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Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Disinformation on Kashmir and the Manipulation of Media

Ever since the latest round of violence began in the valley of Kashmir, there has been a sustained effort in the Indian media, both print and electronic, to spread disinformation about the origin of this violence, despite the fact that the instigators are out in the streets defying curfew and government orders, and openly exhorting others to join them. In the process when some of the protestors become victims of their own participation in the violence, the media is ready to pounce upon the security forces for doing their job, while completely ignoring the role of the instigators. Lately I have been reading column after column by well established political commentators like Vir Sanghvi, Jyoti Punwani, Firdous Syed, Neerja Chowdhury, Seema Mustafa and others who all have only one common theme. In their considered opinion India has failed the people of Kashmir, and if the “poor” Kashmiris have had to resort to violence to make them heard, it is only because we the Indians have been completely indifferent to their suffering. Hira Fotedar, co-founder and past President of the Indo-American Kashmir Forum, had made a forceful presentation in October 2008 in Chicago as a case study in the manipulation of Indian media. But that has largely been ignored and forgotten by the American and Indian authorities and the media. The purpose of this article is to revisit the subject and examine the so-called suffering of the Kashmiri Muslims closely and put it in a proper perspective.

When Kashmir, with the rest of India, became independent from British rule it was, without doubt one of the poorest parts of the country. The valley had almost no industry apart from a primitive silk factory that produced a very inferior quality of silk cloth, and a match factory near Baramulla. Agricultural production was not enough to feed the population; items like sugar, salt and other commodities had to be brought in from the plains. The only link with Jammu was an unreliable road over the Pir Panjal range that would frequently close due to landslides and heavy snowfall. Air connections were also unpredictable as the Dakotas in use then could not fly if the Banihal Pass (at about 10000 feet the only available corridor for flying across the mountains) was hidden by clouds. In the winter of 1951-52 I have gone to the Srinagar Airport every day for 21 days for catching a flight to Pathankot, before a plane could come across and leave the same afternoon.

Kashmir’s tourist season was also relatively short in duration. People from the plains would mainly come during the summer holidays, usually for 2 months. There would be some traffic during the annual Amarnath Yatra, but that consisted mainly of pilgrims who provided some employment for pony drivers and a few porters. Shawls, which had been the mainstay of the economy of Kashmir, had only contributed to the enrichment of a few merchant families, while keeping the actual artisans and weavers perpetually poor. Kashmiri Pandits had realized long before that in order to improve their lives they would have to invest in education. This they proceeded to do in right earnest. Educating the young, whether male or female, had become the sole objective of the Pandit families. Consequently, a number of them were sent to Universities in Punjab, Delhi, Benares, etc., from where they obtained degrees in Humanities, Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The only employer for their services was the Government who had no alternative but to fill available vacancies from this pool.

Understanding that poverty could not be eradicated by platitudes, the first democratic Government of Kashmir, headed by Sheikh Abdullah, instituted a number of progressive reforms. The land reform of Kashmir that took the land away from landlords and gave it to the tillers is still unimplemented in the rest of India in totality. Equally important was the making of education almost free up to University level for the residents of Jammu & Kashmir. I have studied in the state and remember paying Rs 5.00 for my fees for one year of college education. The standard of education was no less than any other institution in India, although the state did not yet have many professional training institutions for engineers and doctors.

The people of Kashmir, though not wealthy, were quite content within their limitations. There was respect for the state leaders, among whom Sheikh Abdullah was indeed the tallest, as also for national leaders. As school children we have enthusiastically welcomed Prime Minister Nehru, Home Minister G. B. Pant, and the other visiting dignitaries from India and abroad. People moved freely across the land and the only visible uniform on the roads would be worn by the men of Jammu & Kashmir Police. The CRPF were in barracks far from the towns and cities, while the Indian Army was stationed at the outposts along the Line of Control that came into existence after Pakistan’s first attempt to wrest the province by military force. The Army Cantonment was at the entrance to the city of Srinagar at a place called Badami Bagh, and its inmates hardly interacted with the local population. My brother was a Sub-Inspector in the state Police and I have travelled to some very remote and beautiful parts of the valley with him during my school vacations. On one such trip we followed a criminal right up to the no-man’s land before the LOC; a chase that lasted for two days across steep mountains and deep valleys, and apart from two pill boxes manned by a single soldier each, we did not see any other person in uniform except the members of our police party. Even at the last village before the LOC we found no men in uniform. The village was small and its headman welcomed us and bade us stay in his house. We were treated with utmost respect and affection. The criminal was caught, and brought back to the original village for further proceedings.

That Kashmir had forgotten its earlier periods of violence during several invasions dating from 1320 A.D., and had evolved a truly syncretic way of life for its people was amply illustrated by the events of 1947 when Pakistan tried to annex the province through force and sent in a tribal militia to hide its own face. The rulers of Pakistan had assumed that the predominantly Muslim population of Kashmir would welcome the raiders with open arms and that their way to Srinagar would be strewn with rose petals by the locals. They were to be in for a rude shock when, first Maqbool Sherwani sent them in the wrong direction (for which he later paid with his life at Baramulla), and secondly when the locals resisted them with everything they had at their disposal. Though the communal carnage had reached levels of insane frenzy in the Punjab and Bengal, Kashmir had remained peaceful and the Pandit and other minorities were protected by their Muslim neighbours from these predators from Pakistan.

The twin initiatives of giving land to the tillers and providing free education to all was grabbed with both hands by the peasantry who found that they could now spare the young from their fields and send them to school to get a proper education. They were no longer living a marginal existence where every hand had to be productively employed in the fields or in the sweat shops run by wealthy merchants knitting shawls or knotting carpets.

During the sixties, within a span of ten to fifteen years, Kashmir had a significant population of educated, lower-middle class youth, with normal aspirations of gainful employment. However, during this period the moral climate had been completely vitiated by a succession of self-serving and venal class of politicians, who came to power after the thoughtless dismissal and incarceration of Sheikh Abdullah in 1953. This blunder of truly Himalayan proportions by Nehru was second only to his call for cease fire when still a large part of Kashmir was in hostile possession. Kashmir was handed over first to the most corrupt family then in existence, known as the BBC (Bakshi Brothers Corporation), who amongst them bled the valley while building enormous fortunes for themselves. The Kamraj plan was, mercifully, used to get rid of this son of the soil, but his successors were even worse. In between came people like Shamsuddin (I am sure nobody even remembers that he was the Chief Minister for a few months), followed by the leftist G. M. Sadiq, and Syed Mir Qasim, in whose times began the alienation of the newly educated youth of Kashmir. By the time the Sheikh had been let out of jail and reinstated by Indira Gandhi in 1974, under the Indira-Sheikh accord as the C.M., much damage had been done to the secular fabric of Kashmir.

Pakistan too had not forgotten its humiliation of 1947, and had never accepted Kashmir as a part of India. It continued to harp on the promise of plebiscite that Nehru had made while ordering the cease fire and approaching the UN. However, it conveniently forgot that plebiscite applied to the entire province of Jammu & Kashmir, and not just to the valley. The territories occupied by it illegally and from which it had ceded some parts to China did not figure in its arguments. Nehru had said that a plebiscite could be held if the Pakistanis withdrew to the positions that existed before the tribal raid, and allowed the displaced populations to return to their homes. This was not possible because the Pakistanis, in their misplaced zeal and haste, had surrendered some portions of Northern Kashmir to China. Further they had no intentions of withdrawing from their occupied portion of Kashmir and creating a situation of status quo ante.

Having failed to get their agenda enforced by the UN, even with blatant American support, the Pakistanis embarked on a deliberate policy of creating dissent and disaffection among the people of Kashmir. The first phase of this operation was code named “Gibralter”. This operation was put into effect by the Martial Law President of Pakistan Gen. Ayub Khan in 1965. The operation involved heavy infiltration of Pakistani nationals among who would be disguised military personnel who would provide military training to Kashmiri youth. The recruitment of the youth was done through Jamaat-i-Islami which had deep connections with the Rabita-ul-Islam, the international headquarters of the Islamic fundamentalist movement based in Saudi Arabia. Pakistan’s Jamat-i-Islami was the organization through which the funding and operational guidance would be channelled. An elaborate infrastructure for propagating Wahabi style of Islam was organized in mosques, schools, and Islamic study groups throughout the valley. In the early seventies this movement gained strength due to the fact that the Indian Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi bent every rule in the book to consolidate her hold on the Congress party and through that on the nation. Mrs. Gandhi encouraged personal loyalty to her at the expense of integrity. This led to the rise of a whole breed of politicians and bureaucrats who were ready to bend and crawl to fulfil her every whim. This was the time when governance suffered extremely and Pakistan was able to take advantage of this weakness and further its agenda in Kashmir.

The Jammat in Kashmir imported Moulvis from Bihar, UP, and Assam, who were soon installed in new mosques built according to Arab tradition and architecture all over the valley. The earlier Kashmiri mosques were a synthesis of various architectural styles incorporating elements from Hindu and Buddhist temples. The imported clergy were instructed to preach the harsh version of Wahabi faith and to discourage the Kashmiris from Saint Worship. The centuries old Sufi tradition of Kashmiri Islam was publicly ridiculed. Kashmiri Muslims were exhorted to repudiate their tradition of tolerance and were taught to despise the liberal Hindus and Muslims among them. Women were also enrolled in this operation and an organization known as Dukhtaran-e-Millat was installed. The women of Kashmir had always been liberal in their outlook and the veil was never a part of their culture. The militant members of the Dukhtaran-e-Millat started threatening ordinary women with dire consequences if they appeared in public without a burqa. Some women had acid thrown on them, thereby making them an example. The members of this organization provided support to the militant groups by indulging in subversive acts like gathering information, distributing arms and ammunition, providing shelter for militants, keeping kidnapped persons in their custody, and above all, by raking up false stories of human rights abuse mainly to involve and discredit the security forces in the valley. The media, always ready to grab any bit of juicy gossip, was a willing victim of their manipulation.

