Thursday, October 6, 2016

THE KASHMIR CONFLICT AND THE MUSLIM IDENTITY IN INDIA


INTRODUCTION

Sixty-six years after independence, the peace in the Valley of Kashmir continues to be fragile. The dispute involving the only Muslim-majority state in the country – Jammu and Kashmir – has been a common thread in the Master Narratives of Indian politics – the Hindu Nationalism, the Muslim political identity and the Secularist discourse.

The Kashmir dispute is a heady mix of contentions along ethnic, religious and territorial lines, irredentism, hyper-nationalism and; interstate and intrastate conflict. The movement in the Kashmir that has its genesis in 1931 owing to the unequal relationship between the ruler (the Hindu Dogra King) and the ruled (a poor Muslim Peasantry), over a period of time aligned itself along the communal lines (Talbot, 1949). The Indian secularists considered the state’s accession to the Union of India as imperative for the four pillars of the its foundation – Secularism, Democracy, Federalism and Nationalism (Ganguly and Bajpai, 1994). Pakistan, on the other hand, staked its irredentist claim on Kashmir as a Muslim-majority territory contiguous to it. The vigour of Pakistan’s claim increased more so after East Pakistan broke off in 1971 to form Bangladesh, discrediting the very idea of Pakistan as the home to the South Asian Muslims.

It is accepted that it was not the differences between the two religions – Hinduism and Islam – that resulted in communalism but “communal politics and ideological practices that transformed religious differentiation into communal cleavage” (Chandra, 1996 and (Brown, 1997). But the failure of the ‘secular-nationalist’ forces to deal with the communal problem despite its commitment to secularism and national unity, in the pre-independence country played an instrumental role in the rise of communalism. Also, the rise of political self-consciousness among the elites in the second largest community in the country – that has been rulers of the country during what is popularly termed as the Mughal Era suddenly projected itself as minorities (Akbar, 2011) - led to the partition of the country into India and Pakistan.

The bloodshed that ensued partition bequeathed both the countries with a heavy burden of the past. And, as Muslims projected themselves as National Minority – a political stance to claim certain collective cultural or political rights – they created a triadic nexus between India-Pakistan and the Muslim community (Bowem, 2002). This triadic nexus also got extrapolated in the politics of Kashmir and the players involved – India and Pakistan – got bound by their intractable positions and the clamour for independence gets stronger among Kashmiri Muslims.

Further, the manifestation of the Kashmir dispute along religious lines has bolstered the strength of the Hindu nationalists across the country, who have pinned the issue to the question of the loyalty of Muslim community as a whole towards India (Varshney, 1991). While it is absolutely fallacious to assume Muslims as ‘homogenous’ entity, what cannot be ignored is that modernity has increased the political consciousness and widened the boundaries communities encompassing masses cutting across geographical boundaries (Chandra, 1996). For India, a polyethnic society that embarked on the process of nation-building only 67 years ago, Kashmir’s ‘inalienable’ association with it is an important part of its Nationalism – defined as a set of ideas, both learned and manipulated (Bowem, 2002).

The Essay will be an examination of the role played by the Kashmir dispute outside the state of Jammu and Kashmir formulating the larger discourse between communal forces from both the Hindu and Muslim Communities. The paper will deliberate on the impact of the Kashmir Conflict on the Muslim Identity in the rest of the India using Rogers Brubaker’s triadic configuration of nationalizing states, national minorities and external national homelands, to explain why issue of Kashmir remains one of the biggest bones of contention between the Hindus and Muslims. The model of ‘the Macedonian Syndrome’ will also be discussed to explain the situation. The schism between the two communities remain starkly crystalised and wide on the contrary to that with the Sikh community, which had also witnessed in 1980’s waged a fairly violent secessionist movement for Khalistan.

