Story of Kashmir: (The Last Smile: A Father’s Love Story by Jeevan Zutshi-3)

(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.”

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.” 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 Control”) 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