Memoranda for Submission to the Chief Ministers of the Two Telugu States.

Articles

What Next in Jammu and Kashmir

Dt:  3/1/24

What Next in Jammu and  Kashmir

Dr T H Chowdary*

Now  (11/12/23) that the Supreme Court of India  had pronounced its judgement that the  government’s act  in removing the temporary Article-370 (and 35A) in the constitution of India is  absolutely valid  and also directed the government  to hold elections  in J&K before Sept 2024 , we must consider  as to what should be the  structure  of  the state for J & K areas. Should  it be restored as a full-fledged state  as it was some time ago or  should  it be split into two  states,  Kashmir and Jammu .

2. There are  weighty reasons   as to why J&K should be split  into two separate  states so that  justice  can be done to the  people of Jammu region. Although  the Jammu  region area at 26,223 sq.kms (62.2% of J&K)  and  its  people  are  53,50,811  constituting  43.7% they  never got  adequate  representation in the governance   or benefits  in the composite  state. They had been nine Chief Ministers  in J&K between  1947  and 2019 .  None of them  was a Hindu.  Bihar and  Rajasthan,  two predominantly Hindu states  had Muslims as Chief Ministers . Abdul Ghafoor  was the 13^th  Chief Minister of Bihar from 2 July 1973 to 11 April 1975 . Janab Barakhtullah khan was the 6^th  Chief Minister of  Rajasthan between July 1971  and Oct 1973.   The Muslim population  in these two states as a proportion of the total population  is less than that of the  Hindus in the  combined state of  J&K .  A  Kashmiri Muslim  Mukti Mohammad Sayeed was the  Home Minister of the Union of India  in 1989-90.  Four Muslims were Chief Justices  of the Supreme Court of 

India and more than  a score  Muslims were Chief Jutices in different High Courts of the country. A  Muslim  Idris Hasan Latif  was the 10^th Air Chief Marshal of the Airforce of India in 1978-81.  But never a Hindu was the  Chief Minister of  the combined state of  J&K . The SCs and  STs  in  Jammu as well as Kashmir region never had the benefit of  reservations in the Legislative Assembly or in  government jobs.   While there are  Minority Commissions in the Hindu majority states, there is no  Minority Commission in J&K  (and other states where Hindus are a minority - Punjab,  Meghalaya , Mizoram, Nagaland…. ).

3. In 1989-‘90  Pandits , Hindus  had been  expelled  from   the Muslim majority Kashmir  area of  J&K from their  millennial home land.  Muslim clerics from mosques  went on calling  upon  Hindus to convert or get out or  get killed . It was   clearly the onslaught of Muslims on Hindus.    Not one Muslim leader  in the  National   Conference  or the   Congress or any other party  ever  came to the rescue  of Hindu Pandits. They were all complicit in the expulsion of  Hindus ,  Pandits. 

This is a repetition of what happened  to  three Jewish  tribes in Madina on the express orders  and  supervision of   Prophet Mohammad himself.  First it was  Beni Kainuka tribe who  were expelled,  permitted to quit  with their movable  properties . The second  tribe Beni Nadir  was  expelled;  they had to leave  all their movable and immovable  properties in Madina; the third  tribe Beni Koraiza  of 800 men were be-headed  under the  oversight of the Prophet himself and their  severed  bodies were thrown into the trench  got dug by themselves. Their properties  were confiscated . Their women and  children  were made   slaves or  converted . It is this  precedent     set by the Prophet himself  that  Muslims  of  Kashmir  expel non-Muslim Hindu pandits  from that territory.  During all these over thirty  years,  no  Muslim leader of Kashmir  or of India  ever   demanded that the  Pandits should be  brought back and their  properties and rights  restored in Kashmir.  Just as  the Hindu-Sikh  population of  Pakistan  has been decimated, so has been the Hindu Pandit population of  the Muslim majority  Kashmir  got decimated / extinguished. 

4. Hindus and Sikhs continue to suffer in the  Muslim majority combined state of J&K.  To add  insult to injury,  the Bangla -speaking Rohingya Muslims  coming out of  Myanmar are settled not in the Muslim majority Kashmir  but in the  Hindu   majority Jammu so that  the demographic content of the  latter can be  adversely affected .  Rohingyas are also getting settled in Hyderabad  and in some Kerala cities.  Should Kashmir’s Hindu Pandits  continue to  live as   internally- displaced  persons, refugees  in other  parts of India?  Relief to  Hindus  in Jammu  region  can  come   only if  Hindu majority  Jammu  region of  J&K becomes a separate  state. 

5. How do the separate states of Jammu & Kashmir  compare with some  other sates, especially in the north east.

Jammu and Kashmir must be divided into two States &  one  UT , Ladakh

6. It would be seen  that  both  Jammu and Kashmir  states  as  separate full-fledged  states will be far more justified  even when compared to Himachal Pradesh  . It is necessary that  the public and the intelligentsia   assert themselves to see that justice is done to the long- neglected  Hindus  and Sikhs  of the Jammu area of  J&K  in the elections  that may be held  in 2024 . Nationalist parties  in India   and J&K must include   the re-organisation of J&K into two  separate full-fledged  states. That alone can ensure justice to the long  humiliated and deprived Hindus of the Jammu area.  The Pandits  must be assisted to resettle  in Jammu state or  preferably in a liberated safe area  of Kashmir adjacent to  the Jammu state.