Within the state of Jammu and Kashmir there has been heavily polarized today like not time in history, as evident from the mass protests of Hindus and Muslims that arose following the Amarnath Yatra Land transfer issue in 2008 (Tremblay, 2009). The Kashmiri Pandits (Hindus) continue to be in exile since their exodus from the Valley of Kashmir in 1990, the generation of Kashmir Muslims since then has grown without any memory of co-existence with other community. Moreover, the Hindus of the Jammu region for long have been grieving against the social, economic and political partisan politics played by the politicians of Kashmir. Seeing no future outside the Union of India and; fearing subjugation and meeting same fate as Kashmiri Pandits in a Muslim-majority-independent Jammu and Kashmir, the Hindus in the Jammu region rose up in an uprising in reaction to the Kashmiri Muslims agitation against the transfer of 99 acres of land of Amarnath Hindu Shrine Board.

HISTORY OF KASHMIR

The history and context of Jammu-Kashmir played an important role in shaping the development of events in the Valley. Islam was not brought to Kashmir by attackers and the people were not converted at gun point. Rather, the people willingly converted and started following the Sufism strand of Islam. The Islam practiced in the Kashmir valley differs from the one practiced in the rest of the country and also in Pakistan. It was this difference that gave the Valley its clarion call for freedom in the name of Kashmiriyat – a set of values it shared amongst its residents. However, it was the context and demography of the state that eventually necessitated the use of religion (Sharma, 1985).

At the time of independence, the Hindu ruler of the Muslim-majority state signed the Instrument of Accession with India on October 26, 1947, in lieu of the New Delhi’s military support against the Pakistan-backed tribesmen from the North Western Frontier Province (NWFP). The tribesmen had attacked Jammu and Kashmir to forcibly liberate the Muslims of Kashmir.  The subjects of Hari Singh, who have started an uprising in 1931, under the leadership of Sheikh Abdullah accepted the Instrument of Accession along with the assurance of the Indian government to protect the autonomy of the state. By November 1947, both India and Pakistan formulated public positions that would make difficult for both of them to retreat (Lamb, 1993).
In making the decision to accede to New Delhi, Sheikh Abdullah identified more similarity between the basic tenets of the Idea of India that is Secularism and Kashmiriyat. Nearly a year after Jammu and Kashmir leader Sheikh Abdullah defended India’s stand in his speech in the UN Security Council Meeting by saying: “It was because I and my organization never believed in the formula that Muslims and Hindus form separate nations. We do not believe in the two-nation theory, nor in communal hatred or communalism itself. We believed that religion had no place in politics. Therefore, when we launched our movement of ‘Quit Kashmir’ it was not only Muslims who suffered, but our Hindu and Sikh comrades as well.”

In popular imagination, the dispute of Kashmir is all about the ‘cohesive and homogenous’ people of a shared ethnicity seeking the right of self-determination. But presently the assumed cohesiveness and homogeneity of the populace of Jammu and Kashmir is contrary to the ground reality. The religion-wise breakup of the population as per the 2001 census showed that the Muslims constituted the predominant religious community of the state at 67 percent, Hindus came next at 29.6 percent, Sikhs 2.23 percent, Buddhists 1.16 percent, Christians 0.14 percent, and others form the remaining part.

The population was also divided into three main geographical regions of Hindu majority Jammu, Muslim-dominated Kashmir Valley and Buddhist-populated Ladakh. While the denial of the right of self-determination has led to the alienation of the population of Kashmir Valley, the neglect of the other communities socially, economically and politically – Hindus and Buddhists - have created schism between Jammu and Ladakh’s relations with the state government-based in Kashmir. The situation can be summed up that contrary to the assumption of Kashmiris being a ‘homogenous, monolithic’ group; it has many small communities each striving for a better socio-economic development and a political space for itself (Behra, 2006). This mistaken impression often results in assessing the relation of only the Kashmir valley with the Indian state and not that of the whole state of Jammu and Kashmir.

On one hand, the continuous encroachment of the Indian government of the promised autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir and the meddling with political institutions in the valley has alienated the now educated and better informed youth of the valley (Ganguly, 1996). The rise of insurgency in Kashmir found an ally in the radicalisaition taking place in Pakistan. On the other hand, the constant refusal of the Kashmir-Muslim headed government to share power with other communities forced Jammu and Ladakh regions to seek a greater integration with India (Behra, 2006). This eventually- led the leaders of Kashmir to seek a separate homeland for the Kashmiri Muslims – which constitute nearly 99 percent of the population of the Kashmir Valley after Kashmiri Pandits were driven out by the violent campaign against them in 1990 by militants. The crystallized divisions became evident in 2008 as the protests of the Kashmir Muslims against the land transfer to the Hindu Amarnath Shrine Board were met with not only equal but more vocal protests by the Hindu in Jammu Region.

