Plague of the pellet guns

Plague of the pellet guns &Indian Muslims’ sailing on even keel Mustafa Khan Even Keel October 30, 2016 mustafakhan@gmail.com 9028225763 Contents Preface (I) Kashmir Chapter 1 Plague of the pellet guns Chapter 2 The grouse Chapter 3 Intifada in Kashmir Chapter 4 Kashmir, a nation tantalized Chapter 5 Inventing threats (II) Indian Muslims Chapter 6 Indian Muslims sailing on even keel Chapter 7 Litmus test for Asassuddin Owaisi Chapter 8 Biryani politics (III)Present in the past and past in the present Chapter 9 Natural nationalism and cultural nationalism Chapter 10 Valley of death and unemployment Chapter 11 New Gods in Kashmir Chapter 12 Kashmir: dry stone gives no sound of water Chapter 13 Kashmir, a view from the plain Chapter 14 Space for peaceful protest in Kashmir Chapter 15 Kashmir stasis: religion Chapter 16 Human Rights Watch and Intifada in Kashmir Chapter 17 Sailing on even keel was never easy in Malegaon Chapter 18 An area of darkness Chapter 19 Muslims today Chapter 20 Nation States and its likelihood of over turning Chapter 21Nations on even keel have dedicated Preface At 11 PM Monday September 12, 2016 I went out for a casual stroll as the children were caterwauling late for the festival of Bakrid that due to begin after just 7 hours. There were two cops at the corner off the Mahade Millat madrassa and Nomani mosque, Malegaon. A burly butcher was goading a huge he buffalo which his younger son was pulling with a rope on the lonely road spotted with occasional two wheelers speeding fast. I was filled with premonition of what the morning this night would lead to for the people of Kashmir. All the ten districts would be under curfew. There would just be two mosques Hazrat Bal and Idgah where the public congregation would gather for the morning Id prayer. The Indian government was determined to let the cops use pellet guns and fire on the public in case they came out and made any attempt to march to the office of UNO. The natives would surely again demand for freedom from Indian rule. That would give away the truth that neither Pakistan nor anyone else is engineering the huge protests but the Kashmiri people whose iron resolve to have freedom at last—that tryst with destiny for them seems to have come now as never before. In the mainland, India is facing all kinds of problems like eating beef, ‘ecofiendly Id al Azha where animals would not be sacrified and the Supreme Court’s order to Karnataka state to release more water from Cauvery River. More than two dozen buses have been burnt in Bangalore or Bengaluru in the south. As the Prime Minister Narendra Modi is singling out Pakistan for terrorism and trying to bleed India in thousand places but not getting that much sympathy as expected. It is all the more poignant that the US is now besieged by its own problem of 9/11 attack and Donald Trumps’ bizarre appeals and castigation and threatening to expose the critical clinical condition of Hillary Clinton. David Cameroon resigned from the British Parliament. The huge congregation of Muslim pilgrims in Mina is gathering at the mountain to pelt stone at what is supposed to be Satan. Muslims of India are teased by religious fervor to celebrate and also filled with apprehension of what would be the morning in Kashmir and even in their own towns and cities for what might spin out of control in the morning public prayer at the slightest provocation in the mainland itself. Neither the Indian Muslims nor the Kashmir could row two boats with one leg in a far away Dal Lake and the other on another boat on the Jamuna off the Taj Mahal. Kashmir has had many bloody confrontations with the police when the march in the cortege of a leader like Mirwaz Farooq, father of the moderate Mirwas Umar Farooq, went undrway. Could anything go terriby violent to mark another visitation of divine anger visiting upon the hapless natives? Kashmiris already shun beef according to their own state laws inherited from the rule of the Dogra dynasty. The rest of India is bound by the ban of beef. Second kristalinacht came towards sunset on September 21, 2016 when Pakistan banned flight and ordered closure of the highways. Fear gripped people now that Modi was under pressure from his closest ally, Udhay Thackeray who mocked him saying that even if Uri attack proof is provided international platforms would not believe it. That was in the editorial of Saamna of September 19. Whether the Pakistanis feel nervous or not by imminent threat of a possible surgical strike with nuclear short range attack is for them to worry. But Indian Muslims showed grave concern what with attacks on them reported daily in newspapers and even Hindu women burning buses in several dozens for suspected beef biryani served to the customer passengers in them. There was no panic and life continued as usual. No report of the minority taking out any protest march or gathering anywhere. They are non committal on the Kashmir protests however they note how Thackeray mocked Modi and his lieutenant MP Sanjay Raut joined the chorus of condemnation of Nawaz Sharif’s UNGA address. Sharif had said: “Burhan Wani, the young leader murdered by Indian forces, has emerged as the symbol of the latest Kashmiri Intifada, a popular and peaceful freedom movement, led by Kashmiris,.. The Security Council has called for the exercise of the right to self- determination by the people of Jammu and Kashmir through a free and fair plebiscite held under the UN auspices. The Security Council must honour its commitments by implementing its own decisions," Raut: “Wani was a terrorist and is a terrorist for us. He was killed by the Indian Army because he was a militant. Therefore, by calling him a people's leader, Pakistanhas insulted the Indian Army." Notwithstanding Indian Muslims like many informed Hindus note discrepancy in what the leaders say and the situation unfolding by the day. Early reports from Uri were sans any insider play any role. But after several days has come surprise that someone had locked the door of the kitchen at the Uri camp as they also note how there is discrepancy regarding the time Wani was killed and how CM Mehbooba was in the loop and yet she lied that she came to know of the death after sunset prayer on July 8th when she was informed about it in writing much earlier and the decision to kill was taken in March 2016. After having rained such pejorative adjectives on Pakistan after PM Sharif spoke at UNGA that Pakistan is a 'terrorist state'+ , the 'Ivy League of terrorism', a country with a 'democracy deficit' that 'practices terrorism on its own people' and a country that indulges in a 'war crime', defense minister Manohar Parrikar says that certain things went wrong at Uri. He refused to elaborate. This coincided with the news of arrest of Chand Khan for carrying cows in his car. He was arrested soon after Adkshardham temple attack. After eleven years in jail he was acquitted along with others the day Modi was sworn in as the PM of India, May 16, 2014. It is also relevant that DG Vanzara led a team of Gujarat police to Srinagar without showing the photo of Chand Khan. When the DGP of Kashmir asked three other accused in the case to identify Khan by looking at the photo’ they said they do not know him and how could they identify him. He was first arrested on September 12, 2003 and second time in June 15, 2016 for carrying 500 kg beef in his car. His wife says of his second arrest: “Recently, a police team from Pilibhit visited my house and threatened to attach our house. Their frequent visits are affecting my two daughters and their studies.” Chand Khan was sentenced to death by the POTA Special Court. The HC confirmed it but SC acquitted him from all charges and said about his confession: “The confessional statements of the accused persons and the accomplices do not complement each other to form a chain of events leading to the offence. Rather, the depositions of the prosecution witnesses were contradictory and disrupt the chain of events and turn it into a confusing story with many discrepancies, defeating the roles of each of the accused persons which have been allegedly performed by them. Also, none of the events of the alleged criminal conspiracy was supported by independent evidence that inspires confidence in our minds to uphold the conviction and sentences meted out to the accused persons.” Even years ago Khan was working as a mechanic in Anantnag in Kashmir when the police first arrested him and brought him to Gujarat. The matter boils down to Gujarat police arresting an innocent Indian Muslim in Kashmir and framing him in a terrorist attack in Gujarat. The Kashmiris know this very well and that was why DGP R Kumar had called IB and R&AW to witness Mufti Qayum who too was accused and was brought to Kashmir for the bogus identity parade. When the head priest Akshardham temple had come to know how innocent Muslims were accused he was disturbed and visited the Sabarmati jail in person. Unfortunately this cut no ice as far Modi and Gujarat are concerned. Acquittal came too late and when it did the new PM of India was swearing into the august office, he was Modi. Now who could tell Parrikar that we erred in Uri and also in Akshardham temple case? The people in Kashmir know this also that for crimes of terror committed in India they bear the brunt of brutal assault and jail in mainland India. Four Kashmiris stayed in the Haj House in Mumbai. Sajid Shaikh, an informer of police accuses in court that he heard the four from Kashmir plotting terror attack. They were sitting on a different platform and he on another. This also led to the arrest of the Imam of Haj House. The Kashmiris and the Imam were all imprisoned. They too were acquitted. Ishrat Jahan and others including two Kashmiris were kept in farm houses in Gujarat and then killed. The weapons came from IBS Gujarat when Rajendra Kumar was its special deputy director and Ajit Kumar Dover chief of another section. It was clear that Doval was also IB chief and had influence on all the sections of the IB at Delhi. Indian Muslims bore all this with exemplary patience and fortitude proving Modi wrong that the refugee camps in Gujarat were the breeding ground of terrorists. There was regular attempt to enmesh Kashmir issues with suspects of terrorism in the rest of the country. In the case of Akshardham temple attack the wife of Chand Khan, Parveen, says about the arrest: “When the attack happened, we were staying at Anantnag in Kashmir, where my husband was working as a car mechanic. When he was arrested, I was pregnant with our second child and our elder daughter was three years old.” [1]They were not Kashmiris but migrants working there and they had to bear the travail of all kinds for being just Muslims. More than a decade later he was acquitted and released. A youth from Sialkot in Pakistan Mohammad Sohail Mullik was in prison in Indian Kashmir but was accused of perpetrating massacre of Sikhs in March 2000 and also killing 30 Amarnath pilgrims on August 1 and was shown to be arrested from Aligarh. When an American visited him in jail there were photos of the five Muslim shepherds who were shot dead in encounter and were accused of the massacring the Sikhs. [2] What were the photos doing in the lonely cell of the prison? The photos of the five and of Chand Khan wait for detailed chronicling to bring more sanity than is around us. Thus has changed Kashmir without a post office to A country without a post office. But the postal address of Malik is certainly in Sialkot. The upheavals in the valley contrasts with the plains of India where Muslims mostly sail on even keel. ------- [1]http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/akshardham-temple-killing-2002-shan-chand-khan-jailed-for-cow-slaughter-beef-ban-gau-raksha-3041645/ [2]http://partners.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20001231mag-kashmir.html Barry Bearak, A Kashmiri mystery Chapter 1 Plague of the pellet guns In some of the holy books the almighty sends plagues which are referred as visitation of the divine anger, disaster as a punishment from god. The days of the old gods are over we have modern day version as Neros and Pharos. In that way the god of the Jews wanted to show that he was mightier than the Egyptian gods. Sometimes the rulers like Pharos are punished for their sins. The pellet guns that even Israelis junked were lying unused when Indian army chose to buy them and use them on its own people. The usurious Jews had no qualms to sell for monetary consideration. Their counterparts in Indian government had tacitly seen the devastation in recent days of Palestinians and would emulate the Israeli. But there is difference the Israelis had occupied land that belonged to Palestinians. Kashmir acceded to India by signing an instrument of accession. The modalities of the accession have not been accurately gone through. The plebiscite was never implemented, nor the intruders pushed back from what later came to be known as Azad Kashmir. PM Jawaharlal Nehru took the matter to the UNO for which he was condemned as if a pariah. So many worse events have happened since accession, Jagmohan’s tenure, Chittisingpora massacre of Sikhs, 1989 violence, the azadi uprising, militancy, the assassination of Kashmiri leaders, the award of money and medal to police and army for killing terrorists in Kashmir who turned out to be innocent in numerous cases. The worst was to come. Instead of healing touch, have arrived the pellet guns. As if that was not the worst linking the open and boiling and public turbulence to terrorism is going beyond any hope of recall. PM Narendra Modi checkmated everything, move and strategy to solve the Kashmir problem by bringing in terrorism. In the Friday August 12, 2016 all party meet in Delhi he remarked: “Terrorism is the basis of tension in Kashmir and it is being supported by a neighbor.” As if that was not enough of a punch, the PM went further “Pakistan forgets that it is bombing its own people. The time has come for Pakistan to tell the world why it has been committing atrocities on people in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Balochistan.” So terrorism must be countered by terrorism! In the name of counterterrorism, of course. And in the 11th East Asia conference on September 8, 2016 he publicly humiliated Pakistan to deflect the situation in Kashmir. “There is one country in our neighbourhood whose competitive advantage rests solely in producing & exporting terrorism.” [1]The former PM Dr Manmohan Singh had admitted Indian role in Balochistan in the non alignment meet in the Egyptian port city of Sharm al Sheikh for which he was roundly rebuked by one and all. There is no one to rebuke Modi. Indian nationalism has surpassed all: a sea change. And now the problem after two months and half has assumed existential proportion for the people of Kashmir. They must cease to exist if they do not leave their desire for internal freedom. It is no more mere claiming Kashmir being an integral to the mainland. “Why do you have to keep on repeating it? And why do you have to kill people to keep it integral?” [2] It is like Gujarat either you accept or cease to exist. PM Narendra Modi is good at adaptation like the RSS and must as chotesradar remember what Maulana Azad wrote in India Wins Freedom: “It must be placed on record that the man in India who first fell for Lord Mountbatten’s idea was Sardar Patel. Till perhaps the very end Pakistan was for Jinnah a bargaining counter, but in fighting for Pakistan, he had overreached himself. His action had so annoyed and irritated Sardar Patel that the Sardar was now a believer in partition…In fact Sardar Patel was fifty per cent in favour of partition even before Lord Mountbatten appeared on the scene. He was convinced that he could not work with the Muslim League. He openly said that he was prepared to have a part of India if only he could get rid of the Muslim League. It would not perhaps be unfair to say” Maulana goes on, “that Vallabhbhai Patel was the founder of Indian partition.” Against this fissiparous mindset is Maulana Mohammad Ali’s letter to his daughter of November 6, 1930: “May, after having travelled overseas, the [Hindu] Maha Sabhai mind-set change and Indians realise in true sense the curse of slavery that they are under. May they overcome their desire to dominate and subjugate one another and, instead, strive jointly together to free themselves from the slavery by others? May God inspire the Hindus and the Muslims to do justice with each other and treat each other fairly. May they abhor slavery so much that they neither accept to be slaved by others nor try to enslave others. Amen!” [emphasis added] It is history that what Maulana Mohammad Ali prayed for did not happen. The RSS did not see the slavery of Indians by the British as a period of cruel repression and atrocities. They felt it good riddance of the unbroken Muslim reign that ended when the British took over. Even Modi does not count the two hundred years of British rule as a curse. They viewed it as benevolence. The RSS advised its cadres to save their energy because the real battle would resume when the British would leave. What is happening in Kashmir in 2016 is end of that strategic withdrawal from confrontation with the British and the unease that prevailed during the Congress rule. So the opportunity is at hand. Now has come the time that with greater energy they would resume the war they had postponed for another day. It was provided in 2014 by the majority of the BJP in parliament. The mobilization of the army after parliament attack on January 13, 2001 was missed opportunity. Or what else is Modi’s determination to liberate Pakistan held Kashmir, Baltistan, Gilgit and Balochistan? II The pellet ridden bodies of victims in Kashmir since July 8, 2016 protests is reminder of the plague of locusts. The prayers of Mohammad Ali have gone in vain because of the Hindutva ideology that akhand Bharat includes not just Kashmir but also Afghanistan and Pakistan and beyond. Nay all these areas must be reconquered by India! So the spell of plagues would continue indefinitely. Pellets are one of the ten plagues currently meted out to the Kashmiris in a show of display as to whose god is true and mightier ala the scriptures. PM Modi has thrown in his gauntlet after what he did in 2007 as chief minister. He had challenged the Muslims to bring rain as Hindus have done in the month of shravan or rainy season. It is a testimony of Muslims of his state and outside that they firmly remained on even keel of Indian nation and refused to gather at Idgas to pray for rain in a show of matching him. The ten plagues of Egypt led to the exodus of Jews from Egypt. Inversely neither the Muslims of Gujarat nor of Kashmir enact any exodus. Nay, indeed, it was Governor Jagmohan Chawla who induced the Pandits to leave the valley with offer of state sponsored largess of land and funds! They fell to the temptation. The Muslims of the valley want the Pandits to resettle where they lived earlier. They also attend the crematorium when Hindu neighbours die. This subtle change howsoever late is breath of fresh air. Kashmiriat should be based on this comity. As the stalemate continued during the visit of Rajnath Singh on August 25-26 many academics came out with more protest with a sober assessment of the situation: “The current escalation of violence in Kashmir started on July 8, 2016 after the killing of Hizb ul Mujahideen’s Burhan Wani by the armed forces of the Indian State. As per reports from the local media, Burhan’s funeral was attended by an estimated 4 lakh people, apart from the numerous other assemblies of mourning held in-absentia across the valley. “The essential character of resistance to the Indian state in Kashmir today is not primarily in the form of a guerrilla war between the armed forces and the militants. Since 2008 mass rebellions have broken out against the Indian state, including stone pelting by youth. In the years 2008, 2009, and 2010, the Indian government has responded to the mass movement through the use of brutal violence leading to the killing of over two hundred civilians, and injuring thousands, many of whom have been blinded for life through the use of pellet guns by the Indian armed forces. We have also witnessed how the Indian state has responded to these agitations by imposing continuous curfews, curbing the local press, snapping all forms of communication and by incarcerating the pro-freedom leadership, thus denying the people all avenues to express and demand the fulfillment of their aspirations peacefully. In 2016 the State continues to respond much the same way. As we write this, sixty nine civilians have been killed, including Amir Nazeer, who studied at the University of Delhi. Thousands have been injured and yet again scores have lost their eyesight forever due to the firing of pellet guns. The government has yet again as always, blamed Pakistan for instigating the protests, thus completely refusing to acknowledge the ground reality in Kashmir. “The State’s militaristic response is not just grossly disproportionate and violative of basic human rights, but designed to perpetuate violence and state terror. There must be a political process that aims to find a lasting solution to the dispute, and such a process must begin by acknowledging the aspirations of the people in Kashmir, who are claiming the right to self-determination or Aazadi. There can be no dialogue based on purposeful non-recognition of what the other party wants. “We appeal to the democratic sections of India to respect the democratic aspirations of the people of Kashmir and to stand in solidarity with them. We appeal to them to demand the cessation of the present cycle of violence and to punish the guilty. Most importantly we appeal to them to raise their voice demanding of the State that it begins a political process aimed at finding a lasting solution to the Kashmir dispute.”