: What did Khomeini sahib think of Qaid-e-Azam
Jinnah? The Ayatollah's answer was: He was a brilliant man but could have benefited
from vision. He should have been patient and his community would have gotten the
whole of India, not merely its crumbs. But then, Jinnah was not a momin but a
recently minted coin.
It is true that until 1935, Jinnah was widely called “the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim
unity”, a term coined by Sarojini Naidu. In his presidential address on the eve of
proposing the Pakistan Resolution in 1940, Jinnah said, “We know that the history of
the last 1,200 years has failed to achieve unity and has witnessed India always divided
into Hindu India and Muslim India. Muslim India cannot accept any constitution
which must result in a Hindu majority Government; in combination with democracy,
it would be a Hindu Raj which Muslims, cannot tolerate.
The Qaid's other contention was that “Muslims are not a minority. Muslims are a
nation according to any definition; they must have their homeland, their territory and
their State.”
Dr BR Ambedkar wrote in his 1941 reply to Jinnah's resolution: No one has
expressed shock at the thought of separating Karnataka from Andhra, what then is
there to be shocked in the demand for the separation of Pakistan? If it is disruptive in
its effect, it is no more so than the separation of Hindu provinces such as Karnataka
from Maharashtra, or Andhra from Madras. Pakistan is merely another manifestation
of a cultural unit demanding freedom. There is nothing new about the resolution
which merely resuscitates the scheme which was put forth by Mohammad Iqbal in
1930. Mr Rahmat Ali gave it the name Pakistan. After Iqbal, there is nothing new in
linking the northwestern provinces.”
“Uncannily, there is nothing new in outing together many districts of Bengal and
Assam into one province. Viceroy Curzon had done it in 1905. The British or the
Anglo-Indian was not a nation; Indians' referred only to the people of India.”
“French Orientalist Joseph Renan has written that a nation is a living soul, a spiritual
principle. The Doctor continues: “The Hindus draw their inspiration from the
Ramayana etc; whereas the Muslims derive their inspiration from the Quran and
Hadith”. Thus, the things that divide and the things that unite, in Ambedkar's opinion,
there is no argument against the claim for partition if they insist upon it.
The Doctor quotes Lord Acton's phrase that Pakistan is a soul wandering in search of
a body. Ambedkar went deep into the subject and showed that the Indian army then
was dominated in numbers by Muslim Punjabis, but their pay and perks were
indirectly paid for by the Hindu provinces. He concluded by writing that in any case it
is better to have the enemy outside the borders rather than inside.
To go back to the Kashmir problem, could it be that the Government in Delhi and the
Governor in Srinagar are unable to relate to the Kashmiris who are of a different
faith? They begin with God, move on to the Prophet and then to the scripture. On the
other hand, we do not have a single authoritative book or Prophet, but are believers in
karma. Their way of thinking, in the lingo of logic, is called deductive, which begins
with a premise and ends with a logical conclusion, top down. Our faith is inductive
and begins with ground realities to move upwards till it reaches a conclusion. A few
scholars realise the huge gulf between the two categories of faiths, Abrahamic and
Eastern.
The Abrahamic method of approaching the issue would be to shoot and kill, whereas
the Eastern way would be to worry about the relationship between the two sides after
the bullets and battles. This explains that we are an ancient civilisation and at the
same time, have taken nearly 75 years to get down to grappling with the problem.
India and Pakistan were born as independent countries at the same time. Yet look at
the difference in the distance covered by the two countries. To overcome the gulf in
the Kashmir Valley, everyone should understand one another so that the Government
of India does not keep going round and round the mulberry bush.
(The writer is a well-known columnist, an author and a former member of the Rajya
Sabha. The views expressed are personal.)
