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The
need for recognition of Kashmir as part of India
Arvin Bahl
The
December 13th attack
on the Indian Parliament allegedly carried out by
Pakistan supported terrorist groups;
Lakshar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, which caused
India to initiate
a massive military buildup along its border with
Pakistan and
the May 14th attack on an army
camp in Jammu by Pakistan backed terrorists
increased tensions on the subcontinent and brought
the Kashmir issue to the forefront of world
attention.
Kashmir is often erroneously referred to as a
“disputed territory.” In reality, Kashmir is
an integral part of the Republic of India. Kashmir
acceded to India in the same exact manner as the
states that acceded to Pakistan did. According to
the formula used for the partition of the
subcontinent, the rulers of each of the 560
semi-independent princely states that were under
indirect British rule were given a choice to
either accede to India or to Pakistan. The ruler
of Kashmir, the Maharaja Hari Singh, chose to join
India on October 26, 1947.
The conflict started in the fall of 1947 when the
Pakistani Army sent in Pashtun tribesman to invade
Kashmir. Hari Singh decided to join with India in
exchange for the help of the Indian government in
repelling the invaders. While the Indian Army
managed to gain control of the majority of the
state, Indian Prime Minster Jawaharlal Nehru —
instead of driving out the invaders completely
and ensuring that all of Kashmir remained
under Indian control — called on the United
Nations for intervention, much to the chagrin of
Home Minster Sardar Patel. A cease-fire line
ensued, separating the Indian state of Jammu and
Kashmir and the portion gained by Pakistan during
the war known as Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK),
which it continues to occupy. The countries have
fought three wars over Kashmir and since the early
1990s Pakistan has been sponsoring terrorism in
Jammu and Kashmir. This terrorism has claimed
60,000 Indian lives.
Pakistan attempts to paint the conflict as a
struggle between Hindus and Muslims, claiming that
Jammu and Kashmir should be part of Pakistan
because it has a Muslim majority. Yet India is the
world's largest secular democracy. Unlike the
Pakistani state, the Indian state has always
proclaimed the equality of all religions and the
equal rights of all its
citizens irrespective of religion.
Not only do Muslims have equal rights in
India, they have special protections with regards
to religious institutions not granted to the Hindu
majority and receive government funding for
religious pilgrimages to Mecca. India
even allows Muslims to have five wives and
have their own civil code, which no other secular
democracy allows.
India has the second largest Muslims population in
the world and more Muslims than Pakistan. It has
had Muslim Presidents, ministers in both national
and state governments, and Supreme Court Justices.
For example, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, a Muslim who is
the father of India’s missle program has
recently been named India’s 12th President
of the Republic. Peter Beinart, the editor of The
New Republic notes that India’s Muslim
population is “among
the freest in the world” and estimates
that more Muslims go from Pakistan to India every
year than the other way around.
Herein
lies the problem from the Pakistani perspective.
Pakistan’s claim to Kashmir is based on the two
nation theory, the same theory that justified
Pakistan’s creation and the partition of the
subcontinent: Muslims of the subcontinent cannot
peacefully coexist in a secular democracy with
people of other faiths and thus must have their
own separate Islamic state. Thus Kashmir is not a
conflict between Hindus and Muslims, nor is it
simply about territory, but rather it is a
microcosm of an ideological struggle between the
two irreconcilable
worldviews that form the basic ideology that each
nation was founded upon.
As the Chicago Tribune states, "the
fate of Kashmir goes to each nation's basic vision
of itself. India, a mostly Hindu nation, has a
secular government that has always stressed the
freedom and equality of all faiths. With more than
100 million Muslims, it spurns the idea that
religion should determine national identity.
Pakistan, on the other hand, thinks Muslims can be
secure on the subcontinent only in an Islamic
republic." The fact that India has a larger
Muslim population than Pakistan and that East
Pakistan became Bangladesh in 1971 proves that
religion cannot serve as the basis of national
identity and has demonstrated the fallacy of the
two-nation theory.
Christopher
Hitchens writing in The Nation about
Kashmir notes the potential consequences of
following the Pakistani position on Kashmir:
"The demand that religion should determine
nationality would, if applied, destroy the whole
subcontinent and make it a prey to warring faiths.
The present Indian government may be Hindu
nationalist in temper, but no responsible
successor regime could or should be asked to
accede to such a fanatical demand."
Saeed Naqvi, an Indian Muslim
journalist asserts that the Indian state is
“history’s largest effort at welding a
multilingual, multiethnic, multireligious
state.” This effort would
be severely undermined as would Indian
secularism should India lose Kashmir.
India's
possession of the Muslim-majority state of Jammu
and Kashmir is seen by Pakistan as the ultimate
denial of its rationale for existence.
