The Kashmiri Society is on the Brink

The Kashmiri Society is on the Brink

(Coping with the clash between two schools of thought)

                                                                                                                         Lalit K Kaul

The threat by TRF is nothing new. The Chairman of All Party Hurriat Conference (APHC), Sri Syed Ali Shah Geelani, gave a public statement (that appeared in print media) some years ago that Kashmiri Pandits won’t be allowed to come back to Valley. This self styled leader who otherwise never moved out to any part of the erstwhile J&K state to campaign and solicit support of the people for his secessionist agenda made it a point to shuttle between his place of residence to the Pakistani Embassy in New Delhi whenever summoned. His other companions in the APHC had the same sort of commutation history. Essentially a mohalla / street / mosque centered individuals were projected as mass leaders by the Kashmir based so called mainstream politicians and the ruling political conglomeration at the Center until 2014, while providing them with personal security at tax payers cost.

The Misconceptions:

“For our demand of political freedom India gave us oppression”, is what one would hear from a section of the Kashmiri Muslims more so in front of a favourable media house. It is a very sad state of affairs that the generation after generation has been brought up on the feed that India has to let go of Kashmir because the first Prime Minister of India declared from the Lal Chowk, Srinagar that Kashmiris will decide their political fate through plebiscite. What they are not taught is that India took the case to the United Nations (UN) Security Council that resulted in the well known UN Resolution and which was going to be instrumental in making the conduct of plebiscite feasible, but Pakistan violated it and did not let it happen.

Another deliberately created (truncated) political issue (by the so called Separatists/Jamait e Islami and covertly supported by the so called Main Stream politicians) was reducing the issue of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) as a unit to just Kashmir Valley that had no sanction- be it legal, historic and ethical. What was referred to the UN was the whole princely state of J&K that also included the geographical area of Gilgit Baltistan and not just Kashmir Valley.

So, the younger generations were indoctrinated to believe that Kashmir was to be liberated from India as she had illegally occupied it and this political deceit was on the lines of Pakistani propaganda. So, the misconceived freedom movement was to be directed from a mosque, a street and a house in a mohalla (without being led from the front) and the instrument for political discourse was to be guns and ammunitions that would naturally end up devouring the very youth who were instigated in to raising them up against the Indian State.

What made Gun Culture Possible?   

There are three kinds of people in this world 1) who live by history, 2) who create history by their singular deeds and 3) who have no opinion of their own and are vulnerable to being on both the sides. Those who live by history they dream of replicating the same good old days (in their perspective) that existed, say, a thousand years ago. Unmindful of the changed times in terms of socio-political, socio-economical, socio-religious and geo-political regimes as also the changed means of production and distribution including evolution of new world-views leading to redefining of relationship between Man and the Mother Nature, they desire to reestablish –what they perceive as - the old pristine societies.

So, Caliphate is to be re established for ultimate salvation of humankind; is both the Claim and political aim! Turkey is already on the mission as post 2023 there is no stopping her from striving for it. Creation of Islamic state the world over is the aim and so one finds Baghdadi on the job torturing all those men, women and children who don’t contribute to his kind of Islam. The women can be raped, enslaved, sold for reuse and then, if no more useful, beheaded; the men and children can be straight away beheaded. These kinds of barbaric acts are supposed to be necessary for re establishing ‘Pure Islam’ of the vintage days of the Prophet Muhammad, as claimed by the protagonists (ideologues) of ISIS. So, to force people in to submission was going to be easier using arms and ammunitions, that’s how it was perceived.

Who created Baghdadi? No single answer. Some reports say that the US created this Frankenstein called Baghdadi to force Syria in to submission. Who killed Baghdadi? No doubt the US got him in his cave. So, both the theorem and its corollary are clear.

‘Pure Islam’ & Caliphate: 

So, we are told there is this ‘Salafi Islam’ synonymous with ‘Pure Islam’. The rationale provided behind the imperative for re emergence of Salafi Islam as the leading faith among the Muslims of the world is that the Caliphate was lost and dissolved because ‘Pure Islam’ had got diluted, if not corrupted, by the locally engineered variations across the globe. The thesis is that the variations in ‘Pure Islam’ made it weak that made it lose sight of the ultimate aim: to establish Islamic State across the Globe. The purpose of Islam won’t be achieved in case of its failure to establish Islamic governance in the world.

Salafi versus Sufi: the fight for ascendancy:

Howsoever misplaced the very concept of freedom of Kashmir from India was (and continues to be), yet somewhere down the line that political aim lost its way in the battle of supremacy between the Salafi and Sufi Islam in Kashmir. That Sufi was to be replaced by Salafi – the faster the better- proved to be the dividing line within the society because this replacement drive was opposed by the elder generation only to be dwindling with time as more and more younger generation people found Salafi very attractive in many ways like, it afforded a good way of life for its preachers (petro dollars inflow from Saudi Arabia) and it dreamed of the Caliphate. As on date, there still exists a dichotomy of faith between the Muslim society transcending age barriers. So there is bound to be mistrust and it has the potential for intra-community faith based genocide. What was meted out to Pandits in 1988/90, may tragically repeat encompassing all non Salafi faiths, if not addressed to in time.

Sri Ghulam Rasool Dehlvi in his article in Firstpost, dated Oct 05, 2016, quotes Indian academician and professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Madhu Purnima Kishwar as under:

 In 2015, Kishwar wrote in her Firstpost article “The traditional benign Sufi Islam is fast giving way to ultra-conservative and fundamentalist Salafi Islam which is expanding the catchment area for jihadi terror groups… In village after village, new Salafi mosques are mushrooming to overshadow the old Sufi mosques. In fact, Sufi shrines are being systematically targeted as being un-Islamic.  While older generation Kashmiris may still go to the Sufi mosques, the excitable youth are flocking to Salafi mosques which spoon-feed them a highly distorted version of world events to show how Islam is under threat and Muslims an endangered species. The siege mentality thus engendered is helping recruit cadres for jihad.”

