The genocidal attrition never stopped against the Hindus of Kashmir and expanded into a deluge during the reigns of Aurangzeb and the Afghans in the 17th and 18th centuries. The exodus of 1990 is the seventh exodus of the Hindus from Kashmir in a series of exoduses in as many centuries.
Some in the Sangh Parivar have set Sultan Zainulabiddin’s rule of 1420-1470 AD as the benchmark of a golden period in Kashmir. It has alluded to the allegory of Shriya Bhatt and the Badshah as the cornerstone of an unflinching Hindu-Muslim harmony.
Some Sangh functionary in a message to the exiled Hindus of Kashmir on the occasion of the Navreh (Kashmiri New Year Day) on 14 April appealed to them to be the modern Shriya Bhatts and go back to Kashmir as apostles of sadbhavana (goodwill) and samrasta (harmony) in order to win over the modern Badshahs of Kashmir and recreate Hindu-Muslim bonhomie. In the similar way, Shriya Bhatt had won over the favours of Zainulabiddin (popularly called Badshah in Kashmiri lore).
The question that begs attention is that if this allegory is universal as also timeless and hence relevant after 600 years, then what has made the Hindus flee Kashmir and live in ramshackle tents and refugee camps as exiles (Indian State tags them as migrants) ever since 1990? The Sangh refuses to pinpoint or mention any reason for the same.
Of course, the allegory draws the conscience to the times of the reign of Badshah (1420-1470) and the time of Shriya Bhatt, which had followed 100 years of Islamic rule of Shah Mir (1339) and his progeny (six Sultans before Zainulabiddin) and the period of Shah-e-Hamdan of the Kubrawiya order who reached Kashmir from Tajikistan in 1372; a period which brought untold misery, mayhem, genocide and cleansing of the Hindus of Kashmir, reducing Kashmir from a hundred per cent Hindu to bare proverbial 11 Hindu households.
Now to the bonhomie of this golden period, which as per some is the benchmark. Did it reverse the situation for a long time post Badshah’s reign? No. Another genocide was let loose upon the Hindus barely after a period of 30 years when a Shia Sufi of the Noorbakshiya order, namely, Shamsuddin Araki reached Kashmir in 1496, and repulsed at the sight of Hindus practising their traditions, decided to stay back and get enforced the Islamic rule and Sharia. The wave of genocide which followed subjected Hindus to mass conversions and murders. Tohfatul Ahbab, a biography of Araki, vividly details the amount of vandalism and mass massacres carried out against the Hindus of Kashmir during the period of Shamsudin Araki and the Chak Sultans who converted to Shai Islam under his influence.
This genocidal attrition never stopped against the Hindus of Kashmir and expanded into a deluge during the reigns of Aurangzeb and the Afghans in the 17th and 18th centuries. The exodus of 1990 is the seventh exodus of the Hindus from Kashmir in a series of exoduses in as many centuries.
Hence, the benchmark being prescribed and the allegory of Shriya Bhatt are unrepresentative of the narrative of peace and harmony that couldn’t survive even 50 years. Yet it does establish that though for a brief period Shriya Bhatt did succeed in achieving a reversal of the Hindu genocide, he successfully halted an attrition of hundred years, and blunted jihad.
Many authors and a host of facts suggest that keeping Hindus to his side was also a political and strategic compulsion of Zainulabiddin, given the nature of a fratricidal war he had to face in the very initial years of his ascending the throne, and for running the administration. And let’s also not forget that Zainulabiddin was the first Muslim Sultan of Kashmir, who replaced Sanskrit by Persian as the court language of Kashmir after a hundred years of the Islamic rule; thus beginning and legitimizing the process of disconnecting Kashmir from its civilizational context.
Now, let’s examine what the Sangh is doing. It is putting the onus of peace and return entirely upon the victims and not speaking about the perpetrators. It assumes that once the victim community dons the cloak of Shriya Bhatt practising balidaan and tyag, the search for the modern Badshah would end in Kashmir and he would get incarnated by a miracle. The SANGH absolves the perpetrators, the jihadi Islamists of Kashmir of any iota of responsibility for genocide and exile of the Kashmiri Hindus.
