Kashmir’s Fight for Freedom

The fight in Kashmir is not only a struggle between the invaders–or ‘raiders’ as they are otherwise called–on the one hand, and the Indian Union troops on the other, to gain free access to the beautiful and fertile valley of Kashmir, but a struggle between two ideologies as well. It is a choice between subjugation by brute force and self-determination by the people, between the unity of the citizens of Kashmir and continuance of their social and cultural ties with India, or surrender to rank communalism and virtual suicide. In Gandhiji’s words “It is on the soil of Kashmir that Islam and Hinduism are being weighed. If both pull their weight correctly and in the same direction, the chief actors will cover themselves with glory and nothing can move them from their joint credit.”

This was perhaps the main consideration which induced the present writer to avail himself of the facility provided by the Government of India to fly to Kashmir and see things at first hand.

It was an early morning on the last day of November that we, a party of writers and journalists, left New Delhi by a supply plane and landed at the Srinagar aerodrome by noon the same day. Though the sky was cloudless and the day pleasantly sunny, a cold wind blowing through the wide open fields had filled the atmosphere with a chill. It was almost freezing. Bleak mountains, dense only at their bases with foliage, were being capped increasingly with snow by the incoming winter. Leafless coniferrous trees stood erect like silent sentries at the foot of the hoary Himalayan range.

On landing, the first to catch our eye were the unfortunate victims of tribal vandalism, men, women, children, who commonly pass under the category of ‘refugees’. We were told they were only a few of a long and unceasing stream of such unfortunates trekking towards the aerodrome on camels, horse, carts, tongas, lorries, and cars. With a blank look in their eyes and morose faces, they looked around with a mixed feeling of hope and desperation. Armed though most of them were with the technical refugee-permits (these were hardly worth the scrap of paper on which they were written), they were constantly shunted from this officer to that for proper information and instructions. Thus they had to spend many days and nights in the open airfield not knowing what to do. In the wake of sunrise they prayed solemnly for a clear day so that planes might come and take them away. The drone of every incoming plane appeared to them to be a new message of hope, an angel of liberation; but when, one by one, all the planes left Srinagar without them, or at least without most of them, their anguish was sickening. Yet they were not very loud in their complaints against the attitude of the authorities concerned, who appeared to be rather over conscious of their authority and not sufficiently mindful of the heavy burden of their responsibility. They were reported to have said that they were not in a position to cope with such a heavy burden, in spite of their requisitioning the maximum number of planes from all the Indian chartered air-services.

“Since how long are these refugees here,–we mean, spending days and nights in the open like this?” we inquired of a uniformed Air-officer.

`“Since many days, maybe weeks,” he blurted out with an air of conscientious disregard, which made us a bit more inquisitive.
“But should they live like that” one of us put in.

“That is what I am actually come to. Well, I tried to argue with them for hours and hours together, but to no avail. I asked them plainly, ‘where would you go? East Punjab is no place for you. Delhi has no room for so many of you either. The houses and refugee-camps over there are too full, and food is very scarce and costly.’ But their obvious excuse was: ‘Who would protect us here. Having lost all sense of security of life and property, what shall we do here?’ The point is, these people are overawed, panicky. But if that be so, if flight is the only remedy for aggression, well, then why worry about the fate of Kashmir or the outcome of the so-called referendum?”

Undoubtedly, it made lots of sense. It made us think: Should this uprooted humanity go away like that? Could they afford to? And whereto? Who will look after their hearths and homes? Besides, the trail of suffering and misery they carry from place to place is bound to excite passions and thus make a solution of the problem doubly difficult. But we were rather in a hurry to get away with it, and with our luggage, to the town.

Public conveyances were scarce around the aerodrome for want of petrol. The only cars, lorries and trucks seen about were either of the officials or that of the contractors. So we had to fall upon a few tongas which were there incidentally. It is a strip of seven miles’ unmetalled road which connects the aerodrome with the town. After negotiating a few winds and descents, as we proceeded in the direction of the town, we saw houses on both sides of the road abandoned by their panicky inhabitants. These belong mainly to the Sikhs and the Hindus. Where could they stop if they simply flew away at the approach of raiders, we murmured.