The defeat in 1965 followed by the humiliation inflicted upon Pakistan in1971 when it lost the eastern wing that became the independent nation of Bangladesh had brought home to the rulers that they could never win a conventional war against India. The wily Bhutto who had fooled Indira Gandhi into surrendering all the gains India had made in the 1971 war without conceding anything on Kashmir, was soon overthrown by the Army and political control once again came into the hands of the Generals. Zia-ul-Haq, in order to retain and legitimise his control on the country, introduced Islamic law in accordance with the Wahabi school of thought and thus converted the country from a quasi-secular nation to a completely fundamentalist state. After hanging Bhutto on charges upheld by a Kangaroo court, he put the second phase of operation “Gibralter” into action. In the late seventies he launched a proxy war against India to wrest control of Kashmir. The battle for the minds and hearts of young Kashmiris was joined in real earnest. The Jamaat had already established a fundamentalist structure in the valley’s schools, colleges, and had enlisted a large number of young recruits in the police and men in government offices. The objective was to launch an offensive against India by these home-grown elements which could be euphemistically called a struggle for Azadi. Pakistan would be able to deny its active involvement in arming and training these subversive elements while publicly clamouring in international forums about the repressive role of the Indian security forces that were seen to be suppressing a struggle for independence by the “oppressed” people of Kashmir.

Part of the action plan involved sudden and violent attacks on Army and other security establishments, thereby keeping them fully engaged. On the other hand the militants began to attack soft targets among the Hindu minority, beginning with the murder of a number of Kashmiri Pandit intellectuals that included teachers, lawyers, poets and bureaucrats. The mosques were used to spread panic among the minorities when their loudspeakers spewed propaganda and exhorted the Kashmiri Pandits to leave the valley or face the bullets. Mosques became training grounds and hiding places for these terrorists, and the young unemployed youth of the valley fell easy prey to this propaganda. Wahabi Islamic code was being enforced; cinema halls and video parlours were shut down, beauty parlours were closed, and consumption of alcohol was strictly forbidden. There were attempts to ban Indian currency and to introduce Pakistani currency as the legal tender. By 1989, the valley of Kashmir had virtually begun to look like a part of Pakistan. The Pandits were intimidated, terrorized and urged to leave the valley. On January 4, 1990 Aftab an Urdu daily of Srinagar published a press release from Hizbul Mujahdeen asking Kashmiri Hindus to leave Kashmir or face annihilation. Pandits were told in no uncertain terms that if they wished to live in Kashmir they would have to convert to Islam. Nearly 4 lakh Kashmiri Pandits fled the valley, leaving behind hardly a few thousands, who probably had nowhere to go, to their fate. Kashmir had been completely Islamized without an open war with India.

The deliberate policy of intimidating and murdering the minorities was part of the strategy to cleanse the valley of non-Muslims and force the Indian government to bring the security forces out from their barracks and spread them in the towns and cities. This made them easy targets and almost every day there were attacks on their posts. Retaliatory action was condemned as brutality against civilians, and if one or two of the protesters were killed in the operation, their funerals were conducted with the pomp and ceremony deserved by heroes. Lakhs of mourners would march in the streets chanting anti-India slogans, burning the Indian flag while openly asking for merger with Pakistan. The Indian and international media had already been co-opted by the propaganda machinery of Pakistan, and these so-called liberals began berating the Indian Armed Forces as part of a planned strategy for their demoralization. The deaths of hundreds of officers and jawans in militant actions were never mourned by the media, as if they were not human beings. Terrorists caught by the security forces were soon released by the administrators calling them “misguided youth”, thereby signalling to them that they were safe and could continue with their activities.

The liberalization of the Indian economy ushered in by Rajiv Gandhi and further implemented by Narasimha Rao and his Finance Minister, the current Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, had changed the Indian society from a “socialistic pattern” to a capitalist one. Businesses were unshackled from government control and profit was no longer a dirty word. The newspaper industry, which till then had largely been seen as an ethical business enterprise, soon changed gears as profits became the sole motive for existence. Television channels mushroomed all over, vying for TRPs and eyeballs. The Indian public, starved of entertainment for so long, enthusiastically lapped up whatever was dished out by these channels. Realising the potential of the media to inflict damage on the country, newspapers and TV channels were funded by shady organizations through the FDI route. The editors of most of these media enterprises have been compromised to mouth the sentiments and policies of these hidden owners. It is rumoured that a large sum of money has been paid by Saudi Arabia to the editors of two prominent Indian TV news channels, with the mandate that they highlight atrocities against Muslims in India and blame the Indian security forces for all that has gone wrong in Kashmir. The Central Government is a willing partner in this manipulation, as it suits its political ends to keep the agitation in Kashmir going. The Indian state is pumping colossal amounts of money into the valley to placate the hardliners, and to maintain the security forces. A large portion of this money is going towards lining the pockets of both the givers and the recipients who are but politicians and bureaucrats. The longer the turmoil lasts, the more is the money that they can make.

The Kashmiri Pandits who were forced to flee and took refuge in Jammu and elsewhere in India were cleverly dubbed as migrants and not as refugees. Their properties were either occupied by the local Muslims or burnt down. The Central Government connived in this fraud by denying the fact that nearly 4 lakh of the citizens of this country had been rendered homeless not due to any natural calamity like flood, earthquake, or tsunami, but by the wilful and carefully planned strategy of terror by another section of the citizenry. The ethnic cleansing of the Pandits was glossed over by the news media and there was never a serious attempt by them to highlight the plight of these unfortunate people. The subhuman conditions in which these Pandits were living in Jammu camps infested with snakes and other reptiles were never exposed to the people at large, but the death or injury of a single protester or stone-pelter on the streets in Kashmir was highlighted and the security forces roundly blamed for thoughtlessness and insensitivity.

In Kashmir many political parties and organizations claim to be secular, but their membership consists of hard-core Islamists. Outside India, World Kashmir Movement (WKM) in London and Kashmir American Council (KAC) in Washington DC serve as mouthpieces of Islamists and pro-Pakistani elements. These organizations have hired Western lobbyists, paid by Arab and Pakistani money, to project Islamic terrorists as freedom fighters fighting for liberation of Jammu & Kashmir from India. At the same time they have recruited known bleeding-heart leftist academics, politicians, and journalists in India to advance their agenda and created a pressure group to favour Kashmir’s secession. These mouthpieces are regularly invited to voice their opinions in the visual media where they keep on harping on the theme that India has failed the youth of Kashmir. Without actually saying that we should hand over the state on a platter to Pakistan, they keep repeating stories of imagined atrocities committed by the security forces that they would like to see withdrawn from Kashmir.

The present generation of the young Kashmiris is totally disconnected from the earlier generation, be it Hindu or Muslim. The Pandits have moved on and settled down to making a new beginning in Jammu and elsewhere in India and abroad. Not being entrepreneurial by nature, they have depended upon executive and administrative employment in either business houses or the government. Both are absent from the valley. There are no employment opportunities for the young in today’s Kashmir and the Pandits are better off outside the valley. Even if the communal climate in the valley stabilizes, the lack of job opportunities will prevent the Pandits to return to their ancestral homes. Pakistan has surely succeeded in completely Islamizing the valley. The Muslim leaders in Kashmir know that the Pandits will not return and their assertion that they are safe once they return is nothing but eyewash. Even if it is safe, the Pandits will go to the valley like other tourists, somewhat like the Italians, Greeks, and Spaniards who have settled for generations in America, to visit the mohallas and localities where their ancestors used to live, and to savour the vegetables, fruits and other local products that some of them nostalgically yearn for.

The Muslims on the other hand have boxed themselves into a valley 60 miles long and 40 miles wide, and have lost the ability to look beyond their narrow piece of sky. They have begun to disown their unique heritage and have wholeheartedly adopted the Arabian Wahabi system of their faith. While beating their breasts at the destruction of the holy shrine of the great Sufi saint Shaikh Nur-ud-din (1337-1442 A.D) at Chrar-e-sharif (revered also by the Hindus as Nund Reshi), they had no qualms in letting dreaded terrorists occupy it who eventually set it on fire. The people have forgotten the message of the Shaikh about how Islam should be followed in the following verses from his great body of work:

Should you not shun inner anger?
How can you, your external wrath?
Unless you cleanse you inner mind
You'll lead an ostriched life

"Why are you bent upon to create hatred amongst them?
They are the descendants of one and the same mother,
Serve to the best of your capacity Mussalmans and Hindus.
If you follow this path God will bestow his grace on thee."


And he had foretold how events would unfold if his advice was not followed:


"They will cut the throat of that very cock.
Who calls them to prayers.
They will simply weigh him for their own ends.
I beseech I may not be born among such people Oh! God."

"You have crammed the books only for worldly ends.
Your learning never prevents you from your bad deeds.
You always think in terms of trapping each-other
Your contention is wrong, for you consider.
Yourselves to be amongst the chosen.
I foretell with authority that you will not reach the goal.”

The young Kashmiri Muslims have been inoculated with this poisonous vaccine of a militant Islam at conflict with the rest of the world over religious identity. It is a lament for the lost glories of Islamic Empires that flourished for centuries over large parts of the globe, and have now shrunk to a few sheikhdoms in oil-rich Arabia. The Sheikhs are a powerless elite, dependent upon the West who exploit them for their oil and in return permit them to indulge in their fantasies. But as with Saddam Hussain, these dictators know that they will be tolerated only till they keep on toeing the line of the Western powers. The frustration at this knowledge of helplessness builds anger in the minds of young Muslims who are ready to avenge their lost glory on the first hapless victim they come across. This is what Pakistan has recognized as the weakness of the Kashmiri Muslim youth and has been exploiting through its agents in the mosques, educational institutions, and the media.

