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COMMENT
Islamism shakes Kashmir
By Sreeram Chaulia
After two decades of calm in large-scale popular movements,
Indian-administered Kashmir recently witnessed mass
demonstrations and protests against the state government's
decision to transfer forest land to facilitate a Hindu
pilgrimage.
The decision of the Jammu and Kashmir authorities to grant
40 hectares of uninhabited jungle tract to the Amarnath
Shrine Board triggered a furor in the Kashmir Valley and
brought life to a standstill for nearly two weeks, a
throwback to the 1988-1989 insurrection against Indian rule.
So forceful was the clamor that the state government had to
eventually rescind the transfer order.
The anti-land transfer agitation fed on important new trends
in Jammu and Kashmir. Firstly, the state has been enjoying a
rare respite from terrorist violence initiated by
Pakistan-sponsored jihadi outfits like the
Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Jaish-e-Muhammad.
The internal political turmoil in Pakistan, pitting a
military presidency against a democratically elected
parliament, and the challenge posed to Pakistan's security
by the US war on the Taliban, left the jihadis in Kashmir
confused and rudderless.
The capability of terrorists to attack Indian military
personnel and pro-India civilians in Kashmir was intact, but
the power struggle in Islamabad created uncertainty about
whether or not the jihadis could rely on Pakistan's undying
support to wrest Kashmir from India.
The anti-land transfer movement can be seen as filling the
"liberation" space that had sunk into a vacuum due to the
gradual rusting of the jihadi guns. The alienation of
ordinary Muslim Kashmiris from the Indian government did not
subside with the decline of terrorist violence by "freedom
fighters". It was waiting for an opportune symbolic issue to
explode, and the Amarnath land transfer issue emerged as the
perfect cause.
It is worth recalling that symbolism playing on the
religious fears of Kashmiri Muslims has a history of
inciting unrest. In 1963, the disappearance of a strand of
hair believed to belong to the head of the Prophet Mohammad
kicked off a major storm in the Kashmir Valley. Likewise,
the razing of the shrine of Kashmir's patron saint in 1995
by the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen stirred a massive commotion
among Kashmiri Muslims suspicious of the shenanigans of
"Hindu India".
A second way of analyzing the upsurge in Jammu and Kashmir
is to run it through the prism of democratic politics in the
state. The decision to grant the land to the Hindu shrine
was made by the Congress party-run state government in the
run-up to provincial elections scheduled for October. Since
the territory of Jammu & Kashmir includes Hindu-majority,
Buddhist-majority and Muslim-majority areas, the land
transfer decision could have been aimed at winning Hindu
votes from the Jammu area for the Congress.
The vehement reaction to the transfer by the People's
Democratic Party and the National Conference was, in turn,
geared towards beefing up their own electoral prospects
among the valley's Muslims. These parties are, in theory,
wedded to the Indian constitution and its democratic
processes, but they have to show their "pro-Islam"
credentials to be electorally relevant in the Kashmir
Valley. The land transfer issue was ripe for exploitation by
these political opportunists who benefit from perks and
privileges as people's representatives within the Indian
polity but commiserate with jihadi secessionists.
The irony of the anti-land transfer movement is that its
very raison d'etre is spurious. The forest land was clearly
given to the Amarnath temple for erecting temporary shelters
and conveniences for Hindu pilgrims who flock annually to
the Himalayan abode of Lord Shiva. It was in no way a
violation of the special status accorded to Jammu and
Kashmir, which blocks citizens of the rest of India from
acquiring property in the state. The makeshift structures
planned by the Amarnath temple staff on the transferred land
were meant purely for the pilgrimage season.
That a temporary land transfer for a Hindu pilgrimage could
be painted by separatist politicians as a devious plot of
the Indian government to alter the demography of Kashmir
shows how communalized Islam has become in the valley. This
is the third and most potent explanation for the movement
that rocked Jammu and Kashmir. While alienation of Muslims
amid a lull in terrorist violence and machinations of
democratic politics partially account for the crisis,
neither of these could galvanize the public without the
wholesale Islamization of Kashmir, a land ironically
mythologized as a cradle of eclectic Sufism. The same
drivers of Taliban-style enforcement of strict moral codes
on Kashmiris, especially women, are at the forefront in the
anti-land transfer movement.
So mainstreamed is the influence of intolerant Islamist
ideology in Kashmir that there is barely a squeal of anguish
regarding restoration of properties of nearly half-a-million
Kashmiri Hindus ("Pandits"), who were hounded out of the
valley by terrorists in 1988-1989. The restitution of Hindu
properties that were destroyed and taken over is a genuine
grievance for which Islamists show no sympathy. Islamists
have also never condemned terrorist attacks that, over the
years, have killed dozens of Hindu pilgrims whose simple
ambition in life was to pay their respects to a supernatural
phenomenon in Amarnath.
While the reality on the ground is that the demography of
the Kashmir Valley has been forcibly redrawn through the
killing of Hindus, the mass movement that erupted in June
was based on fictitious claims of the land transfer being a
diabolical conspiracy for Hindus to deluge the valley. There
is little evidence to prove that India's Kashmir policy
mimics Chinese internal colonization solutions that have
changed the population profile of Tibet in favor of Han
Chinese. While the Tibetan upheavals this year against
Chinese high-handedness had a legitimate basis, the
anti-land transfer ruckus in Kashmir rests on concocted
charges.
The most perverse sign of bigoted Islamism running the roost
in the Kashmir Valley is a report that shrines are being
built to glorify jihadi groups as a retort to the Amarnath
temple imbroglio. The first-ever shrine to the
Lashkar-e-Toiba has just been inaugurated in a village near
the town of Ganderbal in memory of two Pakistani holy
warriors who died fighting the Indian army. According to The
Hindu, local businesspersons who erected this monument
declared, "Here was India conspiring to seize our land and
hand it over to infidels [Hindu pilgrims visiting the
Amarnath temple], and here were these two foreigners who had
given their lives to save Islam in Kashmir."
The agenda of "saving Islam" from alleged threats is growing
stronger in Jammu and Kashmir, even though its Muslims enjoy
constitutionally guaranteed religious freedom. Terrorist
violence in Kashmir may wax and wane and state-level
elections may come and go every five years, but the seeds of
Islamist hatred continue to sprout and augur ill for peace.
The liberation of Kashmir from jihadi mentality remains an
uphill task.
Sreeram Chaulia is a researcher on international
affairs at the Maxwell School of Citizenship at Syracuse
University, New York.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contact us about
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