But these were not the only people to do so. On reaching Srinagar we were told that just three days after the raiders’ attack on Kashmir, and when they were rumoured to be about three or four miles away from the Srinagar aerodrome, the Maharaja fled, lock, stock and barrel, for the safety of his person, throwing to the winds all sense of duty and responsibility towards his people, and especially the minority community. He was coolly and loyally followed not only by his retinue but also the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Home Minister, thus leaving the poor, helpless people and the Capital to their fate and probably to the mercy of the raiders. This conduct of the absolute and undemocratic monarch, not commensurate with the lofty tradition of his ancestors, hardly deserves any comment.

This flight of the Maharaja and his Ministers worked as a lever to demoralise a section of the State forces and resulted in a virtual breakdown of the administrative machinery at Srinagar. Had the National Conference not stepped in to fill up the political vacuum thus created by the sudden collapse of the administration in time, and helped to maintain law and order by allaying popular misgivings and panic and enlisted people’s active co-operation and support in doing so, what would have been the fate of Srinagar and especially the minority community living there? For three days and nights the people of Srinagar heard with bated breath the roar of the enemy’s guns, the patter of his machine-guns and the explosions of hand grenades. People, especially of the minority community, spent sleepless nights and many stood guard for the signal of any approaching danger. The rich and privileged were more shaky than the rest. Some of them had a shrewd suspicion that the attitude of a section of the majority community beyond the Fourth Bridge was rather threatening. But nothing untoward came off. Many good and sensible Muslims assured the minority community of their protection and they faithfully stood by their word. People could thus carry on their normal avocations without much ado.

In an hour’s time we arrived at Srinagar. Once the boom town of the lucky visitor and the rich trader, the -garden of paradise with its Nishat, Shalimar and the Dal, Srinagar lay today in the shadow of gloom. The stories of the raiders’ depradations appeared to have cast their shadow on it too. Its placid, unhurried and remote life continued without glamour or glee. With a few stream-lined cars, cosy house-boats, furnished bungalows, banks, hotels, cinemas and business houses, the grinding poverty and wardness of the people is writ large on the town. Since the division of India into Pakistan and India, and with Rawalpindi, the western-end of Kashmir’s life-line coming under Pakistan, all trade through this principal route has come to a standstill. Thus Srinagar’s trade and importance have both speedily deteriorated. The prices of Kashmir’s fruits, silks, woolens and other exportable commodities have considerably come down and thus added to the privations of the people in these days of soaring cost of living.

Having fixed up our rooms at the hotel, we set out for our fact-finding mission, so to say. Though we were there out of season, we were fortunate enough to be welcomed and received warmly by officials as well as non-officials. Kashmiris have a noble tradition of hospitality. They were more hospitable, polite and noble when they knew that we had not gone there on a pleasure trip or to report the day-to day encounters with the raiders, but to study the ground of their resistance movement. We had the audacity to tell them that we had brought with us India’s message of hope, goodwill and admiration for their united stand against the tribal marauders, and that we had the fullest and most unshakable confidence in the ultimate outcome of their grim struggle. The victorious conclusion of their struggle, we asserted, would not only go a long way to forge real Hindu-Muslim unity in the whole of India but would also serve as a clarion call for the long overdue liberation of the States’ peoples. Their eyes glistened with hope and they greeted us with a smile we shall never forget.