[3] III Trivializing the Kashmir issue is now a packaged service given to the minister of state for external affairs, MJ Akbar. He had the experience of hobnobbing the likes of Tarun Vijay. Their style of bonhomie is seen in their scheduled visit to Kashmir in June 2010. Though Akbar is more for show for Indian natives within the country rather than for abroad but his remark is quaint. He sees the 22 emissaries of PM Nawaz Sharif going to foreign capitals on official junket paid by Pakistan in which India would not contribute in creating understanding of the Kashmir problem! Thus this much foreign travelled journalist turned politician refuses to countenance foreign countries coming to know the recent troubles and the possible solutions. When Kashmiris have hermetically refused to have dialogue with Indian emissaries he does not see any good opening up our side of the case. Meanwhile the standoff continues. Kashmiri leaders threw a surprise on September 4, 2016 when they refused to meet the all party delegation. They dubbed the talk as deceitful and they would have no such dialogue. They also called it futile. And what is more they would prefer transparent talk. Why did this sharp reaction come from them from all the Kashmiri leaders? One reason is that they have several generations of experience of being let down on Kashmir issue that the mountain of suffering is crushing them and their fellow Kashmiris alike into the abyss of hell that the region has become. The curse of the pellet guns was the last straw that broke the back of the camel and not just the death of Burhan Wani . The four leaders, CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury, CPI leader D Raja, JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav and RJD's Jay Prakash Narayan in fact broke away from the delegation and personally went to see Syed Ali Shah Geelani. His gate was shut. He saw them from the window but refused to hold talk. Home Minister Rajnath Singh dubbed the failure of talk as devoid insaniyat, jamhooriat and Kashmiriat. If he is sincere and open minded he should learn insaniyat not from Atal Bihari Vajpayee but DGP K Rajender of Kashmir in dealing with Mufti Abdul Qayum Mansoori whose visit to Kashmir shows real Insaniyat or humanism. There are two types of insaniyat as there are two types of what Hemant Karkare thought terror as a scourge of humanity and politicized terror. In one of the darkest periods of Kashmir history of Kashmir two stars crossed each other in the sky over the Lalit Grand Palace, Srinager, third week of June 2010. MJ Akbar and Tarun Vijay: Akbar: Why do you throw pebbles at Muslims. Hurl boulders at us and see how your politics (of BJP) succeeds Vijay: Ha, ha, ha! Akbar: In fact BJP should rebuild the Babri mosque. We have many amongst the Muslims, like you, who would themselves demolish it and rebuild it ala the Akal thakt at the Golden temple![as was done by Sant Longwal] This reflects the kind of terrorism and humanism the extremists in India see as the greener pasture to conduct their politics. Those who see Kashmir as a Xanadu of pleasure The Mufti was taken to Kashmir by Gujarat police officers of notoriety whom the courts have given acquittal and are now out of prison after 7 years of imprisonment: DG Vanzara, police inspectors RI Patel, AA Chavhan, CJ Goswami, Qayum was accused of attack on the Akshardham temple attack and so were Maulvi Abdullah sahib and Adam Bhai. Vanzara was so scared that he sat with the Mufti and began to practice as if he was very chummy with him. When the latter shrank from him out of respect, Vanzara shouted if he would get him killed [in Kashmir] and remarked “Let my arms be on your shoulder and talk to me as if I am your friend.” Inspector Patel repeatedly told the three innocent accused that they must identify Gulsher Chand Khan who the cops believed was behind the Akshardham attack. They had not been shown Khan’s photo ever before and wanted that they should still do the same or else they would target the three in fake encounter and kill them. They also tutored the three that they must not tell others that the cops were from crime branch (of Gaikwad Haveli in Ahmadabad). They must say that they were intimate friends and were on pleasure tour. Such was the unbelievable change of behavior in Kashmir of the cops that Mufti Qayum remarks: “Such was the state of the cops who had collected award and promotion in the name of bravery by organizing fake encounters in which they had killed the weak and women.” The Gujarati cops were conducting investigation in the typically Gujarati style being fond of tours and were doing it as the pretending “innocents abroad.” Like village bumpkins they were so naïve that they did not know how to tie the safety belt let alone ordering chocolates or food. They were agog that the Mufti was doing for them with such deftness and they appeared the country cousins of the Mufti. At the office of the Director General of Police K Rajender the Mufti and two of fellow accused had the crucial test. They had not seen the photo of Chand Khan because the cops had never shown it to them. Now they were subjected to a bogus identity parade. Rajender and his colleagues ACP Sandeep Wazir and ACPDr Abdul Haseeb. Rajender asked them to identify the photo of the fidayeen who attacked Akshardham temple. They could not because they had not been shown the photos. This gave away their lie. The Kashmir police knew the truth and therefore Haseeb changed tactics and questioned the Mufti. He asked him what fatwa he was giving. He said he was giving diktat on divorce and property. Haseeb thundered at him that he was giving fatwa for jihad! The Mufti indicated by his thumb close to his chest which the Gujarat cops could not see and made them know that he could not tell the truth in the presence of the Gujarat cops. This followed the formal remonstrance that the Mufti should be ashamed of issuing jihad fatwa. But the next day the Director General called the officers of IB and R&AW and also intelligence unit of the army. He asked the Mufti now to tell the truth, the Mufti pleaded with him not to tell the Gujarat cops otherwise they would beat him cruelly. There he broke down and wept loudly in his sorrow. “I wept uncontrollably because of his humanity and sympathy.” [4] Rajender comforted him and offered him tea and biscuits. Then he asked the Mufti to tell the truth. Of course Rajendra knew the truth but asked him why he was chosen. He replied because he had started the first relief camp in Dariapur, Ahmadabad in 2002 pogroms. The Gujarat police were touring for pleasure even when the task was so serious. This is the crowning irony of the Sultan of Governance : “Narendra Modi, his metamorphosis from merchant of death to Sultan of Governance” as the Society magazine of May 28, 2014 had called Modi. Akbar perhaps did read the magazine or else how could he have remarked: “As far as Kashmir issue is concerned, Pakistan mustn’t internationalize it, it is a bilateral issue. It is Pakistan’s individual right if it wants its MPs to go for free tourism.”[5] Modi had taught him to say the right thing at the time. ------- [1] http://www.financialexpress.com/india-news/pm-narendra-modi-whips-pakistan-internationally-11th-east-asia-summit/371035/ [2] Nitasha Kaul of School of Oriental and African Studies in a sminar on August 14, 2016, “Whose Democracy?”. [3] https://kafila.org/2016/08/22/statement-on-recent-developments-in-kashmir-delhi-university-students-academics-and-other-concerned-individuals/#more-33592 [4] Mufti Qayum Mansoori Eleven Years Behind the Bars. P.43 [5] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/kashmir-issue-pakistan-india-2999355/ Chapter 2 The grouse The Kashmiris have been dehumanized by the media and the government in Delhi so much that they do not trust the people from the rest of the country. In his statement on Friday September 9, 2016 Syed Ali Shah Geelani touched the core issue, freedom. He said “dehumanising us and labelling our just struggle as terrorism” has had almost done them in. But this resurgence of their struggle since July would bear fruits. Never before had any leader spoken with candor and confidence that the Kashmiris are speaking in one voice. They feel “close to freedom.” “The current phase of the freedom struggle has provided a powerful push towards our goal of freedom, which is very much in sight.” This optimism is based on what he says that “no village and no town where people have not made it abundantly clear again that the only relationship between India and Kashmir is that of the occupier and the occupied and between the two the smokescreen that India had created here in the form of Abdullahs, Muftis, Lones and the sundry has fallen.” “We have always been saying that these collaborators are mere stooges of India and today it is crystal clear that their only task is to strengthen the Indian occupation of J-K and provide shameless justifications for cold-blooded murder, maiming and blinding of our people,” he added. There is also an attempt to reconstruct the Kashmiri society wherein the Pandits can rejoin the kind of internal freedom the leaders have in mind. It is evident in their declared aim that they do not want the Pandits to be left out but join their fellow Kashmiri. The director general of police accepted that the press conference which Geelani had called for would have attracted the police. K Rajendera Kumar was frank and without rancor when he observed: “I don’t know why the press conference was not allowed. The decision must have been taken at the appropriate level.” He was also very forthright and candid in dealing with Mufti Qayum of the Akshardham temple attack. Geelani evinces how David versus Goliath is the equation in the struggle for freedom. “Our occupier has the world’s third largest army. It has the world’s largest paramilitary force, most of which is stationed in Kashmir. It is the world’s fifth largest economy. We are a people’s resistance. We have no resources. We have no army. We have no media. But our greatest strength is our truth, unity and our determination to free ourselves…”http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/pakistan-a-friend-india-occupying-force-kashmir-separatist-leader-geelani/story-jqoNZgqPdnzbSdmEiDKmVI.html Chapter 3 Intifada in Kashmir The Kashmir problem cannot be addressed unless you address Pakistan, says Dr Madhav Godbole.[1] The Kashmir problem is a quandary but new grounds seem to be broken. Sitaram Yechury who called on Geelani but could not meet him said that Pakistan should be included in any dialogue on Kashmir. It went unnoticed by BJP and even Congress. Geelani called Pakistan a friend and a well wisher. Either the public opinion is not educated enough to know the delicate situation or the kind of nationalism that verges on chauvinism and vigilantism victimizing the minority Muslims has taken deep roots and reconstructing society that includes Kashmiris is dismissed out of hand. It is all on account of the forbidden word, Pakistan. However there is a new territory far from India whom India befriended and sympathized but forgot, Palestine. Since Advani/Vajpayee welcomed into India in a disguise of a Hindu, Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan in the early 1990s, there is a chemistry of change that has increasingly coloured perception and policy. The fall out was the 1994 declaration that Kashmir is an integral part of India and those on the cusp of gaining power would offer the sky to Kashmirs but not Azadi. This comes to the mind as 67 day of continued protest on the day of Idul Azha. The Israelis would occasionally lift embargo on food meant for the Gaza strip or elsewhere but “Indian” Kashmir valley Intifada is deterministically more horrifying what with pellet guns spewing horrible wounds and death and shutting down sale of animals for the festival and not allowing food otherwise into the ten districts under harshest curfew. Even the biscuits which some Samaritans managed to smuggle in could hardly reach or be enough to a couple of neighborhoods. The Palestinian intifada had begun in 1987 against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land seized in war. The West Bank and Gaza were fully covered by the west media even at worst of times. But the intifada in the valley is without even that. Chief Minister Narendra Modi had warned the media in 2002 to cover Gujarat pogroms at the risk of their life. He went further and ominously and insidiously reminded them the fate of Daniel Pearl. Today it is grimmer and situation bleaker. Now, if you look at the photo above sent by S Irfan to PTI and which is also shown on rediff.com you would know that the protester is not dressed like Palestinians. He is just like any mainland Indian in his dress and boots. Any Indian whether Hindu or Muslim looks like him. He has nothing to share with any pathan suit wearing Pakistani. His dress is the specialty of a festival like Eid or Diwali. But the quaint is in the right arm that is lowered after releasing the stone hurled at the security forces confronting them. In a mechanical reaction the left arm is fully stretched back. The time of action and reaction was enough to take him on the crossed hair and pull the trigger. He is not even hooded or masked. On the day of special Morning Prayer he has jettisoned the usual cover on his face because he has taken the risk to endanger his life but not to fail to register his protest and anger. What with Morning Prayer and all there was no time to go to prayer and also subsequently prepare for any camouflage. So the protest has come from within the heart and mind of the protestors and was not funded by any and was spontaneous as transfer of money or food is beyond even the remotest thought. There was no transfer of animals or money for the whole period of protest since July 18 to September 13. Even net or phone connection was off. How Irfan shot and sent the photo is also difficult to guess. So grounded in the locale is the protest. Similar contextualized is the figure of the native Mohammad Imran Parry riddled with pellets: The victims of oppression and suppression or terrorism cannot choose their attackers. In Kashmir case it opposite. The victims choose to confront the security forces knowing fully well that they would be easy target. They confront the police and army from close distance. You can choose your friends, though. India chose Israel, and now the US. These could not have the option like the Syrian child from Aleppo. PM Narsimhan Rao had craftily chosen Moshe Dayan and had also chosen to go silent on Babri demolition and had also chosen to ignore Rajesh Pilot who came nearest to the hearts and minds of many Kashmiris. He had seen red in the assistant secretary of the US State Department Robin Raphael’s questioning the finality of J&K’s accession to India coinciding with PM Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan’s remark that Kashmir was an “unfinished business of Partition.” It was this Machiavellian move of Rao that was undoing of the earliest solution we could have had. Rao struck again. He used his Home Minister SB Chavan to undermine Rajesh Pilot by dampening his enthusiasm and slowing down the progress he was making before putting an end to it. Much later Pilot died in plane crash in 2000. The Prime Minister did not want any solution and offering the sky was a smoke screen. If Rao was so secretive and hence sinister in his design, Modi who took the rein of the government on May 16, 2014 was overtly against Muslims and made no bones of what was up in his sleeves. He was a pracharak or guide of RSS and would be just that even if the heavens fall down. He disregarded the unsolicited advice of Muftil Mhammad Saeed of November 24, 2014 to hold dialogue which is the only way to solve Kashmir problem and end hostility with Pakistan. He was prepared for neither of them because of his ideology. What followed Saeed’s utterance is in his own word ‘waste of time.’ In his standard RSS tactics he enacted the inanity of the charade of wasting time, prevarication. Being not a statesman like Vajpayee, but a demagogue, Modi exacerbated the matter by becoming more voluble by uttering too much of terrorism forgetting that 2002 too was terror and blaming Pakistan for bombarding Balochistan, Baltistan, Gigit and also part of Kashmir in Pakistan control. In contrast Vajpayee chose his words trying and succeeding in his uttering turning brevity into wit: “A stable, secure and prosperous Pakistan is in India’s interest. Let no one in Pakistan be in doubt. India sincerely wishes Pakistan well.” “Pakistan was unfortunate but the wound has healed. One can choose one’s friends, but neighbors are permanent.” The difference between the pracharak and the orator is clear. The latter could jettison the ideology for realpolitik the former could not. A much practical solution was at hand much earlier. “There was nobody in Delhi more sympathetic to Kashmiris or to their cause, in the government of India, than Rajesh Pilot.”[2] Vajpayee had asked Modi to do his rajdharm, the duty of a ruler. Modi had replied pat tongue in cheek that he was just doing that. Today he would say the same. It has roots in mythology. Lord Krishna had asked Arjuna to do his duty and in war kill the enemy even if they were part of the overall familial society. So the 2002 pogroms were just that. This time around the victims are the same and more would fall victims of the pellet guns. Only the provenance has changed from Gujarat to Kashmir. In contrast stand the restructuring of the society and community, the two circles, which are essential for democracy and amity as well as integrity of the country. However when Modi speaks of mother India it excludes Muslims who love their biological mothers and still love the country of birth. The RSS ideology is committed to nation building; one language, one religion and one region. This could hardly be the society for a democratic and secular India. As Maulana Azad made it clear there are two circles, one of the community to which you belong and the larger circle concentric to it is the Indian nation or society. The extremists among the BJP and Shiv Sena ruling alliance do not view Indian Muslims as part of India as a matter of realistically speaking. They target them occasionally and one such occasion was in the midst of Kashmir turmoil on July 24, 2016 when Udhav Thackeray like his father Bal Thackeray advocated “Hindu nation” to fight terror. He was speaking in the Kashmiri context and said: “There is no other option but to declare the country a Hindu nation. There is enough of secularism.” [3] This is not the way to reconstruct society or community. Nor will the Kashmir problem be solved by means of law and order operation. ------- [1]http://www.rediff.com/news/interview/in-kashmir-were-in-a-tunnel-with-no-light-at-the-end/20160908.htm?pos=3&src=NL20160911&trackid=7MGeiBNRiOgHpjiU22XIw0UhYgsPCBFedrAsNDfdS8Q=&isnlp=0&isnlsp=0 [2] AS Dulat. Kashmir, the Vajpayee Years. India Harper Collins, 2015. Pp 18, 179-180. [3] Asian Age July 25, 2016. Chapter 4 Kashmir, a nation tantalized! Plagues of1990 Kashmir has always raised hopes for its native people, be they Muslims or the Pandits, but the same hopes cannot yet be fructified. Successive periods of great expectations came followed by blights that kept the aim and purpose out of reach. Shakespeare says famously that the good a man does in the world is often entered with him in his grave but the evil he has done lives after he is gone. Mufti Mohammad Saeed and Burhan Wani were also entered in the graves (2016) but their deeds are still visiting the state like the plagues of ancient Egypt. And so does that of Governor Jagmohan Malhotra though he is still alive and winner of Padm Shri, Padam Bhushan and Padm Vibhushan. From the events in Kashmir and the country as a whole there is a positive change in the intellectual atmosphere. After the lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq intellectuals, writers, artists, film makers, etc have woken up to the grave danger India faces despite the prowess that the PM Narendra Modi and his government are showing in their breast thumping and chorus of victory to the mother India. However the challenge that Kashmir throws up unavoidably seems unchanging. On the other hand it is becoming worse by the day. It has its roots in the accession of Kashmir to India and the partial role that PM Jawaharlal Nehru played and also the misplaced secularism of Sheikh Abdullah in not judging the situation wisely. When he realized the missed opportunities his secularism became so thin that he would not like to be buried in a slave nation of his valley or to use his own words “an enslaved territory” and would like his dead body to be immersed in the Arabian Sea. When India and Pakistan were made out of the British India what remained became independent nations, like Kashmir, Hyderabad, etc. Even before August 14-15 1947 division of the country Jinnah had argued: “The Mussulmans are not a Minority. The Mussulmans are a nation by any definition. The British and particularly the Congress proceed on the basis, well, you are a Minority after all what do you want? What else do the minorities want? Just as Babu Rajendra Prasad [later to become the first President of the Republic]said. But surely the Mussulmans are not a Minority. We find that even according to the British map of India we occupy large parts of this country, where We Mussalmans are in a majority such as Bengal, the Punjab, Northwest Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan. The problem in India is not of an inter-communal character but manifestly of an international one, and it must be treated as such.”[1] The Kashmir Socialist Party and Kisan Mazdoor Conference had also felt that Kashmir was a separate nation but it should join Pakistan. A natural consideration was that all the rivers of Kashmir and three major roads flowed into Pakistan. Sheikh Abdullah and other leaders were released from jail on September 29, 1947. On October 22, Pakistan let its soldiers and irregulars invade Kashmir. The war continued till the end of 1948. The “enslaved area” was visited by manmade plagues intermittently. A writer writing in The Independent of Calcutta observed at the beginning of January 1990: “Intellectual hypocrisy in leagues with the hypocrisy of self serving politicians has contaminated our democracy critically…our self appointed intellectuals have never undertaken any sustained campaign against communal riots and rioters. Economically and socially Muslims are the worst dispossessed and battered community. To add insult to injury they are often branded as pro Pakistan?”[2]. Still in the same week LK Advani wanted the home minister Mufti Saeed to resign rather than save his daughter. The abduction of Rubaiya Saeed was a matter with the state government in Kashmir and not in Delhi. There was no tolerance then as now in not telecasting by Door Darshan Sanjay Khan’s film Tipu Sultan based on Gidwani’s novel. “If some 4.2 million Muslims in Kashmir won’t live in peace in Kashmir as Indian citizens because they are Muslims what would now Muslims feel about their Muslim fellow citizens? An untrustworthy people whose heart is in Pakistan and probably their loyalty as well?” [3] The people outside the valley could not understand what the true psyche of the people in the valley was. In this benighted atmosphere where mails remained undelivered for 7 months and even the news channels shut down and no emails unlike besieged Sarajevo in 1997 onwards, the arrival of Jagmohan Malhotra as governor was like a blight that like the locusts preyed on the natives of the valley. “Every Muslim in Kashmir is a militant today. All of them are for secession from India. I am scuttling Srinagar Doordarshan’s programmes because everyone there is a militant… The bullet is the only solution for Kashmir. Unless the militants are fully wiped out, normalcy can’t return to the Valley.” [4] With this mindset Jagmohan reached the valley. A Congress leader had taken him to RSS chief Balasaheb Deoras who recommended that PM VP Singh appoint him governor. He resumed his office on January 18, 1990. If you sowed bullets then and pellets in 2016 now what you reap will be grapes of wrath, misery and suffering that would never win the head and heart of anyone. The only exception would be people like Mufti Saeed who had told Jagmohan to crackdown on the people because he wanted his path cleared for chief ministership later. Wajahat Habibullah had requested the governor to broadcast appeals of Muslims to Pandits not to leave the valley. The governor turned it down: ‘the Government cannot guarantee any safety of Pandits….if Pandits decided to leave, refugee settlement camps had been set up for them and also that departing civil servants among the Pandits would continue to be paid their salaries’. The state gave assurance of all help to the Pandits and none for the Muslims and this was the inducement for an exodus. Did any government anywhere in India show this kind of largess to beleaguered Muslims in a fast worsening situation? Did this happen in Muzaffarnagar in 2013? Genocide was the only option Jagmohan had in mind and that is what transpired in the night of January 21, 1990. The whole night of that Saturday there were clashes between the security forces and the Muslims. The clashes continued on Sunday as well. On January 20 Ajit Bhattacharya had reported that Kashmiri Muslims wanted to leave India because of anti Muslim riots [in India]. [5] So frightening was the situation for them rather than the Pandits. They could not leave because of the continuing curfew and shoot at sight order in force. Mark Tully reported at 8.30 pm on Monday January 22 that 150 people were brought to hospital on that day itself with serious bullet injuries. “People everywhere have been shouting ‘We want Islam. Dogs leave Kashmir.” The much vaunted genocide of Pandits [6] was questionable when only about 219 had been killed over several days. As compared to this on August 10, 1948, The Times (London) published a report [‘Elimination of Muslims from Jammu’, Part II, 10th August 1948, p. 5] by “A Special Correspondent”, saying “2,37, 000 Muslims were systematically exterminated – unless they escaped to Pakistan along the border – by all the forces of the Dogra kingdom. It is worth enumerating the numerous massacres of Muslims at the hands of Indian security forces. January 18 Jagmohan Malhotra reappointed governor of JK January 19 Pandits migrate January 21Gaw Kadal massacre more than 100 killed more than 25 injured critically January 22 The Alamgari Bazar massacre scores killed and injured January 25 Handwara massacre 25 killed, dozens critically injured March 1 The Zukoora And Tengpora Massacre: more than 33 killed and 47 critically injured The Kunan Poshspora mass rape:Indian official records say at least 23 women were gang raped by soldiers that night. However, Human Rights organizations