As Naqvi notes, “Indian secularism is
anathema to Pakistan; its success across the
border denies the theocratic state with its very
basis.” Pakistan backed Islamic fundamentalist
groups have
thus embarked upon their quest to
“liberate” Jammu and Kashmir from India's
“oppressive” secular democracy and turn it
into an Islamic theocracy. Islamic terrorists have
ethnically cleansed the Hindu population of the
Kashmir Valley driving 300,000 Kashmiri Pandits
from their ancestral homeland and as the Navbharat
Times notes, from 1986-1992, "Ninety-one
Hindu temples in the Indian state of Jammu and
Kashmir were subjected to destruction, grenade and
rocket attacks, arson, and ransacking by
Pakistan-backed Islamic militants." Young
girls are forced by militant Islamic groups to
wear veils against their will. Pakistan's
brutality, however, is not confined only to
Hindus, but also affects the Muslims Pakistan
claims to be “liberating.” A report titled,
"A Profile of Terrorist Violence in Jammu and
Kashmir" notes that the number of Muslims
killed in Kashmir by terrorists is seven times the
number of Hindus.
But
perhaps the most compelling reasons why Jammu and
Kashmir must remain a part of India relate to the
realities of the subcontinent. India has had
virtually uninterrupted democratic rule ever since
independence. By contrast, Pakistan has been ruled
for most of its history by oppressive military
dictatorships, as it is currently. Freedom House
has annually rated political freedom in every
country in the world since 1972. Pakistan's rating
in 1999-2000 was worse than that of South Africa
under apartheid and Yugoslavia under communism for
ever year since 1972. The only way to guarantee
that the most fundamental human rights of the
Kashmiri people are protected such as the right to
vote, the right to assembly, and freedom of speech
is to ensure that Jammu and Kashmir remains a part
of India.
The most pressing issues, however, have to do with
the religious freedom and secularism, where the
contrasting conditions seen in both countries are
rooted in the radically different ideologies upon
which each nation was founded. As noted above,
India is a secular state that guarantees not only
equal rights but also special privileges for its
Muslim minority. This is not the case with
Pakistan, a nation many would call an Islamic
theocracy. Article 227 of the Pakistani
Constitution, for example, mandates that “all
existing laws shall be brought in conformity with
the Injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Holy
Quran and Sunnah, in this Part referred to as the
Injunctions of Islam, and no law shall be enacted
which is repugnant to such Injunctions.” Article
203-D empowers
a Federal Shariat Court
to “examine and decide the question
whether or not any law or provision of law is
repugnant to the injunctions of Islam.” If a law
is found to be repugnant to Islam either the
government “shall
take steps to amend the law so as to bring such
law or provision into conformity with the
Injunctions of Islam” or
“ such law or provision shall, to the
extent to which it is held to be so repugnant,
cease to have effect on the day on which the
decision of the Court takes effect.” Article 51 reserves over 95 percent of all seats in
Parliament for Muslims. Article 41(2) states, “A
person shall not be qualified for election as
President unless he is a Muslim.” Article 91(4)
describes the oath the Prime Minister takes:
“I,
____________, do swear solemnly that l am a Muslim
and believe in the Unity and Oneness of Almighty
Allah, the Books of Allah, the Holy Quran being
the last of them, the Prophethood of Muhammad
(peace be upon him) as the last of the Prophets
and that there can be no Prophet after him, the
Day of Judgment, and all the requirements and
teachings of the Holy Quran and Sunnah”
While
most national constitutions, such as the American
Constitution, explicitly
prohibit such religious tests for public
office that are characteristic of medieval Europe,
the Pakistani Constitution mandates them.
The
significance of discussing the Pakistani
Constitution, is that while in many countries
minorities suffer discrimination, in
not many does the nation’s constitution
mandate such persecution. Many think that
by merely stopping a “fundamentalist fringe”
in Pakistan, “secularism” and “religious
tolerance” can be preserved, failing to
recognize that the very ideology of the Pakistani
nation is in conflict with liberal norms such as
secularism and religious pluralism.
For example, BBC on January 31st 2002 describes Pervez Musharraf, a man hailed as the “Ataturk of
Pakistan” as
trying to dispel
“ the impression that his recent moves against
Islamic extremism were aimed at negating the
country's founding ideology.” Musharraf is
quoted as saying,
"Nobody
should ever think that this is a secular state. It
was founded as the Islamic Republic of Pakistan".
While
it is certainly true that at times
democratic nations such as India and
the United States have failed to live up to
their commitments of equality, freedom, and
secularism, these nations, unlike Pakistan, are at
least committed to such norms.
The
United States State Department Pakistan Country
Report on Human Rights, and Labor note that
"Pakistan's discriminatory religious
legislation encourages religious intolerance
and violence directed against minority Muslim
sects, Christians, and Hindus." (emphasis
added)
In
Pakistan, the testimony of Muslims in court counts
more than that of non-Muslims and the testimony of
men counts more than that of women. In certain
cases, the testimony of women and non-Muslims is
not accepted at all. The report notes that
if a Muslim man rapes a Christian woman in the
presence of several Christian men and women, he
cannot be convicted under Hudood ordinances
because non-Muslim witnesses are not accepted.