The more we met, saw and talked to the Kashmiris, the more we were depressed to know their miseries and hardship. That the ravishingly beautiful valley with its loamy, fertile soil and considerable forest wealth should only be inhabited by a starving peasantry and a privileged labouring class (craftsmen and factory-workers), that the whole population, fine, simple and docile, should be denied the most elementary rights of civil liberty, that grinding poverty and chronic slavery should retain its worst features under a total blackout of civic rights, is but a sad commentary on a century-and-a half old Dogra regime. The poor peasant and the starving artisan is compelled, for economic reasons, to man a plough or drag a cart during the day and sleep in a shabby water-home, built on stilts, during the freezing night.

It is no wonder, therefore, that the Dogra regime’s misrule has been ingeniously turned into an anti-Hindu agitation by the stooges of the Muslim reactionaries masquerading as the Muslim Conference, which has now assumed the self-styled authority of a ‘Free Kashmir Government’ after the attack by non-Kashmiri tribesmen from north and west! Added to the ugly character of the undemocratic Dogra regime, the role played by the Kashmiri Pandits, the main supporters and runners of a most corrupt, inefficient and inept administration, has also given rise to some misgiving in the minds of the Muslims. To add to all this, the Punjabi Hindu trader has not only been rapacious and cunning but a bully also. It is under the weight of oppression and exploitation of this three-fold evil that the poor Kashmiris, a majority of whom happen to be Muslims, have been groaning if since the last century and a half. But the remedy does not lie replacing ill an undemocratic and outmoded Hindu regime by a more reactionary and undemocratic Muslim one. And we were gratified to see that many sensible Muslims with foresight and imagination concurred with us.

But many among the Hindus do think differently. The Kashmiri Pandits cannot get away from the idea that their ancestors once ruled over Kashmir and they see nothing wrong in identifying themselves fully and faithfully with the Dogra regime. The Punjab Hindu traders, on the other hand, cover everything they have been doing under the garb of ‘free and fair trade’. While strolling through the canal-intersected slums of Srinagar and its dingy and narrow alleys, we encountered quite a number of Hindus who were perturbed with regard to the safety of their person and property. One of them, a gray-haired sober-looking man, told us in confident undertones that, had the Srinagar aerodrome fallen to the raiders and Indian troops not turned up in time, the Hindus and Sikhs in Srinagar might have been done to death and their property looted by their Muslim neighbours. That their fears were mostly unfounded and their suspicions highly exaggerated was proved by the statements to the contrary by unattached Muslims. Further, if things could have been as bad as that, how is it that during the three days when no administration worth the name existed in Srinagar, not a single case of loot, theft, murder, arson or even a fracas was reported? It is a pity that Hindus and Sikhs, in spite of their being in a microscopic minority, never cared to earn and deserve the confidence, goodwill and co-operation of their Muslim neighbours. They took shelter under the protective wings of the Dogra regime.

The State authorities are no less responsible for this lamentable state of affairs. Like their imperialist bosses, they also believed in the theory of ‘Divide and Rule’ and played one community against the other. It was only when they saw that the National Conference could rally Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims together against the autocratic regime, that they clapped its leaders behind prison bars and ed the Muslim Conference in their vain attempt to take the wind out of the sails of the National Conference. But this proved to be a costly folly and put their administrative machinery out of gear in Kashmir. The raiders have appeared on the scene like a horde of wild bears, when the Maharaja was only playing a game of hide and seek. This has exposed the rottenness and stupidity of the administration beyond any shadow of doubt.

The wholesale destruction and vandalism wrought by the raiders presents a ghastly spectacle. We could not know much about Muzaffarabad, the first to fall victim to the depredations of the raiders, as it was still in the hands of the tribesmen; but villages and towns recaptured by the Indian troops (like Garhi, Chinari, Uri, Baramulla, Biawa, Chak Charatram and Bargaon etc) are simply heaps of destruction, with houses burnt down and almost deserted. There is hardly any house that was not ransacked, hardly any family of which at least one member was not killed or maimed, and hardly any young woman who has not been molested or ravished. The tale of those ill-fated girls and women who have been forcibly carried away by the raiders can only be imagined with shudder. A good number of mosques and other places of religious worship, we were told, were turned into veritable brothels, butcher-houses, and store-rooms for the looted property.