including Human Rights Watch have reported that the number of raped women could be as high as 100. The 1993 Lal Chowk fire : Over 125 civilians were killed in the conflagration and the ensuing firing by BSF troops. The Bijbehara Massacre: Border Security Force killed 51 civilians in Bijbehara after protests erupted over the siege of the mosque in Hazratbal. Apocalyptical happenings January 23, UN observers of Indian contingent opened fire at Kashmiri crowds and killed 17 innocent people. The Independent reporter found no cause for provocation to the firing. The killers fled in the cars of the UNO. Horrible! Nobody felt any remorse for this massacre. The victims were buying fruits during curfew relaxation. January 24, four Air Force officers were killed by unidentified assailants. Flag hoisting on Republic Day January 26, 1990 would go into history as a day of war hysteria, fear and premonition. Even people outside were filled with apprehension of the apocalyptical signs and symbols emanating from Kashmir had their pall of gloom casting shadow around the rest of the country. It was caught in the Republic Day celebration speech of a ten year girl Aeysha in a school of Malegaon. “We celebrate our 40th Republic Day today. My head beats louder with love and happiness that we are a republic. I hope we make our Republic strong and safe. In this time of great dangers and uncertain future there is need for unity and brotherhood. Will you join me in this noble work? Together we can make our country strong and united. In this school of ours you and I can make a beginning. Let us love each other. Let us understand each other. Let us help each other. Let us bear and share our burden. God does not love anything as dearly as the brotherhood of man. Let our Republic be a place of brotherhood. Jai Hind.” In Kashmir the army maintained strict control in Srinager. Shoot at sigh order is enforced with a heavy hand. It is not so much the disturbance of the Republic Day that the government fears but the Friday congregation in mosques. Kashmir is bleeding. January 28, Iran cancelled IK Gujral’s visit to Iran. SS Mann of UAD wanted military withdrawn from the Kashmir valley. He likened the Muslims with Sikhs in Punjab in June 1984.. January 29, All India Congress Committee general secretary KN Singh revealed that a union cabinet minister had taken Jagmohan to RSS chief Balasaheb Deoras who had prevailed upon PM VP Singh to appoint him as governor of JK. Evil influence of obscure signs PM VP Singh had ordered a complete black out of news from the Kashmir valley on February 8, 1990. It was as ominous as the preparation the Indian army under PM Indira Gandhi had made on the eve of Operation Blue Star at the beginning of June 1984. Shakespeare speaks of obscure signs of evil influence as in Julius Caesar, when beggars die no comets are seen but the heavens blaze themselves forth at the death of a prince. On the following day February 9th Malegaon’s usual quietude was shattered repeatedly by the rumbling of the fighter jets flying overhead in what appeared as war maneuverings. The jets flew across the barren hillocks of Daregaon and sped past the fort in the centre of the town. Then they came over the skies of Islamabad, a neighbourhood in the south around the Mosum River. They rose and fell in a sweep and again rose in a slant rise. Clearly showing their repeated attacks and after having finished the target took their return journey to the jet factory at Ojhar near Nasik. It was a cloudy day that made the sky murky. The war games in the skies stunned and awed the Friday crowd that watched the show with bated breath. The feat in the sky scored the point that the dream of Shaikh Abdullay to rename Srinagar as Islamabad would not be allowed to be realized. March 1, security forces killed 46 Muslims who shouted anti-India slogans. April 4, PM Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan wanted to wage a war for thousand years against India. PM VP Singh admonished fellow countrymen to be mentally prepared for war. May 21, Maulvi Mir Waiz assassinated in Kashmir. May 22, Army men shot and killed more than 50 Kashmiris without order given to them. May 23, another 60 died in police firing. May 26, Jagmohan was replaced by Saxena as governor. Solutions There have been suggestions of resolution of the Kashmir imbroglio. Arundhati Roy’s was that we redeem ourselves from Kashmir. We must free ourselves from the bondage of the legacy of Kashmir. And let the Kashmiris have freedom. It is like the curse of the carpenter in Nathaniel Hawthorn’s novel The House of Seven Gables. Hawthorn: “the wrong-doing of one generation lives into the successive ones, and . . . becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief.”The evil man does visits on him and also his descendents unless the curse is removed. Another is that of another Kerala girl educated all over India as she claims. I also shared that education when she was in the university Department of English in Aurangabad, Nirupama Rao (nee, Menon). “We need sense and sensibility, not pride and prejudice, in relations between India and Pakistan.” However PM Narendra Modi declares that the two countries should jointly fight hunger and poverty but such is the pride that we don’t want to turn our guns into ploughshares. We even evacuated the farmers from the region of LoC when for them the standing crop needed harvesting urgently. Such is the pride of Pakistan that even after losing four wars they want to still fight like the enraged cocks in the pit. Nirupama Rao dilates: “Bothe countries are fed a diet of ignorance and propaganda about the other country…even as the world has changed around us, time has stood still as far as India and Pakistan are concerned. The old players have gone; replaced by new voices…the cobwebs of the past distort vision …there is a Gotterdammerung feel about the place. “Do we think of a South Asian Commons? Not an arena for mutual jousting where we bait each other in blood sport, but a space for maturity of peaceful purpose, robust civility, and mutual accommodation. We have built towering babels around ourselves, but we have not cleared a way for the Commons.” Nirupama had read the feminist Jane Austen well and she let it come out in her solution. “A feminist foreign policy would embrace the idea of a South Asian Commons: it would speak and act in favour not of ravishing disunities, but of rationalizing unities, of merging capacities to build, to develop, to link. It would exercise vetoes to block war, not peace; it would emphasise the right to food, the right to health, the right to knowledge and learning, the right to respect the disconnects, the worn clichés and mental barriers that divide us. It would weigh the interests of humanitarianism against the interest of power with far greater precision and wisdom. It would say no to violence, against all, but particularly crimes against women and children. It would reject the voices of the far right and the far left. It would feel the true pulse of the unknown, the marginalized, the excluded. It would have a people-centred approach (on both sides of the divide across the LoC) to healing the wounds in Kashmir. It would promote business-to-business engagement, building the infrastructure for trade, removing non-tariff barriers, facilitating commerce, understanding economics of proximity rather than promoting proximity as a peril. Why sacrifice these benefits at the altar of history? Rather, promote these possibilities as assets that can alter the narrative of the past, and realize the prospect of peace that have hitherto been so elusive. That is the killer app that the India-Pakistan relationship must possess today. “Is this an idea for our time? Cynical, public trials conducted in the Indian or Pakistani media do not provide the answer. We need sense and sensibility, not pride and prejudice, in relation between India and Pakistan.” [7] The hurdle to this approach became evident during the BRICS summit when the PM Narendra Modi could not overcome his obsessive compulsive disorder on Pakistan and terror. His mother ship of terrorism could not sail because there was no wind. It also laid bare the ideology of the sangh parivar/RSS, the stuff of which the PM’s mindset is made. The two Keralite women, Nirupama and Arundhat contrast with what our defense minister Parrickar chirped in “I wonder that a Prime Minister from land of Mahatma Gandhi and a defence minister from Goa and surgical strikes… maybe the RSS teachings was there, but this was very different kind of a combination.” That is the difference, the Kerala women were better educated and better informed than Parrikar’s own mother because the latter was from ultra conservative and saffron ideology coloured: “Some people have been seeking proof (of surgical strikes)…. When America sent the first human to moon, my 72-year-old grandmother did not believe it. She asked for proof. When photographs were shown to her, she still did not believe it. She was never convinced till her death.”[8] PM Narendra Modi was soaring high in the sky on his two wings on terrorism and Pakistan. But he went too near the sun like Icarus and the wax melted. This fiasco was on account of his ideology that decimating Pakistan is necessary because of RSS ideology. His vigour for equating Indian army with the Israeili Defense Forces leaves out the state of art defense weapons are always with the Israelis and American support to Israel is like Israel being treated as the fifty first state of the US. "The Goa meet is a textbook lesson on how not to conduct India's diplomacy," remarked Ramesh Chandra a former cabinet secretary who also called India’s efforts to finger point Pakistan at BRICS as a “damp squib.” [9] The fiasco at Goa is the result of what Parrickar prides on a “very different kind of a combination” of Modi from Gujarat and he from Goa. This fig leaf cannot hide the subject matter that both are from RSS to whom India is mother superior to their biological mothers according to Anand Math. Both of them take the matter of the Bankum Chander Chatterji novel to be literally and metaphorically true. Those like the Muslims are unclean and need cleaning as Modi also put it in the Kozhikode conclave of his party. This is the pride and prejudice of the right wing government and ideology but it lacks sense and sensibility if India has to remain united and strong. Jane Austen novels teach us better than the desi. Politics and conclaves kept hopes and aspiration of Kashmiri people beyond reach. The pride that “we will kill you; yes we will kill you, with our own guns, with our own manufactured bullets, at our own choice of time and at your own place” is the pride that goes before fall. If Kashmir is the illustration of the fall of all gods, Gotterdammerung, how can a regime like that of Congress or Modi withhold it? Forebodings are there of Naresh Chandra, a former cabinet secretary, of Shiv Shanker Menon in his “Choices inside the making of India’s Foreign Policy,” and Nirupama another foreign secretary. ------- [1] Jinnah’s address at Lahore convention of Muslim League 1941. [2] “An icing on the cake”. Bishwanath Bhandari January 3 1990. [3] MV Kamath in The Intependent, January 16, 1990. [4] Interview in Current May 1990. [5] Independent January 20. [6] The Hindu 20th January 2014, There Are No Goodbyes. [7]http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/india-pakistan-women-literacy-women-empowerment-women-safety-3088484 [8] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/surgical-strikes-manohar-parrikar-gives-credit-to-rss-teachings-3087525/ [9] http://www.firstpost.com/world/brics-a-damp-squib-narendra-modi-govt-should-check-its-obsession-with-pakistan-3059174.html Note What Rahul Gandhi described as brokering in the blood of the soldiers for politics goes back to much earlier to 1990. "Ask George Fernandes, who is fortunately alive, how Mufti manipulated bringing in Jagmohan as the governor of Jammu and Kashmir to pave the way for him (Mufti) to become the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir," They traded miseries of people to become the chief minister of the state," he said. http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/mufti-and-jagmohan-ordered-massacres-in-j&k-in-the-90s-omar-abdullah/1/188759.html Note The reference to Hawthorn’s novel is significant. Matthew Maule builds a house to live. He is accused of witchcraft and hanged. Colonel Pyncheon is reported to be behind the conviction and hanging. The curse of Maule visits the successive generations of the Pyncheon. The colonel ordered Maule’s son to build his house where the farmer’s stood. On the day of the inauguration, however, the colonel is found dead. === Chapter 4 “Inventing threats”: Kashmir It is a well established truth that the Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi is a product of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sevak and has maintained that umbilical cord till today. He owes to his organization not just his personal life of celibacy, his post of secretary of BJP in Delhi, appointment as Chief Minister of Gujarat but also the post of Prime Minister of India. RSS had mobilized all its cadres and all its branches in all the states of India to fight and win him the victory of scoring 31% votes. That kind of approach is so utterly unlike nonalignment of an earlier era that it has pitted India against Pakistan in more than one aspect. Bimstec (Bay of Bengal Initiative For Multi Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) is an instance of it. Modi has gone beyond recall by what is called “inventing threats.” By isolating Pakistan he has not carefully considered the fact that without the cooperation of the army in Pakistan the US could not have taken out and killed Osama bin Laden. Therefore those who favoured President George Bush’s dictum of either you are with us or against us also were assured by President Musharraf who ultimately joined exactly that effort. By handing over suspects and accused in terror Pakistan did comply with US like in the killing of Daniel Pearl. Khiser Khan was a Pakistani by birth but became a citizen of the US. His son Humayun died in fighting for his country of birth, America. They earned laurels by overwhelming section of the US society despite the tactics of Donald Trump anti Muslim juggernaut. There is no question of the certitude of all this. If it were only that it would not have mattered for India. But what is a serious concern is that Modi is a factotum of the hate ideology unlike his predecessor, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. We respect him as our PM and also feel proud of our soldiers who carried out the surgical strike but we have freedom guaranteed by our Constitution to register the truth that he also is playing internal politics over the sacrifices the soldiers made for the motherland. That has acquired for him a smarting sobriquet of a broker in the blood of the sacrifice of the soldiers. The ideology of RSS is based on Vasudhaiva Kutumbkam. Though this motto would mean the whole universe is a family—but the organization [really] is...[committed]to establish a country based on Hindu nationalism.” [1] Towards that he made the same efforts in challenging President Musharraf of Pakistan while he was fighting his own election in February 2002 and Gujarat assembly election September-December 2002. Within a week of 9/11 attack in the US, Modi had dubbed it “Islamic terrorism” and ascribed it to the teaching of Islamic faith; Rajdeep Sardesai, Dr Rafeek Zakaria, Siddharth Vardarajan protested but John Elliott demurred during the debate. Modi had won the hearts of the right wing organization and was sent to Gujarat as Chief Minister in October 2001. Angered by these tactics of CM Modi the Pakistani leader took the matter of genocide of Muslims of Gujarat 2002 to UNO General Assembly. As CM of a state he was playing politics of international implications for which there was nothing at stake as far as India was concerned. His derogatory use of Mian Musharaff sent the domestic populace in hilarious shouting and thumping as if they were witness to a gladiatorial confrontation in the domestic arena. Neither then nor now the Muslims of Gujarat have anything to do with Pakistan. Yet they also are seized of the fact that Mufti Sufiyan accused in the assassination of a Gujarati minister, Haren Pandya, was allowed to escape to Pakistan. Why was a terrorist who reportedly accused to have killed the home minister allowed to escape? Why did the CM and his government suffer DGP DG Vanzara planting arms in Muslim locality and cause riots? No other than the intelligence chief of Gujarat state, RB Sreekumar, did take exception to this! But no court has so far taken exception to Vanzara’s claim made in his resignation letter on fake encounters, including that of Ishrat Jahan. In his resignation letter, Mr. Vanzara accused the State government of trapping the arrested policemen in various fake encounters and added that the, “Gujarat CID/ Union CBI had arrested me and my officers in different encounter cases holding us responsible for carrying out alleged fake encounters. If that is true, then the CBI investigating officers of all the four encounter cases of Sohrabuddin, Tulsiram, Sadique Jamal and Ishrat Jahan have to arrest the policy formulators also as we, being field officers, have simply implemented the conscious policy of this government which was inspiring, guiding, and monitoring our actions from very close quarters. By this reasoning, I am of the firm opinion that the place of this government, instead of being in Gandhinagar should either be in Taloja Central Prison at Navi Mumbai or in Sabarmati Central Prison at Ahmedabad.” These and many other such cases including those of Kashmir are based on the theory of inventing threats calculated to achieve a political aim. The massacre of Sikhs in Chittiginghpora and the genocide of 2002 are cardinal examples. The “policy formulators” in the case of the fake encounters spread lies that the life of the CM Modi and Hindutva leaders like Parvin Togadia was in danger. The masses were filled with fear and naturally the 2007 elections victory was assured. The Chittisinghpora massacre was carried out when President Bill Clinton was just to arrive in March 2000. Why was only Sikhs chosen? It was for the purposes of killing two birds with a stone: driving a wedge between Muslims and Sikhs in Kashmir and also making the Sikhs remain firm with the BJP and also blaming it on the Muslims of the valley. Years after the massacre Clinton said: “During my visit to India in 2000, some Hindu militants decided to vent their outrage by murdering 38 Sikhs in cold blood.” Many in India like the The Times of India reporter called it a goof, a howler, a stupid and glaring mistake. [2] However they failed to take the significance of how the American president weighed the moral responsibility, the quintessence of human rights. Now read it in total context. “During my visit to India in 2000, some Hindu militants decided to vent their outrage by murdering 38 Sikhs in cold blood. If I hadn’t made the trip, the victims would probably still be alive. If I hadn’t made the trip because I feared what religious extremists might do, I couldn’t have done my job as president of the United States.’’[3] And suppose instead of “Hindu militants” he had used “Islamic extremists” of “Islamic terrorists” as is the wont today Indian media would have vaunted it as scoop and all the Muslims in India and even in Kashmir, a part of it, would have to bear the brand of ignominy that would stick to them despite facts militating against the situation. And that is what happened. Five poor shepherds were accused and killed by the security forces. Years later their remains were exhumed and forensic examination proved that they were innocent shepherds. Even the DNA reports were tampered and the same charade was performed and finally the truth was established. Therefore the threat was created by the ingenuity of the security establishment. An attempt to destroy proof and miscarriage of justice was undertaken. The damage was done. Had Henrik Ibsen were alive he would have written a whole play on the moral turpitude. Was there any threat to the Sikhs in 2000? They had been living in their own ghettos or villages and there was no obvious dispute as there was when governor Jagmohan used excessive power of guns and created perennial threats to the Kashmiris. In this who ruled from Delhi was not what the Kashmiris felt threatened by, but the army and paramilitary forces. The kind of oppression and suppression they had suffered was unspeakable. A president of America or secretary of state like Madeleine Albright could not be ignorant of the ground reality. She wrote a book The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs. In her book she confronts the government affairs, faith, god and the role that the US played. Among many is an instance in her chapter on Faith and Diplomacy where she narrates how in Lebanon when Muslim militia ran over a Christian village in warfare a militant asked a Christian woman named Mary to convert of face death. She said she was a born Christian. He shot and crippled her. Next day she was rescued by another person, a Muslim. When she was rescued and treated in hospital she said she had forgiven her attacker. This surprised the Secretary of State: "Mary, this makes absolutely no sense. These are people who tried to kill you. Why in the world would they take you to the hospital the next day?" Mary replied: "You know, sometimes bad people are taught to do good things.” Given this kind of description in the book Clinton who wrote the Introduction of the book could not be making stupid mistakes. He wrote it years after he left the White House. Clinton gives the context which shows that he was seized of the situation in Kashmir as well as Poland. He was reading her book when he rang up Albright. “When I rang, Madeleine was standing in a crowd that included the former Czech president Vaclav Havel and the current presidents of Ukraine and Poland. She passed the phone around, and I had an unforeseen but welcome chance to catch up with some old friends. Meanwhile, Madeleine placed a bouquet of flowers as a memorial to Solidarity and attended a three- hour open-air mass in celebration of freedom. I had caught her at a moment and in a place where God and democracy were together at center stage. One theme of this book, and a source of continuing controversy in public life, concerns the relationship between the two.” He also said that the founding fathers of America could not establish an official state religion, or abridge the right of anyone to worship freely. The founders understood from history that the concentration of political and religious authority in the same hands could be toxic. We know, of course, that the power of faith is often exploited by those seeking to enhance their own power at the expense of others… In the wrong hands, religion becomes a lever used to pry one group of people away from another not because of some profound spiritual insight, but because it helps whoever is doing the prying.” Clinton gives examples of Slobodan Milosevic and Osama bin Laden and it is then that he speaks of India circa March 20, 2000 visit. Clinton ends saying that if people realize their common humanity they would not demonize each other. Does this squarely fit in the scheme of things as far as RSS and India are concerned? Not India as a whole but the dispensation under Modi or infiltration of RSS into army particularly after the Amnesty International went begging for fund from Indian donors since the ascent of Modi to the post of PM the organization has changed its style from “advocacy” approach to “campaigning” approach.[4] However its initial report had this paragraph which stands scrutiny and cannot be simply swept under the carpet because of Modi’s banning foreign funds: “Several witnesses have said about 20, men clad in live green combat fatigues, arrived in the village at 7. 15 pm. They told the people they were Indian soldiers, and ordered the men out to be questioned… As they started firing, the gunmen shouted ‘Jai Mata Di’ and ‘Jai Hind.’ In theatrical fashion, one of them took swigs from a botte of rum (liqor popular with the army) even as the killing went on. While leaving, one of the men called out to his associates; “Gopal, chalo hamare saath” (Gopal, come with us.”) In his book Temptations of the West : How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond”Pankag Mishra quotes another passage: “The attackers wore uniforms of the armed forces and were led by a tall man whom they addressed as Commanding Officer (CO). All Sikh men were rounded up, ostensibly to check their identities, and made to sit on the ground in two groups against the walls of the gurdwaras [Sikh temples] a few hundred metres from each other; they were shot at point blank range. As the attackers withdrew, they reportedly shouted Hindu slogans. A small bottle of liquor was left behind by them”. [5] As the New York Times story puts it “it was a monstrous way to transmit a message”, [6]to Clinton. It is simple to decipher for whom the message was intended. But very complex what was intended and by whom. India had clean swept the Taj at Agra and the environs there; a state safari was also arranged in a grand manner. Was the Chittisinghura a part of this arrangement for the visiting dignitary? Remember that Clinton had called the attackers “Hindu militants.” After the Gulf war, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the prospects of the collapse of Russia the joint chief of the armed forces of US Gen Colin Powell remarked in 1991 that “I am running out of demons.” So America had to invent threats to maintain and enhance its defense spending.[7] Now that India has enough surplus and also clearly defined targets to recover Baluchistan, Gilgit, POK, etc. to end Pakistan’s cross border attacks the UP election scenario is too tempting in the “twilight of the rogues” to use our own made guns, pellets, and the choice of time in our own discretion to make further surgical strikes. Or will the US carry out such strikes? To prevent nuclear war it could. The US Under Secretary on Countering the Financing of Terrorism Adam Szubin has described Pakistan a “critical counterterrorism partner in many respects”. But if it does not act against all the terrorist groups the US “will not hesitate to act alone, when necessary, to disrupt “We continue to urge our partners in Pakistan to go after all terrorist networks operating in their country. We stand ready to help them. But there should be no doubt that while we remain committed to working with Pakistan to confront ongoing terrorist financing and operations, the US will not hesitate to act alone, when necessary, to disrupt and destroy these networks.” The undersecretary goes further: “Of course, Pakistanis are themselves often the victims of brutal terrorist attacks on schools, markets, and mosques, and the list unfortunately goes on. And in the face of such violence, Pakistan has in some ways pushed back,” Szubin said. “Pakistan has achieved success in its ongoing operations against traditional terrorist safe havens in northwest Pakistan. It has officially designated ISIL as a terrorist organisation. And it has gone after the funding and operational capabilities of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP.”[8] This funding bears on other cases which are still shrouded in mystery and need the attention of officers and agencies like under secretary Suzbin and important agency of the State Department, Concerning the Financing of Terrorism. When the case of the firebombing of Samjhauta Express was almost solved our National Security Advisor MK Narayanan stalled it for the fear that it would have adverse effect on Indian foreign policy. When Swami Asimanand admitted that Abhinav Bharat members like Sunil Josh, Ramsinghji Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange had carried out the attack and even Lt Col Prasad Purohit had provided RDX stolen from Kashmir according to aural video recording the case is again enmeshed. Our CBI director travelled to the US earlier this year 2016 and announced that the attack was funded by sources in American. He even named the person, Ilyas Kashmiri. Therefore there are two things to be undertaken to remove the haze from such and other cases like the Chittisinghpora attack. Everything should be objectively and scientifically investigated and chauvinism should not be allowed to crowd out truth from the purview of the public in the name of state security or national security. Another is there is need to define terrorism. What happened in Gujarat pogroms of 2002 was sheer terrorism and should be officially treated so. The reports in public domain say that Sonal Shah and her father in charge of VHP of America had supplied funds for it why was it ignored by the intelligence agencies and the government in Delhi? It all adds up to the fact that the minorities must feel secure. As the Canadian author Michael Ignatieff says that democracy is democracy if the security of the minority is secured by the elected government. Neither the Muslims nor the Sikhs and not even the Pandits feel safe, What does it portend that the Ministry of Home Affairs had told President Obama visiting India in 2010 that Sikhs in parts of Kashmir like Upalnar and Hatmura, were not safe? That they were danger! [9] And in the case of Gujarat the home state of PM Modi why should this agonized request: “First give justice to Jakiya Jaffry and Ishrat Jahan and then bat for the Muslim women.” ------- [1]Kingshuk Narg. The Namo Story [2] Publication: The Times Of India Mumbai; Date: May 19, 2006; Section: International; Page: 14 New York, February 2006 Clinton goofs up on J&K killings Chidanand Rajghatta | TNN [3] p. xi The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs. [5]http://www.sikhiwiki.org/index.php/Clinton's_thoughts_on_the_Chittisinghpura_Massacre [6] http://partners.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20001231mag-kashmir.html A Kashmiri Story [7] Carl Cmetta and Charles Knight “Inventing threats” The Bulleti of the Atomic Scientists, March April 1998 [8] http://indianexpress.com/article/world/world-news/wont-hesitate-to-disrupt-and-destroy-terror-forces-in-pakistan-warns-us-3098045/ [9] http://www.outlookindia.com/newswire/story/chittisinghpura-massacre-apscc-wants-fresh-probe [10] http://ummid.com/news/2016/October/23.10.2016/asaduddin-owaisi-mumbra-rally-oct-22.html (III) Indian Muslim Chapter 6 Indian Muslims, sailing on even keel Muslims around the world live in diverse milieu. It is difficult to generalize them even within a country. Individual differences would always be there. Islam also allows a measure of choice in announcing lakum dinakum wal yadin, my faith with me yours with you. This in no way justifies politicizing Islam in acts of terror when attackers segregate those who read or recite the holy book Quran and the others who do not. India has escaped from the scourge of this nightmare for reasons that go back in the history of the Indian subcontinent and the partition. The legacy of the partition includes realization that if left to themselves in prayer and living their own way there is not much they would strive to rival anyone. No doubt what happened in 1992-93 and again in 2002 shook them to their foundation and filled them with anguish, grief, pain and shock. But they have hunkered low with time and seem to be resilient, eschewing going to any point of no return. It is etched in my memory how I travelled from Mumbai to Manmad on my way back from the metropolis in the aftermath of demolition of Babri mosque and its consequences. A sadhu perched on the upper berth of the shuttle train was smoking in a compartment where most of the seats were reserved by the army men going to Deolali artillery camp near Nasik. The ashes of the burnt out cigarette in the hands of the sadhu was falling on the military officer sitting below. He objected it and the sadhu behaved insolently towards the officer. Given the fearful atmosphere prevailing in the country at that time many would suspect the officer to be Muslim. About half an hour later another man with beard and cap obviously a Muslim with a prayer mat came there and prayed early evening prayer and then quietly withdrew to his compartment where perhaps he did not have enough space to pray. As the train neared the cantonment station the army officer who turned out to be a Muslim asked the fellow civilian travelers to vacate the compartment and go to another for they would have other army men boarding the compartment. This brief description of a compartment mostly occupied by Hindus had about two to three Muslim passenger travelling in times of tension and strife shows instances of tension, strain, restraint, etc. Living together is viable until the atmosphere is charged with communal virus. Or, some agent provocateur enters the scene with indoctrinated hate against the other and ready to settle old score. That was what had happened in Gujarat 2002. Narender Modi government and more importantly the VHP had preplanned the post Godhra violence. Muslim tea vendors and Sophia Shaikh were manhandled and molested and a fracas developed. Pelting of stones followed. The collector of Godhra Jayanti Ravi described the fire incident as an accident. Modi turned it much later without proof into a terrorist attack by Lashkare Taiba and ISI. It was aimed at turning the course of communal violence or riots once for all in favour of the Hindus. A misunderstanding was created that in earlier riots Muslims had played more aggressive role and hence caused more damage and casualties on Hindus. Hence, the time to avenge so horrendously that it would change the equation for good. Rajan Priyadarshi was IG of Rajkot, director of ATS in 2007, etc. During his posting at Rajkot HM Gordhan Zadaphia called him sometime in July 2002 and told him “write down three names, and arrest all these three.” Pat came his reply “Sir, these three are sitting with me and let me tell you Sir that they are all Muslims and because of them normalcy has been restored. And these are the people who have brought the Hindus and Muslims together with their efforts and brought the riots to an end.” Later HM also said that it was the chief minister who had ordered the arrest. Rajan stood his ground, “Sir, I can’t do it even if it’s the CM’s order because these three are innocent.” Rajan gives another such incidents in one such he says that Amit Shah confided to him how in 1985 he had instigated communal riots. In another instance he asked Rajan why he did not transfer the police constable. Rajan informed him that the constable was stopping a BJP leader from causing riots. Shah had also told him that Ishrat was no terrorist but was kept in police custody before they killed her. This last shows that Ishrat was not a terrorist let alone a fidayeen. The Home Secretary of Narendra Modi was Ashok Narayan who revealed the ambiguity in targetting Gandhi forever. Till we follow Gandhi’s policy of non violence, till we continue to follow the practice of the ambiguity in the official language of Modi. The chief minister would say “Take care that riots don’t take in that area” but the real meaning is “take care that the riots take place in that area.” Another instance of euphemism is that Ravan is a word of Muslims. Pravin Togadia: “Terror was unleashed at Godhra station because this country follows Gandhi. We locked Gandhi away on February 28. Reform yourselves (Muslims) or we forget Gandhi forever. Till we follow Gandhi’s policy of non violence, till we continue to follow the practice of kneeling before Muslims, terrorism cannot be eliminated. My brothers we have to abandon Gandhi. You know the Ramayana, it is relevant to the Godhra incident. At7. 45 am on Sigal Falia the burnt S6 was Hanumanji’s tale set on fire. Who burnt the tail of Hanuman? Ravana burnt it. Hanumanji had gone for a walk, we hear Hanumanji had come to Godhra(crowd laughs and cheers). Hanumanji came to Halol, Kalol, Sardarpura and he stayed put in Karnavati (Ahmadabad) and didn’t want to go back.” The Commissioner of Police of Ahmadabad PC Pande admitted that 2002 was revenge of what had happened at Godhra. But the post Godhra violence was to really avenge the riots of 1985-86 and 1992. According to him in the latter the Hindus were at the receiving hand. “Here [2002] was a chance, given it back to them [Muslims]. Why should anybody mind it?” “…there were riots in 85, 87, 89, 92 and most of the times the Hindus got a beating. And the Muslims got an upper hand. So this time in 2002 it had to happen, it was the retaliation of Hindus.” Pande says that the Muslims are creating anarchy in the country and said about the suspects: “These people should be put against the wall and shot.” “My best friend is a Muslim but that’s a different thing.” He even downplayed the killing of Kauser Bi saying that she was living in with Sohrabuddin! He is myopic and prejudiced and not fully informed. Kauser was Sohrabuddin’s second wife. From her earlier marriage she has two daughters. From the sting operation by Rana Ayyub the truth came out that there was an overwhelming desire for revenge against the Muslims only the pretext had to come. When it came about on February 27, 2002 a deluge of protestors came on the streets according to Pande like what happened in the Arab Spring in Egypt. How could you open fire on such multitudes? He conveniently does not want about the logic how in such a short time such huge crowds could materialize on the scenes of pogroms well armed and well supplied with food packs and water pouches and printouts of Muslim shops and houses to the minute details of partnership in commercial establishments. “The aggression came from [the thought] what do I do. I am in strength of 10, 000 you are in strength of 100.” Why would Pande then spare the Muslims? Pande like Togadia is for mobocracy where Muslims would be taught a lesson to know their place and shut up. Even DG Chakravarthy also admits it. He says Modi was groomed by the RSS which was involved in the pogroms and he had to yield to the crowds (consisting of RSS cadres mostly) because he was power hungry. Daya Naik had said that Haren Pandya murder was the “biggest political murder” in the history of India. As this turned out that the blame thrown on Muslims and eleven people were put behind the bars. Finally they were acquitted. They suffered years of imprisonment like the accused in Akshardham and Godhra attack. After the released Muslim went back to society there is no trace of any violent feeling on their parts to take revenge on India. Their faith in the country remained unchanged. In fact they also helped the Hindu prisoners in jail to fight for justice. Even more important is that they have sailed on the safe even keel of the ship of the nation that Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Maulana Azad brought back from the stormy sea of the partition era. It is in this larger perspective that terror events should be objectively investigated no matter how big the person is involved. But the ground reality shows how investigation and judicial process is suborned by Modi. The inspector who investigated Haren Pandya murder in the beginning YA Shaikh was used by IB. He had said that IB was working for Modi. That LK Advani brought in CBI to cover up the Pandya murder. “The CBI rescued Modi in this case.”[1] Mufti Sufiyan had links with the bootleggers through whom the Gujarat cops got Asghar Ali and kept him in detention and blamed him for the murder of Pandya . One question that Gujarat police asked Mufti Qayum was “who came from Hyderabad?” They wanted to frame Asghar Ali because he was from that city and in their custody. They could frame Mufti Qayum more comfortably in any of the three cases, including the Pandya assassination where Modi’s involvement was direct. The Pandya case was another fake encounter where the accused were already with the police like in Ishrat Jahan case. Lest the police use Indian Muslims in such deplorable manner and in future link them to Daesh or Islamic States which may disturb and beleaguer the minority, vigilance is need of the hour. Game Plan This apprehension is based on the experience of Mufti Qayum Mansruri. The session court had sentenced him and others to death in Akshardham temple attack. The game plan of the ATS chief Vanzara was to frame them in any one of the three cases of terror attack: Godhra train attack, Akshardham or Haren Pandya. This kind of Russian roulette in framing innocent Muslims is the hall mark of Modi sarkar as long as he was in Gujarat. Now he is prime minister of India in Delhi and may carry the same milieu in Delhi darbar for the wider stage of Daesh. Lest Indian police use Indian stock in detention and begin to frame them in Daesh cases and enlarge the field operation it is better to be vigilant. One can understand the kind of preaching Dr Zakir Naik is giving, it is in vogue. But Muftis like Qayum are a different breed than Mufti Sufiyan. Further the brief given to the police also matters and to sail on even keel Indian Muslims have to be more circumspect. There is no such thing that Ahle Hadish community among the believers is radical or the Tabligi Jamat or the Sufi groups are radical or not radical. Persons committing terror must be judged on their individual acts. When the police took Mufti Qayum to Vanzara he became red in face and cursed the Tabligi for Qayum hailing from that group. But in his poems and utterances on stage since his release Vanzara had been cursing the Wahabis and Ahle Hadish. For India to sail on even keel giving such brief to police is obfuscation. No sooner had the bombs exploded in 2006 in Malegaon the police were ready with the thesis that Tablighi group did not eye the Sufi and Sunni going to graveyard with favour and the deductive logic from this was that the Tablighis were suspected. Even the MLA of Congress then bought this thesis. According to premeditated plan the police arrested only people from Ahle Hadish community for their stance that visiting graveyard is forbidden. Succinctly the essence of Islam and how the faithful could go stray crystallized in what Sayyid Ibrahim Khaleel Bukhari asserted in Malappuram, Kerala through a pledge along with 300, 000 fellow Muslims on Friday July 1: “Even as we take pride in being Muslim, we respect and honour all other faiths and their followers. We will keep a continuous vigil against forces such as Islamic State that work to destroy the oneness of humanity.” [2] India is much different from Pakistan and Bangladesh. Indian Muslims en mass do not subscribe to any hatred to either fellow Indians or anyone outside India. A day after this assertion and pledge came the hostage taking and the murder and mayhem in the neighbouring Bangladesh Holey Artisan Bakery. About this subsequent event coming on the heels of Bukhari’s mammoth gathering he remarked: “These beastly actions are the biggest blow and blemish that has happened to Islam. Even though India is a secular country, we have every freedom to practice our religion and live as a Muslim without any fear. “When you have the freedom to have mosques, when you have the freedom to have madrasas and when you have the freedom to pray, why should you turn to terrorism? “We want to send this message to the entire world.” There could not be any better testimony of sailing on even keel despite all the turbulence of 1992 or 2002. Bukhari went on “Islam came to India during the times of the Prophet. There are people from different religions around us and they pray to different gods, but we always lived harmoniously. That is why there is peace of mind and happiness in our country. “It is to make youngsters understand the true message of Islam that we start religious centres. Even in our schools and colleges, we see to that children from all religions sit together and that no segregation takes place. The love that they develop as a child will never end. “If we can live happily in a secular country, why can't they? That is our message.” Game Changer All this good comes through despite what Muslims of India went through in 1992 and 2002. This is also despite the fact that with the induction of Modi as CM of Gujarat in 2002 his backers in RSS and VHP wanted him a game changer in what they had in mind of making the Gujarat laboratory experiment. Modi performed his act to the hilt and to the applause of the full gallery as witnessed in the conclave in Goa 2002. Gujarat 2002 was pitted against all the previous riots of 1980s. Even if Modi got away with all that and the fake encounters there has been no convincing proof that there was any act of terrorism as a revenge of 2002 post Godhra pogroms or the fake encounters in which even innocent girl of 19 was sacrificed at the altar of the Hindutva Moloch. ------- [1]Rana Ayyub. Gujarat Files, anatomy of a cover up. (2016) Most of the quotes here and earlier are from the same source. [2] http://www.rediff.com/news/interview/a-person-who-has-understood-islam-will-never-become-a-fundamentalist/20160705.htm Chapter 7 Litmus test for Asasuddin Owaisi The Madina bomb attack could have been very ferocious and horrendous had all the explosives gone off at once. So also if the Owaisi brothers had just gone on imitating and retorting the barbs of Pravin Togadia such as the one that Akbarrudin was the dog of Hyderabad. The brothers have forsaken that. It would be foolish to ask the Indian police to move off the scene of any riot for fifteen minutes to let the communities settle their score. They must remain there and they must be monitored and recorded how they handle the task and then taken to task where they make mistake or neglect to do their duties. Already they have earned bad name for the country by carrying out the unconstitutional and criminal instructions of not coming in the way of Hindus taking revenge on Muslims in Gujarat during the pogroms of 2002. They must be seen to redeem the honour of the country. It is no more any individual who has image problem on account of that but the country. More than 17 % of the population of India is Muslims. They have nowhere to go. They have to live in India and hence they must defend it from enemies within its borders and from outside. As this realization is sinking into them they are in the forefront of the fight against Narendra Modi since he became Chief Minister of Gujarat and especially now that the rein of the country is in his hands as the PM of the country. This is the call of duty in the hour of need of the country. Why Muslims should be extra cautious about the safety of the country? History has proved how majority of the people of a country like US and UK can be taken for a ride by their rulers. John Chilcot’s report on the 2003 invasion of Iraq is a classic case of this veritable truth. They could befool all the people of their countries then. But now the truth has manifested their skullduggery. Bush and Blair had cooked up false charges against Iraqi leader Sadam Hussein only to attack Iraq in greed of its rich oil reserve to plunder it for their own economy. They plundered Iraqui oil and wealth to meet their end. In so doing they sowed seeds of bloodbaths to be enacted by the Iraqis themselves after the foreign troops leave the country. Modi did worse as he directly divided the country on communal lines and sold land at throw away price to his corporate friends and failed to bring even any farthing from the black money Indians have stacked up in Switzerland banks. The money that Amitabh Bachan’s brother acquired through Bofors gun purchase by PM Rajive Gandhi is and secure. Amit Shah is still nursing thumb of writing a jumla or phrase of bringing the black money and paying 15 lakh into the accounts of the Indian people each. As Muslims are the poorest of the people in India their task must be to safeguard the country from the snares of Modi and Shah and their plunder. Asasuddin Owaisi has notably nuanced himself and his party towards this task. As the BJP firebrands are running down Muslims, that is, gradually deteriorating in quality and condition of their life and rights ( especially Modi failing to do anything to protect life and property and not preventing massive boycott of Muslims after the pogroms, getting the relief camps shut down, etc) he is shoring up alliance with other parties for this task by appealing to the people to join the majority in fight against the Hindutva goups who are further dividing the country. A host of the Muslim leaders and preachers have risen to the occasion to articulate their being essentially Indian in their ethos with robust sense of belonging to their faith at the same time. Dr Zakir Naik is one, despite the hounding of him by Maharashtra government at the instance of