The
New York Times on May 17, 2002 describes a
story of a rape victim who is sentenced to death
by stoning. Under Islamic law in Pakistan, if a
woman makes an accusation of rape, which is almost
impossible to prove, she herself can be prosecuted
for adultery. Under Pakistan’s blasphemy law one
who “willfully
defiles, damages or desecrates a copy of the holy
Koran” can face life imprisonment. Even
certain sects of Islam suffer from religious
persecution. Pakistan has specific legal
prohibitions against Ahmadi Muslims. For example,
they are not allowed to name their children
Mohammed, recite the Quran, call themselves
Muslims, or use Islamic terminology. The
persecution of minority Muslim sects continues
under the government of Pervez Musharraf, which is
widely hailed by the West as a bulwark against
Islamic extremism. The
Lahore Times notes :
“President
General Pervez Musharraf and his
military-government have promulgated the Conduct
of General Elections (Second Amendment) Order 2002
that prohibits listing Ahmedis or Quadianis on
electoral rolls. The government has invited
objections to this order within ten days fromits
promulgation. Under the order, a non-Muslim or
Ahmedi cannot register to vote. Any Ahmedis or
Quadianis found to be on the official electoral
rolls would be summoned by the Revising Authority.
Their appearance before this authority would be
mandatory within 15 days of receiving
notification. This person shall then be required
to sign a declaration agreeing to the finality of
the Holy Prophet. If this person refuses to sign
this, he or she shall be deemed non-Muslims. The
name of this person shall then be removed from the
electoral rolls. ”
Forcing
the people of Kashmir, long known for their
tolerant traditions, to live in such a theocratic
society is unjust
Most
disturbing, however, is Pakistan's treatment of
Hindus, which comprise 35 percent of the
population of Jammu and Kashmir. According to
former French Cultural Minister Andre Malraux, the
policies of Pakistan (which means “land of the
pure” in English) towards Hindus, bear striking
resemblance to the Nazi actions towards the Jews.
In 1946, over 30 percent of present day Pakistan
was Hindu, but now the total percentage of
religious minorities is less than 3 percent, as a
massive ethnic cleansing forced out all
non-Muslims. (By contrast, the number of Muslims
in India has increased from 8 percent to 14
percent since 1947). In 1971, the Pakistani army
engaged in the Bangladesh genocide in which over 2
million Hindus were slaughtered. When Pakistan
took over parts of Kashmir in 1947, it launched a
brutal campaign against Hindu and non-Muslim
populations. As noted above, Pakistan's ethnic
cleansing against Hindus continues today in Jammu
and Kashmir. Given this history of ethnic
cleansing, the fate of Kashmiri Hindus if Pakistan
were to take over all of Kashmir is too painful
even to contemplate.
Much is also stated about the
"self-determination" of the Kashmiri
people and "ascertaining the will of the
Kashmiri people." Article 370 of the Indian
Constitution, gives Jammu and Kashmir more
autonomy than any other state in India. Article
370 even prohibits people from other parts of
India from settling in Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan
on the other hand, has forcibly removed Kashmiris
from their homeland and settled it with Pashtun
and Punjabi servicemen in an attempt to alter the
demographic composition of the Pakistan Occupied
Kashmir. The will of the people of Jammu and
Kashmir has been ascertained through periodic
democratic elections in the state. By contrast, in
the Northern Areas of the Pakistan Occupied
Kashmir, adult franchise has never been granted.
It is also important to note that there are
three parts to the state: Hindu-majority Jammu,
Buddhist-majority Ladakh, and the Muslim-majority
Kashmir Valley. The
insurgency is almost entirely confined to the
Kashmir Valley, which comprises only 15 percent of
the area of the state.
It
is also erroneously assumed by many that the
Muslims of Kashmir do not want to be a part of
India. The
party that has governed Jammu and Kashmir for most
of the years since independence is the
pro-India National Conference, led by a
Muslim, Farooq Abdullah. Pakistan claims that the
terrorist movement in Jammu and Kashmir is
"indigenous." Yet this is not the case
as over 70 percent of those killed by the Indian
army in the state from June 2001 to January 2002
were Pakistanis. A large portion of the remaining
30 percent were likely to be Arabs or Afghans. A
recent poll by the British based firm MORI
International has shown that 61 % of Kashmiris
believed they would be better off economically and
politically as Indian citizens, while only 6%
preferred Pakistan.
Over two-thirds of the respondents believed
that Pakistan’s involvement in Jammu and Kashmir
has been harmful. Over 88% believed that
ending the infiltration of militants across the
Line of Control would help bring peace to the
region. In
1964, when Pakistan attacked Jammu and Kashmir,
the Kashmiris helped turn the invaders into the
Indian army rather than helping the Pakistanis.
And most importantly, Pakistan claims that it is
the guardian of Muslims on the subcontinent ring
hollow due to the persecution of various Muslim
sects in Pakistan as noted above and its brutal
terrorist campaign in Jammu and Kashmir which has
killed thousands of innocent Kashmiri Muslims.
Arvin Bahl is from Edison, NJ. He can be
reached at abahl@princeton.edu |