As said earlier money has never been in short supply in the valley from the time Mrs. Indira Gandhi took complete control of the Congress party and the country. To keep herself in power she indulged every corrupt politician and hundreds of millions were diverted from public schemes to the private coffers of the powerful and the power-brokers. To keep control on the valley she installed Sheikh Abdullah as CM in 1974, who was no longer the lion that he had been in his earlier phase. A long time in jail and out of power had dulled his fire and he was happy to be back in office. Under his stewardship corruption rose to new heights and all the money that the centre was providing for infrastructure development and employment-generating schemes just went into private hands. Kashmiris were becoming rich without doing anything and the centre was happy to go along turning a blind eye. Indira Gandhi believed that she had brought the state firmly into the Indian Union and that there would be no more talk of a plebiscite or merger with Pakistan. Little did she realize that the funds she was providing were being utilized by the enemies of India to train and mobilize a deadly column of young jihadis who would be completely indoctrinated with the philosophy of militant Islam. After her assassination in 1984 she was succeeded by her son Rajiv who was inexperienced and naïve and thus became a pawn in the hands of his mother’s wily adherents. These parasites had been encouraged by his mother to help her stay in power and they now switched over to his body. Rajiv was completely isolated by this coterie around him and kept in an ‘ivory tower’ that made him lose touch with reality. In 1989, not only did he lose the Lok Sabha elections that he had won five years ago with the greatest majority ever, but the country was almost at the threshold of balkanization as sectarian and fissiparous pressures were tearing the national fabric into shreds. There were, in the famous phrase of Sir Vidya Naipaul, a “million mutinies everywhere”. However, India did ride that crisis except in the valley of Kashmir. The ethnic cleansing of the minorities began in the same year and the valley has been openly rebellious against India from that time onwards.

Going by the comments on Facebook by Kashmiri youth, who seem to have taken to it with great relish, one can see how completely alienated and indoctrinated these young men have been. Instead of Maqbool Sherwani it is Maqbool Bhatt who is their current hero. I have gone through hundreds of profiles and thousands of statements made by them openly on this website and am appalled at the kind of language they are using to denounce India. These are all educated, English speaking, T-shirt and jeans clad youth, and not some bearded, Salwar-Kameez-wearing fanatics. The hatred for India and the Indian security forces in their hearts is running deep and fast. There are a large number of women on Facebook who echo these sentiments, perhaps with even more vehemence. Facebook is a public domain and anyone can access it and read the innermost thoughts of most people who like to post their comments on it. The Kashmiri youth is not in the streets pelting stones at the security forces because they have mundane demands like employment, education or, as we have a tendency to say in India, “bijli, sadak, aur pani”. The youth have no such demands. The writers and intellectuals, who are continuously harping upon the theme that India has not done justice to Kashmir, have never actually put down the nature of the demands of the agitators. They want to gloss over the fact that the young Kashmiri Muslims have only one demand - to be given independence from Indian rule and to establish a complete Islamic state in the valley. The demand for independence is just a pretext as they do not openly want to admit that their ultimate goal is a complete merger with Pakistan. Everybody knows that a landlocked independent Kashmir cannot survive and the moment Indian troops move out, the Pakistani Army will move in and bring the state under its rule. Ask any young Kashmiri in the street and he will confirm that he does not want anything else but Azadi from India.

The pseudo-secular media has conveniently ignored to report on this aspect of the movement in Kashmir. They have not even once asked the question that why the people of Jammu and Ladakh have not resorted to the same tactics as the people of the valley. It is because the truth is inconvenient to their agenda and the real people who control them. The Jyoti Punwanis, Vir Sanghvis and others have compromised themselves to a position on Kashmir for reasons best known to them. Unfortunately, they are in a position to influence public opinion by projecting a wrong image of the Indian Security forces in Kashmir while sympathizing with the openly anti-nationalist and anti-Indian people of the valley of Kashmir. The Government of India is led by a weak Prime Minister and an arrogant-ignorant Home Minister. It is doubly unfortunate that the Congress President, who by virtue of a surname, is in a position to influence policy and decision-making, is instead totally occupied by the mission to have her son anointed as the next Prime Minister. It is he who is dictating policy at this time and there is no one in the Government or the party who dare say a word contrary to his. Much like his father he is too inexperienced and naïve to understand what the enemies of India are planning. The state’s energies are diverted towards holding such wasteful extravaganzas as the Commonwealth Games. Making money has become the mantra of the urban masses with Western lifestyles as the ultimate achievement. The media is actively encouraging this tendency and conspicuous consumption has become the norm. In this pursuit for more and more consumerism, we have forgotten the purpose for which we had fought for our independence in the last century. That independence is under serious threat from an extremely hostile neighbour on our Western flank and our own citizens from the North. Our present indifference to these threats will cost us very dear in the future and may eventually end up with a complete break-up of the entity we know today as India.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

WAR ON TERROR IS WINNABLE

Terror is a situation the world has learnt to live with for centuries. From the time humans discovered agriculture, and began to abjure a nomadic, pastoral life, small communes evolved around agricultural fields, gradually developing into hamlets, villages, towns, cities, states and nations. Settlements became natural targets of predators, wild and human. From the beginning of history, even before men found God and religion, human settlements have been attacked, preyed upon and terrorized by other human forces. History is full of such narratives and names like Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Alexander The Great, Asoka, Babar, Pizzaro, and Cortez, just to name a few, evoke in our minds visions of marauding hordes descending upon helpless people and nations, indiscriminately slaughtering anybody and everybody in their paths, leaving behind a trail of death and destruction. Except for the Aztecs and the Incas, who trusted their Spanish visitors, and actually welcomed them with open arms, and in the bargain, paid the highest price for that trust, the other settled populations of Europe and Asia were, more or less, resigned to the fact that one or the other warlords would descend upon them, without warning, whenever he wanted. By the end of the Second World War, almost the entire population of the globe had a direct or indirect encounter with terror.

In the violent history of the world, 9/11 was an event that, however, seems to have evoked a wholly different response from people. Undoubtedly, it was an extremely daring terrorist operation, carried out with precision, and had the added advantage of being telecast live into the rooms of almost one-third of the homes on the planet. In just a few minutes, the entire military and security apparatus of the most powerful nation on earth had been shown up to be vulnerable, and its leaders shown as men of straw. In contrast, the response of the Western leadership was too predictable, and it was this response that the mastermind behind the attacks was hoping for. During the course of just one day, an obscure, little, individual with a turban and a beard, attained the identities of Genghis Khan, Attila and the others rolled into one. The fact that this man was not personally leading any horde but was hiding in some cave in the Tora Bora mountains of Afghanistan, did nothing to detract from his image of a world conqueror, who had brought the mightiest nation on earth to its knees.

How was this identification possible? The answer lies in the fact that Osama bin-Laden did not claim to be the beneficiary of this act of terror, but called it a victory for a religion, an identity that about 1.6 billion inhabitants of this world ascribe to. Osama claimed that he had acted on behalf of these 1.6 billion people and sought revenge for perceived and imagined wrongs that had been perpetrated by non-Muslims on Muslim nations from the time that the religion had been founded in the 7th century. It was a classic case of what psychologists call the “victim response” in which a group feels the loss of collective self-esteem as a result of overwhelming outside forces of which they have become innocent victims. Among the upper and middle classes of the Muslims this is also known as the “Andalus syndrome”, deriving its name from the sudden and abrupt ending, in the 16th century, of the great Muslim civilization in the Iberian Peninsula that lasted for nearly 800 years, leading to unremitting gloom among the Muslim societies in North Africa and around the Mediterranean. The victim syndrome was further aggravated by the decline of the Mughals in India who ceded power to the British after the 1857 War of Independence, and the ending of the Ottoman Caliphate and its replacement by a Republican government led by Kemal Ataturk, in October 1923. The past glory and reach of Islamic power had shrunk to dependencies across the Arab world and Asia. The loss of Andalusia and especially the loss of Cordoba in Spain where the Caliph Al Hakam II had built a great mosque in the 10th century have been perennial laments in the history of Islam and its followers. That there is now a move afoot to build an Islamic centre near Ground Zero in New York City which will include a mosque named Cordoba, is an attempt to reclaim that lost glorious period of the supremacy of Islam.

This proposal has split the American people as it has put a lot of strain on the American ideal of freedom of expression and the right of its people to give full expression to their religious beliefs. The Mayor of New York City, as well as President Barack Obama have both stressed on this aspect of the American Constitution, and cannot see how this project can be stopped legitimately. There are others like the former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who have opposed it by protesting that the “9/11 Victory Mosque” would insult the memory of the victims who died in that inferno. There is right now a very intense debate in the media on this controversial project, and I find the approach of the Muslim intellectuals and writers to be of a dissembling nature. Almost unanimously they cry that one Osama does not represent the entire population of Muslims and that he belongs to a “lunatic fringe” that finds no resonance in the hearts and minds of ordinary Muslims. At the same time they warn that by rejecting this proposal, the world would be providing a “recruitment bonanza for Al Qaida”. These same writers tell us that any action perceived to be insulting to the symbols of Islam will end up in strengthening Osama’s ideology and getting him more and more soldiers for jihad. The Swiss ban on Minarets, the French and Belgian ban on the burqa are seen as great insults to Islam, but they have no comments when M. F. Hussain denigrates Hindu Gods and Goddesses in his paintings. Then it is the artist’s freedom of expression that is invoked! That the immigrant Muslim populations in Europe have never tried to integrate with the native inhabitants and have always expected to be treated differently due to their religion is conveniently ignored by them. All the concessions are expected from non-Muslims. They must not be asked to conform and to accept the local laws. On their part the Muslims are not expected to do anything because they are, after all, “victims”.

