COMMENT Islamism shakes Kashmir
By Sreeram Chaulia
After two decades of calm in large-scale popular movements, Indian-administered
Kashmir recently witnessed mass demonstrations and protests against the state
government's decision to transfer forest land to facilitate a Hindu pilgrimage.
The decision of the Jammu and Kashmir authorities to grant 40 hectares of
uninhabited jungle tract to the Amarnath Shrine Board triggered a furor in the
Kashmir Valley and brought life to a standstill for nearly two weeks, a
throwback to the 1988-1989 insurrection against Indian rule. So forceful was
the clamor that the state government had to eventually rescind the transfer
order.
The anti-land transfer agitation fed on important new trends in
Jammu and Kashmir. Firstly, the state has been enjoying a rare respite from
terrorist violence initiated by Pakistan-sponsored jihadi outfits like the
Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Jaish-e-Muhammad. The internal
political turmoil in Pakistan, pitting a military presidency against a
democratically elected parliament, and the challenge posed to Pakistan's
security by the US war on the Taliban, left the jihadis in Kashmir confused and
rudderless.
The capability of terrorists to attack Indian military personnel and pro-India
civilians in Kashmir was intact, but the power struggle in Islamabad created
uncertainty about whether or not the jihadis could rely on Pakistan's undying
support to wrest Kashmir from India.
The anti-land transfer movement can be seen as filling the "liberation" space
that had sunk into a vacuum due to the gradual rusting of the jihadi guns. The
alienation of ordinary Muslim Kashmiris from the Indian government did not
subside with the decline of terrorist violence by "freedom fighters". It was
waiting for an opportune symbolic issue to explode, and the Amarnath land
transfer issue emerged as the perfect cause.
It is worth recalling that symbolism playing on the religious fears of Kashmiri
Muslims has a history of inciting unrest. In 1963, the disappearance of a
strand of hair believed to belong to the head of the Prophet Mohammad kicked
off a major storm in the Kashmir Valley. Likewise, the razing of the shrine of
Kashmir's patron saint in 1995 by the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen stirred a massive
commotion among Kashmiri Muslims suspicious of the shenanigans of "Hindu
India".
A second way of analyzing the upsurge in Jammu and Kashmir is to run it through
the prism of democratic politics in the state. The decision to grant the land
to the Hindu shrine was made by the Congress party-run state government in the
run-up to provincial elections scheduled for October. Since the territory of
Jammu & Kashmir includes Hindu-majority, Buddhist-majority and
Muslim-majority areas, the land transfer decision could have been aimed at
winning Hindu votes from the Jammu area for the Congress.
The vehement reaction to the transfer by the People's Democratic Party and the
National Conference was, in turn, geared towards beefing up their own electoral
prospects among the valley's Muslims. These parties are, in theory, wedded to
the Indian constitution and its democratic processes, but they have to show
their "pro-Islam" credentials to be electorally relevant in the Kashmir Valley.
The land transfer issue was ripe for exploitation by these political
opportunists who benefit from perks and privileges as people's representatives
within the Indian polity but commiserate with jihadi secessionists.
The irony of the anti-land transfer movement is that its very raison d'etre is
spurious. The forest land was clearly given to the Amarnath temple for erecting
temporary shelters and conveniences for Hindu pilgrims who flock annually to
the Himalayan abode of Lord Shiva. It was in no way a violation of the special
status accorded to Jammu and Kashmir, which blocks citizens of the rest of
India from acquiring property in the state. The makeshift structures planned by
the Amarnath temple staff on the transferred land were meant purely for the
pilgrimage season.
That a temporary land transfer for a Hindu pilgrimage could be painted by
separatist politicians as a devious plot of the Indian government to alter the
demography of Kashmir shows how communalized Islam has become in the valley.
This is the third and most potent explanation for the movement that rocked
Jammu and Kashmir. While alienation of Muslims amid a lull in terrorist
violence and machinations of democratic politics partially account for the
crisis, neither of these could galvanize the public without the wholesale
Islamization of Kashmir, a land ironically mythologized as a cradle of eclectic
Sufism. The same drivers of Taliban-style enforcement of strict moral codes on
Kashmiris, especially women, are at the forefront in the anti-land transfer
movement.
So mainstreamed is the influence of intolerant Islamist ideology in Kashmir
that there is barely a squeal of anguish regarding restoration of properties of
nearly half-a-million Kashmiri Hindus ("Pandits"), who were hounded out of the
valley by terrorists in 1988-1989. The restitution of Hindu properties that
were destroyed and taken over is a genuine grievance for which Islamists show
no sympathy. Islamists have also never condemned terrorist attacks that, over
the years, have killed dozens of Hindu pilgrims whose simple ambition in life
was to pay their respects to a supernatural phenomenon in Amarnath.
While the reality on the ground is that the demography of the Kashmir Valley
has been forcibly redrawn through the killing of Hindus, the mass movement that
erupted in June was based on fictitious claims of the land transfer being a
diabolical conspiracy for Hindus to deluge the valley. There is little evidence
to prove that India's Kashmir policy mimics Chinese internal colonization
solutions that have changed the population profile of Tibet in favor of Han
Chinese. While the Tibetan upheavals this year against Chinese high-handedness
had a legitimate basis, the anti-land transfer ruckus in Kashmir rests on
concocted charges.
The most perverse sign of bigoted Islamism running the roost in the Kashmir
Valley is a report that shrines are being built to glorify jihadi groups as a
retort to the Amarnath temple imbroglio. The first-ever shrine to the
Lashkar-e-Toiba has just been inaugurated in a village near the town of
Ganderbal in memory of two Pakistani holy warriors who died fighting the Indian
army. According to The Hindu, local businesspersons who erected this monument
declared, "Here was India conspiring to seize our land and hand it over to
infidels [Hindu pilgrims visiting the Amarnath temple], and here were these two
foreigners who had given their lives to save Islam in Kashmir."
The agenda of "saving Islam" from alleged threats is growing stronger in Jammu
and Kashmir, even though its Muslims enjoy constitutionally guaranteed
religious freedom. Terrorist violence in Kashmir may wax and wane and
state-level elections may come and go every five years, but the seeds of
Islamist hatred continue to sprout and augur ill for peace. The liberation of
Kashmir from jihadi mentality remains an uphill task.
Sreeram Chaulia is a researcher on international affairs at the Maxwell
School of Citizenship at Syracuse University, New York.
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