Surely the most noble of human emotions is to find hope in the midst of tragedy. One of the tourists killed by the terrorists in Pahalgam was N. Ramachandran from Kerala. On her return home, his daughter, Arathy Sarath, spoke movingly of the succour she found from two young men in the wake of her suffering. The Hindu newspaper quoted Ms Sarath as saying: “Musafir and another local driver Sameer were with me all through, including when I stood outside the morgue till 3 a.m. They treated me like a younger sister. Kashmir has now given me two brothers.”
As reports in other papers confirm, Musafir and Sameer were entirely representative of how Kashmir, as a whole, reacted to the barbarism that claimed so many innocent lives. Several tourists who were at the scene of the attack were shepherded to safety by their Kashmiri guides. At least one of these guides, like the others a Muslim by faith, was killed by the terrorists. As tourists sought to flee in panic, clerics opened mosques to provide beds for those who did not have hotel bookings. Taxi drivers refused to charge fares for passengers seeking to get to Srinagar airport.
The day after the killings, there was a complete hartal in Kashmir as shops, hotels, schools, colleges all stayed closed to express their sympathy with the victims of the violence. All political parties, whether in power or in the Opposition, took out rallies in condemnation of the terrorists and their backers from across the border.
To this historian, the aftermath of the attack recalled the similarly exemplary behaviour of Kashmiris in the wake of the first-ever attack launched by Pakistan on the Valley, in the immediate aftermath of Independence and Partition. Then, in the late autumn of 1947, amidst the savage bloodletting elsewhere, especially in East and West Punjab, Kashmir was a haven of communal harmony as Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs all stood together in solidarity against the invaders.
There is little question that, by the targeted killings of Hindus, the terrorists hoped to polarise Hindus against Muslims across India. They failed in this aim, at least as far as Kashmir is concerned. Now it is for the rest of us, who live in the other states and Union territories of our country, to similarly rise to the occasion.
The signs so far are unpromising. In Rajasthan, a Bharatiya Janata Party MLA entered a mosque during Friday prayers, shouting “Jai Shri Ram” and placing a “Pakistan Murdabad” sign on the premises. In Assam, the BJP chief minister initiated arrests of political rivals whom his administration claimed were “anti-India” and made similar charges on social media as well. In Madhya Pradesh, a Congress MLA, who happens to be Muslim by faith, was issued death threats. In Gujarat, police rounded up people they claimed were “infiltrators”; among them were several hundred bona fide Indian citizens.
In Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Punjab, Kashmiri students have been forced by right-wing goons to leave their hostels, put on hold their education, and return to the Valley. In Mussoorie, Kashmiri shawl-sellers had to abandon their trade and go back home. Meanwhile, in Kashmir itself, where with its present Union territory status it is the Union government that controls law and order, there has been a wave of arrests and bulldozing of houses in which some or even many Kashmiris altogether innocent of any links to terror are likely to have suffered.
It was also disappointing to see that the prime minister’s first public speech after the tragedy was made in Bihar. That this state is scheduled to have assembly elections in a few months is unlikely to have been a coincidence. In that speech, and later in a Mann ki Baat address, Mr Modi referred to Indians being united in their condemnation of terror regardless of the language they spoke. A more statesmanlike approach would have been to acknowledge and appreciate the pluralism of religion that distinguishes our country as well. This omission was particularly distressing in light of the admirable conduct of the Kashmiris on the spot, of which the prime minister was surely not unaware. Finally, Mr Modi’s decision to skip the all-party meeting held to discuss the terror attack displayed a dismaying lack of respect for democratic procedure.
The prime minister’s pluralism is selective — it embraces language but not religion. (Other BJP leaders are even more narrow-minded; for them, Hindi is the supreme language of India just as Hinduism is its superior religion.) It was thus refreshing to see that the defence minister, Rajnath Singh, did squarely state that, in the wake of the barbaric attack in Pahalgam, all Indians stood united irrespective of religion.
As with previous terror attacks orchestrated from across the border, this one too poses two distinct sets of tests: one for the Indian State and a second for the Indian people. Unlike newspaper columnists and television anchors based in New Delhi, so ready to offer advice on how and when to go to war, I do not believe I have any views of any originality or worth in this matter. How the Indian State should respond, what precise mix of diplomatic, economic and military measures it should adopt to, as it were, ‘punish’ the Pakistani State for its tacit and overt support for terrorism, is beyond my domain expertise. However, as a defender of the constitutional values of democracy and pluralism, I do have views on how my fellow citizens should respond.
These broadly coincide with the views of India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. On October 15, 1947 — exactly two months after Partition —Nehru wrote this to the chief ministers of states: “We have a Muslim minority who are so large in numbers that they cannot, even if they want to, go anywhere else. They have got to live in India… Whatever the provocation from Pakistan and whatever the indignities and horrors inflicted on non-Muslims there, we have got to deal with this minority in a civilized manner. We must give them security and the rights of citizens in a democratic State.”
Nehru is a much misunderstood, much vilified, figure in India nowadays. Some of this retrospective criticism is merited; for example, as prime minister, Nehru should have begun to release the State’s stranglehold over the economy by the late 1950s (by which time it had clearly proven counter-productive)‚ and he should not have been so naively trusting about China. On the other hand, we Indians now need his robust, uncompromising defence of religious and linguistic pluralism more than ever more.
Nehru’s enduring relevance in this regard is best illustrated by quoting some remarks made in recent weeks by the chief of the Pakistani army, General Asim Munir. Days before the terror outrage, this man had insisted that Kashmir was the “jugular vein” of Pakistan. A few days after the butchering of Indian tourists, he told the graduating cadets of the Pakistan Military Academy that “The two-nation theory was based on the fundamental belief that Muslims and Hindus are two separate nations, not one.” He further insisted: “Muslims are distinct from Hindus in all aspects of life — religion, customs, traditions, thinking, and aspirations.”
As is by now well-known, the ideologues of the Hindu Right, such as V.D. Savarkar, mimicked this sort of thinking entirely. They articulated their own version of the two-nation theory. They too thought Hindus and Muslims separate and distinct in their ways of thinking and being, they too claimed that Hindus and Muslims could not companionably, peaceably and equitably live together in the same political or territorial unit. Transferred to the situation today, when so many Muslims do in fact live in post-Partition India, the Hindutva ideology insists that they can only do so by subordinating themselves economically, politically, and culturally to the Hindus.
Against this pernicious, polarising way of thinking, Jawaharlal Nehru stood steadfast. When, in the first few months after Partition, the Pakistan State was determined to inflict indignities and horrors against its non-Muslim citizens, Nehru insisted that his government in India would deal with its Muslim minority “in a civilized manner” and “give them security and the rights of citizens in a democratic State”. Now, as terrorists aided by Pakistan have so brazenly murdered tourists in Kashmir who happen to be both Indian and Hindu, we who care for the future of this Republic, we who cherish and uphold its founding values, must redouble our efforts to treat with dignity and respect, and to consider as full and equal citizens, those Indians who happen to be Muslims by faith.
ramachandraguha@yahoo.in