It is the opinion of these intellectuals that the war on terror is not winnable as they see the Taliban in Afghanistan and the other Islamic terrorist outfits in Pakistan as providing enough resistance to the Western powers who appear to be fast running out of patience and would like to get out of these theatres of war. Al Qaeda, according to them, does not have to launch another attack on American soil for it to claim victory, for it has the capacity to force an ideological clash which will be more disastrous. The solution, for them, is to accept all such proposals that will raise the esteem of the Muslims and give them every concession they demand. Nowhere have I read that the Muslim world is prepared to take on the Al Qaeda and the other terrorist outfits, and to eliminate them from among their midst. Pakistan cries hoarse that it is also a victim of terror, but does nothing to seriously confront the perpetrators who are well known. Osama is known to be hiding in Pakistan, as also Mullah Omar and the other leaders of the various Jihadi outfits. Apart from some cosmetic surgery the Pakistani government and people are not serious about confronting this monster of their own creation. Ordinary Muslims expect the Western powers to confront these jihadi militias and to watch the battle from the sidelines. They are always ready to jump into the streets, burning and looting, when there is an imagined or perceived dishonour of any symbol of Islam, but they are not ready to fight and eliminate someone whom they themselves call as belonging to a “lunatic fringe”. You can almost sense a smirk on the face of the writer when he/she is writing that Islam should not be confused with Al Qaeda and so on. That the Wahabi type of “fundamentalist” Islam, which is the cornerstone of Al Qaeda and similar outfits, has been on the ascendant ever since Arabia discovered oil is conveniently ignored by these intellectuals. The syncretic form of Sufi Islam that prevailed in the Indian subcontinent has all but disappeared and has been replaced by the harsher version. Kashmir is an apt example of this state of affairs. It is a state whose population is almost entirely Muslim. From the time that its leaders decided to accept its union with the Republic of India, it has remained a troubled state. First through the direct military intervention by Pakistan in 1947, and then through its agencies like the ISI and the Jihadi outfits, Kashmir has remained on the boil and is continuing to be an area of bloody conflict. By replacing the softer, syncretic version of Islam by its Wahabi version, the people of Kashmir started looking at India as Dar-ul-harb and the Hindus as their enemies. All their energies were wasted in projects aimed at opposition of the Indian state and the expulsion of the Kashmiri Hindus from the valley. To achieve these aims the Kashmiris resorted to terror tactics against the Hindus, intimidating them through loud-speaker threats from their mosques, and through murder and arson. That these tactics did grave damage to the economy of the state, shut down whatever industry it had, closed educational institutions, and kept the holiday-season tourists away, did not seem to occur to these agitators. Sine 1989 Kashmir has been in the grip of these destructive elements, and whenever opportunities for reconciliation have appeared, they have found some excuse or the other to keep the fires burning. A prime example of this is the large scale agitation launched by them when the J & K Government transferred about 100 acres of forest land to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board on lease for Rs. 2.31 crores in Baltal. The land was to be used for building temporary shelter for pilgrims during the two months that the Yatra lasts every year. The intolerance exhibited by the people of the valley was on full view when they attacked security forces, openly burnt the Indian Flag, and raised pro-Pakistan slogans. Today these very people are asking for a solution from India for a problem that they have largely been responsible for creating. The demand for Azadi without any concrete idea of what to do with that Azadi is nothing but a convenient slogan to raise in the name of keeping the agitation going. Kashmiris demand jobs, but they have destroyed all employment-generating agencies. Actually what they would really like are jobs with the government where they need not produce any work and where they can earn money through corruption. This then is the grand agenda of the Kashmiri militants. But the Muslim and the secularist writers in the media will continue to feed us with the propaganda that the people of Kashmir have been wronged by India and somehow they should be brought into the mainstream. How that can be done without the participation of the Kashmiris has never been suggested.

The war against Islamic terror is certainly winnable but for that we need political will and self-confidence. It cannot be won through vote-bank politics that has become the way of political life in India, and some parts of the West, particularly England. It cannot be won by allowing a college professor’s palm to be chopped off for setting a question paper that is perceived to be insulting to Islam. The unfortunate professor did not get the support of his Christian community and was summarily sacked from the college. Adding insult to the injury has been the conduct of the clergy in Kerala who have condemned him from pulpits across the state and justified the chopping of his palm and defending the most unchristian act of sacking him from his job. The deafening silence of the law and order authorities across the country, and its Home Minister speaks volumes about the kind of moral stupor that the country has lapsed into.

If the Muslim leaders who have first come up with the idea of building the Cordoba centre of Islam in Manhattan do not have any moral compunction about it, then the rest of the world should allow them to do so. Maybe we should encourage them to build such centres in other capital cities like London, Madrid, New Delhi, as also in places like Mumbai and Ahmadabad - places that have been victims of Islamic terror. But at the same time severe political and economic sanctions have to be enforced upon states that harbour and export terror. Pakistan would naturally head this list. The Afghani Taliban resistance will crumble once Pakistan is brought to heel. Anarchies like Somalia and Sudan need to be sorted out by military intervention and brought under UN governments backed by full military support till the anarchists are either eliminated or neutralised. Iraq needs to be rehabilitated and huge investments must be made to revive its oil and other industries. The Islamic nations of the CIS need to be looked as industrial partners and not as gas fields to be exploited for one’s benefit. A major shift is called for in the mindset of the West which will require it to invest huge amounts in education, health care, and industry in the Islamic world. The Arabs must be forced to part with some of their wealth to finance these projects, as it is the export of their ideology that has brought these countries to their current state of stagnation and backwardness. Education, full employment, and good health will make the appeal of instant paradise less attractive and will go a long way in defeating Osama bin-Laden in the battle for the minds of the 1.6 billion Muslims of the world.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

THE MYSTIC GUIDE

I met Babubhai in the summer of 1969. It was an extremely hot month of May when I decided to travel from Patna, where I was working with a multinational footwear organization, and from where I was desperately looking for an escape, both from the squalor and backwardness of a city that progress had left far behind, and from a company that matched the city in all its aspects. The company had two fixed periods of holidays during a year, each of a week’s duration, when the operations would come to a halt and the employees would be asked to proceed on leave. These periods were known as Annual Compulsory Privilege Leave (ACPL) weeks; the paradoxical juxtaposition of the words “compulsory” and “privilege” not bothering either the half-literate Czechs who owned the company, or their equally equipped senior Indian managers. The two weeks invariably happened to fall in the months of May and October. The second week inevitably coinciding with the Puja celebrations in Calcutta, when all of Bengal would be in a festive mood.

That May was particularly hot and dry. The heat and tedium of Bihar during summers can be very enervating. The dreaded pacchhia (westerly wind), whenever it blew, would sap even the last bit of moisture from all living creatures, leaving them listless and exhausted. To escape this oppressive atmosphere, I had planned to travel to Bombay where a few of my friends and classmates had found employment. I had written to them earlier and they had confirmed that I would be able to stay with them in their rented apartment. I had never been to Bombay, and despite having lived in Calcutta for almost two years, had never seen the sea. The prospect of spending a few days in the commercial capital of India, also the city of many dreams churned out by its cinema industry, was like going to a circus show or a picnic during one’s childhood days.

The train journey from Patna to Bombay took almost forty hours. Madhu Dandavate had not yet become the Railway Minister. Second class sleeper coaches consisted of wooden berths, and the three inches of foam covered by cheap Rexene cloth had not yet been deemed necessary for the poor, ordinary travelling people of the country. The train traversed through the dustbowl of Central India covering everyone with a uniform coat of earthly brown. The landscape also wore a uniform look, parched dry by the relentless sun; agricultural fields looking cracked and ravaged like the surface of the moon, our little satellite that would soon have its first human footprint. (Apollo 11 landed on the moon on the 20th of July 1969). The wayside stations wore a desultory look, the hawkers and vendors running along the train with their wares hoping to catch the eyes of tired and exhausted passengers. Even the drinking water taps at these stations either had run dry or poured out a scalding hot stream. The only vendors who did brisk business were the cola and soft drink sellers. Plastic drinking water bottles were yet unknown. Families travelling together usually had an earthen pitcher, commonly known as a surahi, which they would fill from time to time at railway platforms on the way. The surahi, being unglazed, has small pores through which the water seeps and as evaporation happens, it leads to the cooling of the substance left inside the pot.

Exhausted, dehydrated, and sleepless, I finally reached the Victoria Terminus Station in Bombay on a Sunday afternoon at about 1 p.m. I was delighted to see my friends Tony and Kiku at the platform. Bombay, in addition to being hot, was also very humid, but at that moment all my weariness evaporated and I found myself ready for whatever delights the city had in store for me. We hailed a taxi and were soon on our way to Malabar Hill where my fiends had their apartment. The taxi swung on to Marine Drive, and for the first time in my life I had a view of the sea. Till then the largest body of water I had seen was the Dal Lake in Srinagar. My friends told me that they were sharing their two-bedroom apartment with the landlord, who occupied one bedroom while they had the other. They were not supposed to bring in guests to stay, but they had sought special permission for me. Apparently he was a poet of sorts and they had told him that even I indulged in the same passion. They warned me that he was waiting for me at home, and that I should be prepared for a poetic onslaught as soon as I entered the house. I was told to keep a straight face and not to burst out in uncontrollable laughter on listening to his poems. Since I have no poetic pretensions, I thought they had landed me in a very sticky situation.

It was, therefore, with a great deal of apprehension that I entered the apartment on Little Gibbs Road, and sure enough, there was Babubhai waiting for me. Before I could even focus my eyes on him, he had grabbed me by the hand and led me straight to his room. He had a small school exercise book in his hand, from which he started reading some poems in English. It was a tremendous effort to keep my composure and not to burst out in raucous laughter. I did not comprehend even one word of what he was reading or reciting. Getting a hold of myself, I told Babubhai to relax, and in as polite a manner as possible, told him that physically and mentally I was in no condition to listen to, and far less, appreciate his poetry. I was dirty and grimy, thirsty and hungry, and above all thoroughly exhausted by my long and sleepless journey across half-a-subcontinent. More than anything else, I needed a long cold shower that would remove the dust and dirt from my body, and freshen up my whole being. Babubhai took a closer look at me and instantly agreed, releasing me from his hold. He said we would continue our conversation later in the evening after I had refreshed my body and soul.

I stayed in Bombay for six days. Tony and Kiku would go to work in the morning and we would meet for lunch at a restaurant near Opera House. I would visit some other friends who were also working in the city. Later, we would all meet for dinner at different restaurants. One night we went to Blue Nile, a restaurant in New Marine Lines which had a very popular cabaret show. The cabaret artist came to our table and dragged Kutty, aka Thomas to the dance floor, mock-trying to remove his trousers. Red-faced, though I suspect rather reluctantly, Thomas extricated himself from her arms and rushed back to the table, accompanied by wolf whistles from us all. The younger brother of a close friend in Patna was also in Bombay trying to make a career for himself in the film industry. He was tall, dark and handsome in a way, and had trained at the Film & Television Training Institute in Poona. Apart from his brother, no one in his family was happy with his choice of career, and it was his brother who supported him financially during his period of struggle. He thought he would make a break in the industry as a villain in the mould of the well-established Pran, and had been making the usual rounds of studios, producers and directors. During the week that I was in Bombay he was with me every day. I suspect he did not have a proper place of his own to live as he never asked me to visit him. Later he became a big star in the industry, and like many others, tried his hand at politics. He was successful to some extent - becoming a minister in the government at the centre; but his ambition of becoming the Chief Minister of his home state remains unfulfilled.

