There has been a new wave of anti-Christian communal violence in Pakistan, with a riot involving as many as 20,000 people in the town of Gojra, west of Lahore.
We normally use the phrase “communal violence” in the Indian context, but reading the particulars of this story in the New York Times, the idea of “communalism” (a particularly South Asian expression of communitarian religious hostility) seems to fit. The recent riots were not on a huge scale — 100 houses belonging to local Christians were burned (compare to 3000 homes of Christians burned in the violence in Orissa last year) — but it’s still frightening and sad.
There is a history of this kind of violence in Pakistan. I don’t know the history in great detail, but Wikipedia has links to several similar incidents in just the past few years. (It often starts with the claim that someone has desecrated the Koran.)
One oddity in the Times coverage was the way they described the size of the Christian community in Pakistan, as comprising “less than five percent of the population.” I gather the number is more like 1.6% — why not simply say, “less than 2%”? Maybe that’s a nitpick.
As a response, the Christian schools in Karachi are on strike for three days. A number of arrests of those involved in the attacks have been made, and President Zardari has strongly condemned them. The Daily Times newspaper has a story with a subheader that the DPO (police chief) in the district has been “booked” as well, but the text of the story actually states that authorities are at this point just thinking about charging him with failing in his duty to keep the peace.
Incidentally, the town of Gojra is in the Toba Tek Singh District of Punjab, an area made famous by Sa’adat Hasan Manto’s story about Partition, “Toba Tek Singh.” Though we’re no longer talking directly about partition, that story about the madness that can sometimes overtake people in the name of religion still feels relevant. Here is a translation of the story, and Professor Fran Pritchett has both the original Urdu and a Devanagari version of the story linked from her site: here.
I meant: he never gave up the ownership of his house in Mumbai,
Kush, two points. First, 75% Hindus is what I call an overwhelming numerical majority, one can see how some people would fear that even in a democratic set up, this numerical majority would oppress the minority. After all, at this point, the constitution of India had not been written, for all these people knew, the Hindu majority would have pushed through a constitution calling for India to be a Hindu state. That this didn’t happen doesn’t make these people’s fears illegitimate. Hindsight is always 20/20.
2) I am well aware that Jinnah didn’t always want Partition. Many Pakistanis know about the Cabinet Mission Plan and that it was only after Congress’s failure to accept this, that Partition perhaps became inevitable. If Ayesha Jalal is right and the demand for a seperate country was a power negotiation strategy that went too far, that is one of the ironies of history.
I do not believe a minority should get their own country just because some in the minority – many Indian Muslims did not share the two state idea – want it. They can base it on fear or arrogance or whatever. At the end of the day, they selfishly grabbed land for themselves to create a land for people of their faith. That Pakistan and Bangladesh exist now fine. No more land should be selfishly grabbed by any other religions or again by Muslims to create their own religious state out of what remains of India. I hope one day both Pakistan and Bangladesh will cease to be Islamic states and be true secular democracies where no religion is the religion of the land, no religious law is the law of the land where anyone of any faith or no faith at all can hold any position in the country.
A land based on Islam will place non-Muslims as dhimmis. What happened to Sikhs and Hindus with the jizya tax in the links above and to the Christians now who are accused of defaming the Koran is what happens to dhimmis. Can communal violence happen anywhere in the world – yes it can and it does. But with Christians, Sikh, Hindus mentioned in the prior articles it is because they are, in Islam and in Islamic state, specifically dhimmis.
(Kashmir is a legal part of India – see all the legal documents on that site. But let’s not get into Kashmir here. I’m sure there will be plenty of other opportunities in the future.)
The dhimmi protection is conditional: “Conditional protection. The protection of the Dhimmi is withdrawn if the Dhimmi rebels against Islamic law, gives allegiance to non-Muslim power (such as Israel), refuses to pay the poll-tax, entices a Muslim from his faith, or harms a Muslim or his property. If the protection is lifted, jihad resumes. For example, Islamists in Egypt who pillage and kill the Copts do so because they no longer pay their poll-tax and therefore are no longer protected.”
I think minorities should obey the majority way of life and the accepted
dharmapractices of the majority culture or be prepared to face the consequences.Kabir – “but because this probably would be a completely impossible task at the moment given the unfortunate hold that islamism has on our society.”
