Author: François Gautier
Publication: Kashmir Herald
Date: November 2002
URL: http://www.kashmirherald.com/featuredarticle/kashmiranddemocracy-prn.html
[Editor's Note: Kashmir Herald is
honored to have Mr. Francois Gautier write this article exclusively for
Kashmir Herald.]
No doubt Mr Vajpayee is a nice man,
no doubt he is well-meaning, no doubt he also embodies some of the better
virtues of tolerance and ahimsa of Hinduism, but lately, he has all but
surrendered Kashmir to Islamic separatism, not only losing elections there,
even amongst his own people, but also saying that "democracy has won in
Kashmir". Democracy has won in Kashmir? Does democracy mean that a state
where Hindus and Muslims used to live in harmony, where Islam had a gentler
more tolerant face, has now become a haven for violence, intolerance, bullets
and treachery? Is this democracy? Does democracy mean that 400.000 Kashmiri
Pandits have become refugees in their own land, an ethnic cleansing without
parallel in the recent history of mankind, worse even that in Yugoslavia
? It is also an irony that Mr. Vajpayee, whom the Press likes to call a
Hindu "nationalist", may have all but handed to Pakistan on a platter what
has belonged to India for millennia.
I am a white man and a Christian,
but I feel ashamed for India when I see in Sundays' newspaper the photo
of a Christian, and a white woman, Sonia Gandhi, along with two Muslims,
Ghulam Nabi Azad and Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, royally offering to the latter
the governance of Kashmir. Have Indians forgotten how Mufti Mohammed Sayeed
surrendered the might of the whole Government when his daughter was taken
hostage and he was a Union Minister? Does a country of 860 millions Hindus,
inheritors of one of the most ancient civilizations on earth and today
comprising some of the most brilliant people on this planet, need a Christian
white woman and a Muslim to run what was once the cradle of Shivaism?
Western correspondents (and unfortunately
sometimes Indian journalists) keep lionizing the Kashmiri "freedom fighters"
and demonizing the "bad" Indian army. But they should do well to remember
Sri Aurobindo, who wrote in 1940: "in Kashmir, the Hindus had all the monopoly.
Now if the Muslim demands are acceded to, the Hindus will be wiped out
again." (India's Rebirth, p. 220) How prophetic! Because nobody cares to
remember today that Kashmiris were almost entirely Hindus or Buddhists,
before they were converted by invading Muslims six centuries ago. True,
today these Muslims in Kashmir have not only accepted as their own a religion
which their ancestors had rejected, but they have also often taken-up the
strident cry of Islam. Does any one remember too, that at the beginning
of the century, there still were 25% Hindus in the Kashmir valley and that
today the last 350.000 Kashmiri Pandits are living in miserable conditions
in camps near Jammu and Delhi, refugees in their own land, they who originally
inhabited the valley, at least 5000 years ago, a much bigger ethnic cleansing
than the one of the Bosnian Muslims or the Albanians in Yugoslavia?
It's a common refrain today in most
newspapers to say that since Independence India alienated Kashmiris through
years of wrong policies. But those who have been in close contact with
Kashmir, even in its heydays of tourism, know for a fact that as a general
rule, Kashmiri Muslims never liked India. There was only one thing that
attached them to India, it was the marvellous financial gains and state
bounties that they made out of tourism. Even those Kashmiri Muslims who
are now settled in India make no bones about where their loyalty lies.
Talk to them, specially if you are a Westerner, and after some time, they'll
open their hearts to you; whether it is the owner of this Kashmir emporium
in a five star hotel in Madras, or the proprietor of a famous travel agency
in Delhi: suddenly, after all the polite talk, they burst out with their
loathing of India and their attachment to an independent Kashmir.