Babubhai, the landlord, and I spent many hours together in the mornings, and sometime late in the night. He would brew himself a pot of black tea in the morning from which he would pour himself a cup, and leave the rest in the pot on the dining table. At about eleven he would leave the house. He would go to the nearby Hanging Gardens, lie down under a tree, or sit on a bench and compose his poems. Whenever an inspiration came, he would pen it down in a notebook, which would always be with him. He would wander along the Queen’s necklace, the promenade on Marine Drive, and offer his services, for a small fee, as a guide to tourists. He would take them to shops whose owners knew him and who would pay him a commission from the sales they made to his groups. By five in the evening he would be back in the apartment. He would pour a cup of tea from the same pot he had left on the table in the morning (by now cold and very bitter) and drink it with great relish. I never saw him eat. My guess is that he would get some vada pao, or some other local snack from sidewalk vendors during the day, and that would be enough to sustain him.

Babubhai was of an indeterminate age; he could have been in his late twenties or mid-thirties, but certainly not older. He was medium-built, not very fair by the standards of his Khoja community, and single. His family was quite well off, and had quite a few business interests in the city. His mother had realised quite early that he would not be able to make a living for himself, and had therefore willed the apartment to him. His older brothers gave him a monthly allowance of Rs. 450.00, and my friends paid him rent of Rs. 250.00. These amounts, supplemented by whatever he earned from his efforts as a guide, were more than enough to meet his needs. He dressed neatly, but simply, did not smoke or drink, and never went out in the evenings.

Babubhai was deeply spiritual and had a great deal of reverence for the Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of the Khojas. This reverence he had inherited from his mother, who he said, had complete faith in the Aga Khan’s divinity. He told me that he had once spied upon his mother who used to lock herself in her room to pray, and seen her levitating at least three feet above the ground. His poems too were steeped in spiritual themes and, though light in composition, they were deeply layered in meanings. Some of the poems he read or recited to me were very beautiful. Today I would have recognized them as the yearnings of a Sufi seeker. He had a bundle of notebooks under his mattress in which he had poured out his heart and his longings. I believe that apart from me he had not shown his notebooks to anybody. He was so happy to unburden his mind to a willing listener that he never once asked me if it was true that I also wrote some poetry, as my friends had falsely led him to believe. One night when Kiku and Tony had gone to sleep, Babubhai and I sat on the balcony and he went on reading poem after poem from his notebooks till I fell asleep there itself. It was like a whole lot of molten lava had found the thin crust of earth above it, and pushing for release, burst forth in a river of splendid colour and heat.

The six days were up in no time, and I was ready for the return train journey to Patna. The would-be star came to see me off at the VT Station. Accompanying him was a similarly struggling female artist with whom he was then doing a horror film. I think he wanted to tell me that life was just beginning to get more interesting for him, and that he had put his foot on the first step of the ladder to stardom. This female artist also made it big in Hindi cinema, and retired at her peak when she married into a big industrial house in Uganda. Babubhai did not come to see me off, but he promised to keep in touch and write regularly; a promise he kept in full measure. There was a letter from him almost every week, and sometimes more than once. Sometimes he would say that he was in the post office, hastily scribbling a poem on an inland letter form, as the words of the new poem had just come to him. I would reply, although not as frequently, giving my appreciation for his work, and encouraging him to continue writing. We carried on like this for about six months. Slowly my responses became more infrequent as I got involved in other pursuits, chief among them my own impending marriage. He too must have sensed my flagging interest and soon his letters stopped coming.

A year later both Tony and Kiku had left Bombay for other places, and Babubhai’s flat on Little Gibbs Road had new tenants. However, the new tenants were usually friends of the earlier ones, single, and mostly from the same institution to which we had belonged. In 1971 I moved from Patna to the island nation of Trinidad & Tobago in the West Indies, although still employed by the same organization. I returned to India in December 1972, landing at Bombay and staying in the city for about a month. On enquiry I discovered that another of my classmates was staying in Babubhai’s apartment. I called on him and found little change in the appearance of the place. All the furniture was the same as it was in May 1969. In these three-and-a-half years a number of our friends had transited through this place and moved on. Now Kuldip was occupying one bedroom, while the second was occupied by another tenant, who apparently was not from our institute. Babubhai, it seems, had left the apartment and gone to Haji Malang, a Sufi shrine near Kalyan, where he had taken up permanent residence. This shrine, dedicated to the 13th century mystic Haji Abdur Rehman Shah Malang, (who according to legend, had come to India from Yemen and had made the little village at the bottom of the hill in Kalyan, his home), has been drawing thousands of Hindu and Muslim pilgrims who come there to pray and to find solace. This is probably the only shrine where a Hindu vahivatdar (a traditional priest) and a mutawalli (claiming to be a distant kin of the Baba) both officiate together at religious rituals. The Board of Trustees of the Haji Malang Shrine comprises of members from both the communities, perhaps the only symbol of true syncretism left in today’s India!

That Babubhai had chosen to leave this material world and find shelter in a Sufi shrine did not come as a surprise to me as I had been witness to his spiritual side and had heard his poems full of yearning for that mystic experience the Sufis call “fana”. I asked if he had left his notebooks behind, but Kuldip had no knowledge of them. I presume he would have carried them with him. How I wished I had, at least, preserved his letters which he had mailed to me in Patna. Some time later I learnt that Kuldip had to leave the apartment because his co-tenant decided to get married and requested him to find some other accommodation for himself. Being a gentleman, Kuldip obliged and left the apartment for his friend and his new bride.

Babubhai never came back to Bombay, and apparently attained the Sufi equivalent of fana while in the service of the Baba Haji Malang. I heard that he had left behind a will according to which the apartment given to him by his mother was to be gifted to the last person or persons living in it as tenants. Apparently his family, in honouring his wishes, did not choose to contest the will.

The week that I spent in his company will always remain in my memory as a period of mystery and wonder. The mystic guide had everything a young man would have wanted those days. He had a loving family who cared for him and made sure that he did not want for anything; seemed well educated; lived in one of the premium areas of Bombay; and above all, could choose to indulge in his passion for poetry without anyone pushing him to pursue a career in some field or other. The family never put any pressure on him to either join the business or do something else more financially profitable. They just let him be and only ensured that he had enough means to look after his daily needs.

Babubhai touched my life briefly, all too briefly. Today I cannot recall even one line from the scores of poems that he recited or posted to me. I find it difficult to even recall his face and if his photograph is shown to me I will surely fail to recognize it. But that one week together has left a deep impression somewhere in my consciousness, perhaps imperceptibly influencing my thoughts as I try to find some meaning in my own rather pointless existence. The magnetic pull of Arunachala that I have been experiencing for some time now seems a natural progression from that week I spent in Bombay more than forty years ago.

Saturday, September 4, 2010

The Lost Paradise

I am born in a Kashmiri Brahmin family. My father, like most Kashmiri Pandits, was a government servant – he started his career as a stenographer in the High Court in Srinagar – and later was the Personal Assistant to the Prime Minister Shri Gopalaswamy Ayyangar. Subsequently, he served as the Supply Secretary, and then the Home Secretary of the state of Jammu & Kashmir. In Srinagar we had a rather large government house on Exchange Road, with a nice, fenced garden in front, another fenced space on the side where we children used to play and, - what appeared to me during my childhood as vast - a vegetable field that I couldn’t see the end of. We were not rich, but neither did we seem to be lacking in the basic necessities of life.

My parents had a very liberal attitude towards religion, and although we would visit the shrines at Khir Bhawani, Hari Parbat, and some other temples in the valley; yet these would be more like excursions, or picnics. The idea of going on a pilgrimage is rather unknown to the pandits. For them there are no austerities to be performed or rituals to be observed before making a visit to a holy place. In fact, more non-Kashmiris would visit the Amarnath cave and the Vaishno Devi shrine in Jammu than the pandits. I suspect we were fond of the good, easy life, and going on arduous pilgrimages did not fit into this lifestyle.

As children we would look forward to these picnics. The trip to Khir Bhawani would sometime be by a Doonga (a modest house boat, quite unlike the luxurious houseboats you find on the Dal Lake for tourists). The Doonga is constructed of wood. It is flat bottomed, usually about 50 feet long and about 6 feet wide. The framework of the sloping roof is timber, and the walls of the enclosed section are made of matting. The Doonga would slowly wend its way through the rivulets that encircle the city (all tributaries of the Jhelum river), and on reaching the entrance to the Dal Lake, would be guided through a gate into a locked space. The river and the lake are at different levels, and this maneuver is needed to bring the boat to the same level as the lake. Once the water level inside the locked space reached the level of the lake, the gate on the lake side would be opened and the boat allowed to move out. The Doonga would inevitably be owned by a Muslim family (called Hanjis) who would also be living, usually in the aft section of the boat, where a kitchen with a dried-clay fireplace would be housed. There, obviously, was no problem of Brahmins and Muslims coexisting in the confined space of a small houseboat.

A Doonga trip would usually be with one or two other families, either from among our relatives, or from my father’s friends. The party would include a family cook who would prepare the meals during the journey. On these trips the menu would be more elaborate, and the cook expected to conjure up delectable mutton dishes and fresh vegetables bought from the vendors floating on the lake. Just before reaching the temple town, however, all the mutton on board would have been consumed, and everybody would become vegetarian. A trip to Khir Bhawani and back would normally take three days. These were three days of no school, no home work, and very little parental supervision. We were only cautioned to keep away from danger, and to ensure that we did not fall into the waters.

Once landfall was made at Ganderbal, we would all disembark, making the rest of the journey on foot. The complex at Khir Bhawani has a small shrine in the middle of an enclosed spring, whose waters are reputed to change colour. The shrine is connected by a gangway only used by the priests to wash and clean the idol of Devi. Devotees are not allowed on this gangway. Around the shrine is a large courtyard, paved with flagstones, canopied by huge chinar trees providing ample shade. The courtyard can accommodate hundreds of devotees, who await their turn to make their offerings to the goddess, and make special prayers conducted by the officiating priests. The courtyard is encircled by the waters of a shallow rivulet that has been bounded on both sides. A part of this rivulet is enclosed for women, to take their ritual baths before they offer their prayers. The men bathe in the open waters. Beyond this circle is a market housing shops selling pooja materials, and a variety of general goods. There are a number of traditional Kashmiri Halwais who are busy making luchis and halwa. These two are in great demand. Luchis are rotis made of maida, deep fried in ghee, and halwa is a pudding made from cream of wheat, with a profusion of dry fruits like almonds, and raisins. Luchis and Halwa of Khir Bhawani are somehow special, and are normally not a part of our regular diet. Both are rather rich and heavy; but there must be something special in the water and air of Khir Bhawani, that no matter how much we gorged on these delectable items, we never fell sick.