In a nutshell initially the Kashmiris – both Hindus and Muslims- had considered themselves vitally different from their counterparts in the rest of the country. But, the movement that started against the “unequal relationship” between the rulers and the ruled that gave way to communal bias as “political consciousness spread to Kashmir.

INDIA, KASHMIR DISPUTE AND THE MUSLIM IDENTITY


The idea of nation itself has undergone a sea change and today nations can be accepted as a set of ideas around which an identity is being constructed to define who belongs to the country and who do not. But for India the restructuring of nationalism took place just at independence as Pakistan was carved out as Muslim Homeland. India instead of choosing the nationality of race decided to opt for the nationality of territory cutting across religions (Varshney, 2002) and was home to nearly 13 percent of Muslims at the time of independence.

Despite the narrative of secular nationalism derives its power form the Constitution of India, the Hindu-Muslim cleavage had never healed in the post-independent India in the presence of the nationalizing host state of India, presence of national minority of Muslims, in whose name an external national homeland was claimed in 1947 in the name of Pakistan (Brubaker, 1996). And the revival of Kashmiri freedom movement aided by the insurgency from across the Line of Control dividing India and Pakistan (Swami, 2007) considerably shaped the Muslim Identity in the rest of the India as well. Symbol selection and manipulation by politically active elites of both Hindus and Muslim communities have shaped the Muslim Identity in the country (Copland, 2014) and Kashmir has been an important symbol that has epitomized this struggle.

The predicaments of the Muslims in the rest of India owing to the Pakistan’s intervention in Kashmir were duly expressed by a group of non-Kashmiri Muslims in a Memorandum to the United Nations in 1951. Signed by 14 distinguished Indian Muslims of that time, the memorandum questioned Pakistan’s constant announcement about their “determination to protect and safeguard the interests of Muslims in India”. “This naturally aroused suspicion amongst the Hindus against us and our loyalty to India was questioned,” said the memorandum. Regarding Kashmir and its impact on the fortune of Muslims it said: “In its oft-proclaimed anxiety to rescue the 3 million Muslims from what it describes as the tyranny of a handful of Hindus in the State (Jammu and Kashmir), Pakistan evidently is prepared to sacrifice the interests of 40 million Muslims in India - a strange exhibition of concern for the welfare of fellow Muslims. Our misguided brothers in Pakistan do not realise that if Muslims in Pakistan can wage a war against Hindus in Kashmir why should not Hindus, sooner or later, retaliate against Muslims in India?”

At the same time failing to gain support of the minority communities of Hindus and Buddhists in Jammu and Kashmir, the leaders of Kashmiri Muslims, even Sheikh Abdullah, pitted the movement against the subversion of the right of the self-determination of the Muslim-dominated Kashmir by the Hindu-majority India(Varshney,1991). The divide along communal lines became more evident during the summer of 2008 as the whole valley broke out in agitation and a stone-pelting population was dealt with heavy hand by security forces. Booker Prize winner and political activist Arundhati Roy talking against the Indian occupation in the Valley in her Essay said: “It allows Hindu chauvinists to target and victimise Muslims in India by holding them hostage to the freedom struggle being waged by Muslims in Kashmir.”

Many scholars, including Samuel Huntington, have pointed out that the economic modernization generates a politically conscious community that seeks greater opportunities for physical, social and economic mobility. Others have also identified that in most of the contemporary poly-ethnic societies developmental needs expressed in terms of cultural values, human rights and security (Brown, 1997).  This could not be more evident in the situation of the Kashmir Valley. A close scrutiny of the situation shows that the employment among the youth remains abysmally low, in stark resemblance of the situation for the majority of the population during the rule of the Hindu Dogra King (Ganguly, 1996).

