Jammu V/s Kashmir

Unlike the sustained uprising in Kashmir in 1990 which was mostly orchestrated by Pakistani trained operatives, the uprising in the summer of 2008 was mostly indigenous, spontaneous and massive. The opening salvo, it would seem, was fired discreetly by the coalition partner, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). Networking with a group of seasoned journalists who write for Srinagar-based newspapers, the PDP let out a canard ahead of the state cabinet meeting on May 20, 2008, that the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board (SASB) under the patronage of its Chairman, the Governor of the state, was planning to construct a large township in Baltal, to be named Amarnath Nagar, near the holy Amarnath Cave. There were other, even more serious accusations, the most disturbing of which was that the Governor was trying to change the demographics of the valley by using the SASB authority to resettle nonresident Hindus in the region.

It took time for this news to make the rounds among Kashmiri political analysts and public. The PDP had perhaps hoped that Kashmir would be on fire by the time the state cabinet would meet on Tuesday, May 20, 2008, but that did not happen. In the local media, other than a story or two, the SASB episode was treated with the same mixture of curiosity and disdain as the “Pakistani currency” or the “joint management of Baglihar hydel project,” and a few other odd nuggets that PDP habitually threw out like the proverbial hand grenades once in a while.

Perhaps the most significant story on the SASB-related rumors was printed on 11th May 2008 in the leading pro-separatist newspaper in the valley, where a well respected political commentator mixed nationalism with religious chauvinism in opposing the “so-called Hindu invasion” by declaring, “Islam is a reality in Kashmir, which was chosen here by the people to liberate themselves from the highly oppressive social, economic and religious order established by the Brahaminical system.” The same journalist would later claim that “the saddest part of the debate surrounding the Amarnath Yatra is that it has attained communal colors, when the question is fundamentally environmental.” But that would come much later.

Interestingly, both senior PDP ministers — the Law Minister Muzaffar Hussain Baig (who also served as the Deputy Chief Minister) and the Forest Minister Qazi Mohammad Afzal — attended the May 20 cabinet meeting. Neither of the PDP ministers made any specific objections when the cabinet voted in favor of the Forest Department’s written recommendation to allow the SASB request seeking non-proprietary transfer of 38.88 hectares (about 800 kanals) of land to SASB. It should be remembered that the SASB had made the request for nearly 180 hectares in 2004 and it had taken nearly four years of due diligence, reviews, court orders, negotiations and official approvals by various departments and ministries that eventually ended up paring down the original request for land transfer to the very minimum for building comfort facilities for Hindu pilgrims in transit.

The Cabinet Decision Number 94/7 of May 20, 2008, clearly states that the SASB has only non-proprietary rights to the land and is explicit regarding the compensation that must precede any construction — a payment of Rs. 2,31,30,400, and an additional Rs. 19,94,000 on account of compensatory afforestation to be carried over twice the requested land surface (79.66 hectares).The Cabinet Order also mentions that SASB had agreed to follow strict ecological damage containment before proceeding with any construction: it would take all possible environmental safeguards in consultation with the State Soil Conservation Department, State Pollution Control Board, State Forest Department and even the orders of the Indian Supreme Court.

Mufti Sayeed, after stepping down as the CM in October 2005, had treated the new Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad with utter disdain, going repeatedly over his head to discuss state matters directly with the national Congress party leadership that should have been normally discussed within the state coalition. This was not accidental – Mufti knew that the “Delhi Durbar” always had the last word in so far as Kashmir is concerned. The Durbar courtiers – modern day political nawabs – had more power and authority than the CM.

Ghulam Nabi Azad had spent a long time in the Durbar and tormented Dr. Farooq Abdullah when the latter was the CM. Now, ironically enough, it was Azad’s turn to be on the receiving end, and Mufti, by running to New Delhi, was making things difficult for him. Azad was well meaning and honest, but having spent a lifetime in the Delhi Durbar meant that he was mostly ignorant of the opportunistic, corrupt and sycophantic nature of Kashmiri politics. Simply put, Azad was not “rascal enough” to be an effective chief minister of the state.