The atmosphere is very relaxed. It is like being in a fair. Everyone is having a lot of fun. Children are playing a variety of games in the grounds beyond the rivulet, women exchanging gossip, brewing kahwa (tea) in their samovars; and the men busy in making arrangements for the special offerings and prayers at the shrine of the goddess.

Offerings made, prayers said, and it is time for the return journey. We pick up our things and start walking back to where the Doonga is berthed. Ganderbal is a town on the banks of the river Sind, and is famous for its fish. As soon as the party reaches Ganderbal, the cook is dispatched to buy fish and mutton for dinner and the meals for the next day. Being vegetarian is no longer necessary.

Being devotees of Siva, Kashmiri Pandits would celebrate Shivratri rather elaborately. Every Brahman household would become a bride’s home - on this occasion the home of Goddess Parvati - and the head of the house would be the father of the bride. He would be doing the kanyadan (giving away the bride) when the groom, Lord Siva would come with his marriage party to claim her. The family priest would preside over the lagan (wedding ceremony) performed with Vedic rituals. The ceremony would take five hours or more, depending upon the priest’s disposition. My parents would have to fast, according to the ritual; while we would feast, and play with cowries. Apart from this there would be other religious occasions when our parents would fast, like Janamashtami, Ram Navmi, some ekadashis, and shraddha days of their ancestors. However, there was no compulsion on us children to observe any of these fasts.

Like all Hindus, we too have a family deity. Her name is Rupa Bhavani. However, she is not some abstract, mythological figure. Rupa Bhawani was a living being, and her story is very much a part of Kashmir’s history and literature. Rupa was born in the family of a learned and wealthy Brahmin, Pandit Madho Dar. Madho Dar was an ardent devotee of Sharika Devi (incarnation of Goddess Durga), and every morning he would go to her shrine on Hari Parbat (Srinagar Fort). Legend says that the Mother, pleased with his selfless devotion appeared before him as a girl child, and granted him a boon. Madho said that since she had appeared before him as a child, he would like her to take birth in his house as his daughter. The boon was granted and the divine child was born to his wife. However, knowing her origin, the learned Pandit named her Alakheshwari, meaning one who is both indescribable and imperceptible. This thought is well known in Upanishads where the divine consciousness is considered beyond the finite and limited capacities of human mind.

Alakheshwari grew up mostly in the company of learned and spiritual scholars, as her father was a renowned spiritualist and many seekers would come to him for enlightenment. This environment developed her spiritual tendencies. Her father, knowing her divine origins, became her guru, and gave her spiritual initiation. However, as per prevailing customs, she was married to one Hiranand Sapru. The marriage was an unhappy one as her husband and his mother had no interest in her spiritual tendencies, ill treating her, and generally making her life miserable. Late at night, Alakheshwari would go to the shrine of Sharika Devi at Hari Parbat to do her sadhana and meditation. Her husband, thinking that she was going to meet some paramour, once followed her. She, aware that he was following her, asked him to join her in the shrine for meditation. But, in his ignorance, he apparently saw an unfordable stretch of water between them, and so disheartened, turned back.

Alakheshwari decided to leave her home, and spend the rest of her life in devotion and meditation. She did not return to her father’s house in Nawakadal, but instead went to a place near Srinagar called Jyeshtha Rudra. She stayed there for twelve-and-a-half years, doing intense tapasya. Her spiritual aura attracted the local people who began to flock to her. In order to escape this attention she moved to another place, Mani Gam, in north Kashmir. She stayed there for another twelve-and-a-half years, deeply absorbed in her spiritual quest. Her radiance could not remain hidden for long and soon the villagers came to know of the existence of a divine being among their midst. They started calling her Bhavani. A devotee once asked her what her name was. Bhavani replied, “My name is Rupa”. Rupa means one who is pure and white as silver, someone who has merged with the oneness of supreme consciousness.

Once more she yearned to be alone and decided to move from Mani Gam. This time she moved to a village called Vaskur, near Sumbhal. Here she settled down once more to a life of meditation and sadhana. However, people soon came to know about her and flocked to see her and get her blessings. Once she asked a blind boy to dig the earth with a stick she gave him. The boy began to dig, and soon he had struck water. Bhavani asked him to wash his eyes with this water. Legend says that his sight was immediately restored. The hole dug by the boy was later developed into a well, and can still be seen in the shrine at Vaskur.

At Vaskur, she took her brother Laljoo’s son, Baljoo Dar, and a local devotee Sadanad Mattu, as disciples and gave them spiritual initiation. This is where her sayings got transmitted. These were in the form of verses, known as Vakhas (sayings). One hundred and forty five of these vakhs have come down to us in the oral tradition of India. After another twelve-and-a-half years at Vaskur, Rupa Bhavani returned to Srinagar and settled down in a house in Safakadal, which was close to her father’s house. Here too she was sought after by her numerous devotees and it is here that she merged with eternity in 1721, exactly one hundred years after her appearance on this earth. After her Mahanirvan, there was a quarrel among her devotees. The Muslims wanted to bury her body, claiming her to be their Rupa Arifa, while the Hindus wanted to cremate her mortal remains. Legend says that, like Kabir, the mourners found that the body had vanished and only a few strands of hair, known as alakh and some flowers were left under the shroud on the funeral plank. Ever since, her day of Mahanirvan is considered as most holy by the Pandits of the valley, especially by the Dars, the Saprus, and the Mattus. On her shraddha, popularly known as Sahib Saptami, everybody keeps a fast, eating only one meal, and preparing kheer (apparently her favourite dish). Sahib Saptami is observed twice a year, once on the actual anniversary of her Samadhi, and the other during the pitra pakhsha. It is one fast that our entire family has observed with great reverence. I am not a believer in tokenism, and ritualism, and I do not believe in fasting for religious reasons. But this is one fast I have religiously observed, for reasons I cannot rationally explain.

There are temples and shrines dedicated to Rupa Bhavani in different places in the valley, but the three most important are at Mani Gam, Vaskur, and Safakadal. I think my parents were particularly fond of Vaskur. That is why, as a child I remember visiting it many times. I have never been to Safakadal, although it is in the city of Srinagar and easily accessible, nor have I been to Mani Gam. The last time I visited Vaskur was in 1981. In 1989 Kashmir went up in flames as the fires of insurgency, fuelled by Pakistan’s desire to grab the state of Jammu & Kashmir, coupled with the rise of an exclusivist form of Islam in the valley, and compelled the Pandits to flee from the valley to safer havens in Jammu and the rest of the country. Numerous Hindu shrines and temples were razed to the ground. I am not sure if Vaskur and the other shrines dedicated to Rupa Bhavani escaped their fundamentalist zeal.

In August 1996 I had the opportunity to visit Kashmir for 24 hours. I was then banking with J&K Bank, and an application for enhancement of financial limits was pending with the Bank’s Head Office in Srinagar. On an impulse I decided to go to Srinagar and see my application through. I spoke to the Chairman, expressing my desire to see him in his office. He wanted to know what was so urgent that it warranted a personal visit from me all the way from the south Indian city of Chennai. I explained about my application. The amount required was rather meager, and he was of the opinion that the limit would normally be approved on merit and did not need any personal intervention. However, my nostalgia was getting the better of me and I insisted on making the visit. He agreed and asked me to inform him once I had made my travel arrangements. I asked if he could suggest an hotel where I could make a booking. The Chairman was generous to say that I would be his personal guest and was welcome to stay with him in his house on Gupkar Road. He asked me to call him after checking in at Delhi Airport to enable him to send a car to pick me up from Srinagar Airport. Before embarking on this journey I spoke to the Branch Manager of the Bank in Chennai, a native of Kashmir, and asked him if it would be possible for me to visit Sumbhal and Vaskur during my short stay in the valley. He said that I should not entertain any such ideas as that part of the valley was totally under the control of the militants and that I should not venture anywhere outside the secured parts of the city.

Anyway, on 6th August, on a gloriously sunny day, I landed at Srinagar Airport at about 11:30 in the morning. The Public Relations Officer of J&K Bank was waiting for me with the Chairman’s personal car. We drove to the office only to find that the Chairman had been called to the Secretariat for some urgent consultations. I was received by the Dy. General Manager, whose office would ordinarily have decided on my application. He was one of the brightest officers in the Bank, hailing from the Uri District of Kashmir, an area almost on the Line of Control, and had risen through sheer hard work and merit to such an important position. A Punjabi speaking Kashmiri Muslim, he was learning to read Hindi and was studying the Hindu scriptures to better understand the unique heritage of his land. He later rose to the post of Executive Director, and has recently retired.

This charming young officer ensured that my pending application was put before the Chairman the same afternoon and said that I would be able to take the approval letter with me the next day. Thereafter we went for lunch to a typical Kashmiri restaurant situated close to the Secretariat. I expressed my desire to pass by my old haunts. Primary on the list was our erstwhile home in Wazir Bagh, which my father had bought in 1952 from a departing Punjabi. Then I wanted to see my old educational establishments, The CMS Tyndale Biscoe Memorial High School, near Rana Pratap Bagh, the D.A.V. High School in Magharmal Bagh, and Amar Singh College in Hazuri Bagh. I still wistfully recall the majestic avenue of poplar trees at the entrance to this magnificent institution. My hosts duly took me on a round of these monuments to my past. We stopped on Zero Bridge and I suddenly realized how narrow it was. As a boy, I had thought it to be very wide. Even the street leading into Wazir Bagh seemed to have shrunk and looked more like a lane. As you grow old your perspective changes and things that looked big when you were small suddenly appear little. The flood channel at the back of Amar Singh College also looked like a narrow drain. We had an ice cream at the Zero Bridge, and then it was time to return to the Bank. I remember the nervous soldiers behind their sandbagged posts, dark muzzles menacingly protruding from the fortified pill boxes. The bright sunshine and the clear blue sky somehow could not lift the gloom. Most of the residential streets were deserted and life seemed to be moving only in the shopping areas. There was a general absence of cheer and it looked like the smile had been wiped from the face of Kashmir.