I am presuming that means that, a strong majority of Pakistanis like the constitution the way it is, , right? Meanwhile, in India, the Hindu fundamentalist find themselves increasingly marginalized and out of power, and yet you insist on drawing moral equivalence between Pakistan and India. Go figure.
@sameer:”At the end of the day, they selfishly grabbed land for themselves to create a land for people of their faith. That Pakistan and Bangladesh exist now fine. No more land should be selfishly grabbed by any other religions or again by Muslims to create their own religious state out of what remains of India”
selfishly? That’s from an Indian perspective and therefore understandable. Because the concocted Indian nationalism itself which “selfishly” wanted freedom from the Britain ( Imagine an India ruled by Britain would look like today)considered any other nationalism within its created boundary as blasphemy – the Khalistan nationalists, the Bodoland nationalists and the Kashmirian nationalist are also given names by the Indian nationalists – terrorists,pro-Pakistanism,religious fundies etc.
75% Hindus is what I call an overwhelming numerical majority
At that time, Hindus were less than 70 %, because Sikh and Christian population has been close to 2-2.5% each. Then you have to include 1% others – Buddhists, Jains, adivasis, etc. Sure, it is still a huge majority.
You have to remember Congress never pushed a Hindu nation concept – with Gandhi, and Nehru (an avowed agnostic who would even freak out President of India, Rajendra Prasad would visit temple ceremonies in independent India) at the helm. Also, people like BR Ambedhkar (the father of Indian constitution) or C Rajgopalachari (Rajaji) had open disdain for organized religion, and they all lot of clout. Rajaji even advocated dealing with Muslim League and Jinnah. At that time, Hindu (Hindutva) as a political entity was a side show – look at the election results of Jana Sangh (forerunner of BJP) in elections from 1950s to1990s. At one point, RSSS (then it was RSSS instead of RSS) was banned in India after Mahatma Gandhi being shot by Godse. RSSS always argued that even Godse and others were members of RSSS, but the organization never played a role.
I would fully agree that Congress as a whole was not in any mood to share power with Muslim League in 1940s.
People tend to forget that at that time, history is mostly dictated by cult of personality, and emotional appeal rather than some platonic concepts.
“I am presuming that means that, a strong majority of Pakistanis like the constitution the way it is, , right? Meanwhile, in India, the Hindu fundamentalist find themselves increasingly marginalized and out of power, and yet you insist on drawing moral equivalence between Pakistan and India. Go figure.”
Your fabricated outrage apart .I thought it all happens because of the Congress’s artifice for votebanks and minority-appeasement policies. Hindu fundies are still running amok and getting wilder and stronger – if the NRIs here in America from Hindu American Foundation to H1B visa holders are taken into consideration.
Hmmm. If the trends are any indication, the woolly headed RSS-BJP types who favor such an arrangement are losing influence in India. Therefore, methinks we’ll see Sindhudesh, free Balochistan and Pashtunistan before we see any reuniting of the subcontinent. But fear not, the new territory of
UKWest Pakistan will be open to any East Pakistani dissatisfied with the arrangement.“Hmmm. If the trends are any indication, the woolly headed RSS-BJP types who favor such an arrangement are losing influence in India. Therefore, methinks we’ll see Sindhudesh, free Balochistan and Pashtunistan before we see any reuniting of the subcontinent. But fear not, the new territory of UK West Pakistan will be open to any East Pakistani dissatisfied with the arrangement. “
Me think the same – Bodoland,Kashmir, Tamil Nadu ( free from the Indo-Aryan), Khalistan,Dimasaland,Gondwana,Nagaland,Manipur,Tripura,Zomi,Vidarbha and an entire free Northeast (closer to their brothers in Southeast Asia )should follow suit the newly created Sindhudesh, Balochistan and Pasthunistan and Khorasan ( don’t forget Afghanistan). These newly created Northeast and Khalistan and others will not give a rat’s ass to Kashmir and vice versa and therefeore all the people in South Asia can live happily ever after.
Not an issue. As long as they all pay tribute to Delhi 😉
@ Sameer (# 153): Who are you (and I for that matter) to deny people the right to form their own country or nation for any reason they please whether you feel it is “selfish” or not? The history of Europe is full of nations that broke apart from former parent nations. This is why we no longer have such an entity as the Holy Roman Empire or Austria-Hungry. I think it is a common tendency of groups to want to govern themselves according to their own culture.
