Last eveing I received an SMS from a very close friend. This is how it read "We are born in Kashmir and we stayed there till 15 to 16 years of ur age-How can I believe in PK concept.Now we should work towards harmony between KM's and KP's...there is only one Kashmir".I was so disturbed by this sudden outburst that despite my not wanting to engage in a discussion I called my friend. I asked him if it was a forward or was it his idea and emphatically he said, It is my idea and promised me to call me back in 20 mins. I waited all night for the call that never came. Maybe he forgot about it but this pronouncement made me re-visit that time of my life when Pandits were under a siege, when our speaking would have meant death or worse, when watching Ramayan was considered "anti-movement", when notices were pasted for us to leave, when mosques called for our annihilation, when our women were meant to be in Islamic Harems, when we were (to use Jagmohan’s phrase) frightened pigeons in a nest with a big cat wanting to gulp us.
I have neither been a votary nor a detractor of the idea or concept of Panun Kashmir but truth be told I have always found it as a perfect counterweight to the secessionists policy of Azad Kashmir. It has been till date the only political concept that Kashmiri Pandits have. In storms we cling to the last shreds of grass that root themselves and in a storm are we. Kashmiri Muslims have this abomination towards the concept and that’s what makes it worth its weight in Gold. Whether it is a utopia or an el-dorado is not to be debated in a time when dreams are all that we have. It may have hundreds of short comings. The leaders may have betrayed themselves and us by falling apart but the idea lives beyond people. Even when there is none of the A’s the idea will live because the age of the idea is far greater than the age of a mortal. There is no Einstein today but the theory of relatively is even more powerful and pronounced today than Einstein himself.
Over the past few weeks the voices of the harmony wallahs have become shriller and louder. There are statements like”If we have to live in Kashmir we need the goodwill of the majority community”. Taken Sir! But will someone please tell these Johnies that it was their goodwill that forced us to flee, will someone please emaciate the cupid about the goodwill that made them defecate on our deities and write graffiti’s like “Gulzar Bhagwan ki Jai Ho” in Batyar Mandir, will someone please tell them they had a house with a fountain near Rambagh that they no longer own because someone’s goodwill forced them to abandon and later sell it, will someone please tell them that onus of goodwill is the one of the majority. It isn’t the prerogative 0r either the power of the meek (read it weak or minority if you may like) to make peace. Have you ever heard a rat going to a lion and saying let us make peace? May be I am an idiot but I haven’t. Wouldn’t it be laughable if not out rightly preposterous to even believe that we can make peace with a people who have Islamicized themselves so much over the last two decades that they call us people who worship snakes and stones (Please read my dear Kashmiriyat wallahs-the columns in Greater Kashmir and these aren’t written by ignorant and illiterate but the informed and educated but unfortunately grossly Islamicized majority).
India is a secular nation not because the Muslims want it that way but because the majority of us are Hindus and we want it that way. Now can the Harmony Harbingers please name three Muslim Majority nations which are secular?
I am no one to stop anyone from engaging in Nalmot(embrace)with whomsoever they wish to but I will fail I don’t bark.
Sirs, for your information and benefit let me explain to you the Polity of Kashmir today. It starts from right(Islamic right I mean) and keeps going to a point where it reaches obscurantist ideology of Al-Qaeda and the likes.Does your wife wear Jeans? Oh that isn’t Islamic.Do you wash your left leg first while you bathe? That isn’t Islamic either.Privately they may admit that all this is a heap of shit but the hypocrisy of the society has reached a level where collective righteousness has become a virtue with the new Islamic Kashmir.
The space for a rational and reasoned debate has shrunk so much that whatever has to be accomplished has to be under the purview of Fiqh(Islamic Jurisprudence).
Undoubtedly there is no one Kashmir Sirs, if you wish to know there is one on the other side too, the one they(KM’s) want to merge with. Why don’t you start a process of talking to them as well? Sardar Qayoom Khan is a free man these days. He will be glad to accept your invitation. May be it gives you a chance to go to Sharda, a chance none of us got for obvious reasons of goodwill and harmony?
There was one Kashmir till 1334,till the day the Islamic zealots hadn’t breached our borders, hadn’t touched the pious soil of our motherland, hadn’t burnt our libararies, hadn’t dug out the Martand sun temple, hadn’t reduced to ruins Parihaspora, hadn’t built a Khanqah on the Kali temple.
There my dear friend is no one Kashmir now. Sad as it may be…
Take a plunge. Try feeding milk to the snakes…I wish you luck…In your success I shall be happy to retain my burnt house in Kanipora.
(The above article is written by Rashneek Kher.The views expressed are his own.He can be reached at rashneek@gmail.com)