the central government, Asasuddin Oawaisi and several others. Owaisi spoke in the context of the Dhaka attack: "ISIS sent one of its suicide bombers to Medina...it is a fraud, an army of criminals...these people are dogs of hell ("jahannam ke kutte"), "You (Baghdadi) brought so much grief to Muslims that even words cannot describe. Those who attacked Madinah, Allah will dissolve them like salt in water. This is the beginning of the end of ISIS." "No doubt, they have nothing to do with Islam. But they exist among our ranks. It is our responsibility to eliminate them," "Technology has become so advanced that even if you type ISIS in your computer, the 'Khatmal' (Hyderabadi slang for police) come to know immediately and they start tracking you. Don't be foolish. Don't do anything that will give these people a chance to target you." "I appeal to the youth, live for Islam, don't die for Islam. Islam teaches you to live, not to die. Live and make this country great. This country belongs to us. This country needs you. Today, if there's someone who is taking on Modi, it's only the Indian Muslim." "It means that we are a threat to the ISIS just as we are a threat to the Sangh Parivar. Alhamdulillah, we are a threat to both. The former are enemies of Islam, the latter are enemies of India's secularism,"[1] Why should the Indian Muslims fight against the sangh? Modi belongs to Sangh parivar. He allowed the Hindu extremist to take revenge. The RSS cadres were on the scene of pogroms in their uniform. They also exploded bombs for which innocent Muslims suffered imprisonment. The Muslims were denied basic rights. Modi like modern day Nero failed to save life when the hapless minority had their houses and shops burnt and they were killed. Modi’is henchmen carried out the murder and mayhem. Through his maneuvering the guilty cops got bail and were reinstated in flagrant violation of all the norms of civilized society and the constitution of India. The Muslims of India know in the heart of their hearts that they suffer on account of what Kanhaiya Kumar calls sanghwad or RSS hate ideology. There is a kind of Hobson’s choice for them. BJP practices against appeasement and Congress in a calculative way by fearing Hindu backlash. Neither relieves the suffering let alone make Muslims safe. The chemistry of change did not happen because a foreign city however holy was attacked. The arrest of Hyderabai youths arrested on suspicion of IS recruits preceded Madinah and Dhaka attacks. Asasuddin had offered legal help to the accused as there was no proof shown till then that they were actually in support of or agent of IS. Chapter 8 Biryani politics The impetuosity of Gauraksha vigilantes, their words and deeds, contrast with the sangfroid appearance of Modi and Amit Shah. They cannot stand comparison because the former are not appearing in courts of law. The latter are not just PM and president of BJP though they are accused in the fake encounters in cases which move snail speed in courts. Though Modi has not been openly accused of directly responsible for that or other encounters but the final order must have come from him alone. On September 15, 2016 the uncompromising police officer Satish Verma wrote to the SC to expedite the Ishrat Jahan case and hence give him the charge sheet of the case for he was the one who had found through investigation that in 2004 Ishrat was not killed in fighting the police but the police had kept her and others in a rented bungalow and killed her later and thrown her body on the road along with those of three others. Verma had investigated the case in which the CBI had submitted the first chargesheet in the special court in July 2013 and the supplementary chargesheet in ACJM court in February 2014. A delay of 12 years in contrast to the quick clean chits and bails given to Modi and Shah will break all the past records of criminal cases and deserves to go to the Guinness book of world record. Their victims are in large numbers. The dismal goings on in the murky corridors of the executive branch of Gujarat and central governments and elsewhere have defied all sense of propriety. Ishrat Jahan’s mother Shamim Kauser and Zakia Jafri have still their spirits intact. Thus Indian Muslims are sailing on even keel with the support of patience and fortitude in contrast with the cases pending against the accused in crimes against humanity. No lesser than crimes against humanity the slow and surreptitiously inducted cracks and arrests of dissenters like Jignesh Mevani, a Dalit, and 200 others in the night of September 16, 2016 in preparation for the birth day of Modi on 17. In this connection Kanhaiya Kumar quipped: How can the leader of 65 per cent youth be a 65-year-old man?” That man of 65 years was much younger when in 2002 many girls and women were killed after rape and the dress and utensils which parents of many others had bought for their marriage were looted and burnt. Their parents and husbands and brothers never took revenge. But in the name of avenging many more met their fate in fake encounters. http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/mind-rocks-youth-summit-2016-kanahiya-kumar-narendra-modi/1/766517.html That was also the part of the plague. In direct opposition there have been other items of armory in Hindutva which have spring up like the “Biryani politics in Haryana. On the night of August 24, 2016 cow vigilantes in Dinghar Heri of Mewat district of Haryana raped two, a Muslim woman (20) and her niece (14). They also tied and beat to death the uncle and aunt of one of them. Before raping they warned them they would be doing it to them because they eat beef. One of the victims had told them: “They asked if we eat beef. We said we don’t, but they insisted we did. Then they said we’re hurting you before so you don’t and that if we tell anyone we’ll will be insulted [exposed or again raped and paraded naked?]”. http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/09/12/mewat-gang-rape-victim-alleges-rapists-asked-if-she-ate-beef/ there appears to be a complex pattern which accrues and shows cow vigilantism, rapes of Muslims, testing biryani, etc.,in which the Muslim minority is segregated from the Hindus. The ultimate end of the hidden agenda is to turn India into a Hindu rashtra or nation. So they want India to be Hindu nation. About a week before September 13 Eid day some people bought buffaloes in Hadapsar, Pune. When they reached Saswad after an hour the cow vigilantes boarded the truck and took it to the police station. The vigilantes accused the owner of truck that he was carrying bulls. The police were facilely taking the accusation to be true. But the truck was fitted with cctv. The gang leader of the assailants also named that they were from a group headed by Pursuram Modak who turned out to be a member of BJP and RSS. This way he was minted money. (III) Present in the Past and Past in the Present Chapter 9 Natural nationalism and cultural nationalism Since third week of September 2001 till today we have heard PM Narendra Modi speaking on terrorism. In the aftermath of 9/11 he called it Islamic terrorism. This generalization was not based on exclusively Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. Till then September 16, 2001 it was not clear that the attackers were from either of the two Islamic countries and there was no Indian involvement. Since then he is redoubtably confident that every act of terrorism in India, Pakistan and everywhere is mounted by Pakistan. He has conveniently forgotten that within a month of his coining Islamic terrorism he assumed the office of chief minister of Gujarat thanks to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The RSS is itself considered a terrorist organization by the North Virginia based Terrorism Centre. Without waiting for the investigation he had instantly declared Godhra train fire as an act of terrorism for which he blamed Pakistan. Those who were in the Intelligence Bureau at that time including Ajit Kumar Doval must have had a role in preparing such kind of accusation with domestic politics in mind. This is also true of the fake encounters since then especially the June 15, 2004 in which among others Ishrat Jahan was abducted on sly and kept with Gujarat police and killed as a terrorist on way to kill Modi and other Hindu extremist leaders. This became the template which remained intact and all other cases were subsumed under it. The Uri attack is the latest one. Therefore killing first and inquiring later theory of Doval doctrine which still is in extant needs thorough scrutiny. In Pathankot and Uri attacks special police force from Delhi had to come and then the operation was complete. This not only undermines the self confidence of the police at the scene but is fraught with misgivings. Local police and security agencies are quite capable of dealing with the situation. First and foremost when the terrorist attack is genuine or fake within India and abroad must also be borne in mind. Bali tourist resort bombing was the handiwork of Muslim extremists in Indonesia. This never comes in references to terrorist attacks Modi gives. Within India the attacks on Samjhauta Express, the Mecca mosque or Malegaon attacks were mounted by those who like him were the guides so called pracharaks of RSS. In the context of Kashmir the situation is very different It was in 2008 that RSS number two ideologue Indresh Kumar was leading the protest in the name of Ekta march against cancellation of the acquired land for Amarnath yatra. He was surely responsible for the violence. It was qua terror. So was the killing of 37 Sikhs in Chittisingpora, Kashmir, on the eve of President Bill Clinton’s visit to India. The world watched with dismay when national security advisor Brajesh Mishra rushed into the news conference saying that Islamic terrorism was behind the massacre. That was followed by discovery that five innocent Muslim shepherds were killed and blamed as terrorists. Their bodies were exhumed, their DNA reports were tampered with, changed and manipulated and then finally it was confirmed that they were innocent. All this in the name of nationalism! Nationalism is and should be natural or strong devotion to your nation. But this natural tendency is warped by the clout of the dominant majority (recall Maulana Mohammad Ali’s letter to his daughter) and acquires different hues like tribal nationalism of the Hutus and Tutsi in Congo and Rwanda, cultural nationalism of the right wing Hindus, religious nationalism as of Saudi Arabia, and racial and religious as of Sudan. In conflict zone the natural nationalism is stunted by the superimposed consideration of race, religion, region, culture, origin, etc. In the fight against terrorism this superimposed ideology plays havoc. In Sudan’s Dahfur region the native Muslims of African origin are suppressed and oppressed by the janjiwads or Muslims of Arab origin, the ruling elite. Overwhelming Arab nationalists do not view the terror unleashed upon the Dahfurians by the janjiwads as terror. In India there is attempt to rationalize the ever-latent-so-far-but-newly-discovered Hindu terrorism of the ilk of Sadhvi Pragayasingh Thakur. All the Hindus like all the Muslims cannot be terrorists nor can a religion be dubbed as terrorist despite the creed of jihad or the mythical opening of the third eye of Shiva. The compulsive competitive opposition between the right wing Hindutva and the rest representing a spectrum of views from the liberal to cautious rationalist is throwing up many grave matters that touch upon the national security of the country. Among them are: the self-professed protestations of “cultural” nationalism which allows vigilantism and are the recent bomb blasts in the country a matter of huge amount of funding for terror. The right wing is in the habit of describing all terrorist acts in the country as the handiwork of the Jihad inspired Muslims. In such gory incidents only Hindus have had the pain of suffering, according to them. Therefore the insidious suggestion of the need is for Hindu vigilante group to save Hindus from terrorism. Such is the false syllogism on the horns of a dilemma. To have natural or “cultural” nationalism. In all this, where does the aspiration of the Muslims for natural nationalism figure in when they sing a hymn to Allah “to decorate my nation with my life blood/ like flowers glorifying the garden”? (ho mere dum se yuhin mayre vatan ki zinat/ jis tarha hoti hai phoolon se chaman ki zinat). As the security agencies are probing funds pouring into the country to madrasas and other organizations the need of the hour is to investigate the foreign and native (including siphoning of government funds under deceptive headings) funding of the RSS and its affiliates of all hues. In the case of Malegaon blast of September 29 2008 police had arrested the financier of the Malegaon blast, Ajay Eknath Rahirkar. Sameer Kulkarni was paid five thousand rupees a month. Like that how many others are on the pay sheets? The sum total would come to astronomical figures given the widespread humongous establishments of RSS. In addition Madhya Pradesh has sent a lawyer, Ganesh Savle, to fight the case of the Sadhvi and other accused. Chief Minister Narendra Modi had allegedly gifted hefty amount to the Sadhvi that has made her affluent enough to have vehicles and modern houses in different towns of different states all of a sudden, unthinkable in the case of a country girl from down trodden Chambal and Morena belt! As former BJP president Rajnath Singh had remarked that anyone who believes in “cultural” nationalism cannot be a terrorist. There was a moving demonstration of this as the police cavalcade bearing the accused neared the session court in Nasik where the mammoth gathering of Ahinav Bharat and Shiv Sena activists showered flowers on it with shouts of “Hinduon ka nara hai, Hindustan hamara hai.”[The slogan of the Hindus is that India is theirs] “Hindustan Hinduon ka, nahi kisi ke bap ka.”[India belongs to Hindus and is not the property of the father of any body’s] Hindu rashtra has virtually arrived. In such a rashtra you cannot dare to have any lawyer defend a Muslim accused in terrorism. Let alone that even a serving jawan of BSF Arif Hussain Khati of Sherud, Dhulia, on duty defending the country in a part of Kashmir, cannot claim either his national identity or his house as his own. The crowd that burnt his identity card and house along with his military uniform knew only the “cultural nationalism” to which he could not belong. As a contrast to this Lt Col Purohit and Major (retired)Upadhya and other military officers involved in Malegaon bombings have the cultural national identity. Look at the sea of saffron flags and the surge of emotion at the court scene where the accused were cheered and applauded as heroes. It bodes good for the cultural nationalism but the chanting of the discriminating slogans tolls the knell of natural nationalism, at least for the time being or till sanity prevails upon the misguided and laws of the land are allowed take the course of action. However, in the aftermath of the President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohansigh’s meeting in October 2008 it is clear that India will be involved in fighting what is ordinarily described as Jihad terrorism as it is going on in Afghanistan but surprisingly not in Iraq, at least not in the view of the president elect Barack Obama. This is how the nation must feel proud to have entered the nuclear club of the western nations. Obama’s fight against terrorism poses a challenge to the artificially created hype on terrorism in India. It calls for a supra national approach to confront the menace of terrorism in our backyard. Widespread belief among the people in India is that Kashmiri terrorism is Islamic terrorism. It verges on terrorism as an alternate to Islamism. Obama would like India to settle its dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir and join the so-called ‘war on terrorism’ in Afghanistan. This sounds anathema to many but it has potential for the future. After having adopted cultural nationalism (which intentionally excludes Muslims and other minorities) as Indian nationalism (love for the country of birth and residence) the right wing groups would be at pains to make out how it could be that they would be essentially helping one group against another of the same faith! One swears by Islam as much as the other. That is no man’s land to fight terrorism. Here at home the beard, the tunic and the round cap were enough to identify but over there everyone is alike. The odd man should be out. Chapter 10 Valley of death and unemployment July 2010 The situation in Kashmir valley has never been as bleak as today. 1989 is much far back in history, albeit the policy of governor Jagmohan has come home to roost. He not only induced the minority Pandits to migrate by offering them government largess but even gave them transport facility and thus accentuated the communal divide rather than bridging it. Simultaneously the even more minuscule Muslims who braved all odds to live a decent and safe life in Delhi and elsewhere fared worst, became suspect terrorists in the eyes of the rest of the country. This structured bias persists. So, the walnut tree grows through the windows and cracks in the walls of the deserted houses. Basically the human situation in the valley and of the Pandits who left it is existential as well as political. Stark realities include Srinager being one of the dirtiest cities in the world. India shining has left it far behind. The valley is no Gaza and yet nothing was rushed to it to make amends and ameliorate the situation. Among the most common human development index is the job situation. Muslims have fared the worst during Hindu, British or Indian rule. Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, no exception as he also failed to get a government job despite a master’s degree in science: “Why Muslims were singled out for such treatment. We constituted the majority and contributed the most towards the state’s revenues, still we were continually oppressed…Was it because a majority of Government servants were non-Muslims?..I concluded that the ill treatment of Muslims was an outcome of religious prejudice.” Has the situation changed in the first decade of the 21st century? In 1988 this writer was in the valley for three weeks and had to cash travelers cheques and do shopping. Government jobs in banks and revenue departments and elsewhere were almost to the last man staffed by Hindus. At one time curiosity drove him to humouredly ask why so. The bank official was having a plate of bhajiya and a cup of tea with fellow staff members. Some of them turned to the interlocutor. The concerned officer proffered bhajiya as a reply! Earlier in June 2010 the Prime Ministe made a visit to Kashmir and spoke in polite Urdu that getting a job was tough indeed for the people there. It would be untrue to say that the Kashmiri do not qualify. Justine Hardy in her new book “In the Valley of Mist” says about Kashmir: “its children (are) the most highly educated in the country because of the Central Government’s attempt to buy the love of the Kashmiri people, spending more on state education than in any other part of India. “It meant that they had been sowing one of the main crops of rebellion themselves, producing thousands of graduate full of ambition but very little employment to temper their expectations.” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh confirmed the paucity of jobs, electricity; ration shops, roads, drinking water and infrastructure in the valley when he addressed the students on June 7, 2010 in Srinager. “I can imagine the disillusionment of those who have received education in premier institutions like the Sher-e-Kashmir University and yet cannot find good employment… “Hamare naujawan hamaare mulk ka mustaqbil hain. Hamein apne naujawanon se bahut badi umeedein hain,” “where Kashmiri youth can find lots of avenues for their ‘zahni (psychological), jazbaati (emotional) and peshawarana (professional) taraqqi”. “Main jaanta hoon ki behtareen taaleem haasil karne ke baad bhi kam mauqe milne se kis qadr maayoosi hoti hai.” The Prime Minister says that he is aware of the disappointment and desperation of the young on account of unemployment in Kashmir and also acknowledges that he would like to create situations where the psychological, emotional and professional development would be possible for the young. But the stark reality is different. The boys are falling victim to the bullets of the troops while going to tuition, playing in stadium or lawns, farming or simply found in sealed and search operation and driven to the border and shot! Or has the threat of Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray’s letter delivered to the Prime Minister by his son Udhav Thackeray on September 13, 2007 also come home to roost? He had held out a threat if jobs were to be given to Muslims under the recommendations of Sachar committee it would be tantamount to another partition of the country! Through a civil war? ---- Ajit Bhattachariya, Kashmir: the wounded valley (New Delhi: UBS, 1994) p.67. Justine Hardy, In the valley of mist (London: Rider, 2009) p.27. “Tarraqi, kaamyaabi..”PM prays in Urdufor Kashmirs. Irna, June 7th, 2010. Thackeray’s Letter. Saamna September 13, 2007. Chapter 11 New gods in Kashmir and more sacrifices July 7, 2010 When John Milton describes the horrid deity of Moloch he speaks of it as covered with the tears of mothers and the blood of innocent children sacrificed to the deity. Slowly the situation in the valley of Kashmir is reverting to that biblical manslaughter. Zubair Ahmed Bhat (17) was sitting at the bank of the Jhelum with his friends when the troopers descended upon them. They panicked and jumped into the river. All others swam to safety but Zubair did not know swimming. A man saw him struggling in the water and tried to help him when the police shot tear gas shells at them. Zubair died soon after. That was June 18, 2010. People took out his cortege two days later and protested on the way. The police opened fire and as a result coincidentally his cousin Javed Ahmed fell a victim. None of them were stone pelters and no lyrical rhapsody of any walnut tree growing out of the abandoned home of a Pandit and protruding through the broken window can match the prosaic description of the killing in Jhelum. When parents had to offer innocent children to Moloch they would pass them through fire and put them into the brazen hands of the deity, which were terribly heated, and the children would be roasted alive. Purification either through fire or water and then comes the agonized death. Are the troops hoping to build a safe and sanitized piece of ‘real estate’? For on June 27 the people of Sopor took out a protest march. Bilal Ahmed, a bystander, watching the procession had a bullet shot through his neck as the troops attacked the protestors. This goes on every alternate day. On June 29 several youngsters were playing in the private lawn of one of them when the police intruded and killed two of them ( Ishtiyaq Khanday and Imtiyaz Itoo) on the spot and another died on way to hospital, the remaining two recovered from gunshot. Why such juveniles like the nine year old Taukir Ahmed had to be killed? His age makes him a child rather than a stone thrower. Even the first boy killed on January 1, 2010 was on his way to tuition. Inayat Khan was 16 and had just passed SSC. Is it colonial complex of holding on to power despite international attention focused on the hotspot? Why should the right wing groups be so self conscious of this limelight even when they are so self assertive of the region being an integral part of the country? This latter imbroglio is the crux of the matter because when Omar Farooq Abdullah and Mirwaiz Omar Farooq say that there is trouble in JK because it is a political issue and cannot be solved by military force or inducement of sorts, either; they mean altogether different things than what the rest of India is made to believe. It is quite clear that the ruler of Kashmir Hari Singh was not in favour of joining either Pakistan or India. He wanted independence. The haste with which the instruments of accession were signed and 150 planes were used to airlift troops smacks of fools rushing where angels fear to tread. Strange as it sounds Nehru himself was cautious as he had four options, which he