The only way to keep nations from breaking apart is by providing the minority groups with equal rights and incentives to stay in the union. Otherwise, the Kashmiris, the Baloch, the Pushtuns, have every right to push for independence from India or Pakistan. Who wants to stay in a union where they feel that they are second class and disenfranchised? Of course, I understand this is purely a philosophical arguement and is not how modern geopolitics works.
Also, I know you don’t want to get into Kashmir, but the legal status of that territory is in dispute and is one of the issues that India and Pakistan have to sort out. I am not stupid or a rabid Pak. nationalist, therefore I don’t make claims like “All of Kashmir belongs to Pakistan”. But the counter- claim by rabid Indian nationalists (BJP types) is just as stupid. Let’s be sensible and diplomatic about all this.
Don’t know what you mean my organized religion, but C Rajagopalachari is a devout Hindu and translated Ramayana in Tamil and wrote many religious discourses. He advocated dealing with Muslim league and Jinnah because he is from a state (Madras) that had fewer Muslims and hence less animosity between Hindus and Muslims. His main fight in Madras state was against the Non-brahmins group called the Justice party which later morphed into DK, DMK and ADMK now. But not many in the Congress took his ideas seriously and he was even forced to resign.
Do you think it is only the BJP types that are claiming Kashmir?. BJP came to prominence only in the late 80s. I don’t think any party in India can surrender the claims on Kashmir.
As far as I understand, it’s only the BJP types who are claiming all of Kashmir including the portions currently held by Pakistan. I’m sure most reasonable Indians and Pakistanis realize that most likely scenario is the LOC becoming the permanent border or some kind of arrangement in which Kashmir gains some autonomy without formally changing the international borders. Not that this is necessarily the ideal situation, and people who believe firmly in the third option of Kashmiri independence from both India and Pak have the right to continue fighting their fight as long as they use non-violent tactics.
But No way is Pak going to surrender its portion of Kashmir to India nor is India going to give the valley to Pak. Some intermediate modality will have to be worked out. That’s what international diplomacy is about.
@Ikram – yes, clearly., However, the question is why. Pakistan, from the beginning, has been a military-bureaucratic state. Even its original constitution was delayed for 8 years because the makeup of the consitutent assembly was not to the liking of those in power and they were likely to pass something else. Pakistan has also been a state in search of a national ideology – it wasn’t even clear from the Lahore resolution whether it would be one state or more than one state. Pakisnan also, as pointed out, inhereited some of the pluralistic but religious-political and liberal democratic sentiments that inform India’s constitution. It also had no industry to speak of at birth (India inherited 90% of the industry of British India) and was from the beginnign heavily dependent on the British and the Americas – who were fighting for rivalry in the region (see jalal). And there was the geographical mess of trying to keep one state together separated by india. So a lot of what has happened in practical politics was the playing out of these types of conflicts (among others), and in the real .
If you look at the state and society in Pakistan – you notice some clear trends. The military has thoroughly dominated politically with the exception, possibly of the Zulfiqar Bhutto period and maybe right now. Now the military seeks legitimacy, and it can’t do so on democratic grounds, and it can’t really do so exclusively through force because that’s a pretty short term and unstable solution and it doesn’t have the money to buy everyone off. the Zulfiqar Bhutto period showed what happens to political leaders that attempt to initated a popular rule – business, agricultural interests, and others severely pushback to the poitn where the ‘popular’ leader starts repressing the populace. So how many options do you have in terms of unifying ideologies – Islam and ‘Pakistan’. But Pakistan is difficult because of the fragmentation of the state, the many ethnic claims, etc. But perhaps it would have been a viable option if more effort had been made in choosing it.
But after the late 70s, you enter an era where religious rule is being enouraged around the world, partly led by the United states – because it serves exactly this fucntion of masking waht the real power is as well as combating the Soviet Union’s alleged atheism. So it is not fundamentalists that introduce Islamist definitions of Paksitan into its constitution, but the bastard genera, and for his own interests, in an attempt to placate the people and especially those likely to get riled up. So Islam becomes more entrenched int he state ideology, though again, all three strands I identified above are still present, and more pertinently, there is a difference between the extent to which Islamists are a driving force and Islamists are a group that the Pakistani elite (much like the U.S. elite or the Egyptian elite or anyone else) are trying to placate .
Meanwhile, the military continues to expand its role in the economy and in society, in part funded by the United States because of the Afghanistan war. And of course the military hass ties to the landholding families etc. And this continues in the 1990s, under nominally ‘civilian rule’ until a civilian government actually tries to exercise some autonomy and is thereupon thrown out by the military. At which time, the military receives enormous amounts of money for yet another Afghanistan War. And it still faces a crisis of legitimacy.
