[dropcap color=”#008040″ boxed=”yes” boxed_radius=”8px” class=”” id=””]H[/dropcap]izbul Mujahideen terrorist and Burhan Wani’s successor Zakir Bhat has actually spoken the truth: it is a jihadist struggle that is going on in Kashmir. This is likely to make the life of Hurriyat leaders miserable, for they have been peddling the Islamist insurgency as a movement for regional autonomy.
Hurriyat leaders like Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, and Yasin Malik have not just been fooling the liberal establishment and the mainstream media by claiming to be fighting for the Kashmiris right to “self-determination”;
Bhat, however, has made it clear that what’s going on in the Valley is not a “political struggle” but an “Islamic uprising.” In an audio message shared on social media, Bhat warned separatists: “Hum kufr ko chhod kar pehley aap ko latkayeingey. Lal Chowk mein inkey galey kateingey!” (Before killing the infidels, we’ll hang you… your heads will be chopped at Lal Chowk).
An engineering student in a Chandigarh college till July 2016 and now Hizb chief, Bhat, aka Moosa, is very clear about his own role as also that of the clergy and conventional separatists. He has exposed their duplicity. The ulema or Islamic scholars in Kashmir “are corrupt… fearful of crossing limits that they may be imprisoned. That is why we have to come forward,” Zakir said. “They are actually political leaders and they can’t be our leaders. Our fight is purely for the sake of Islam, and we shall implement the Shariat in Kashmir, insha-Allah.”
The new Hizb boss has correctly put things in perspective. Hurriyat leaders like Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, and Yasin Malik have not just been fooling the liberal establishment and the mainstream media by claiming to be fighting for the Kashmiris right to “self-determination”; they have also been hoodwinking the very people they claim to represent. They have been fomenting trouble in the state, spreading the poison of radical Islam, and instigating the youth to fight against armed forces; at the same time, they send their own children to Western countries for higher education and even a lucrative career.
[dropcap color=”#008040″ boxed=”yes” boxed_radius=”8px” class=”” id=””]A[/dropcap]nd, typically, Left-liberals swallow the Hurriyat narrative hook, line, and sinker. They refuse to examine the content of azaadi (freedom) that Hurriyat leaders want. Now, the word ‘hurriyat’ also means liberty. So, on the face of it, one might be tempted to acknowledge the outfit and their sympathizers as freedom fighters. Besides, postmodern relativist ethics has it that one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. Ergo, Hurriyat chaps are freedom fighters.
…it is not surprising that intellectuals don’t acknowledge the fact that the ultimate objective of Kashmiri separatism is an Islamic state…
Such a conclusion is the consequence of faulty premises which, in turn, are the result of our thought leaders’ reluctance to face the truth. Evidently, they don’t see through the smoke-and-screen world of jihad for the simple reason that they don’t want to see it as it exists. For seeing the truth is akin to eating the forbidden fruit, which leads to banishment from the Garden of Eden. In their case, this means exile from the multicultural, political correct dreamscape that no intellectual wants to leave.
Therefore, it is not surprising that intellectuals don’t acknowledge the fact that the ultimate objective of Kashmiri separatism is an Islamic state; it has always been; Bhat has merely stated this fact. Priyanka Bakaya and Sumeet Bhatti of Stanford University studied the subject in a paper ‘Kashmir Conflict: A Study of What Led to the Insurgency in Kashmir Valley & Proposed Future Solutions.’ They wrote, “In 1980, the Islamization of Kashmir began with full force. The [Sheikh] Abdullah Government changed the names of about 2,500 villages from their original names to new Islamic names. For example, the major city of Anantnag was to be known as Islamabad (same name as the Pakistani Capital).” So, the protagonist in the pro-Islamist Hindi movie, Haider, having internalized the jihadist geography, refers to Anantnag as Islamabad.
[dropcap color=”#008040″ boxed=”yes” boxed_radius=”8px” class=”” id=””]A[/dropcap]ccording to Bakaya and Bhatti, “The exact role of Saudi Arabia cannot be known due to lack of evidence currently, but there are clear indications showing their influence. Many Saudi religious personalities and scholars held an Islamic Conference in Srinagar in 1979 and visited often thereafter. Further, they set up the Jhelum Valley (JV) Medical College in 1980, through which they were able to funnel large sums of foreign exchange money into Kashmir… Anecdotal evidence suggests it was the doctors in this hospital that began spreading the message of radical Islam and communalism.”
Ethnic cleansing continued relentlessly; on March 20, 2000, three dozen Sikhs were massacred at Chittisinghpura in the Anantnag district.
Kashmiri leaders also spewed venom against the Hindus. The Sheikh began giving communal speeches in mosques as he used to in the 1930s. Further, in his autobiography he referred to Kashmiri Pandits as ‘mukhbirs’ or informers of the Indian government, wrote Bakaya and Bhatti.
The Islamization pattern in Kashmir had a familiar trajectory. The Saudi money established facilities such as madrassahs that, according to Bakaya and Bhatti, “trained jihadis in the region. From the early 1980s, madrassahs started spreading throughout the Kashmir Vale, and these institutions planted the seeds of Islamic fundamentalism in Kashmiris from an early age. Children were instructed to ‘fight for Islam,’ and hatred for their Kashmiri Pandit counterparts was bred extensively.”
The denouement was the expulsion of three-five lakh Pandits from their native place. Ethnic cleansing continued relentlessly; on March 20, 2000, three dozen Sikhs were massacred at Chittisinghpura in the Anantnag district. Ten years later, in August 2010, they received anonymous letters from Islamic militants asking them to either quit the Valley or embrace Islam.
Christians have fared little better. Six years ago, a Christian priest was accused of forced conversion in Jammu & Kashmir by the state’s Grand Mufti. Imagine the tempest that would follow if the chief minister of a state ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party were to appoint a Shankaracharya and seek direction for social and cultural policies. Rank communalism, vile regression, beginning of theocracy, assault on secularism—this is how our liberals would greet the move. They would vehemently campaign for the status quo.
[dropcap color=”#008040″ boxed=”yes” boxed_radius=”8px” class=”” id=””]B[/dropcap]ut when it comes to Kashmir, all the grand notions about keeping the state and religion apart are given a silent burial; a conspiracy of silence entrenches itself. But the J&K government, in which the super-secular Congress was a partner, actually appointed a Grand Mufti. The mandate was obvious: to implement Shariat, which is the antithesis of all that the Indian Constitution and modernity stand for.
It is a strange, frightening world we live in: theocracy assumes the guise of self-determination and democracy; slavery masquerades as liberty; and liberals do not (refuse to?) even notice the trick.
The Grand Mufti also forced Pragaash, an all-girl rock group from Kashmir, to be disbanded in February 2013. Typically, he had denounced their music as “un-Islamic.”
So, this is the azaadi the separatists are fighting for—where non-Muslims would be either kicked out or forced to convert to Islam, women would be pressured to follow the diktats of medievalist clerics, music would be banned, and all the abominations associated with an Islamic state would be introduced.
It is a strange, frightening world we live in: theocracy assumes the guise of self-determination and democracy; slavery masquerades as liberty; and liberals do not (refuse to?) even notice the trick.
Even stranger is the fact that it is not a scholarly public figure but a terrorist who calls the bluff of separatists.
Note:
1. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of PGurus.
- Liberty Is Penalized, Violence Goes Untouched - December 21, 2019
- Rahul’s Howdy bloomer - September 22, 2019
- Chidambaram’s hypocrisy - August 22, 2019