enumerated in a letter of December 1, 1947 to Hari Singh. One was to hold a plebiscite in which the people of JK would decide their destiny. Second, an independent JK state with defense guarantee from India and Pakistan. Third, dividing the state into Ladakh going to India and the rest to Pakistan. Fourth was: Jammu and the Kashmir valley to remain with India while Poonch and beyond going to Pakistan. Historical events show that Pakistan was in haste to send the marauders into Kashmir valley. But was it the only antecedent? If we do not redeem ourselves from this murky history of the state we would again regress to 1989 situation. That is we are back to square one and have not learnt anything from the past two decades. What hope of redemption with more boys falling victims to violence! --- July 29, 2010 My comparison of security forces as priests of Moloch should not surprise anyone. Since I wrote the above this is what has emerged. Faizan’s mother, Fareeda: “My son left with his two friends for a casual walk in the afternoon. But on the Azad Gunj Bridge they were surrounded on both the sides by Police and SOG in civvies. A local SOG man hit Faizan on the head with gun butts. And when Faizan had started to get seizures, the SOG man lifted him from his ankles and threw him into Jhelum to pass it off as death due to drowning,” “When Faizan was drowning he waved his arms for help. But police and SOG kept firing bullets and tear gas shells at him and at everyone that tried to come to his help. I saw it with my eyes when I reached the spot,” “On the afternoon of the third day a diver came out of water and gave thumbs up to his officer who was over-looking the proceedings. But instead of bringing out the body he took in a short rope and later came out empty handed. When we asked him, he said he had not found the body and officials excused us for lunch,” she says, adding, “The diver tied the body with something in the floor so that it could not come up during the day.” However, the body appeared on the surface later in the evening. ----- “Faizan’s Mother Speaks. Danish Nabi”, Kashmir Times, July 28, 2010) Chapter 12 Kashmir: the dry stone gives no sound of water August 25, 2010 The boulder and the stream solution of Kashmir spell out need for patiently bearing the paramilitary and not confronting the forces. If the people of Kashmir accept India and march forward it would bring great benefits to them. This realization or epiphany of a seer (Maulana Waheedudin Khan)is charming to observe in the bucolic sylvan setting of the valley but not in the narrow meandering lanes and by lanes with shop shutters down and streets deserted and stones strewn all over. As a reminder of the previous days’ or earlier days’ engagement with the soldiers it is a heap of images of waste, the valley has become the waste land. The valley was beautiful and quiet when the soldiers were only guarding the borders and were confined to their barracks. Now the whole valley has turned into a garrison and you have to negotiate every check posts almost like the Palestinians who take days and months to reach their relatives just across a stretch of a few kilometers away. Are we also turning Kashmir into another West Bank and Gaza? Yes, if this is what the valley has become then surely the paramilitary forces have transformed it into an occupied territory and it would remain so for good because it would legitimize what India and Pakistan want: turning line of control into a recognized border. Wither autonomy, then? There would be none. The boulder and stream tantalizing also belies the fact that the valley was traumatized by the two upheavals of the mainland: the seismic upheavals of the events around 1992 and the Gujarat 2002 pogroms of Muslims. It would be foolhardy of anyone to ask the people to continue living halcyon days of pre 1989 as if nothing has happened. How much is viable Maulana Wahiduddin Khan’s advice that,” The developments over the last decade or so clearly indicate that, in today’s context, Kashmir’s benefit lies not in independence or in joining Pakistan, but, rather in being part of India and in abandoning the path of violence in exchange for peaceful reconstruction and progress.”? The shift in situation on ground in Jammu and the rest of the country is not helpful to the Kashmiris. The ascendency of the right wing Hindu groups does not want to see even the article 370 enacted. In times of trouble the blockade of Kashmiri goods from entering into the rest of India and essential supplies reaching the valley threatens existence of the people. Those who enforce the blockade know that their action economically cripples the valley and has no visible effect on India. What prospect does it hold for the future? Similarly people hesitating to visit Kashmiri shops in Delhi on account of the identity of the shopkeepers is not a result of insurgency in the valley but rather a fall out of the misconceived perception that all Muslims are terrorists. Justin Hardy mentions that even Japanese hastily withdrew from Mohammad Dar’s shop in Delhi. As far as development is concerned if 600,000 Kashmiri youths are unemployed Omar Abdullah’s now asking the centre to create 50,000 thousand jobs is not that enviable offer. But more pertinent is to ask why so far the jobs were not created? If economic plight of the ordinary people fuels protest on the street it is supplemented by sometimes 27 days in a month closure of shops due to inordinate curfew and the consequences of continuing death toll of the young people. Sometimes it is not the boulder that obstructs but the man made policy of commission and omission. Is there any sign of change? Despite, the ten percent growth! ----- The figure of unemployed is given in TIME August 21, 2010 under the heading “Kashmir’s new warriors”. The Waste Land Chapter 13 Kashmir: a view from the plain August 22, 2010 The Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said that if there is consensus the government would consider autonomy for Jammu and Kashmir. Still there is no sign of mentioning it a second time let alone moving a resolution in the parliament. In the meantime Bal Thackeray threatened on the eve of the Independence Day: “Autonomy to Kashmir? It is the limit!” (Kashmir la swyatta? Hud jhali! ). His words show he has reached the flash point and would not take it anymore. “Why this autonomy! And for whom?! (kasli swayatta! Aandi kuna sathi?) Parsing the exclamatory and the interrogative would reveal that how could a region of India have autonomy that is not already there in India itself. But the question mark on the identity of the people seeking identity is to him more horrifying to say the least. “Unfortunately if it is at all given the country will be flung into an abyss, just imagine.” (jar durdevane dilich tar saara desh kontya kahdit lotla jaeel teyachi kalpana kra.) Bal Thackeray lives far from Kashmir but has the potential to raise the temperature to boiling point elsewhere especially in Maharashtra. His musclemen have the freedom to physically assault Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the Hurriyat leader in Jammu thanks to the police. They could dig up cricket pitch, ditto! Given this kind of law and order situation it would not be surprising that this time around it would be hell let loosed. In 2008 agitation against the revocation of grant of land for the pilgrimage to Amarnath Jammu and Indore and other parts of the country saw sheer terror. In contrast the people of the valley fed and housed the stranded pilgrims and showed no hatred for them for being Hindus. While at the same time the Muslim drivers passing through Jammu were assaulted brutally and even killed and trucks looted. Not only there but also in Punjab! This kind of inhuman reprisal in Jammu and the selected parts of the rest of the country shows how the Hindu right is ready to coerce the government. Shiv Sena and BJP cannot brook any concession to either the Kashmiris or the Muslim minority in the country. On the provisions made for the poor and backward Muslims in Sachar Committee recommendations Thackeray wrote to the PM that it would lead to civil war. Such is the communally charged situation in the country and the nefarious politics being played over it that the oil slick off the shores of Mumbai by the collision of ships and the overturning of a tanker on road the ecological danger is not viewed as serious as the autonomy in the far off region of the country. Instead of clearing the sea of the oil the supporters of Thackeray and his nephew are engaged in competitive politics of having more Marathi films screened in multiplexes. What else is this if not the communal consideration of the agitation in valley and the carrot of autonomy dangled by the PM? Like much else things are viewed from a communal angle in the plains of India. There is no doubt the situation and the mindset of the Kashmiris are affected by the barbarity often seen in communal riots and pogroms against the Muslims in particular following Babri demolition and the Godhra incident. That has exacerbated the situation and hardened the minds but the present stone pelting protest is a different matter altogether. There is nothing communal and the stone pelters are not aiming to kill any police even when they get hold of any one once in a blue moon. However on the other hand the genocidal tendency in the police is widespread. A policeman chased a five year old Athar and shouted at him while the kid ran into his house: “Hum mar dalenge. (We will kill you).” It is another incident that even in treating the incidents of street protest as a matter of breaking law of strict curfew order the anger and reply of the paramilitary shows what is latent is becoming manifest. The rest of the country is as much in the dark of the truth of the events as is the chief minister Omer Abdullah himself who taunted that: “If his life had been so important, why didn’t the other two boys pull him out.” He is talking of a boy who was mauled with rifle butts and when he was having seizures the CRPF jawans threw him into the water so that his death would be passed off as drowning. But the boy recovered and struggled in the water and at that point the soldiers fired tear gas canister at him. The post mortem report shows that he received injuries on head and died. Truth is the first casualty of the ongoing operation against the protests. It is evident in the case of the Chief Minister himself. The police officer supervising the scene and the diver who went into the bottom to fish out the body of Faizan came up and raised his thumb but dived again with a small rope and tied the body to something in the water so that it would not emerge in the day light. But it came to the surface and that is how the world came to know about the truth of the boy! With such startling disclosures it is quite possible that there would be change in the perception of truth in the plains of India. Indian civilization is much older than Kashmir and the moorings of civilization cannot be washed away by a few years of insurgency or counterinsurgency. Nor can the temporary turbulence of rabble rousers like Thackeray or Pramod Muthalik or the brief “frozen turbulence” of a governor of the region. The Amarnath pilgrimage is still on for which Muthalik has called for the cancellation of the tax of two thousand rupees per pilgrim. In this age of corporate business even communal violence is also a commodity. You can order a riot by paying seventy lakh rupees to Muthalik and his Sri Ram Sene and you can have it anywhere you like. But the shell is broken and truth is peeping out! --------- Saamna August 14, 2010. Mother Speaks. Danish Nabi, Kashmir Times, July 28, 2010 He flays Kashmir govt’s move to impose tax on Amarnath pilgrims. Deccan Herald. August 1, 2010. August 21 Am A Pacifist. But Here’s Why I Want To Be A Stone-Pelter Zahid Rafiq,Tehelka. August 21, 2010. Chapter 14 Space for peaceful protest in Kashmir valley September 15, 2010 People of the Kashmir valley have been coerced to remain inside their narrow houses and shut for long hours of curfew. No sooner does the curfew end than some protest begins bringing life to a standstill. It was this tedium of every day existence that made the Eid day protest and marches on Saturday 11, 2010 as a historic day. “It’s suffocating, It’s collective punishment. Every Kashmiri is being forced to stay inside.” This is what Sajjid Iqbal told New York Times (September 14, 2010 ) Their pent up frustration, anger and anguish at the mounting toll of the youths had thrown up a necessity for the leaders to address the people. India is no stranger to such gatherings and marches. The rathyatra of LK Advani passing through many states before the Babri mosque was destroyed had a bloody trail of communal violence resulting in bloodshed in most places. Barring Lalu Prasad Yadav and Mulayamsing Yadav, Chief Ministers and even the Prime Minister twiddled their thumbs as the security forces either looked the other way or members of the forces also took part in the juggernaut. This was happening in the mainland when the militancy in JK was on the rise. Therefore there is no need to apply double standard to compare any event of the earlier days or to the present turbulence in the Kashmir valley, either. This time there is a sea change in the valley. The youths have taken over the protests, they are the ones who go before the soldiers who have their guns drawn and aimed at them with fingers in a reflex situation of pressing the trigger as the scene is too violent and bloody. There is an action packed drama going on in the streets that calls for a different response than the reloading of the smoking guns. The most remarkable thing is to ponder why so many thousands of tons of stone s thrown at the security forces (who also paid them back in the same measure) did not convince the government in New Delhi for speedy solution or easing of the situation. The government postponed the the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) meeting from Saturday to Monday, then to Tuesday and then again to Wednesday and now after the all party delegation meets everyone in Kashmir valley and Jammu. There is also evidence that even the Home Minister Chidambrum was not seized of the situation in the streets of the valley for he called it fake protest. This is what he said on Thursday when the videos of naked men paraded by the security forces and brutally assaulted by them before the local women went on the air. The government started narrowing the space or even closed whatever space was available before. The government locked down all the fights to and out of the valley. The air flights were most necessary for the media people to reach the valley and report what was transpiring there. Why was the government so jittery about it? India is the largest democracy in the world and the freedom of the press is a vital pillar of our democracy. There is another way of closing the space for peaceful protest. The government can counterbalance the intensity of the protest in the valley by welcoming the people of Jammu to register their response to the kind of move the government would make in the valley. This may remind you the counterbalancing the revocation of the land grant to the amaranth pilgrims in 2008 by letting the ferocious protest in Jammu to continue. The present unrest in the valley is valley specific. It is neither national specific nor even state specific. The specificity of the valley in regard to space is best seen in two incidents of recent time. The man who threw his shoe at the chief minister became a hero of the people in the valley. Many thousands marched to his village and garlanded and congratulated him for his daring act. The second incident is of the Eid day. Firdous Ahmed Hajjam had climbed over the clock tower at Lal chowk and raised the Islamic flag on Saturday. Again many thousands of people went to his village and congratulated him for his daring act. So the space for peaceful protest is narrowing as well as enlarging depending on the situation on the ground. Chapter 15 Kashmir stasis: religion September 14, 2010 Dispassionate and disinterested view on Kashmir is not easy to have even for a self effacing person. Even Justin Hardy in the end of her new book In the Valley of Mist says that the situation is so desperate that people like her would give a helping hand even when they overhear the local people remarking about the foreigner as a non believer. She has worked there longer and knows better than many others, particularly the ones who are well ensconced in the comforts of the five star hotels. Stone pelting has not killed any police man but the police have killed nearly eighty five people overwhelmingly young ones. Stories are galore of brutality including the security forces attacking ambulance carrying civilians injured in police retaliation. This intense hatred is very disturbing and is not area specific: Coimbatore riots 1998 where Hindus stopped ambulance and killed the injured Muslims who were carried to hospital. In 1986 anti-reservation violence in Gujarat the extremists turned it anti Muslim and threw Muslim patients from higher stories of the hospital building to their death on the concrete below. Ram Jethmalani is a committed right wing politician like LK Advani. The senior lawyer and a former law minister says that Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s hatred of Indians is on account of his religious conviction. He has dubbed him as “intentional abettor of murder”. The stone pelters are supported by the people “in the pay of Pakistan of whom Geelani is the leader.” He should be incarcerated in a jail far away from Kashmir. “Jeelani is just a Hindu hater by his religious conviction who does not know the real Islam of the Prophet of the majesty of its core teaching (Free Press Journal, September 3, 2010) Religion is going to play a much larger role than anything else. The meeting at the house of LK advani on Sunday September 12, 2010 night assumes significance. Advani can keep his silence over Jharkhand but not on Kashmir where the people agitating for freedom happen to be Muslims. BJP’s demand not to dilute the AFSPA is their old policy of opposing what they generally call appeasement of minority Muslim. Jethmalani calls Jeelani mortal enemy of Kashmir. The Kashmiri Muslims as well as the Muslims in the rest of India have had their mortal enemies and the recent history is replete with them and their deeds. Former governor of JK Jagmohan’s role in the induced migration of the Pundits of the valley by opening state largess to them is well known. Now he is calling for harsher crackdowns on the protestors. Thanks to these he is the distinguished guest at the RSS meetings. Cultural nationalism has the hardrock bottom of religion. Unfortunately the Kashmiri Muslims do not make a part of it. It is but natural the vitiated communal atmosphere in the country cannot brooke anything. Jagmohan thunders “Don’t turn back the clock in JK.” The centre has spent 95 000 crore on Kashmir since when he was governor in 1989-90 to 2009-2010. (AA September 7 & 8 2010) BJP the political configuration of the Hindu right is very calculative: “whole nation is anxiously watching as to which vision prevails in the CCS meeting on Monday.” (Sack Omar, but don’t dilute AFSPA:BJP to PM, Express News Service September 13)Now the CCS is scheduled to meet on Wednesday. The Hindu right does not want to either spend such huge amounts on Kashmir under Article 370 or have any political solution. What do you have still left, then? Sanity. Moderation. Yes these are with some people. Prakash Karat sounds quite holistic in his approach to Kashmir. He met the PM on Sept 4,2010 and asked him to remove the Disturbed Area Act from the urban areas so that Armed Special Power Act would also go. The last act had made the security forces use excessive power that led to the death of more than sixty youths. He also made sure that the bed rock for any solution will have to be maximum autonomy recognizing the identity of the people and the special status of the state. Reviving economy and a political dialogue is necessary. Removing bunkers and reducing security forces will also help ease the situation. (Karat urges PM to hold talks on J&K sans precondition TNN, Sep 5, 2010) Chapter 16 Human Rights Watch and the Intifada in Kashmir September 11, 2010 There is a groundswell in the resentment of the ordinary Kashmiri against the Indian security forces. The Shaikh Abdullah family misled them twice. The last time it was Dr Farooq Abdullah who espoused the minimum agreed agenda of the NDA government dominated by Hindutva party, BJP. The National Conference was a part of it. The pogroms of Muslims in Gujarat 2002 shocked the Kashmiris tremendously but what shocked them more was how Farooq and his son did not react to events in Gujarat as strongly, immediately and categorically as they should have representing the popular sentiment of the people of Kashmir valley in particular. But the genocide in Gujarat came too close to the 9/11 in America and so the NDA’s toeing George Bush’s line crowded out the kind of concern the world and particularly the west shows to the gross violation of human rights. Even Britain did not react as firmly as it would do. The Prime Minister AB Vajpayee went even further and remarked in the Goa conclave of his BJP party that the Muslims do not live in peace with their neighbours and it is their violent nature that is responsible (for what happened in the US and India). However, when the Commissioner of UNO Human Rights Commission Mary Robinson wanted to visit Gujarat the Prime Minister sent Justice Verma of NHRC and the Attorney General Soli Sorabji to prevent her visit and request her not to go public about Gujarat. The British High Commission also recorded that the mass murder of Muslim was carefully planned and even if the Sabarmati train was not burnt the extremists of Hindutva would have found out another alibi to attack the Muslims. What the British High Commission recorded did not translate into any kind of condemnation or raising the issue of the human rights violation in India because PM Tony Blair ala Vajpayee had jumped on the bandwagon of the Bush government in their misconceived war on terror which turned out to be a war on the Muslims. The Kashmiris were very much disturbed by all these. In the present worsening situation in the valley they are outraged by among other things, genocidal tendency of the security forces, gang rapes of the Kashmiri women and the humiliation of the Kashmiri men in the presence of their women. This last is having a disastrous effect on them because they feel that what the security forces did in Gujarat they are doing the same in the valley. Many Americans are now waking up to the stark truth that under George Bush the war on terror was in fact war on Islam, witness what President Obama is saying currently and what George Soros has been saying. Soros wants to make Human Rights Watch a global organization with an overwhelming concern for South Asia. This is a belated recognition that India did get the kind of attention because of the twisted perception of Bush administration when it came to human rights violation in the country. The unfolding scenario in the valley is truly horrifying. The Kashmiri men are paraded naked in full view of their woman. The security forces beat them mercilessly and goad their private parts with batons and then hit them in the crotch. Many a time the victims have their hands tied behind and are stark naked and thus unable to even a reflex protection gesture of their private parts or head or any other parts of the body. This kind of genderised humiliation is calculated to show that they are impotent before the security forces that have also subdued their women to watch their helplessness. The death toll of the boys has gone to 70 with no end in sight. Why only the young boys some of them even as tender as 8 years old are picked out and shot at? Is it not an attempt to debilitate the next generation of the Kahmiris? What NDA government did under Vajpayee is being repeated today with the home minister Chidambrum expressing doubt that the victims caught on cell phone camera are genuine because 'people seen in it have not spoken up'. First the government tried to erase the videos of naked parades of torture and humiliation and then the denial! The cumulative effect is that the loud protest of the people is rising in a crescendo and the word that stands out loudest in the melee is freedom, azadi! In 22 years of protest it was a watershed when even on Eid for the first time the sound of azadi rings the air in the valley from the Eidgah to the Lalchowk. It is time to ponder why the hawk Yasin Mallik and the dove Umar Farooq Mirwaiz come together in determination. Can the Human Rights Watch hear the shouts? Chapter 17 Sailing on even keel was never easy for Muslims of Malegaon A Muslim was killed on April 13, 1965at the square known as Tamba Kanta of Sapti bazaar on Tilak road on the issue of slaughtering a cow. There was a march under the leadership of RSS leader GM Puntambekar. He carried the calf of the dead cow on his shoulder as he passed from Motipura chowk and entered Hiray Galli and turned into the Tilak road and Rajabahadur wada. Four other Muslims also lost their lives and 25 injured in police firing. Under Puntamberkar’s leadership there were others who imbibed the saffron ideology of taking on the Muslims. Among them was Bhima Gauli who lived in Bajrangwadi with his family and collection of buffaloes and sold milk and looked after a hotel in Mulla bada. Both these localities were very sensitive areas at times of communal tension that dotted the history for decades particularly in 1980s, etc. Nihal Ahmed MLA and his fellow member of the same party Shivaji Patil had different roles to play. Nihal A got Bhima externed because the wrestler would beat up Muslims at the time of tension and create a row that led to tension and Patil beat up Brahmins near Swaminarahan temple at the time of assassination of Gandhiji. Puntambekar was also arraigned as agent provocateur in the riots of Bhiwandi by Justice D Madan in his commission report on that town. September 2016 Ganesh immersion saw a banner at Tamba Kanta in memory of Puntambelar and Bhima Gawli. However the times have changed. The population shift across the Mosom river has left few traces of tension and strife. From a detached view and passage of time all endeavours including stand offs between communities mock at them. Prudence and not confrontation is the better part of bravery. It was bravery to have exploded crackers inside the toilet of Jama Masjid when India won the world cup on June 10, 1983. Puntambekar and others including Milind Kulkarni were at the site. Wisdom would have been to celebrate along with Muslims after the Ramzan night prayer was over. Six Muslims lost their lives besides 400 injured. Among other dark days of turbulent life are Khilafat firing and killing in which a Hindu and seven Muslims were killed and 20 were injured on April 18, 1921. Mohammad Ali Jinnha had defended one of the accused in court. 