And then you have the latest series of civil society uprisings, the continuing ethnic tensions, increasing pressure on the military and civilian elites to become involvedin what is now an ‘Afpak’ war. But we will see how it goes. I don’t know Pakistan’s history and society well enough to make predictions.
So anyway, that’s one possible way of interpreting the story of Pakistan and why Islam got involved. It’s not totally coherent and I’m sure there are other ways of looking at it (e.g. if you looka t roving bandits vs. stationary bandits to compare how nehru handled linguistic reorganisation to how Pakistan handled the East Pakistan thing) and there are probably mistakes in it, but that’s an example of the kind of analysis, I think, that needs to be invoked to begin to understand what the situation is and why, whether you area Lefitst, a Hindutva advocate, or a secular liberal. And it has to be met with critiques also which will help move it forward. Just one person’s opinion, but am semi-informed one.
For people interested in looking at issues like this, I recommend: Ayesha Jalal (historian) and Hamza Alavi (political economist/historian).
I don’t think there was even an argument about the role of Islam in Pakistan to begin with. Except a few inconsistent noises made by Jinnah supremacy of Islam in Pakistan is a given.
If at all there was an argument it was along the lines of Islam = democracy, islam = secularism and islam = religious freedom and the argument tha won was islam = islam.
There is, I think, a consensus around this in the social sciences, though it is changing. For example, the sangh have intiiated textbook wars in Karnataka and BJP has won its first southern state there. In any case, your point is more evidence why it is less than useful to stick to the ‘Islamist vs. Secular’ lens of understanding of differences between India and Pakistan on communalism than with a different framework.
I disagree with you that cherrpicking of indicators is more of a problem here than, say, in anything that speaks about ‘India’ as if it were a uniform whole (what does Tripura have in common with Goa or Ahemedabad with Darjeeling? surely some things, but surely not a whole lot of other things). Bad social science is bad social science and work totally disfigured by politics is just that regardless of what topic you pick.
there is, of course, a more important issue, of whetehr you can adequately undersatnd these issues through ‘indicators’ alone rather than a combination of statistical methods, ethnographies, historical accounts, and theoretical analyses. But I’ll leave that until after the site administrators close the thread.
You are mistaken. The Constitution of India the Constitution of J&K, and a unanimous resolution in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha all give effect to the claim. Reasonable Indians are the ones who are willing to the let the LoC remain as it is for another few decades and integrate J&K more closely with the rest of India rolling back some of the more obnoxious features of the state’s autonomous status, such as those that prevent non-J&Kers (actually any non-Muslim) from buying property, owning a business, or working for a private employer in the state. J&K enjoys more autonomy than any other state in India or Pakistan and is almost entirely supported by the Union Budget. That’s one thing Sarah Palin and Mehbooba Mufti have in common, sanctimony, ignoring the fact that but for the Union their respective states would starve. The Indians who demand more “autonomy” for J&K are generally from the radical fringe, definitely not the reasonable sort.
jyotsana, reasonableness is a matter of definition. As much as Indian nationalists claim all of Kashmir is part of India, that territory has been in dispute for more than 60 years. There is no way in hell India is ever going to get all of the territory back. Neither is Pakistan ever going to get all of Kashmir. We have to learn to work within the realm of possibility. A similar case I can think of is Palestine. The Arabs are never going to get all of the former British Mandate of Palestine, the Jews are never going to get all of “the land of Israel”. In disputes like this, both sides have to learn to compromise on their positions. If India isn’t willing to do that, then the status quo will never change.
Just a final thought on Kashmir: It’s my understanding that Indian Held Kashmir is not just another state of India, it has a special status because of its disputed nature. Is this correct?
Similarly Azad Kashmir is not technically part of Pakistan, which is why it has its own President and Prime Minister. Again, the reason for this is the disputed nature of the territory. If Pakistan did not recognize that there was a territorial dispute, why would it not have integrated this territory and made it another province of the country?
One way for the dispute to be solved (possibly the simplest) is for the LOC to be made the international border, IJK would then become another state in the Indian Union and AJK would become a province of Pakistan.
Kabir,
Converting the LOC to the IB is pretty much the unstated Indian position anyway. India has made no serious attempt to recover any of the territory across the LOC and would be happy to formalize the status quo.