We returned to the Bank and found the Chairman back in his office. He received me very warmly, enquired about my application, and issued the necessary orders for the sanction letter to be typed and kept ready before my departure the next morning. It was time to leave the office. We got into his car, and with one armed CRPF jawan in the front, made our way to his residence on Gupkar Road, just below the hill of Shankaracharya, reputed to have been named after the great Saivite saint, who in his short life, had visited Kashmir and had been bested in a religious debate by a local lady of great learning. I was not surprised to see the sandbagged entrance to the house with CRPF jawans guarding it from all sides. The Chairman’s house was protected like a small fortress. As it was still early in the evening - summer days in Srinagar are long – he offered to send me with his car and security guard to visit the nearby Parimahal (the palace of fairies), and the great Mughal garden on the Dal, built around that perennial spring, the Cheshma Shahi. I was accompanied by the Deputy General Manager and the PRO. There was hardly any traffic on the road along the Dal Lake, known in Srinagar as the Boulevard, and we passed the familiar landmarks of Gagribal, Nehru Park, the Palace Hotel, all full of memories for me, until we reached the turning that drives up to Cheshma Shahi, and further to Parimahal. The Cheshma Shahi with it’s beautifully laid out Mughal garden, is one of the most graceful gardens of Srinagar. One has to climb up a flight of steps to reach the main entrance to the garden, and once inside, one’s senses are assailed by beauty all around. The manicured lawns, the beautiful flower beds, and the gently gurgling and flowing stream from the Imperial Spring, the waters of which have really no compare on this earth, all cast their magic spell on you. You can stuff yourself with the richest meal possible, but one drink from this spring and it would all be gone; fully digested! In a trice you would be ready for another meal.

With no tourists in the valley, the gardens were totally deserted, but for a few security men. The lawns were looking immaculate and pristine, the flower beds in full bloom. There was no one to walk on the green grass, or to wonder at the beauty of the magnificent blooms gently tossing their heads in the summer breeze. The Dal Lake, in the distance, was looking like a placid sheet of glass, though one could see the overgrown weeds under the clear waters. The island of Char Chinar, the hump-backed bridge, locally known as Oont (Camel) Kadal, and the Srinagar Fort in the distance, could all be clearly seen against the blue skies. Kashmir looked bedecked like a bride waiting for the groom. Only she didn’t know that the wedding had been called off!

The PRO asked me if I would like to pay a visit to a temple that was located on the side of the hill on which the garden was situated. It was on the road that leads up to Pari Mahal. Naturally, I said I would be very pleased to see it. We descended the stairs and there in front of me was an arched gate leading into the temple. There was a sign by the gate which declared that this particular temple was dedicated – of all the crores of deities in the Hindu pantheon – to Alakheshwari Devi, and that it was under the management of the trust that ran the Safakadal shrine. I could not have been more surprised. I had never known about this shrine, although I must have come to Cheshma Shahi hundreds of times before. Here I was, deprived by militancy to visit the Devi’s shrine in Vaskur, and resigned to leaving the valley on the next day without fulfilling this wish. But miraculously she had drawn me to another shrine of which I was not even aware! I went into the premises accompanied by my two escorts. The shrine itself was a small, modest structure, hardly 6 ft x 6 ft, located in the middle of a walled garden. There was a picture of Rupa Bhavani, surrounded by prints of popular deities like Rama, Krishna, Siva, Hanuman, and a few others. These, apparently, had been placed there by the jawans of the defense forces, who were probably the only ones coming there for finding some peace and solace. There was a shloka from the Bhagvad Gita written on the entrance to the small shrine, and the Deputy General Manager read it out for me. I already knew that he was studying the Hindi script and the Hindu scriptures for personal edification. I am not very adept at praying, and hardly know any prayers from the Vedas and the Upanishads. I stood before the shrine for a couple of minutes, thanking Bhavani for bringing me to her and thereby fulfilling my desire to visit her in Vaskur.

There was a gentle stream flowing though the garden. I am not sure if the waters are from the same source as the Cheshma Shahi. A small cottage rested in one corner, probably the abode of the priest assigned to this place. However, on this day, there was another surprise for me. The cottage was occupied by a young white man, in his forties, who came out to greet us. He was wearing a white kurta and pyjamas, and looked very much at home in the surroundings. He invited us into the cottage. On enquiry I found that he was from England. He had come to India as a young hippy, in search of enlightenment and nirvana. Traveling through the length and breadth of India and Nepal in search of truth, he had finally come upon this deserted place. Finding that there was no one to take care of this little shrine, he decided to settle down, and had been living there for a few years. Apparently, he was not disturbed by the security and administrative authorities, and was allowed to live in the little cottage and take care of the shrine. He asked me my name and immediately said that I had come to my family deity’s temple. He was fully conversant with the legend of Rupa Bhavani and had been to Mani Gam. After some conversation he offered to make some Kahwa (tea) for us, and promptly proceeded to boil some water over a stove. We sat there, listening to his fascinating tale of self-discovery, wondering at the mysteries of existence. While we were sipping the tea, there were two more visitors. One was a Pandit school master who came with his young son on a scooter. He was a teacher at the Biscoe School, which was the first school I had attended as a five year old. He had not migrated from the valley during the exodus, and had decided to stay back. He was a regular visitor to the shrine and enjoyed the company of the young Englishman. I am sure he must have contributed a great deal to Michael’s knowledge of local lore and legend. The second gentleman was a sitting judge of the state High Court, a Muslim, who liked to take an evening walk up to Pari Mahal, and on the way back stop at the shrine to meet the young Englishman and to exchange views with him. He was disappointed to learn that I would be staying in the valley for that night only. He would have been pleased to invite me to his home for a meal.

It was time to leave. After another obeisance at the shrine I went to say good bye to the kind host. He had one more surprise for me. From a trunk he pulled out a packet containing some dry green leaves. He told me it was Woppal Haak, a green leaf grown in the valley, and usually cooked after being dried in the sun, with moong dal. . The leaf is a little bitter to taste and not commonly prepared in Kashmiri kitchens. The vegetable, however, was a favourite of Rupa Bhavani, and her English devotee obviously knew about it. He even knew how it was traditionally cooked and made me write the recipe. I took the packet, convinced that Bhavani had arranged, in her own way, to bring me to her, and to send me back with what I can only refer to as “holy prashad”. The visit was over. The magic spell had ended. The sun was dipping into the lake and it was time to return to the reality of the fortress on Gupkar Road.

After bidding good night to my companions of the evening, I joined the Chairman at his house. He was living alone as his wife chose to stay in safer environments in Jammu. He had a manservant who cooked his meals and generally looked after the upkeep of the house. We were later joined by the Chief Secretary of the state, who had come for a chat with the Chairman of the Bank, and stayed to join us for dinner. I was comfortably lodged in an upstairs guest room, and soon fell into a satisfied, dreamless sleep.

Morning brought another promise of a gloriously sunny day. Looking from my window I saw the Chairman playing badminton with a few members of his security detail, inside the fortified garden of his house. There was no question of him going out for a morning walk, and this was his way of keeping himself fit. We had breakfast, and he surprised me by making parathas himself. There were some calls from politically connected people demanding favours for their relatives, but I found him quite firm in dealing with these demands. At nine we left for his office, where I picked up the promised letter, and bid a hasty good bye to my friends who had spent the whole afternoon and evening with me. The Chairman’s car dropped me at the Srinagar Airport, where the security drill began from almost a kilometer before the entrance to the building. I was personally frisked. My bags were opened and checked; the car was inspected inside and outside; travel document examined closely, and only then was the car allowed to proceed. There was another security drill after checking in.

Twenty-four hours after I had touched down on the land of my ancestors, I was again airborne, this time not sure when I would again have that privilege. Much had been lost since my last visit, for two days, in August 1985, when I had gone to the valley with a German business client. We had then stayed at the Centaur Lakeview Hotel, which, in my opinion, was one of the finest hotels in the world. We traveled to Gulmarg and visited the Mughal gardens around the Dal Lake. The weather was the same as now; blue skies with stray white clouds, and the sun at its brightest. The gardens were in full bloom, honey bees busily collecting nectar and spreading the pollen around. Agha Shahid Ali had not yet written the words: “In the lake the arms of temples and mosques are locked in each other’s reflections”, but that was the general feeling. How everything had changed in the intervening years! Perhaps there is no better way to describe the anguish of the times than in the words of the late poet:

“…..From Zero Bridge
a shadow chased by searchlights is running
away to find its body. On the edge
of the Cantonment, where Gupkar Road ends,
it shrinks almost into nothing, ….”

“……Kashmir is burning:
By that dazzling light
We see men removing statues from temples.
We beg them, “Who will protect us if you leave?”

“…They make a desolation and call it peace.
Who is the guardian tonight of the Gates of Paradise?”

and in his finest and most heartfelt cry, called “The Country without a Post Office” wherein he laments:

“His fingerprints cancel blank stamps
in that archive for letters with doomed
addresses, each house buried or empty.

Empty? Because so many fled, ran away,
and became refugees there, in the plains,
where they must now will a final dewfall
to turn the mountains to glass.”….

“Everything is finished, nothing remains.”….

Clutching my little parcel of woppal haak, I left the valley. I asked the senior members of my family if they had known of the existence of the shrine near Cheshma Shahi. No one had heard of it. My older sister went to Kashmir the following year. She made it a point to visit the shrine and, to her surprise, she found Michael in the little cottage. Although I continue to ritually observe the Sahib Saptami fast, Alakheshwari has not contrived to recall me to her abode. Perhaps her fondness for the bitter leaf is a reminder that under the pristine and unparalleled beauty of Kashmir there is much that is unpleasant. Kashmir continues to burn, and the petty politicians are too busy in their little games of intrigue to either feel the heat or see the rising hatred for them. I do not know if the young Englishman continues to live in the little cottage and if the Pandit school master and his son have outlived their belief in their safety. The only consolation is in the experience of Swami Vivekananda who, distressed at the sight of destroyed temples and images of Hindu deities, asked the Goddess in Khir Bhawani how she had permitted the invader to wreak such havoc. The Goddess appeared to him in a dream and asked: “What does it matter if the invader destroys my temples and images? Tell me, do you protect me, or do I protect you?” The great apostle of non-dualistic Advaita was instantly cheered by this admonition, and happily went his way. I try to find solace in his words, but I am not as detached as the great saint, and cannot help but ask, “if there is a Paradise on Earth, where is it, where is it, where is it?”