1926 marked tension, firing and lathicharge over Bohra cemetery. Two Muslims were killed..1935 and 1937 Ganesh procession in Nayapura saw tension. In 1946 as many as 90 were injured in Ganesh immersion. In the after math of Independence 6 Muslims died in cases knifing on August 23, 1947. The military entered Malegaon on Idul Azha 1948 to prevent slaughter of cow. In 1957 a Hindu lost his life on slaughter dispute. One September 2, 1963 firing in which 6 muslims lost their lives during immersion of Ganesh idols, 40 were also injured. Babri mosque flareup of July 19, 1992. On December 7 1992 five Muslims died in police firing. Anti US protest note riot in which 17 Muslims and a Hindu were killed on October 26, 2001. It engulfed more than 70 villages and for the first time saw migration of Muslims from villages into the town. There were several rape cases of Muslim women. But one case resulted in conviction. Since then Malegaon sailed on even keel even during the two bomb blasts case of 2006 and 2008. It is remarkable that the two bomb blasts eroded communalism for good. Ironically the police and ATS had to bite the dust for making a case of revenge of Gujarat and creating riots between Hindus and Muslims as the cause of the blasts and innocent Muslims were arrested for the first. But on both the occasions the police were frightened and fired at the crowds of Muslims in which a couple of them died. Now there is a measure of equanimity of mind in the town despite provocation. The town heaves a sigh of relief as the leaders on both the sides of the divide are dead and the town is sans violence. Chapter 18 An Area of Darkness In the days of “biryani politics” it is worth to call to mind how the Gujarat police act and what Narendra Modi said about Muslim as chief minister and now as PM of India. Modi lived just some hundred feet away from the Akshardham temple. He called the attack on the temple as an act of terrorism. As usual he blamed Pakistan for it. Mufti Qayum had told the truth of Akshardham temple attack to IB and RAW etc when he was taken to Kashmir. DG Vanzara and others had their sixth sense awakened that the truth was out. To recover from the utter embarrassment Vanzara asked the other tourist spots. They stayed in Shalimar hotel in Lal Chowk and were fed on Kashmiri delicacy, Kashmiri vazwan. But instead of writing a report on section 169 that they made mistake in making arrest and submitting it in the court they went further in their heart of darkness. They made the Mufti the main accused. They did this to win medals and award. The Mufti remarks that they did so to even keep their fellow Hindus into the dark. Such is the “area of darkness” (Gujarat) that Modi and Vanzara did nothing to bring light. After entering BJP Vanzara still parrots that the encounters were real and his superior maintains his silence. But a humble man like the Mufti cares for fellow Indians even if they are Hindus, they must know the truth. The South Indians had greater spirit of secularism. They were manning the airport from where they left for Ahmdabad. They advised the Mufti and the two others to have patience and the truth would be out. They were from the staff of DGP of Kashmir K Rajendra. Within a week after his return from Kashmir Vanzara, Singhal and others took him out to kill in an encounter on September 18, 2003. The scene was the sanctum sanctorum of the Gaikwad Haveli the headquarter of Crime Branch that the wife of Sanjiv Bhatt and others feared. That was the eye of the “area of darkness” of Gujarat that Modi ruled. As the cops coming out of the Haveli they hit Mufti’s head against the seat and gave him phone to talk to his wife and father the last time. They took him in the dark to the airport area and Vannar shot from his gun several times over his head. Then he called Singhal sahib. This farce went on and broke Mufti’s spirit as he agreed to give false witness. On 19th September it was Tarun Barot who threatened to kill him. “Latif bhai ko maine mara that”. Barot said that he had killed the dreaded Latif and now would kill him for the beard [Vanzara] and the blind [Singhal] want him to kill the Mufti. The whole drama was choreographed for the sake of making the Mufti to imitate a threatening letter on the imminent attack on Akshardham temple that was prior to the attack. Could such people with such sobriquets like the beard, the blind not to speak of the white beard reconstruct Indian society in a true functioning democracy which also has secularism as an important tenet in its Constitution? In contrast was the Mufti who knew the Qoran and quotes a chapter where it says “lest you take revenge that they prevented you from going to the mosque and your taking revenge becomes cruelty you restrain and stick to the path of goodness and forbearance.” Another version: “Lest your enmity against other community compel you to practice injustice and cruelty, you do justice and observe forbearance.” There are areas of darkness in India and by no means can the whole India be dubbed as “an area of darkness.” Gujarat may be developed in terms of material life but is still an area of darkness as far as civility, justice fair play; rule of law, a healthy judiciary, etc are concerned. Suborning the judiciary is the index which shows that those involved in massacre of Muslims in 2002 and fake encounters, be they ministers, police officers, or members of parties or public are roaming freely. The police officers tainted with the blood of innocent are not only given bail but reinstated in their position and given promotion. All this has been swept under the carpet of development. However there are other areas of the country like Haryana where there is development with ghettos of Muslims left out from any development. A bus driver, Arbaz Ahmed – said it eloquently when he stopped at a motel to watch the assembly result in October 2014: “In Mewat, we survive because of the work we get in Gurgaon. We still don’t have water. Our schools are terrible. This is what was10 years ago and I fear that this will be the case 10 years from now.” This prognostic came home to roost as the otherwise peaceful Muslim area of Mewat too came under pernicious hate ideology with biryani politics in 2016. In the assembly election the BJP fire brand leader Sanjay Singh clearly revealed his party’s ideology when he remarked that Mewat needed development and not more Meo Muslim leaders. Haryana saw three Muslims winning assembly seats: from Freozpur-Jhirka Naseem Ahmad of INLD (Om Prakash Chautala party), from Nuh Zakir Husain and from Purnaha Rahis Khan. For Muslims the real development should include not only material but also civil life index showing justice and equality as hallmarks of our democracy. In this Kashmir, Mewat and ghettos of Muslims, Dalits in Gujarat and elsewhere are also areas of darkness."We have decided to open a driving school of international standard here because I have been told the youth of Mewat like driving. Not only will they get training here but also jobs. "That cut no ice for the driver Arbaz Ahmad. Kashmir and rest of the country merge on one point that Muslims have been deliberately left out from development. The result is that he who pays more to police informer calls the tune. Those whom the government feared of revealing the truth like Mufti Sufiyan were induced to seek haven in Pakistan. Cash or refuge to silence or jail terms were familiar pattern of hiding crimes and their perpetrators. In fact the Doval doctrine is also based on that. National Security Advisor Ajit Kumar Doval has advocated more payment to buy over those who are in the pay of the Pakistan intelligence agencies. There are many instances of the same doctrine. In Pathankot attack many well meaning Indians are puzzled why special National Security Guards are called to handle it. That was also true when Uri attack took place. The local police were not allowed to finish the few attackers. Such events create so much paranoia that doubting any would call for condemnation. The case of the exact time of killing of Burhan Wani is also in doubt. The house he was killed in was burnt down because the natives believed that he was there. The same kind of suspicion was in the case of Uri attack that there were insiders who had shut the kitchen door so that the victims would die. Who were the insiders? In what way the ideology in which Modi has been nurtured, nay even now he spouses in his own characteristic way warrants this remark he made at Kozhikode in the enclave of his party. It is reminiscent of the Goa enclave of 2002 when the PM Vajpayee mouthed the Huntingtonian thesis that the Muslims do not live well with their neighbours? Then he was expected to sack Modi for the massacre of Muslims and now Modi has to justify why Muslims, his neighbours everywhere as citizens of this country including Kashmir need two different treatments, bearing the brunt of pellets fired at them in Kashmir and chased and beaten up by cow vigilantes? And even lynched! Even so the Indian Muslims are sailing on even keel of the ship that India is and would do all to prevent it from sinking. So to them it is music to their ears to hear Modi from Koshikode. “Pandit Upadhyaya used to say no ‘ ang’ (part) of society is untouchable for us. But many people misunderstand BJP and project us wrongfully. The definition of secularism in currency is distorted. It runs down the ‘desh bhakts’ (patriots). At such times, let us see how we look at the minorities,” “Pandit Upadhyaya said do not reward Muslims, do not rebuke them, but purify them. Do not treat Muslims like vote ki mandi ka maal (vote banks) or ghrina ki vastu (object of hatred). Unhe apna samjho (regard them as your own).”[1] [1] https://www.thequint.com/politics/2016/09/25/prime-minister-narendra-modi-bjp-national-council-meeting-kozhikode-kerala-muslims-deendayal-updadhyay Chapter 19 Muslims today Every age calls forth fresh efforts to live and regenerate oneself to meet the challenges according to the signs of the time. The Muslims of India also have the same challenge as never before. The signs of the time are disturbing and tasks formidable. Kaumon ki hyat unkey tassauf pe hai maukuf. Life of a community depends on their view of life they want to live. If you live like the flotsam and jetsam the tide would carry you wherever its force takes you. However if you learn to swim out of the current and have will to swim and power you can have the safety by and by. Islam is a way of life and when it comes in contact with unknown people in unknown places there is a chemistry of change. There is a new set of thinking and practices that people accepting Islam adopt. For example the distinction between the sacred and the profane assumes significance as the people new to Islam begin to learn. Alcohol and promiscuity are profane and hence forbidden. But when Muslims migrate to places which are alien to Islam they develop what Lee Harris calls “defense mechanism.” Muslims naturally want to defend themselves from things like alcohol and promiscuity. Veiling women is an attempt to forestall what would lead to temptation and beyond. Muslims are under siege in a cultural survival. But in the case of war and conquest at least in the early years force alone did not change much. The most beloved uncle of the prophet did not accept Islam altogether as almost all others did. The result accordingly is “a total and revolutionary transformation in the culture of those conquered or converted.” However, the west still views Islam with skepticism bordering on hostility. Harris himself speaks of self defence mechanism as “fanaticism of reason.” There is Noam Chomsky who believes that the Muslims are victims of an evil system and are not terrorists themselves. The latter example was exemplified in Parbhani where the Mohammadiya mosque was targeted when two bombs were thrown at the worshippers. Those accused of the attack were set free by the court. Thus they were not only the victims of the attack but were also denied justice. The imam of the mosque called for patience and perseverance. It bore results soon when the Bakrid festival arrived. In a rare and commendable show the Muslims decided not to buy either cows and bulls or even the buffaloes. Instead they bought goats. As a result of their equanimity of mind the Hindu farmers who usually made brisk business during the festival had such a disastrous result. They cursed the government for what they believed the total collapse of the market in big animals. Nawab Bhai from Parbhani reasoned that instead of settling the issue on the road or taking the law in one’s hand self restraint would pay richer dividends. That fructified. In contrast in Malegaon which was also was subjected to attacks on Muslims the people paid through their nose at least twenty to twenty five thousand rupees for a single buffalo. The longer term effect is the rise in the price of milk and the cost of the buffalo. People prefer buffalo milk over cow milk. The travails of paying handsomely have therapeutic effect. Instead of Muslims protesting it was now the Hindu majority that was aggrieved and protesting. The community also saved itself from the stigma of being castigated as beef eaters. It is worth to know that this is triumph of reason and not failure of reason. This is also an instance of creating new opportunity of survival. It is remarkable that within a year the Muslim could bounce back from Mohammad Akhlak’s lynching by fanatic Hindus of Dadri what has given birth to a kind of ominous malaise that somebody’s food is another person’s sacrilege and the rigmarole of mutton could be beef and beef mutton. What worse example of muddle that India is as EM Forster would put it. These were found at two places, in the fridge of Akhlak and the electric transformer where he was dragged to and lynched. Fair is foul and foul is fair, yes, India indeed! The Muslims in Parbhani reconstructed their society in which law and rationality came out successfully in a period of justice delayed is justice denied. They held themselves responsible to the society and the community being the integral part of it, the two circles that Maulana Azad viewed Muslims of India to be working in. In this creative transformation of society the Muslims left their stamp. All this became possible thanks to their continued espousing the core values of Islamic injunction to observe patience during suffering. Despite the Islamic influence, the market is another phenomenon and has its own forces. For example in Parbhani the multiple personalities of Muslims acquired hue of harmony and brotherhood. In Malegaon there was a clear shift when the police were stricter in 2015than in 2016. They came down heavily upon the butchers as a community not to take risk of joining the mainstream in their enforcement of beef ban. They said they would like them to keep themselves apart. In 2016 there is a kind of détente as beef is easily sold at the price of 180 to 200 rupees a kilo and is also easily available on the sly. So the talk of the town in Malegaon is that the authorities have made the butchers grow richer at least those who can afford to grease the palm. Indeed the situation changed so much that cows and bulls according to Urdu Tarjuman daily of September 11 the bulls and cows which cost 15 to 20 thousands last year were easily sold for 5 to 6. So the multiple identities which had played havoc previous year disappeared and turned the community of butchers more supplicant to the customers in a more open matter because of the surplus supply. Even the DGP Mathur of Maharashtra police added his mite in enforcing strict warning of taking firm action against cow vigilantes intending to block entry of animals or raiding suspected places where the forbidden coloured animals are kept clandestinely. So the bonhomie of the authorities and the butchers has brought about a new situation never seen before in the season of festival. The newspaper advised the Chief Minister Phadnavis better be firm. It says that the Muslims have alternative in the black animals available but he must adhere to his Hindutva party BJP for it would lose its appeal and would no more be a party with a difference. However, the paper is even more insightful and says that for the better of democracy and secularism setting healthy example is important for the general weal of the citizens of India. These churning up of strange ideas and examples reveal a deeper level of change in the Muslims who ask for better governance rather than corruption and maladjustment. Two other incidents of signs of time where two different people share the vision of Indian government with Muslims today, Dr Zakir Naik and Ravish Kumar: “From what I understand, IRF and I have been set up for a ban. Never mind the fact that the legal agencies have found no wrongdoing – financial or otherwise. Never mind the lack of evidence (although I am not guilty of any wrong-doing, much less any offence whatsoever). At least this is what is evident from the media stories being ‘planted’ since the past several weeks. The message is clear: it’s not a question of whether I’ve committed a crime or not. It’s a question of using desperate measures to kill peace and harmony.” If Naik is sharp and cold like the owl, Ravish Kumar is sarcasm and brilliance incarnate: “It seems Government has already achieved all its goals, that is why it is more concerned as to what goes into the platter of a common man. The whole idea is to communalize the masses and shift their attention from the basic problem.” And that is where biryani comes in. Pakistanis will not be served biryani because they are Muslims. So what is wrong with biryani? Can a delicacy associated with Muslims be taken to be whole community when it is a very minor part of it? It is like the British who speak of crown to mean the government and the queen. Islam cannot be reduced absurdly to a very minor part of the food habits of some Muslims, Islam a mere metonymy! In the two cases of Naik and Ravish Kumar the question of identity of Muslims comes in focus. Kumar does not mention Muslims but the surfeit achieved by the Hindutva government of Modi has made promise of bringing hidden treasure in Swiss banks and other problems are over and so Modi government pick up plates of biryani and find out the test and what is in it. This is a respite for them vis-à-vis the general situation. And the time of election is near so pick up identity politics to win votes. Muslims anyway do not vote BJP. Dr Naik also touches the same cord when he says “Of 150 countries where I’m respected and my talks are welcomed, I’m being called a terrorist influencer in my own country. What an irony. Why now, when I’ve been doing the same thing for over 25 years?” This is no failure of reason by any means. This sounds more rational than the dilly dallying of CM of Maharashtra Phadnavis and Home Minister Rajnathsingh of the central government. Naik was forced by the emergent situation to reconstruct his societal perception in contrast with his being in his own community: “This was not the first time I was being targeted. For years, there have been groups who have opposed me. Instead of retaliating or reacting to them, I’ve felt it best to continue with my work and not pay attention to these detractors. That is what I tried doing even this time. But I soon realized that this time it was different. There was much greater media involvement, and a much deeper government’s involvement. I’m not privy to internal details so I do not know which came first – my opposition groups, the media or the government. But from what it looks like, this is the best concerted effort used against me so far.” So choosing him to target was to target his community as a whole. But why him? This is the game the police of Gujarat had played with Mufti Qayum accused in Akshardham temple attack. “But I still can’t stop asking myself – why am I being targeted? Then I realized some time back that if you’ve decided to target a community, you’ve to first target the biggest name and the most popular figure of the community. If you can bring down and demonize this figure of the community, the rest becomes a cakewalk. That, I think, is what is happening. It may sound like a conspiracy theory, but I honestly cannot find any other plausible reason.” In the Mufti Qayum case there was no proof against Chand Khan and the Vanzarat team that took the Mufti to Kashmir made themselves the butt of laughter and in the case of Naik too it is the same. “Why is there no effort to gather the most basic proof that comes from the converted? It would be naïve to presume that the agencies mustn’t have tried. The fact is they tried and they couldn’t get proof of any forced conversion. The fact is, there never was forced conversion.” Naik also engages in the creative transformation of his society: “I still have faith in the judiciary and I know that truth will ultimately prevail. But it may come at a huge price if the current actions are not checked now. To all, my appeal is, do not allow subversion of the constitution. My appeal to the government – be fair in your investigation. Be fair in what you allege. Be truthful with facts. To my fellow citizens – Let no one and nothing dissuade you from speaking the truth. Whatever position you occupy, in authority or in media, or as a citizen of this great country, be truthful and fair. Nothing less, nothing more” “But this isn’t only about me. It’s about us. It’s about the morals and values of a great country. What will become of India if we let bigotry and injustice seep into the very fabric of our nation? What will be the fate of our country if it falls into the stranglehold of such vices? The answer is frightening, and one we all wish to avoid. It’s time we do something about it.” In these