It was deposed by more than one eye-witness that in the first stage of the attack by the raiders, they did not loot and kill people indiscriminately. Their slogan was “Head of the Sikh and wealth of the Hindu,” and they were actively helped in their nefarious activity by a fifth column of local Muslims, including some highly placed Police and Revenue officials of the State and a few tradesmen, some of whom are safe behind prison bars, now awaiting their trial. Forcible conversions have also been many. At some places we came across complaints that it was not the raiders but a section of the local people, belonging mainly to the majority community, who had looted and converted the inhabitants belonging to the minority community. There were also instances where the looted property of some was found with members of the majority community of the same place.

These things obviously created a lot of difficulties in the way of rehabilitation. The National Conference was keen that all looted property should be recovered and returned to its original owners, and some local Muslims found in possession of such property were successfully persuaded to part with the same. But in many cases the authorities were reported to be rather reluctant to use force, lest it should give an easy handle to their protagonists. Every step they took in this direction was undoubtedly fraught with risk of being misrepresented, the more so because the question of referendum loomed large before them. However necessary and advisable this may have been, it has failed to create the requisite amount of confidence in the hearts of Hindus and Sikhs to go and settle down once again in their former homes, mostly burnt or demolished. Those who were forcibly converted or who embraced Islam out of fear for their lives or property, had not the courage to return to their places for fear of untoward repercussions. With folded hands and tearful eyes they begged of the authorities to send more troops and close the three passes on the side of Handwara for their future safety. The Zamindars belonging to the majority community had also not behaved themselves. They had grabbed the peasant’s share of the produce (shali, rice) as well, and the authorities were rather slow to bring them to book.

We, however, could not escape the feeling that, if the authorities were serious about rehabilitation, they must maintain law and order with a more firm hand, and, without fear or favour, suppress the lawless elements. This only can inspire some confidence in the hearts of the minority community. Mere expressions of helplessness, or faltering steps, cannot serve any purpose. The mischievous part played by a section of local Muslims, and their complicity with the invaders in some places, has already alarmed the people of the minority community. The invaders have also tried to create confusion and misunderstanding among the ranks of the Kashmiris by distributing a portion of the property looted from Hindus and Sikhs to the Muslims, in order to convince them that their real job is to liberate the Muslims from the oppressive hold of the Hindu Bania and the Kashmiri Pandit and ameliorate their lot. Some have been duped into believing that the Hindus and the Sikhs had exterminated all the Muslims in Delhi, East Punjab and elsewhere. That this poisonous propaganda went a long way to confuse issues and create distrust and bitterness between the two communities is clear from the havoc wrought by the raiders. The National Conference has happily lost no time to give the lie direct to this false propaganda and to bring the doubtful elements to book. But something more needs to be done to inspire greater confidence in the hearts of Hindus and Sikhs. The present interim administration is perhaps not up to the mark, and competent enough to cope with the emergency.

The rot in the administration is mainly due to the fact that the Maharaja is reluctant to part with real power. The loyalty of some of his henchmen to the provisional administration set up by the National Conference seems halting, if not doubtful. Lack of real strength and the divided loyalty of quite a big number of the personnel of the present administration has robbed it of speed, efficiency and influence. It is more of an administration with a very heavy responsibility, but practically no power. And it does not go to the credit of the States Ministry of the Central Government at New Delhi to allow things to drift, in the face of the gravest danger not only to the territory of Kashmir and Jammu but to the Indian Union as well. The only consistent positive force in Kashmir today is the National Conference. Its leader Sheikh Abdullah, Sher-i.Kashmir, as he is lovingly called, has incredible hold on the masses. Though the fight in Kashmir has not yet developed into a full-fledged and openly acknowledged armed struggle between Pakistan and the Indian Union,–and it may never be so,–it is no mere raid by a few tribesmen. It has been an open secret that about 200,000 to 500,000 men from Pakistan areas, armed with the most modern weapons of warfare, are in Kashmir and they have not only unstinted support, ing and material help from Pakistan, but it is actually Pakistan that is running the whole show. So, an extended Military action is not enough. Sheikh Abdullah, who symbolises the surging tide of the people’s resistant movement, and who is the only person capable of rallying the people around him under the banner of the National Conference, should be ed and the people armed. Nothing short of this can possibly save Kashmir.