He goes on to state:

Much like Shamsudheen Fareed, a known Salafist cleric in Malappuram whose extremist sermons are cited in the show, the avowed advocate of Salafi mission in Kashmir, Maulana Mushtaq Veeri is not lesser hate-monger. Maulana Veeri has delivered various speeches — all of them filled with the extremist and exclusivist content — in the Valley’s Salafi mosques. Scores of his divisive speeches have been circulated on social media and are still attracting the imagination of the Kashmiri youth towards separatism. Only a single instance is sufficient and substantial evidence on how the ‘Salafi mission’ is being pursued in the religious rhetoric in Kashmir. In his religious sermon (khutba), Maulana Mushtaq Veeri dwells on “the Salafi Mission in Kashmir”. After a lengthy talk in the local Kashmiri language, he speaks in Urdu in the conclusive part of this video. Note these words in his speech:

“Dekha Salafiyon ka kamal, jab salafi maidan men utarte hain to wapis naam lene ka kabhi sochte hi nahi. Ham Islami hukumat qaim kar ke rahenge. Iraq men dekho Abu Bakr naam ke salafi ki hukumat…..kashmir men anqareeb inshaAllah Islami jhanda gaad diya jaega….”

(See the achievement of the Salafis! When the Salafis embark on their mission in the battlefield, they do not back out. Look at the state of the Salafist by the name of Abu Bakr Baghdadi in Iraq... God willing, we will be hoisting the Islamic flag soon in Kashmir...)

On June 02, 2017, Ajit Kumar Dubey reported in India Today the following:

"The number of mosques controlled by Wahabis including the Ahle Hadith has gone up quite substantially in the last 10-15 years as they have almost doubled from around 1,000 mosques to around 2,000 with most of the youth opting for them than the traditional Kashmiri Sufi shrines," sources said here. The funding for these mosques and Madrasas comes from sources in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Gulf countries where oil money is transferred from promoting their brand of Islam among the followers. It has been seen that the funding in Kashmir is so well channelled that there is lavish use of marble in building the structures and effort is to make them look pompous and attract the youth.”

"If a traditional mosque comes up in two to three years, the funding for these Wahabi controlled mosques is such that they are completed within six months and with lot of investment to attract the youngsters who can be potential recruits for terrorists in the future," the sources said.

Connivance of the Political Leadership:

In his analysis of the Kashmir situation, dated November 05, 2012, Sri Tariq Mir writes in Fountain Ink (some quotes):

“Shah, a scion of one of the notable Salafi families in Kashmir, was in the eyes of some Salafis responsible for an act of unforgivable perfidy: he forswore his loyalty to the fight for liberating Kashmir from “idolatrous” India, and made peace. He changed from fiery Salafi orator and jihadi commander in the early 1990s to head, ten years later, of a more than one-million-strong group aiming to cut its ties to the resistance. Lashkar, whose cadres follow Salafi Islam, said its own probe found “the killers within us” murdered Shah. By 2002 and the years that followed, New Delhi,…, had quelled the insurgency, killing and arresting many. But militant Islam took root in the cultural landscape… thanks to the petrodollars that Saudi Arabia, the home of Salafi Islam, was pouring into Kashmir while New Delhi looked the other way.

“…. He (Al-Kindi) loses no time laying out his vision of Islam for Kashmir: a total break with the past is a religious imperative to build a pious society of believers evoking the spirit of Islam observed 14 centuries ago in the Prophet’s time.”

“…. A few of the dead came from the area where al-Kindi delivers his Friday sermon. For many Salafi adherents it is like an act of treachery—talking about everything under the sun but remaining silent on Kashmir’s travails. Many feel it is a glaring contradiction in a movement that for years openly confronted the Centre. In return for their silence, the Salafis are free to preach their sectarian theology, benefiting from an unrestricted flow of Saudi petrodollars.”

“For some Salafis, it isn’t just doctrinal primacy that is alluring, but also the chances of social mobility. Al-Kindi’s ascent is a testament to it,….., he was recommended by the Salafi leadership for higher religious education to Saudi Arabia. In the five years since his return, he’s been a star attraction at large gathering held to recruit fresh members, a permanent fixture on television discussions of Islamic theology, a popular teacher at a Salafi college in Srinagar, where nearly 200 students from low income families are studying to be clerics.”

 …. al-Kindi is as much a strict enforcer of the dogma among his children as among his followers. Finally, I ask why he mentioned the Palestinian political dispute with Israel in his sermon but avoided speaking about Kashmir.

“You know under how much pressure we’re working in Kashmir. You have to be careful about what you say in sermons, speeches. We have been instructed by our leadership not to talk politics.” ….

So what’s clear from Tariq Mir’s analysis is that New Delhi was aware of Salafi sect growth and the only condition to be satisfied by its preachers was not to do politics! Therefore a ground was being prepared for a very fanatical situation to emerge that had/has the potential to devastate the Kashmiri society on a much larger scale than it has been by the irrational and opportunistic deeds of local Kashmiri leadership. Perhaps the oft repeated claim in public and the Parliament that peace was returning to valley meant it being groomed to erupt one day in a way that would devour the entire community.

Appeal:

I am no leader/politician, but as a human I want to appeal to such activists as propelled by outside countries that they should not venture in to anything that has the prospect of converting Kashmir in to a Syria and Iraq. Whatever be the motivational levels an armed struggle against the State and the natives can never be won. It only creates countless graveyards and dehumanizes societies.