Following the issuance of the Government Order by the PDP led forest ministry; Mufti kept working behind-the-scenes on a separate but a related issue that was crucial to his future plans. This dealt with uncertainty regarding selection of the new state Governor. Mufti had a long standing feud with Governor S. K. Sinha and Amarnath yatra was in fact a leading cause of friction between the two.

While the SASB was formed after being voted in the state assembly during the time that the National Conference (NC) was in power, Mufti did his best to scuttle the pilgrimage in every way possible after he became the new CM. It seemed to matter little to him if yatris were not properly housed or protected because to him the whole idea of Hindu pilgrimage to Kashmir was perhaps an abhorrent thought.

In 2000, as many as 22 people were massacred by terrorists during the yatra in a series of communal attacks attributed to Lashker-e-Toiba (LeT) that year. Seven pilgrims and five workers were killed in a terrorist strike the next year during the pilgrimage. In 2002, 8 people were killed and 30 injured by terrorist strikes and the SASB, finding the state efforts lukewarm and indifferent, sought authority from the state to protect pilgrims.

But Mufti did not even bother to reply to the letter from the SASB Board.The matter ended in the J&K State High Court, where in two rulings in 2005 (Mufti sought the higher bench ruling after the first court decision went against him), the verdict was identical – SASB had the responsibility to set the timing and define security needs for the yatra. Mufti, it would seem, never recovered from that judicial defeat and never reconciled with the Governor.

The term of Governor Sinha was expiring on June 4, 2008. Mufti wanted him out but Governor Sinha wanted to extend his stay, and more importantly, Chief Minister Azad liked the Governor and wanted him to continue in the post. This was unacceptable to Mufti, who was working very hard in the Delhi Durbar to force a change, and as usual was able to trounce Azad.

On June 23, a leading pro-separatist daily in Srinagar ran the story (dated June 22) saying that it “had documents in its possession that the construction of pucca buildings [was] going on a war footing at Dumhel, one of the resting points for Amaranath Cave bound pilgrims.” Baltal Traders Association was co-opted to express its indignation which was prominently splashed by the daily. The fact that SASB was in no position – legally or otherwise – to start any permanent construction was of little interest to the rabble rousers.

Sadly, the daily would not tell its readers that the J&K government had after 1996 — when 250 pilgrims died due to heavy snowfall during the yatra and before the passage of the SASB Act in the state assembly in 2000 — built a number of permanent comfort facilities for pilgrims. In fact, the earliest such structures were built in 1980s. Also, the media conveniently ignored that the SASB had donated most of its tear-down comfort facility kits to the people of Tangdhar and Uri after the October 2005 earthquake and there was an urgent need to build replacement facilities along the yatra route.

The same day (June 23), having received confirmation that Governor Sinha would be replaced, the father and daughter duo seemed to have lobbed another incendiary device and like master tacticians disappeared from the scene: Mufti announcing that he was headed to America for medical checkup and the daughter to a seminar in London. The “bomb” was an ultimatum to their coalition partner – Congress party – that if the Government Order 184-FST was not revoked by June 30, PDP would pull out of the government. It was not a difficult decision for the PDP as they believed that they would improve their political standing in an election, especially with Sinha gone for good. Mufti Sayeed had initially indicated that he would exit the country before the new Governor took over, but he did not actually leave for the U.S.until after attending Governor Vohra’s oath ceremony on June 25.

The Muftis are, after all, masters in harnessing communal tension towards a political advantage. They had executed similar tactics in the past, and the one that seems particularly apt, as reminded to me by a journalist friend in Srinagar, was in 1986 when Mufti ran a similar dirty campaign which targeted Kashmiri Pandits in the Anantnag district that led to burning and loot of hundreds of Pandit properties and temples and caused the fall of the Gul Shah government. In fact, the record shows that Mufti has been involved in triggering the maximum number of central government interventions in the state through the Governor’s rule, hoping to improve his political standing in subsequent elections.