Early one morning, when we came out of our hotel on our way to the National Conference Headquarters, we saw kids, between six to twelve years of age, parading in the Red Square near the Palladium. They were armed with toy-guns, wooden swords, pick-axes, daggers, iron-rods and ordinary sticks. They were Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims from the barber, boatman, carpenter, tradesman and similar classes. We asked them laughingly, “Whom would you strike with your weapons?”

“The raiders, the Shaitan tribesmen,” instantly came the reply in a chrorus.

And amid deafening cheers, and shouting slogans of the National Conference, they made their way through the crowded lanes. We could not fail to notice the seriousness, determination and enthusiasm which glistened in their eyes, and the innocent smile which gleamed on their face and reddened their apple-coloured cheeks. Here was a new hope for the future of Kashmir.

As we moved towards the National Conference Headquarters, which art located in the spacious Exhibition Buildings on the Baramulla Road, we saw columns of Kashmiris from all walks of life and from all communities, armed with modern rifles, marching proudly in the Maidan facing the Secretariat. These were units of the National Home Guard trained by military officers and ex-service men, in order to form a second line of defence and to fight the enemy in the rear. They were in all about 850. Here was another face of the New Kashmir-sturdy, patriotic and enthusiastic people yearning for a fight to safeguard their home and hearth and their right to live their own lives. It was something of a People’s Army in making. It was really something to see the simple and docile people, with no military tradition for the last four centuries, march proudly with rifles on their shoulders. It appeared to us as if a New Kashmir was marching ahead through a cloudy way.

Opposite to this parade-ground is the famous Zenana Park of Srinagar. But no ladies come for a stroll here these days. It has become a parade ground and shooting practice-centre for the Women’s Brigade, the female wing of the National Home Guard, known as the Zoni Brigade after the name of a brave Kashmiri woman. Here was the beauty of Kashmir challenging death and preparing for a fight with brutal bestiality encroaching upon their domain. A brave new womanhood is rising in Kashmir to encounter the widespread and wholesale killing, raping and abduction of the weak, helpless and innocent daughters of Kashmir.

In the central wing of the Exhibition Buildings are located the offices of the Cultural Front of the National Conference. Besides looking to the political education of the National Home Guards in particular and the masses in general, the Front is responsible for publicity and propaganda to educate and mobilise public opinion by means of paintings, photographs, dramas, poems and articles. To mention a few, the writings of Mahajoor, Asi, Aziz, Arif, Azad, Hashmi, Pardesi, Prankishore, Pushp, Kaiser Kalander, Sagar, Premnath Dar, Salauddin and Talib have not only moved the people of Kashmir but have also toned up their moral strength and determination to fight the raiders. An oil-painting by Kashmir’s famous artist, Sjt. Somnath Khosa, deserves special mention. In this a Kashmiri maiden has been shown tied to the trunk of a tree by the raiders. Her torn clothes shining watery eyes, and the expression of shock writ on her face, faithfully portray the pangs of Kashmir’s agony at the hands of the raiders. A village in flames provides the appropriate ground to this realistic painting.

The whole of Kashmir is thus aflame today to fight for its freedom and fundamental rights, and it was through these silent and smokeless flames that we saw the face of a New Kashmir. It will perhaps be here that a true unity and lasting friendship and understanding between free Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims will be forged, and the monster of communalism buried deep for all time to come. From the sufferings and ruins of Kashmir will arise not only a new and free Kashmir, but a new and really free India as well. Long live Kashmir!