However this would not be acceptable to Pakistan, as it would leave the valley under Indian control. Although ultimately the formalization of the LOC is the only realistic solution.
Jammu & Kashmir is enjoys a special status within the Indian Union based on Article 370 of the Indian Constitution – a set of temporary provisions. Similar provisions in the Constitution exist for someother regions and states of India.
What may ultimately happen is anyone’s guess, but the accepted political consensus in India is in favour of the restoration of pre-1948 borders of Jammu & Kashmir and its complete integration with the Indian Union. This is not an extreme view within the political establishment and every political party save fringe outfits like the PDP hold this point of view. This is unlikely to ever change regardless of the party/alliance in power at the Center. The Congress if anything can be more hawkish than the BJP. Take Manmohan Singh’s speech at the launch of the INS Arihant and rwrite it as coming from LK Advani/Mayavati/Mulayam Singh Yadav/Lallu Prasad Yadav/Deve Gowda/Vajpayee/Karunanidhi. It would sound the same.
I was under the impression that it was the stated policy, something which I always found silly because it gives India no room to negotiate down.
I don’t think accepting the LOC as the IB is the ‘official’ policy, maps in India still show the whole state as part of the union. However the govt pretty much treats the LOC as the de facto border, and has not pursued any territorial claims in Pakistani Kashmir or the Northern Areas.
Kabir:
The LoC has been the de facto border for a long time now. Now its just that small matter of Pakistan stopping the terrorists from crossing over and killing, closing the training camps, stopping their funding, arresting some ppl maybe .. oh and changing the textbooks preaching hatred of India and Infidels wud also be appreciated.
“Kabir,
Converting the LOC to the IB is pretty much the unstated Indian position anyway. India has made no serious attempt to recover any of the territory across the LOC and would be happy to formalize the status quo.
However this would not be acceptable to Pakistan, as it would leave the valley under Indian control. Although ultimately the formalization of the LOC is the only realistic solution. “
Is it acceptable for Kashmirians then?
@jyotsana
“You are mistaken. The Constitution of India the Constitution of J&K, and a unanimous resolution in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha all give effect to the claim. Reasonable Indians are the ones who are willing to the let the LoC remain as it is for another few decades and integrate J&K more closely with the rest of India rolling back some of the more obnoxious features of the state’s autonomous status, such as those that prevent non-J&Kers (actually any non-Muslim) from buying property, owning a business, or working for a private employer in the state. J&K enjoys more autonomy than any other state in India or Pakistan and is almost entirely supported by the Union Budget. That’s one thing Sarah Palin and Mehbooba Mufti have in common, sanctimony, ignoring the fact that but for the Union their respective states would starve. The Indians who demand more “autonomy” for J&K are generally from the radical fringe, definitely not the reasonable sort.”
Reasonable Indians should understand that India is an occupying force in Kashmir ( sugar coating aside).Kashmirians are not asking for any petty “Union” Budget – $ 5 billion dollar should be spent on the Northeast – another region wanting freedom from the “Union”. The 250,000 Kashmirians who marched against India were not radical fringe – though it is more convenient for India and Indians to treat Kashmir nationalism as radical fringe,terrorists and etc.
“Jammu & Kashmir is enjoys a special status within the Indian Union based on Article 370 of the Indian Constitution – a set of temporary provisions. Similar provisions in the Constitution exist for someother regions and states of India.
What may ultimately happen is anyone’s guess, but the accepted political consensus in India is in favour of the restoration of pre-1948 borders of Jammu & Kashmir and its complete integration with the Indian Union. This is not an extreme view within the political establishment and every political party save fringe outfits like the PDP hold this point of view. This is unlikely to ever change regardless of the party/alliance in power at the Center. The Congress if anything can be more hawkish than the BJP. Take Manmohan Singh’s speech at the launch of the INS Arihant and rwrite it as coming from LK Advani/Mayavati/Mulayam Singh Yadav/Lallu Prasad Yadav/Deve Gowda/Vajpayee/Karunanidhi. It would sound the same.”
Article 370 is an example of India’s own view that Kashmir and Kashmirians will never be Indians or Indianize without the lenghty process of forced and slow assimilation. Hence, India waits for a few generations to be born in Kashmir before she claims Kashmir as her own. BJP has tried to abolish Article 370 without any success.