Nowadays Mufti Mohammed Sayeed wants
us to believe that with a certain degree of autonomy, Kashmiri Muslims
will be appeased. This may be true in most Indian states, who are often
rightly fed-up with the Centre's constant interference in their internal
affairs, but basically, there is only one thing which Kashmiri Muslims
are craving for and that is a plebiscite on whether they want to stay with
India or secede. The answer in the Kashmir valley, would be a massive "no"
to India (98%?). And as for Mufti, he would be quickly eliminated by the
militants, who would immediately seize control of Kashmir and attach it
to Pakistan.
The Indian security forces in Kashmir
are accused of all kind of atrocities. But this is war, not a tea party!
If India decides to keep Kashmir, it has to do so according to the rules
set by the militants: violence, death and treachery are the order of the
day. And men are men: after having been ambushed repeatedly, after having
seen their comrades die, after weeks and weeks of waiting in fear, one
day, they just explode in a burst of outrage and excesses. Amnesty International
chooses to highlight "the Indian atrocities" in Kashmir. But Amnesty which
does otherwise wonderful work to keep track of political atrocities world-wide,
can sometimes become a moralistic, somewhat pompous organisation, which
in its comfortable offices in London, judges on governments and people,
the majority of whom happen to be belonging to the Third World. Its insistence
on being granted unlimited access to Kashmir is a one-sided affair. Did
Amnesty bother at all about the support given by the CIA to the most fundamentalist
Mujahideen groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan, support which led to the
bleeding of Afghanistan today and the Pakistani sponsoring of terrorism
in India? (Without mentioning the fact that most of the Western countries
which today sit in judgement of India, raped and colonised the Third World
in the most shameless manner; and after all it happened not so long ago).
And this leads to the next question:
should then India surrender to international pressure and let Kashmiris
decide their own fate? Well it all depends on the Indian people's determination.
Each nation has, or has had in the past, a separatist problem. Today, the
Spanish have the Basques, the French the Corsicans, and the Turkish, the
Kurds. Amnesty International will continue to lambaste India in its reports
about human rights violations. But has Amnesty the right to decide what
is right or wrong for each nation? Sometimes double standards are
adapted by the West. Yesterday it colonised the entire Third World. Today;
the United States, under the guise of human rights, is constantly interfering
in other's people's affairs, often by force. It uses the United Nations,
as it does in Iraq, in Somalia and Yugoslavia and is getting away with
it. Can Amnesty International, the United States and the United Nations
decide today what is democratic and what they deem anti-democratic and
use their military might to enforce their views? But this is the trend
today and it is a very dangerous and fascist trend. Will tomorrow the United
Nations send troops to Kashmir to enforce Pakistan's dreams?
Furthermore, there is today another
very dangerous habit, which is to fragment the world into small bits and
parts, thus reverting to a kind of Middle Age status, whereas small nations
were always warring each other on ethnic grounds. It is the West and particularly
the United States' insistence to dismantle Communism at all costs, thus
encouraging covertly and overtly the breaking up of Russia and Eastern
Europe, which started this fashion. But this is a dangerous game and tomorrow
Europe and indirectly the USA will pay the price for it: wars will bring
instability and refugees to Europe and the United States might have to
get involved militarily.
Can India get herself dragged into
this mire? Why should India which took so long to unite herself and saw
at the departure of the British one third of its land given away to Pakistan,
surrender Kashmir? The evolution of our earth tends towards UNITY, oneness,
towards the breaking up of our terrible borders, the abolishing of passports,
bureaucracies, no man's lands; not towards the building up of new borders,
new customs barriers, new smaller nations. India cannot let herself be
broken up in bits and parts just to satisfy the West's moralistic concerns,
although it does have to improve upon its Human Rights record, particularly
the police atrocities. To preserve her Dharma, India has to remain united,
ONE, and even conquer again whether by force or by peaceful means, what
once was part of her South Asian body . For this she should not surrender
Kashmir, it could be the beginning of the breaking up of India.
[Francois Gautier, who has lived
in India for 30 years and is married to an Indian, is a French journalist,
the correspondent in South Asia for Le Figaro, France's largest circulated
newspaper. He has published Rewriting Indian History (Vikas) and Arise
O India (Har Anand).]
