(Looking back at the untimely death of a promising young man
by his father Jeevan Zutshi of California-2; see the link for the forward below)
The Last Smile: A Father’s Love Story by Jeevan Zutshi
Chapter One (part 2)
Following The Footprints Of My Origin
This misrule led many
citizens to lose faith in the Hindu kings’ abilities to govern. He assumed the
formal name of Sultan Shams’d Din and the dynasty he ushered in was called
Shahmiri. The kings were given the title of Sultan. He was not an extremist in
ethnic matters. The bottom fell in Kashmir
when the fifth Sultan, Sikandar (1389-1413) went full steam after the Hindus.
He levied a special tax on them, called jizia, just for being Hindus, and made
it illegal for them to continue putting on their foreheads a religious mark
called tilak (a crimson colored paste). He persecuted them with passion, which
included forced conversion to Islam and the destruction of their religious
shrines. One of them was the celebrated Martand Temple.
Kashmiri Pandits deserted their land for the physical and religious refuge in
northern India, to the extent of engendering the myth that there survived only
eleven Pandit families in Kashmir. Converse to
the perverse rule of Sikandar was the rule of the seventh Sultan, Zain ul-Abidin
(1420-1470), popularly known a Bud Shah, and considered as the greatest king of
Kashmir.
He respected Pandits and recognizing
their special intellectual abilities and disciplined behavior put them in
special positions in his administration. A particularly brutal period for the
Hindus occurred in 1477 and 1496 AD when Mir Shams-ud-Din Iraqi, the founder of
a Shia sect in Kasmir, came to the valley. Ganjoo writes of the terrible
suffering incurred on the Kashmiri Pandits during this time, which resulted in their
fleeing the valley in large numbers for the third time: About 24,000 of them
were forcibly converted to Shia sect of Islam. Iraqi had even issued orders
that everyday about 1500 to 2000 Brahmans be brought to his doorsteps, remove
their sacred threads, administer Kalima to them, circumcise them and make them
eat beef. These decrees were ferociously and brutally carried out. The Hindu
religious The Kashmir Problem The current conflict emerged after India and Pakistan became separate countries
in 1947.
Sumit Ganguly, a visiting scholar at the Center on Democracy,
Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, wrote a summary in
July/August 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs Magazine. Ganguly sees the conflict
as a kind of impasse of “competing projects of nation building.†He writes that
India’s position, that
Kashmir deserves a chance to demonstrate that it can thrive as a “secular
state,†was solidified with the decision of Kashmir’s Hindu monarch to join India in 1947
in an attempt to prevent a “Pakistani-backed incursion.â€
Pakistan has consistently viewed Kashmir as
belonging to it because of Kashmir’s high
Muslim population. (It is important to note that the state of Jammu and Kashmir has a Muslim population of
65% and that of Hindus is 30%. So, the Muslim population is not overwhelmingly
high. It is in the Kashmir Valley (popularly called the Vale Of Kashmir) that
The Last Smile 10 Chapter One - Following The Footprints Of My Origin 11 the
Muslim population is 97%. Often, the people following Kashmir
Problem are ignorant of these demographics.
Wars have broken out between these
two countries three times, in 1947-48, 1965, and 1989. An alarming component of
this conflict is not only the suffering of Kashmiris, who have been forced to
endure the outbreaks and Pakistan’s attempts at stirring up ancient rivalries
between Muslims and Hindus, but the fact that in 1990 and 2001-2002, the two
countries threatened to use nuclear weapons over it. Ganguly also notes that
the case that each country has made for the sovereignty over Kashmir
has been countered by the events that took place subsequently.
Bangladesh
seceded from Pakistan in 1971, proving a majority Muslim state could gain its
independence from Pakistan, and the rise of “virulent Hindu nationalism†takes
some of the wind out of India’s
argument that it is a secular nation. In spite of these events, the countries
have neither adjusted nor backed down on their claims. When Pakistan was defeated in the 1971 Indo-Pakistani
war, which was provoked by the Pakistani civil war (not the dispute over Kashmir), there was relative peace between the two
countries until 1989. India’s
superiority in conventional arms was part of the reason the conflict had ebbed.
According to Ganguly, what changed in 1989 was the people of Kashmir, who were
no longer willing to tolerate the “chicanery†of the National Conference, the
dominant party, which “had long intimidated political opponents, stuffed ballot
boxes, and coerced voters -- all with the tacit approval of the Indian government.â€
Ganguly notes that “a mostly indigenous ethnoreligious insurgency, was aided
and abetted by Pakistan,
who gave them “weapons, training, and sanctuary†in order to garner revenge
after their humiliating defeat in 1971.
There may be other views on the degree
to which this insurgency was indigenous, for it is well known among Kashmiris
that Pakistan has
continually tried to stir up ethnic hatred in Kashmir,
where Hindus and Muslims had been residing in peace for decades. Pakistan’s aid
changed the shape of the insurgency; soon Islamist terrorist organizations had
replaced local insurgents.
Ganguly notes that these organizations attracted
people who were more motivated by “bloodthirstiness, religious fervor, and
greed†than they were in helping Muslims gain political rights in Kashmir. As Ganguly puts it, “During the 1990s, the
insurgency in Kashmir became a well-organized,
ideologically charged extortion racket and, in the process, lost the support of
much of the local populace.†The decline in the support of the population of Kashmir was due to the insurgents tendency to “harass,
and sometimes even terrorize†the Kashmiris. The government of India countered
the uprising with their security forces and by holding elections in 1996 and
2002, which the international community observed to be fair.
Ganguly notes that
there have been three crises that have renewed the attention of the world on
the Kashmir dispute. The first lies in the
fact that since 1998 both countries have shown their nuclear capabilities by
testing. The second occurred in 1999, when Pakistan
invaded India, gamboling on
greater success this time in light of its recent demonstration of its nuclear
capabilities, which it hoped would nullify India’s conventional arms
superiority. Pakistani troops, disguised as tribes people, slipped over the
border (referred to as the “Line of Controlâ€) and took over three positions
vital to protecting Indian-controlled Kashmir.
The Indians fought back hard, and the international community, with the United States at its forefront, was quick to
support India
and denounce the invasion. However, Pakistan
turned out to be correct in its assumption that its nuclear capacity had
shifted the playing field, as it had apparently kept India
from launching a counter attack into Punjab or
Rajasthan. On December 13, 2001, the third event occurred. India’s
parliament building was attacked while it was in session by Pakistani-backed
terrorist organizations. India renewed diplomatic efforts and some of the
compromises that were agreed upon include ceasefire along the Line Of Control,
bus service between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad
(capital of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir), permission granted for the members of
anti-India organization All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) to visit Pakistan.
Although these appear to be steps towards reconciliation, there remain major
obstacles to achieving a long-lasting resolution. For one, although India’s Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, has
voiced a willingness to discuss with the APHC issues of political
representation, Pakistan has
not been willing to stop its support of terrorist organizations bent on
creating upheaval in Kashmir.
2: Story of Kashmir
1)
see a forward by Maharaj Kaul