Just like the Valley of Kashmir many secessionist movement was waged in Punjab. The economically strong backbone of Punjab helped it bounce back as opposed to Kashmir where one crop season and the militancy had destroyed the economy. Sikhs who have been victims of the carnage of 1984 following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, are performing really well and are respected across the country. This is in complete contrast to alienation faced by the Kashmiri Muslims and the aspersion it casts on the Muslim Community in the country as general.

The antinomies of nationalism of India and Pakistan and the question of Muslim Identity in India can be extrapolated to the Myron Weiner’s model explaining ‘The Macedonian Syndrome’. The model has three actors - an irredentist state, an anti-irredentist neighbor, and a shared ethnic group crossing the international boundary (Weiner, 1971). The ethnic group has to be in minority in the anti-irredentist neighbor. The situation gets exacerbated as the two neighbors have a disputed territory. Since Partition Pakistan continues to have irredentist claims on the Kashmir Valley and the rest of the Muslim population of the anti-irredentist India. The Muslim being the national minority of the country is also a key actor in this triadic relation.  

The situation can also be understood in the light of the triadic configuration used by Rogers Brubaker while explaining the National Question in the New Europe as the boundaries were drawn cutting across communities similar or different from each other. Brubaker saw the relation between nationalizing state, national minorities and external homelands. As per this configuration, nationalizing states are poly-ethnic and are still in the stage of nation-building making it imperative for them to promote to varying degrees the language, culture, demographic position, economic flourishing or political hegemony. Then there are self-conscious national minorities striving for greater cultural or territorial autonomy.  Muslims are the national minority of India and not Sikhs, Jains or Buddhists. A manifestation of such a demand is embodied in the Kashmiri Muslim’s demand for more freedom. And the triad is completed by an external national ‘homelands’ of the minorities. Pakistan on the basis of common religion with the Muslims of India have been closely monitoring their situation and closely protest alleged violation of their rights and assert its obligation to defend their interests. A case in point would be the resolution passed by the Parliament of Pakistan to denounce the anti-Muslim communal riots in Gujarat in 2002.

The separatist leaders have been constantly invoking the common religious thread between Kashmir and Pakistan to assert secession from India.  In 2008 separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani said during one of the protest that Islam would guide the struggle and that it was a complete social and moral code that would govern the people of a free Kashmir. He said Pakistan had been created as the home of Islam, and that that goal should never be subverted. He said just as Pakistan belonged to Kashmir, Kashmir belonged to Pakistan (Roy, 2008). It is such stances of the Kashmiri leader that given fodder to the Hindu chauvinist outside the Valley and then the ensuing stereotyping of the rest of the Muslims and their putative nationalism towards Pakistan.

The triangular relationship is also exhibited in the clash of the informal symbols of nationalism prevalent in the Valley and the formal nationalism as promoted by the Central Indian government. For instance as the insurgency started in the Valley in 1990s, celebrations of events associated with the Indian nationhood such as Independence Day and Republic Day are not celebrated by the masses. Whereas, the Pakistan backed militant groups designed social calendars to mobilise the masses and included events like Paksitan’s Independence Day. In the same fashion, cricket matches between India and Pakistan served an important political function as the Kashmiris cheer the Pakistani team. The efforts of the Indian Central government in generating national symbols have also been thwarted by the exposure of the Kashmiri population to Pakistan radio and television that have been instrumental in giving an alternative version of the Kashmir issue and strengthening the religious bond between Pakistan and the Kashmir Valley. This aided with the alienation of Kashmiri Muslim masses has put up questions around the legitimacy of the Indian authority(Tremblay, 1996).

While Pakistan can hardly afford to give formal citizenship to the Muslims of the country, its continuous monitoring of their situation and interference in their affairs; and privileges given to the Muslims from the Kashmir Valley and the rest of the country has given rise to two mutually antagonistic nationalisms – one towards India and other towards Pakistan. The recent example has been the suspension of 67 Kashmir Muslim students from a university in Northern India after they rooted for Pakistani team during a cricket match on March 3, 2014 and the immediate response from Pakistan and Pakistan-based terror outfit Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) separately offering scholarship to the expelled students highlighted this third party intervention attempting to exploit the existing fissures in the society.