Hence this narrative of Shriya Bhatt questions the very constitutional and democratic obligation of the Indian State to protect its citizens of their life, limb and property in Kashmir; and to dispense justice and rehabilitate these victims of genocide back in their homeland. On the contrary, the argument puts the entire onus of protection and justice on the Victims, who as per the assertion, have not been able so far to metamorphose into the modern day Shriya Bhatts in order to invoke the Badshah among their perpetrators.
The question is why should any patriotic “Hindu” organization shun to take any responsibility of these Hindu victims of a blatantly communal attrition and armed jihad in Kashmir? The answer is obvious. Its definition of Hindu and its idea of Hinduism do include Muslims and Islam as part of Hindutva. Not many years ago, the Sangh declared that Hindutva is incomplete without Islam. About ten years ago the Sangh floated the Rashtriya Muslim Manch to induct Muslims into the Sangh; and as per Sangh claims, the Muslim Manch has ten lakh Muslims as its members.
In the quest for absorbing and integrating the Muslims in the Hindutva-fold, the Sangh ignores the issue of jihadic attrition and the idea of Ghazwa-i-Hind; and for its larger preoccupation with the imagination of an Akhand Bharat, it seeks to obliterate and resolve all conflicts with Pakistan; and is ready for any reconciliation. The life, limb and well-being of 3 lakh Kashmiri Hindu victims of genocide are hardly of any consequence for such a “noble” goal.
And that’s precisely the reason that BJP, immediately after coming to power in 1998, started a process of direct as well as indirect negotiations with Pakistan under the leadership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who embarked upon his historic Lahore Yatra to sign the Lahore Declaration; and then in spite of a war in Kargil with Pakistan in 1999-2000, he invited General Pervez Musharraf to Agra to execute a peace proposal called the Musharraf plan.
To cut the story short, the Musharraf plan envisaged a joint-control over two parts of Jammu and Kashmir between India and Pakistan with porous borders. Though apparently these were BJP initiatives, these had the go-ahead and approval of its parent body in Nagpur. The BJP of that period saw the creation of a pro-Pakistan political party with the name PDP in Jammu and Kashmir in 1999. The vision document of PDP talked about a shared sovereignty by India and Pakistan over Jammu and Kashmir, which was reflected again when BJP signed the Agenda of Alliance with PDP in 2015, while forging an alliance with the later. This very Agenda of Alliance, while speaking about the return of Kashmiri Hindu (migrants) stated, “reintegrating as well as absorbing them in the Kashmiri milieu.” And there was no mention and recognition of any justice for these victims of genocide who were in exile then for quarter of a century. It is also no secret that before clinching the deal with BJP, the PDP’s Hasib Drabu spent six days in Nagpur.
This six-day hiatus resulted in the Agenda of Alliance (AOA) to continue with the special status of J&K, a review of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, removal of security bunkers and pickets as well as taking back from the Indian Army lands under its strategic use. In addition, to incorporate and legitimize the demographic invasion in Jammu on forest lands and around the riverbeds, the AOA set out to the creation of a Muslim only Greater Jammu Satellite Township. The government released dreaded terrorists like Musarrat Alam and court-martialled Army officers on flimsy grounds. Hoisting of Pakistani flags and rallies by Hurriyat Conference before the police and the Army headquarters became the order of the day. National security was compromised when BJP-backed Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti went to compensate the family of Burhan Wani, the slain chief of terror-outfit Hizbul Mujahideen. The Indian security force officers got used to be stone pelted, kicked and slapped by the public in open daylight. Such had been the results of the compromise of the BJP on vital ideological and national security issues.
5 August 2019 appeared to be a departure from this compromised position when Indian Parliament undertook to neutralize Article 370 and scrap Article 35A of the Constitution and integrate Jammu and Kashmir fully into the Union of India. Every Kashmiri Hindu hailed it as the success of the Republic and was sanguine with the hope that soon the State of India under its dynamic Prime Minister Narendra Modi shall bring to an end the 30 long years of exile. That the perpetrators of the crime of genocide shall be booked and tried and their exile and genocide would be reversed. Almost two years have passed, and there is hardly any step forward in this direction. These victims of genocide can’t afford to lose their guard and shall have to keep on fighting for their rights and justice.
Shailendra Aima is an educationist who is among the founders of Panun Kashmir as its Senior Vice Chairman.