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

PAKISTAN HAS "NO BALLS"

One would not be very wide off the mark if one were to say that the Pakistanis have confirmed that they have “no balls”. This is something that we Indians have always suspected, if not known. Even if one were to stretch one’s imagination to the extreme, one would find it difficult to define Pakistan as a nation or a country, in the conventional sense of the term. It is an abominable abortion, performed by a retreating imperial power at its nadir; savagely wanting to wound the people it had so ruthlessly ruled over and exploited over two centuries! The desire to inflict everlasting humiliation and instigate perpetual conflict among the former colonies was something the erstwhile rulers could just not resist. Although knowing that the partition of the sub-continent would lead to a bloodbath, yet the British, in their haste, did not for a minute let this knowledge deflect them from their divisive policy. Enough and more has been written on this subject, and there is little purpose served in adding further to it here.

The Pakistan that emerged out of the vivisection in 1947 was a concept that had no grounding in reality, both historical and geographical. It was a purely political concept designed to satisfy the whim and fancy of one man, and the impatience to rule, of another. The two parts of Pakistan shared nothing with each other except a common faith. They spoke totally different tongues, dressed differently, and had very dissimilar food habits. While West Pakistan at least adopted the Persian script and the Urdu dialect, the Easterners were happy using the Bengali language and script as it was before the partition. The Punjabi dominated military and the bureaucracy looked down upon the Bengali citizens, and treated them with contempt. Even those who chose to immigrate to Pakistan from Central India found that they were unwelcome. They came to be known as muhajirs, a rather derogatory term. Pakistan, without any roots in national history, and without any rationale for existence, soon deteriorated into a free-for-all, where the military eventually rode to power, due mainly to its superior muscle and the legacy of the British organizational ability. The initial promise of it becoming a nation representing a majority of the Muslims of the subcontinent was also not realised due to it having become home for less than one-third. This led to Pakistan desperately looking for a reason for its creation and continued existence. Since it had failed in its attempt to represent the Muslims of the subcontinent, including the Muslim majority province of Jammu & Kashmir, it resorted to a policy of subterfuge and deceit.

Beginning with the thinly veiled ‘tribal invasion’ of Kashmir in 1948; through the infiltration policy leading to a second war with India during Gen. Ayub Khan’s military rule in 1965, until the bifurcation brought upon itself by its repressive policies in East Pakistan that led to the birth of Bangladesh in 1971, Pakistan has been living on a thin edge. It fooled the Americans into believing that it would be their frontline ally against the Soviets during the cold war, and extracted huge amounts of aid from them. This aid was in turn used by it to finance its military and nuclear arsenal, and hardly a pittance was spent upon economic development, education, and health care. It had no qualms in selling dangerous nuclear technology to belligerent states like North Korea, and Iran. The father of its nuclear programme, A. Q. Khan was known to have made his technology available to anybody willing to pay the price. The shocking, three-decade story of A. Q. Khan and Pakistan's nuclear program, and the complicity of the United States in the spread of nuclear weaponry is comprehensively brought out in Adrian Levy’s book: Deception: Pakistan, The United States And The Global Nuclear Weapons Conspiracy. The military has continued to dominate Pakistani life even though there have been brief intervals of limited “democracy”. The soviet invasion of Afghanistan gave it another opportunity to continue deceiving the Western allies and furthering its aims at developing nuclear weapons. It had no hesitation in going to bed with the Chinese, to whom it ceded a part of occupied Kashmir. It also collaborated with them in building the Karakoram Highway and allowed them to build naval ports in the Gulf. The Karakoram Highway (KKH) is the highest paved international road in the world. It connects China and Pakistan across the Karakoram mountain range, through the Khunjerab Pass, at an altitude of 4,693 m/15,397 ft. It connects China's Xinjiang region with Pakistan's Northern Areas. The Highway is also meant to link with the southern port of Gwadar in Balochistan through the Chinese-aided Gwadar-Dalbandin railway, which extends up to Rawalpindi. I have always believed that the Chinese have larger designs in this theatre. After the annexation of Tibet and the subsequent demographic alteration of the region by allowing hordes of Han Chinese to settle there, it has turned its attention to the Muslim majority Xinjiang province. Although geographically a part of the PRC, the regime in Beijing looks at the Xinjiang Uighurs with suspicion and hostility. Already the policy adopted in Tibet is seeing its implementation in this region. The recent unrest in the Xinjiang capital Ürümqi is a direct result of the resettlement of large number of Han Chinese in this region. China will gradually push the Muslims from its territory into the adjoining countries and later begin to lay claims to territories occupied by them. The Karakoram Highway will facilitate the migration and the subsequent military expeditions across these nations that lie in its path. I cannot see any way in which the Highway benefits Pakistan. The pittance that it would earn by way of tolls from the traffic of commercial goods from China to the Gulf would be very poor compensation for the cost of the construction of the Highway and the threat of an aggressive China at its doorstep.

The humiliation of 1971 and the loss of East Pakistan, temporarily put a halt to Pakistan’s aggressive pursuit for a national identity for some time. However, it was Zia-ul-Haq, who after seizing power, struck upon the idea of giving Pakistan a whole new identity. Farzana Shaikh, Associate Fellow of Chatham House, and author of Making Sense of Pakistan, argues that “conflicting visions over the role of Islam in Pakistan have made it impossible to reach a broad consensus over fundamental questions about the purpose of Pakistan, or, indeed about the precise relation between ‘being Muslim’ and ‘being Pakistani’. This lack of consensus, she suggests, gravely impeded the development of a coherent national identity for Pakistan”. This lack of a national identity resulted in the emergence of a “negative identity” predicated on Pakistan’s opposition to India. “One of the most significant implications of this ‘negative identity’ that rests on no more than being ‘not India’ has been to dilute Pakistan’s South Asian roots in favour of a more robust Islamic profile informed by the Islam of West Asia. The implications of this imported theology has been deeply damaging to Pakistan, “where the broadly pluralistic instincts, characteristic of local varieties of Islam have been forced to give way to harsher readings of Islam imported from abroad”. The transformation of Pakistan during the Zia years have had lasting effects on the psyche of its people who have been misguided to believe that they are a Muslim country chosen to become the guarantors of Islam in the world. It is this version of Wahabi Islam that Pakistan has tried to export to Kashmir through its lackeys in the Hurriyat and other subversive institutions, with the hope that it would turn the Muslims of the valley against their traditional sufi ethos, and make them the instruments of success in breaking Kashmir away from the Indian Union. Pakistan has largely succeeded in its designs. The people of Kashmir have fallen prey to the invidious propaganda and have succeeded in driving the Hindus and other non-Muslims out of the valley through terror and murder.

It has also resulted in Pakistan denying its pre-Islamic legacy, and suppressing the culture, the history, the arts and the literature of the Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and other non-Muslim eras. This suppression has deep psychological implications for its people. Having been forced to deny their past, a large vacuum has been created in their consciousness. This vacuum is being filled by lies, hatred, and notions of victimhood, where the people are made to believe that they are being victimized and persecuted by the rest of the world for pursuing their faith. Lies and deceit have become ingrained in the Pakistani consciousness.

It is this part of the consciousness of Pakistan that makes it “run with the hare and hunt with the hounds”. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan gave it the opportunity to divert Western military aid to the Afghan mujahedeen, whom it nurtured and supported, with the full knowledge of the Americans. After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, it took no time in turning the mujahedeen into an anti-American/anti-Western force, and here again it was Pakistan that was supplying weaponry and personnel to the mujahedeen outfits. The Kargil war with India in 1999 is another example of Pakistani deceit. While the Pakistani Prime Minister was receiving the Indian Prime Minister in Lahore, who had embarked on a friendship bus journey, Pakistani Army units were surreptitiously occupying positions on the Indian side of the LOC. While initially the Pakistanis maintained that the fighters were Kashmiri insurgents, but documents left behind by the casualties confirmed the involvement of Pakistani paramilitary forces led by Gen. Ashraf Rashid. The Indian Army, later on supported by the Indian Air Force, recaptured a majority of the positions on the Indian side of the LOC infiltrated by the Pakistani troops and militants. With international diplomatic opposition, the Pakistani forces withdrew from the remaining Indian positions along the LOC. Having been chastised by the then US President, one would think that the Pakistanis would desist from further adventurism. But there has been growing evidence of Pakistani involvement in international terrorist attacks, epitomized by the infamous 26/11 attack on Mumbai. Even then the Pakistani establishment denied the involvement of its nationals, protesting its innocence with a false sense of outrage. However, the world now knows how deeply the Pakistani Army and the ISI were involved in this operation. It is also quite clear that there will be no action taken against the known masterminds of terror within Pakistan. It is characteristic of the Pakistanis to strike from behind, as any coward would do, and then protest injured innocence.

It is the same mentality that denies the existence of a known, Interpol-notified criminal like Dawood Ibrahim within its borders. The whole world knows his whereabouts and even his address in Karachi, but Pakistan will continue to deny any knowledge about him.
It is the same consciousness that views an ordinary event like the marriage of the Indian Tennis star Sania Mirza to the discredited Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik as some kind of a victory over India, with celebrations in Sialkot touching absurd levels of exhibitionism.

It, therefore, should not come as a surprise that a bunch of Pakistani cricketers have been caught in ‘spot fixing’ and wholesale selling of international matches. In spite of being hugely talented, cricketers like Mohd. Asif, and Mohd. Aamer did not think twice before embarking on the ‘match fixing’ route. Deceit and falsehood is in their blood, as is cowardice. Now that they have been caught with irrefutable evidence on tape, the Prime Minister of Pakistan has the gall to say that the cricketers have made him to hang his head in shame. Where was his head when innocents were being butchered in Mumbai? Where was his honour when he refused to acknowledge the participation of his nationals in the Mumbai massacre, and subsequently refused to even accept their mortal remains for burial? These bodies have now been buried somewhere in India, because their handlers have “no balls” to acknowledge them!