INS Arihant is a Soviet-made – and we need to wait until 2011 whether the machine can move without killing any navy-officers – other than that – Manmohan Singh needs to tone down his jingoism.
@ swati
May be we should extend your suggestions to India – stop the brutal occupation of Kashmir,the arrest,the murder,the rape and leave your pathetic jingoism aside before speaking to Pakistan and Pakistanis. And,by the way, Pakistanis are brought up to hate snakes and chocolates too.
Do you find anything untrue in the following statement(s)?.
Ardy – Do you know anything about Kashmir’s demography? Are you aware that all Kashmiri Muslims do not wish to secede from India, just a certain percentage of Sunni Muslims. Btw, It is Kashmiri, not Kashmirians.
Ardy the Pakistani, “Kashmir nationalism”? Oh! you mean AFTER the Hindu genocide in the valley!
Remember Swati, it’s nationalism and tolerance for me, but not for thee.
@Ardy the Pakisthani,
I am bad with “Amreekan” slang and racial jibes so you will have to explain what u meant by chocolates. Also for a snake hater.. u sure slithered away from the issue quickly 🙂
Slow assimilation is the key my friend. Them Kashmirians should be glad we are not Han China.
Meeaoww!…..the grapes are sour this side of the LOC
Is this a new game, this snakes and chocolates? You throw the dice and get 5 points for a Hershey’s (American), 21/2 for Cadbury’s and Mars (British) and 1.25 for Nestle. You come back to square one if you draw Amul. If you draw a Pakistani brand, you are playing the wrong game.
@Manpreet
Did you hold a plebiscite in Kashmir to jump into that conclusion? And by the way, Kashmirian is the adjective used to describe the people of Kashmir.
@Swati the Indian,
Does anybody who reject Indian occupation in Kashmir has to be a Pakistani or is that how India and Indians justify any critism towards its occupation of Kashmir – as merely a product of pro-Pakistanism and therefore case closed?
If one is so myopic like you,the so-called Hindu genocide in Kashmir (is PN Oak your historian?just wondering ) should be used as the basis to bring up the Muslim genocide under the Dogra.The famine of 1870-71 caused by the Dogra should qualify as a genocide against Kashmirian Muslims.
@Slow assimilation is the key my friend. Them Kashmirians should be glad we are not Han China.
You are a mimicry of Han Chinese – except the people of Tibet and Xinjiang – just like the people of Kashmir and Northeast have been waging slow resistence.
@INS Arihant
Let’s hope it will not turn up to be another BrahMos.(notice the capital M in the middle of the word…was placed there to scare the Pakistanis)Haha.
Ftw ? We are talking about the all weather, taller than tallest mountain, deeper than the deepest ocean friend here. Please show necessary rispeck.
I will be delighted if it does turn out to be half as successful as BrahMos. By the way, you should come down to Assam and see the Brahmaputra. It is awesome.
Is this a rejoinder to, or a validation of Ardy’s counter-comment making the exact same point about Sameer’s comment?
Ardy – No, I did not, did you, since you are making all these ridiculous claims. At least I have been to Kashmir, where my close relatives used to live. Yup, ethnic Kashmiri Sikh relatives, whose ancestry goes back farther than the advent of Islam in the valley. As I mentioned, only Sunnis have a problem with the current scenario, and they too break all over the place – from pro-Pakistan to Independence to pro-India. Kashmiri Hindus, who were ethnically cleansed from their homeland in 1989 and Kashmiri Sikhs who live under constant threat and fear of expulsion and Kashmiri Shias and Kashmiri Buddhists have absolutely no problems with India. Btw – Are you aware that in order to hold a plebiscite, all armies have to withdraw to pre 1947 borders of Kashmir. This border was first violated by the Pakistanis, in case you forgot. Aren’t you wondering why the Kashmiri Sunnis who so desperately want independence never demand, even verbally, that Pakistan vacate the part of Kashmir they control, where the living standards of Kashmiris is lower than that of Indian Kashmiris. Not to mention Chinese held Kashmir.
p.s. i just asked a Kashmiri friend of mine about “kashmirian”, and he in turn asked a dozen or so of his family members, and guess what : nobody has heard of Kashmirian.
What’s most striking to me about all these narratives and counter narratives of history is that all of us (Pakistanis, Indians, ABDs, etc) seem not to care at all what the Kashmiris think or desire. It’s all about “India will never accept this, all of Kashmir is ours” or “Pakistan demands all of Kashmir”. The Kashmiris have been waging an indepence struggle for decades. Do they not have the same rights to an independent nation that India or Pakistan had?