CONCLUSION


The popular assumption among the masses in India about the “Muslim Separatism” that got manifested in the partition of the country is that Muslims had a choice of political identity but they chose one based on religion (Robb, 1991). The assumption got impetus with the turn of events in the Kashmir valley and the constant irredentist claim of Pakistan.

Under international Law, a state has the right to protect its citizens even when they live in other states. But they cannot legitimately claim to protect their ethnic co-nationals leaving in other state and holding the legal citizenship of that state. While Kashmiris right to strive for self-determination is indisputable, Pakistan’s irredentist claim on the basis of a movement that saw a resurgence in 1990s (considerably long time after Maharaja Hari Singh signed the Instrument of Accession with India) complicates the situation.

Monitoring is the key aspect of the triadic relation and Pakistan- projecting itself as the homeland of South Asian Muslims – take complete leverage of that situation. Pakistan backing the movement in Kashmir, can react back on the nationalizing state that is India, where the minority might be accused of disloyalty in reaction. Hindu fundamentalists have already been holding the “attitude of Muslims that Muslims were different from the nation” as the main reason of the country’s partition (Varshney, 2002). The success of movement in Kashmir is deemed pernicious for the secular fabric of India and will have a ‘domino-effect’ in the poly-ethnic society of India.

Pakistan might be exploiting its ethno-religious ties with the Kashmir valley driven by geo-political reasons. But the idea of Pakistan is under question as it became the world’s one of the most violent country and not because Hindus are killing Muslims, but because Muslims are killing Muslims (Cohen, 2012). In such a scenario, claiming Muslim-majority Kashmir is to strengthen its position as the home for the Muslims of South Asia.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bajpai, S. G. and K. (1994). India and the Crisis in Kashmir. Asian Survey, 34(5), 401–416.
Copland, I. (2014). Islam and Political Mobilization in Kashmir , 1931-34, 54(2), 228–259.
Ganguly, S. (1996). Expalining the Kashmir Insurgency: Political Mobilisation and Institutional Decay. International Security, 21(2), 76–107.
Robb, P. G. (1991). Muslim Identity and Separatism in India: The Significance of MA Ansari, 54(1), 104–125.
Sharma, P. (1985). The National Question in Kashmir, 13(6), 35–56.
Talbot, P. (1949). Kashmir and Hyderabad. World Politics, 1(3), 321–332.
Tremblay, R. C. (1996). Nation , Identity and the Intervening Role of the State : A Study of the Secessionist Movement in Kashmir. Pacific Affairs, 69(4), 471–497.
Tremblay, R. C. (2009). Kashmir’s Secessonist Movement Resurfaces: Ethnic Identity, Community Competition and the State. Asian Survey, 49(6), 924–950.
Varshney, A. (1991). India, Pakistan and Kashmir: Antinomies of Nationalism. Asian Survey, 31(11), 997–1019.
Weiner, M. (1971). The Macedonian Syndrome : An Historical Model of International Relations and Political Development. World Politics, 23(4), 665–683.

Akbar, M. (2011). Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan. Harper Collins.
Behra, N. C. (2006). Demystifying Kashmir. Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press.
Bowem, J. R. (2002). The Myth of Global Ethnic Conflict. Alexander Laban Hinton ed. Genocide:An Anthropological Reader, Blackwell, Oxford, UK.
Brown, M. E. (1997). The Causes of Internal Conflict an Overview . Cambridge : MIT Press.
Brubaker, R. (1996). Nationalism Rreframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe. Cambridge(pp. 55-76): Cambridge University Press.
Chandra, B. (1996). Communalism in Modern India. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd.
Cohen, S. P. (2012). The Future of Pakistan. The Oxford University Press.
Lamb, A. (1993). Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy. Oxford University Press.
Roy, A. (2008, August 22). Land and Freedom . The Guardian.
Swami, P. (2007). India-Pakistan and the Secret Jihad: The covert war in Kashmir, 1947-2004. Routledge.
Varshney, A. (2002). Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India. Yale University.

No comments:

Post a Comment