While Muftis were conducting their divorce proceedings with the Azad-led coalition government in public, the valley newspapers were having a field day. Suddenly, a new picture emerged in the valley. Almost every editor and columnist tried to outdo each other in rhetoric and demagoguery. The SASB, a creation of the state assembly eight years earlier, got transformed by the media into an alien institution, imposed by Indian authorities, a state-within-a-state, and a conspiracy that was at the vanguard of a Hindu invasion in the valley.

On June 18, Mirwaiz announced that he would meet with Geelani at the latter’s residence on June 19, to chalk out a “common resistance program” against the land transfer to SASB. At the meeting, they agreed to combine their efforts under the Action Committee against Land Transfer (ACALT) and put Mian Abdul Qayyum, the former President of the Kashmir Bar Council who had in the past tried to effect a patch up between these two leaders, in charge. Previously feuding Hurriyat cadre rolled into ACALT which took over the organization of street demonstrations, formation of public kitchens for meal- giveaways, and volunteer corps to manage auxiliaries.

On June 23, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, succeeded in escaping the police who wanted him interned at his residence in Hyderpora and led a joint demonstration near Gow Kadal. Elsewhere in the Shahr-e-Khas, the demonstrations got out of hand, pitched battles took place among demonstrators and police, and security booths were burnt down. The engagement with paramilitaries on that day led to a death (first of many that would follow) and many more were injured.

It is difficult to comprehend how a request to build brick-and-mortar lavatories at 10,000 ft altitude in an inhospitable area where not a tree grows and where it snows for nearly 8 months a year could be seen as a land give-away that could provoke such a violent reaction. But this is Kashmir, where the powerful and the rich have succeeded in maintaining their authority and control (“the status quo”) by hatching conspiracy theories and seeding alienation, while the poor pay the price and continue to stay poor.

Meanwhile, the three-member Hurriyat team reached Pakistan on June 21. Their most important day during the visit was Monday, June 23. On that day, they held many meetings in Islamabad but the three most important were with the Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani in the morning, with the leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami Qazi Hussain Ahmed later in the day, and in the evening with the chief of the United Jihad Council (UJC) and leader of the Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) Syed Salahuddin in a local hotel.

The state government appeared paralysed. But more importantly, no one in the Delhi Darbar seemed to care. Delhi was busy with its own shenanigans dealing with the instability in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition ruling the center, and the subject of Kashmir was as usual left to courtiers like Saifudin Soz and Makhan Lal Fotedar who are generally more critical of the man at the helm in Srinagar than his detracters.

The courtiers continued to believe that the PDP would not pull out of the government and asked Azad to convene an all party meeting to sort out the matter politically. Ironically, no one had any idea in New Delhi (since most reports from security services are routinely ignored, or worse not even read, by Delhi-based rulers) about the extent of damage that the PDP had caused not only to the state coalition but also in unleashing a deadly mix of nationalism and religious chauvinism in both regions of the state.

Given the state of affairs, it was no wonder that on Friday, June 27, following prayers in various city mosques, protesters raised anti-India, pro-Islam and pro-Pakistan slogans and raised not Pakistani flags (as reported in the media) but three green flags that bore the crescent-and-star logo of Islam on the clock tower of Srinagar’s historic Lal Chowk. As reported by the Greater Kashmir daily, the nearby contingent of local and Indian police personnel did not even raise their eyebrows.

On Saturday, June 28, PDP formally withdrew from the Congress-led coalition citing reluctance of the Chief Minister to withdraw the Government Order 184-FST.

After the new Governor took over, he assessed the situation and realized that the whole affair had been blown up beyond proportion by an unlikely alliance of conniving politicians, opportunistic separatists and misplaced emotional rhetoric by the civil society. Equally of concern was that the situation in Jammu was beginning to turn sour.

The Governor acted quickly thereafter. He accepted the resignation of nine PDP ministers on June 29, and asked Azad to prove his ruling majority on July 7. On July 1, the Azad government revoked the Government Order 184-FST thereby withdrawing the terms and conditions for transfer of land to SASB.

A fire storm of public disgust hit the streets of Jammu.