times, my heart bursts with gratitude to those of you who have stood up for justice and harmony, irrespective of religion or creed. Because I know that like me, you care for this country. You care for core values like justice and tolerance. And that shall make a big difference. The head priest of Akshardham also cared for the values of this great country. When he came to know the conspiracy in which Umerji of Godhra and Mufti Qayum were framed he was so disturbed that he met the Mufti that along with the fiasco in Kashmir proved the Mufti and others innocent of the Akshardham attack and also Godhra because Vanzara had asked them in which cases they would like to be framed. The third was the assassination of Haren Pandya. So who provided the guilty cops with high premium to carry out all this? In contrast to Naik and the Mufti’s integrative approach to reconstructing Indian society the PM Narendra Modi replayed the role of the past PM AB Vajpayee’s volte face in Goa conclave of BJP in 2002. Instead of removing Modi from chief ministership he not only decided against it but went on to find fault with Muslims who did not know how to live with their negihbours, he remarked. In Kozikode conclave Modi implied that Muslims were impure and the audience gave a thundersous applaus. The editorial in the Telegraph of September 28, 2016 is a logical analysis of the PM’s meaning and import: “Breach of faith The word, 'purification', has many rather unpleasant resonances. It suggests, straightaway, the notion of impurity. It is unfortunate that the prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, decided to invoke the idea of purification in a speech delivered to the national council of the Bharatiya Janata Party. He did this by way of the writings and beliefs of Deendayal Upadhyaya, one of the principal ideologues of the BJP and the entire sangh parivar. Upadhyaya, and Mr Modi quoted him with approval and aplomb, believed that Muslims in India were in need of cleansing and purification. They were unclean because, even though they were originally Indians, they had been polluted by Islam. The Muslims in whose veins ran, according to K.S. Sudarshan, another ideologue, the blood of Ram and Krishna, had to be cleansed so that they could reclaim their Hindu origin. The obvious, and dangerous, implication of such beliefs is that it sees a very large section of the Indian population as being 'impure', and further sees the faith to which they subscribe to be a polluting agent. It is ironic that Mr Modi was using Upadhyaya's arguments with the purpose of showing that the BJP and the sangh parivar do not treat minorities as inferior entities. Upadhyaya's views, in fact, have the opposite effect. They reinforce the idea that the sangh parivar and the BJP have a deep-seated prejudice against the Muslim community. Mr Modi's reiteration of the beliefs of Upadhyaya does not come as a surprise. All his life, he has been a loyal and devout member of the sangh parivar. A prejudiced view of the Muslim community is an integral part of the mindset of all sanghis. Many would argue that it is part of their DNA. It should also be remembered that Mr Modi was speaking at the BJP national council, and so to the converted he said what the converted wanted to hear. What he overlooked, willingly or otherwise, is that since he is the elected prime minister of India, his identity as a loyal member of the sangh parivar has become secondary. Mr Modi's primary, and most important, identity is that he is the prime minister of India and, therefore, he represents all Indians, irrespective of creed. By speaking about the minorities through the words and ideology of Upadhyaya, Mr Modi no doubt won applause and support from his party members - it was, indeed, music to their ears. But to a wider audience, his words were appalling. As the prime minister of India, Mr Modi cannot view Indians through the filter of purity and impurity. India has no such filter.” 'unfortunate that the prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, decided to invoke the idea of purification in a speech' - Editorial, The Telegraph (28 Sept 2016) Chapter 20 Nation State & its likelihood of overturning stable keel A relatively humongous people of common descent and same language make nation state. They also pose a threat to pluralism as well as democracy. What had fascinated BS Moonje, Dr Hegdewar and others of RSS to Nazi Germany was that it had one religion, one language and one descent. That developed Germany into a strong nation. In Europe Roman Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox Christians have lived together and there was no animosity at least in more recent times. In this growing terrorism infested times and huge migration of Middle Eastern population Europe also thinks in terms of asserting their identity on the basis of religion, race, etc. PM Theresa May is modern day version of Margaret Thatcher. The latter would not have Muslims in England if they remained willful in adhering to Sharia or fundamentalism. BJP government is in third year in power with Narendra Modi and it confidently believes that it would convert India into a Hindu Rashtra. The UP state assembly election is coming nearer and the banners that went up in the wake of the surgical strike of September 28, 2016 has unleashed the kind of aggressive nationalism bordering on war hysteria. As if the pellet guns were not enough for Kashmir, India would have its own as it has already joined the select club of arms manufacturing countries of the world. The banners read: “We will kill you. Yes we will definitely kill. By our own gun, by our own bullets, by our choosing of the time only the land will be yours.” And below it is another banner which is the gravamen of all that went into the making of the present war like atmosphere which is reminiscent of what Amit Shah said in Muzaffarnagar that the time to take revenge against Muslims for insulting Hindus has come. The small banner reads: “27 years of wretchedness of UP” meaning that the rule of Congress BSP and SP parties made the people suffer. Was Uri attack, the surgical strike and worsening Kashmir situation after the death of Burhan Wani a replay of Muzaffarnagar before the 2014 election? India is caught up in a whirlwind of taking a binary position of direct confrontation at the onset of a fight between two groups. After the furor created over nationalism at JNU now in politics there is a demonstration of it. All others do not matter if they do not toe the line of cultural nationalism [read ideology of RSS] of BJP. You can fool somebody sometimes but not all the people all the time. Even keel to sail on through this difficult time is out of consideration. What began at JNU on February 8 2016regarding a village without a post office and Afzal Guru is like the village where Burhan Wani was killed on July 8[7?], 2016. A whole Pandora’s box opened up. As Modi’s recurring theme became terrorism it even pervaded the Bharat International Tourism Bazaar expo in Delhi on Tuesday October 4. 2o16. The AAP minister Kapil Sharma remarked that as long as terrorism is in the valley the tourists would shun the valley. To this CM Mehbooba raised expectation too high in the sky saying that the tourists will give confidence to the Kashmiris. Mishra: "It does not work this way that we will not call Burhan Wani a terrorist but tourism will have to flourish in India. How will that happen? You will say Afzal Guru is not a terrorist and that he should not be hanged. How will tourism develop? It is not going to happen." Mishra:"She (Mehbooba) needs to make it clear if she considers Burhan Wani and Afzal Guru terrorists or not." [1] Mishra also remarked: “This is the first time I met Mehbooba Mufti. I have asked her four questions. She once said that had they knew [known] that Burhan Wani hiding, he could have been saved. They consider Afzal Guru as a freedom fighter. If she does not answer, the BJP must answer as to why such people are coming to power who don’t love the nation and aren’t ready to recognize terrorists as terrorists.” We are electing such people who are not even ready to say ‘Bharat mata ki jai. I do not want to share any stage with her. Sharing stage with her is an insult. I am not questioning Mehbooba Mufti’s election; I am questioning her stand on this sensitive issue.” [2] This kind of dissent shows fissures in the unity acquired after the surgical strike. Sanjay Nirupam: "Every Indian wants surgical strikes against Pakistan but not a fake one to extract just political benefit by BJP. politics over national interest(sic)," "The way BJP was indulging in politics, putting up banners and taking credit gives a view whether such strikes did happen.” [3] CM Arvind Kejriwal asked the PM on October 3 to prove that the surgical strike was genuine in order to dispel the false propaganda of Pakistan. Omar Abdullah also twittered: “And some people will lecture others about politicising the army action all the while turning a blind eye to hoardings like these that sprout.” “ As the banners are reeking with coming election in UP it is a direct threat not so much against Pakistanis but Indian Muslims. It was similar to the 2002 election in Gujarat when Modi had taken on Mian Musharraf to fight the assembly election. It was this that had prompted President Mushriff to take the genocide issue to UNO. This was and is the mismatch. The 2002 election in Gujarat and 2017 in UP are failure to correspond with the issues relevant to India. Similarly putting a patch of subcontinent on IS of Middle East is also a mismatch because India has no locus standi in Syria or Iraq or Libya. Russia yes, but not India. Digvijay Singh also chimed in when he sent links of articles which cast doubts on the veracity of the surgical strike. This according to him had put Indian credibility so low. Chidambrum’s contention is that the government also had carried out a much bigger surgical strike in 2013 without a hullaballoo. A former General of the Army Shankar Roy Chowdhury: 'Those questioning surgical strikes are treacherous'[4] Between the killing of Wani and the surgical strike there is a blurring of who is a terrorist and what is terrorism. In India in 2002 the Sabarmati express train burning was terrorism but not the pogroms and massacres of Muslims? How? And CM Modi had chosen that accusation or blame without any proof. In Kashmir Wani was held a hero and freedom fighter and not a terrorist, even Mehbooba demurred from calling him one overtly. He did not travel to Pakistan to learn from that Ivy League of Terrorism. Our national security advisor MK Narayan preferred to block the investigation into the burning of Samjhauta express full of Pakistanis citizens on their way to return to Pakistan from India. Ultimately the confession of Swami Asimanand based in Gujarat allegedly claimed responsibility of bombing Sabarmati train for which LtCol Prasad Purohit supplied RDX and the Sunil Joshi module executed the blasts. Now after so many years NIA director after visiting US claims that the fund for the train blasts had come from America and implied thereby that it was the work of a Kashmiri, Ilyas Kashmiri. India had nothing to do with it! Our country is also indifferent to what is transpiring simultaneously in Kashmir valley, at the LoC on the Indian border and Gujarat and Mumbai. Udhav Thackeray said that the proof of Uri attack would not be believed at an international forum. But surprisingly KP Raghuvanshi one time head of Anti Terrorism and commissioner of police in Thane and also the one whose niece from Muzaffarnagar requested him to delay the Central Reserve Police Force and army from development so that more Muslim could be killed, is now joining hands with notorious DG Vanzara and former DGP Gujarat Shabbir S Khandawaha in forming an NGO, Justice for the Victims of Terrorism! Their coming together is like the three witches of Macbeth, by the itch of this my thumb something wicked this way comes! It s also reminiscent of the funeral of Mohan Chand Sharmas killed in the Batla house encounter. Police officer Sachin Vaze had beaten Yunus Khwaja so cruelly that Dr Mateen falsely accused in Aurangabad arms haul case said that Yunus would die as he was vomiting blood. Vaze took Yunus in a police car and killed him saying that the car had accident. But the body was never found. Vaze and other such cops came to the funeral of Sharma in a show of solidarity smacking of what is transpiring in Mumbai among Raghuvanshi, Vanzara[ who has now joined BJP as has the former commissioner Dr Satya Pal Singh and now a member of Lok Sabha] and others. There is a silent restructuring of a nation state which leaves out several sections of society and it is tolling the death of pluralism. ------ [1] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Mehbooba-Mufti-fights-back-as-AAP-minister-Kapil-Mishra-taunts-her-on-terrorism/articleshow/54678893.cms [2] http://www.business-standard.com/article/news-workapil-mishra-116100400786_1.html [3] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Everyone-wants-surgical-strikes-against-Pakistan-but-not-fake-ones-Sanjay-Nirupam/articleshow/54677368.cms [4] http://www.rediff.com/news/interview/those-questioning-surgical-strikes-are-treacherous/20161004.htm Chapter 21 Nations on even keel have dedicated professionalism for sailing The former President Abdul Kalam spoke in favour of a single investigating agency. He was speaking in Allahabad on September 26th 2008 and asserted that this single agency can fight terrorism successfully. Of course, he was trying to say that if you do your job professionally and fairly honestly the investigation would yield result. Little did he know that there was one such officer Hemant Karkare in Mumbai who was doing just that! And that three days later there would be a second terrorist attack in Malegaon in which a Lt Col Prasad Purohit of the army was behind it. But on the night of September 29 there was a huge bomb blast in Bhiku chowk that made the Muslim crowd so restive that they turned upon the police and pelted stone blaming them for the explosion because they had called it gas cylinder explosion. When the police opened fire one more Muslim died. That had put Maharashtra home minister RR Patil on the mat for having blamed Muslims for such acts till then. It was his pet theory that the Muslim extremists were behind in order to cause communal riots. There was no communal riot on account of the bomb blasts. Karkare had already known that even the first attack in September 2006 was not the handiwork of Muslims. So there was some Hindu extremist organization, Abhinav Bharat, and not Muslims or even the Students Islamic Movement of India. So the purpose of the architect Sunil Joshi was to cause blasts and blame Muslims and create more violence in which riots would take place leading to more deaths of Muslims. That would burn the ground under their feet. In the present set up we have far too many investigating agencies that often work at cross-purposes. Moreover the authorities have not recruited staff from all sections of the society. Discriminating on the basis of religion that some cannot be trusted because of their religion is not just abuse of their religion but also willful negligence of caliber of individual members of the society and their individual integrity. Humayun Kabir’s son was not selected for RAW because he was a Muslim although his father was secretary to the first education minister of India, Maulana Azad. On the other hand the wide spread bias against the Muslims is so detrimental that there is virtual block out of Muslims in recruitment. In fact in the case of RAW it is said that the rule is Muslims and Sikhs need not apply. It is much like the colonial time when the Muslims and Sikhs were considered martial groups and hence recruited in the army of the raj. As compared to this, look at the much-vaunted officers of the day, the most decorated and state patronized. There was Daya Naik who was part of the Central Intelligence Unit (CIU) between 1996 and 2000. Around this time he killed many criminals in encounters. But during this time he also collected huge amount of money and real estate property. In just one case he got five cror from former journalist Ketan Tirodkar on behalf of fugitive don Chhota Shakeel and Fahim Machmach. The assets of Naik are simply mind-boggling. He owns a hotel in Dubai apart from other real estate there and has huge amounts in banks within and outside the country. All this in just over half a dozen years! And as a sub inspector! It was he who also remarked that Haren Pandya murder was the greatest conspiratorial assassination. Even more boastful case is that of Rajbir Singh of the special cell of Delhi police. He had given fifty lakh rupees to a real estate agent Bharadwaj to invest. He also gave the agent a gun. Bharadwaj shot Rajbir dead with that gun fearing that the assistant commissioner was coming to demand explanation of the fifty lakh as an excuse to liquidate the agent. What is common in the cases is that these so called cops-come-sleuths engage in extortion that gives them enormous amounts of money in quick time. So how could they be honest to their job! They also fallout with colleagues and those who pay extortion in crors can also give supari to an insider. It was Rajbir who had called Afzal Guru a chootiya or stupid in full view of the camera because the so called attacker on the Parliament so simpleton that he was not amenable to tutoring by Rajbir. Mohan Chand Sharma of the special cell of Delhi police was the protégé of Rajbir Singh. His death in the Jamia nager encounter on Firday September 19, 2008 has always been analyzed in the media and on the net. There are some disturbing implications for the hype attached to the so-called war on terror. According to one analysis Sharma’s autopsy reveals that there was no bullet found in his body nor was any found in the scanning. He died of profuse bleeding. But the place where he was allegedly shot on the fourth floor of Batla house and the flights of stairs do not show marks of bleeding. He climbed down the four flights of stairs. Two men helped him walk to the waiting vehicle kept some distance away. Even the clean path he covered as he hobbled shows no marks of blood. Sometimes after this he must have been shot from close range and bled excessively and died. There was no terrorist near him except his own colleagues in the police and investigating agencies and the media persons. This seen in the background of his mentor’s killing shows a pattern that the cops involved in the December 13 2001Parliament attack are systematically eliminated to leave no trace of what had happened then. Who could be interested in wiping out these, what Arundhati Roy calls, the footmarks of the dragon? Could it be the mother intelligence agency under this Home Minister Shivraj Patil or his predecessor? Or how else anyone could dare to do such things that require superior command structure and security of immunity. There is another line of fact finding into the encounter. Prashant Bhushan, a well-known lawyer of Supreme Court, says that the police did not go to Batla house with any thought that they would confront terrorists. There was no planning for such an eventuality. The sister of Sharma also says that the Delhi police wanted to have it on Saturday. Moreover the police verification of the tenants is authentic. It is unlikely that people who give true information of their background and personal details to police at such a critical time would be involved in conspiracy and plant bombs. But the most crucial is the line that would focus on the “friendly fire” as cause of Sharma’s death. Did a colleague bump him off? After all like his mentor Rajbir he was also involved in extortion. Remember Sharma entered the flat with six of his colleagues. Some people from a room rushed out and shot at him. He fell down and the bullet aimed for him hit a police constable, Rana. If no other policeman was hit then it is likely that Sharma was trapped to meet his fate on that fourth floor. He was transferred out of the special cell only the previous day as a punishment. What was the antecedent of the punishment posting? Then as nowadays the police and the investigating agencies have full information up their sleeves and roll out details just for asking. For example the Joint Commissioner of Delhi police says the Sharma deliberately did not wear the life jacket. “Had Sharma been wearing one he would’ve been spotted by the terrorists much before the attack even began”? This automatically begs the question why did his colleagues wear it, then. It is on record that he was the only one without the jacket, the six colleagues who went up with him had donned it. There is also his sister Gangotri who says that it was habitual with him not to wear life jacket. Karkare’s bullet proof jacket was never found out. Too many security and investigating agencies can cause problems. Afzal Guru was hired by State (special?) Task Force(STF) in Srinager as police informer. To get the job of informer Afzal had paid two lakh rupees to STF. Why did he have to pay when the agencies fill vouchers mentioning big amounts of money they pay to informers? He was asked by them to take one Mohammad to the Indian Parliament on December 13. Mohammad was one of the five killed in the shootout at the Parliament. A noted member of Congress counted six men getting down to attack the Parliament. Who was the sixth? Who managed to get that sixth out of the hot spot? What for? These questions defy answers unless real and professional investigative works are allowed and also truthful forensic analysis is permitted. It is a moot question as to whether the infiltration of the saffron privar or the ISI into the IB and RAW is sabotaging the agencies from within. Officers from police and intelligence agencies have betrayed India by not being professionally sound but ideologically tainted. Dr Satypal Singh being a Member of Parliament should have been more devoted to professing truth. He had dismissed Akhlak of Dadri for eating beef without giving proof. He also failed to weigh that dragging a man out of his house and lynching at the power generator polls was an act of terrorism. He also refused to cooperate in the investigation of Ishrat Jahan case. Vanzara and Amit Shah knew that Ishrat was innocent and the order to kill had to be cleared from the “white beard.” Rajendra Kumar had ordered police informer Pranesh Pillai to bring Ishrat and Pranesh beguiled her that he was taking her for business. Her mother failed to understand why her daughter had to go to Gujarat. Shamim Kauser went berserk with sorrow and grief mulling over how did Ishrat reach Ahmadabad? Books by the same author First Hindutva Genocide of Muslims and its Architect (January 26, 2014) Aggressive Hindutva terrorism and Malegaon (January 30, 2014) Decade of the Demagogue and His Demagoguery (January 30, 2014) Mass-Terror Atrocities on Muslims for a Hindu Rashtra (January 30, 2014) Premeditated Framing of Innocent Muslims in False Terror Charges (March 20, 2014) Ishrat Jahan : sacrificed at the altar of Hindutva Moloch Narendra Modi and his pack: the terror streak (April 29, 2014) Muzaffarnagar, fury and ferocity (April 10, 2014) Polarizing India in attempt to Hinduize it (February 27, 2015) Indian Muslims’ continuing agony (July 12, 2015) Elephant in the room, radicals and the radicalized (September 25, 2015) Enemies of living together (2015) Renaissance at the JNU (April 9 2016) Notice 1.All persons/organizations mentioned and discussed in the book are presumed to be innocent unless proved guilty in the court of law. They are mentioned and discussed here for “critical thinking, which has the potential to change your established attitudes and beliefs.” 2. I thought of creating a think tank “Even Keel” aimed at saving India from communal divisive disaster which indeed is manmade disaster. Never before had it posed such a serious challenge to our democracy by raising the ugly head of exclusivist hidden agenda as of today. It is being propagated as ‘cultural nationalism. It is absolutely legitimate task of all Indians to identify persons and groups hell bent on keeping burning the communal cauldron. It could be the Dawood gang or the Hindutva conglomerations of hate ideology. We have a duty to our nation to save it from dangers of extremism. Towards this end members of all communities are welcome to join hands in solidarity. Index