I am interested in this issue because like Manpreet I am Kashmiri by ancestry. One of my great-grandmothers grew up in Shopian, which has incidently been in the news a lot lately. My great-great-grandfather lived and died in Srinagar. It seems entirely ridiculous that my family cannot visit our own ancestral areas because they are now part of this disputed territory which neither India or Pakistan care a bit about despite all their claims to the contrary. It is the people of Kashmir more than the Indians or Pakistanis who matter in this case.
You understand wrong. The RSS types for one have no issues with this solution as long as the Pandits are treated fairly. You can read Bal Raj Madhok’s prescription in the penultimate chapter here.
http://ikashmir.net/storm/index.html
The simple answer is NO. The more complex answer is “No, not if this is going to be a pawn for non-Indian powers a la Pakistan.” Between the two lies the gulf of negotiating the separation of powers between the centre and the states. Kashmir’s special status under Article 370 is the result of the negotiation of the separation of powers between the Kashmiri (Abdullah) government and Delhi.
A similar answer applies to any other “independence” struggle in the Indian subcontinent.
Ashish, what gives you (or India) the right to decide which nationalisms are legitimate and which are not? If a majority of Kashmiris don’t want to be a part of India (not to say they want to be part of Pakistan), what right does India have to keep them forcibly in the union? The same applies to Pakistan or to any other country. We (Pakistani Punjabis) oppressed the East Pakistanis for decades until they finally had enough and formed their own country. If the central government cannot provide ethnic minorities with equal rights and incentives to stay in the union, it has no right to force them to stay in it. This is a moral, principled position regardless of my personal feelings on which country Kashmir should have belonged to originally.
Imagine if the British in the 1940s had said what you are saying now “India cannot be independent if this is going to be pawn for non-British powers”. It would have sounded ridiculous then, and it sounds equally ridiculous now. The Kashmiris have every right to seek independence, provided they do this within democratic and non-violent means. Just because you don’t think their demand is legitimiate doesn’t make it so.
There are what 1 or so billion people in present day India. Plenty of minorities no matter how you try to slice it – religion, language, caste, skin color. Just considering religion, two so-called national parties govern states where religious minorities are the majority (Congress/Muslim in Kashmir, BJP/Christian in Nagaland and Meghalaya), while a third national party governs states with sizable minority population (CPI(M) in Kerala and West Bengal).
The common thread is that every Indian subordinates his or her ethno-nationalism to the common cause. Kashmir has what 3-5 million citizens – what makes it so extraordinarily different?
“The common thread is that every Indian subordinates his or her ethno-nationalism to the common cause. Kashmir has what 3-5 million citizens – what makes it so extraordinarily different?”
Ashish, what makes Kashmir different is that unlike the other Indian states, it is disputed territory, not unequivically part of India. India itself took the dispute to the UN in 1948, this making it an international dispute. What I am arguing is that the aspirations of the Kashmiris, not of Indians or Pakistanis, should be made the primary focus. If a referendum is held and a majority of Kashmiris want to be part of India, I am fine with that. If a majority wants to be part of Pakistan, I’m fine with that too. If they want independence, I am equally happy with that.
You are right that every Indian subordinates his or her ethno-nationalism to a common cause. This is true of other countries as well. The problem arises though with an ethnic group that perhaps doesn’t feel “Indian”. Just because you consider the Kashmiris “Indian” doesn’t mean they consider themselves that. All I’m saying is that they should not be forced into being “Indian” because it makes you comfortable. Social science teaches us that identities are constructed and it is often the individual’s subjective identity that is important. If the Indian state over 60+ years has failed to assimilate the Kashmiris and make them Indian, perhaps there is good reason for that.
As an example of an individual’s subjective identity, I point you to the case of the great poet Agha Shahid Ali, who throughout his entire life wanted to be referred to as a Kashmiri-American and never as an Indian-American. Who are you to tell him that he is wrong and he is Indian? He never felt Indian.
Kabir – I am personally from Punjabi stock, but thanks to an aunt who married a Kashmiri Sikh gent, I have Kashmiri relatives.
Man, I’m so old that I remember back when majoritarianism was something only right-wing Hindutvaadis were into.
I thought us liberal, secular types were supposed to be all about the liberties and freedoms of the individual?