The ACALT called off their demonstrations on the same day, even though a day earlier they had announced a new 5-point agenda to keep their agitation going. Both Hurriyat factions and PDP declared victory. On Wednesday, July 2, the market activity in Srinagar was so normal that a visitor would have been hard pressed to believe that the city had witnessed ten successive days of utter turmoil and anarchy that had ended barely a few hours earlier. The uprising was over. Atleast for the time being.

That still however does not do justice to the manner in which the public opinion was moulded by “civil society” and various political parties in the valley. This incident brought out an ugly truth about the Kashmiri separatist movement and one has to question if Kashmiri nationalism can be sustained without religious bigotry.

During the uprising, valley demagogues had to concoct daily conspiratorial theories and rumours about “Islam in danger” to get people rattled enough to bring them on the street.Sadly, and without good reason, a few unfortunate young people lost their lives for what was actually a tempest in a tea cup.

But that was not all. With the assembly dissolved and elections in the offing, competitive politics had kicked in. Let’s recall that the Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi had described Amarnath as a second “Shah Bano”. And his prophecy seems to be coming true. The communal divide between Srinagar and Jammu, between Hindus and Muslims has only deepened with this latest instance of criminal mishandling of what could have been a minor administrative matter.

The idea that locating a conflict’s source in nationalism does not make it communal is a form of self-delusion we should shed. Both nationalism and communalism are also integrally linked to the politics of territoriality. Omar Abdullah’s ridiculously feted speech exemplifies this perfectly. When he made the claim that opposing the land transfer was a case of fighting for one’s land, he made the link between communalism and territoriality. Implicit were two explosive links: first, that only one particular community has any claim to land in Kashmir. Even granting Kashmir’s special status, the acceptance of this foundational principle is a massive concession to communalism. Second, he lent credence to all those who exaggeratedly believe that a mere 40 acres is a prelude to colonisation by some “alien”. Of course Muslims have for centuries facilitated the yatra. But that deep cultural fact is then used as a shield to elevate a minor matter to gigantic political proportions; a hard-won cultural interface sacrificed on the altar of that innocent sounding phrase, nationalism.

While the chattering classes were singing paeans to this speech, one young man, Kuldeep Verma-Dogra, who was participating in a hunger strike at Jammu’s Parade Ground against the revocation of the land-transfer, seems to have decided to do something tragically dramatic to register his protest to the speech. He consumed poison, stood up to read out a passionately patriotic poem he had penned, and fell dead.

The panicking police behaved the way only panicking police does. In an abject manifestation of their ineptitude, they forcibly took away Dogra’s body to his hometown, Bisnah, 15 km from Jammu and, as the AYSS puts it, “tried to cremate it using old tyres, kerosene oil and liquor”. The police were also accused of “insulting, abusing and assaulting” his widow Shilpi when she protested. The police did not realise that they had managed to fan a far bigger fire in their bumbling efforts at lighting a funeral pyre. As the news spread, a huge crowd gathered and snatched Dogra’s body away from the police. It was taken to Jammu, and the fire of the protests were now fuelled by this outrage — and from then on, the situation simply spiralled out of control.

Curfew had to be clamped on all of Jammu and Samba. The army had to be called out. The governor was virtually forced to remain confined within the Raj Bhavan. The AYSS hardened its position into settling for nothing less than the revoked land transfer to be restored to the SASB. Protesters defied curfew and dared police and army to shoot them. Some were indeed shot dead. At least 14 people have been killed since May 26. Many more have suffered serious injuries. But it is the injury to the nation that is more grievous. The protests were unrelenting. But for the central government it was business as usual. It seemed too preoccupied with the aftereffects of the trust-vote, the IAEA, the NSG, and the bomb-blasts in Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Surat to care for the raging fire in Jammu. And it took the much vaunted “integral part”, the Kashmir valley and its adjoining areas, to be “cut off” from the rest of India, as the protesters threatened to cut off its essential supplies, for the central government to be jolted out of its stupor, with a flurry of political activity and the all party meet. While a wider political consensus and the joint appeal for calm is only to be welcomed, it remains to be seen how this would be translated into reality on the ground.

This article also appeared in the Outlook (New Delhi) Please click here to view the same.