7. That J&K are very sensitive areas because  they are   neighbors to our inveterate enemy  Pakistan  cannot be any reason for keeping these two together.  Arunachal Pradesh and  Sikkim  and even UP  have borders with  another  bullying and non-friendly, nearly inimical state China .   Punjab and  Rajasthan  and Gujarat  are also  having borders with another  enemy state Pakistan.  We have non-Hindu  majority states   - Meghalaya , Nagaland,  Mizoram, Punjab. Very soon Kerala and  Arunachal Pradesh and perhaps even Bengal  may become non-Hindu majority states.  We may have to live with them  by devising administrative and security systems  that will prevent them from any separatist or secessionist  courses.

8. The bifurcation of the  combined Union Territory of J&K and  upgradation  of  the two regions  Jammu and  Kashmir separately  as  full-fledged states like Telangana  will be the correct solution  to end adverse discrimination  to the  people in Jammu region.  This must be agitated  in the  elections  to be held   in J & K before Sept 2024.  It must figure in the  election manifesto  for 2024.

9. Js. Sanjay Kishan Kaul while delivering the  Supreme Court’s  verdict on Aticel-370 on the  11^th Dec 2023 wished for Truth and Reconciliation Commission  for and in J&K to bring about  mutual good-will, tolerance and fraternity between the Muslim majority  and Hindu minority,  especially  the Pandit community which was forced out,  ethnically cleansed in 1989-‘90.  Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in South Africa and Peru  might have worked because the adversarial populations, though racially different,  were of the same faith . Christianized  indigenous people and the  colonist white European settlers and their progeny . Islam’s theology instructs and inspires and obligate Muslims not to fraternize  with non-believers ( in Islam) like Hindus and other Indic peoples . There are  scores of Ayats  in Koran that  obligate  Muslims to wage struggle ( jihad) to subdue the kafirs .  Prophet Muhammad  ordained that  in his land Arabia  none but Muslims should inhabit . It is an article of  faith  of Muslims that they  irrespective of their character  are superior  to even persons  like Mahatma Gandhi as  asserted by no less a  person than Maulana  Mohammad Ali  who took Mahama Gandhi as the partner to lead the   khilafat movement in 1919- 22.

10. If indeed  there can be a  Truth and Reconciliation Commission , it should be not only for J&K but for the whole of  Bharat where  thousands of  Hindus’  temples were destroyed  by Muslim invaders and rulers  and   mosques were constructed  on these very sites   or  the temple structures altered  to serve as mosques.  The Babri in Ayodhya,  Gyanavapi in Varanasi , Shahi Masjid  in Mathura  are the well-known “Hindu masjids”, apart from Somnath (Gujarat). Generations of  Hindus will not  forget the injury done to them and which remains  unacknowledged and genuinely regretted .  It is a burden of immense crime . That is why  the National Integration Council  has  failed to  bring about national integration.

11. Views of the tallest Muslim leaders in India about Hindus  and Muslims being  two nations who cannot constitute one nation is given in the Annexure . (1,404 words)

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Annexure

Most influential Muslim intellectuals and politicians on  Hindus and Muslims

as one- nation and Hindu-Muslim Unity

1)      Sir Syed Ahmed  (Oct 1817 – Mar 1819) while addressing a Muslim gathering in Meerut in 1888:

The Indian National  Congress was founded in 1885.  Sir Syed Ahmed  was against Muslims joining the  Congress . He  expounded the idea that Muslims are a nation separate from Hindus.  Speaking in Meerut in 1888 he made this clear.

“….In whose hands shall the administration and the Empire of India rest? Now, suppose that all English, and the whole English army, were to leave India, taking with them all their cannon and their splendid weapons and everything, then who would be rulers of India? Is it possible that under these circumstances two nations — the Mahomedans and the Hindus — could sit on the same throne and remain equal in power? Most certainly not. It is necessary that one of them should conquer the other.

To hope that both could remain equal is to desire the impossible and the inconceivable. At the same time you must remember that although the number of Mahomedans is less than that of the Hindus, and although they contain far fewer people who have received a high English education, yet they must not be thought insignificant or weak. Probably they would be by themselves enough to maintain their own position. But suppose they were not.  Then our Mussalman brothers, the Pathans, would come out as a swarm of locusts from their mountain valleys, and make rivers of blood to flow from their frontier in the north to the extreme end of Bengal. This thing — who, after the departure of the English, would be conquerors — would rest on the will of God. But until one nation had conquered the other and made it obedient, peace could not reign in the land.”

During the  Khilafat movement in 1919-22  some Muslim Leaguers  indeed appealed to the  Amir of Afghanistan to invade India . He did no such foolish act.  Then Muslims were even advised to emigrate to  Afghanistan  just as Prophet Mohammad when he was weak emigrated  along with his few supporters from Mecca to Madina. Despite   the partition of the country and creation of Pakistan as an Islamic state  the  Muslisms in India  still cherish  the hope and dream  to rule India; first through their  surrogates, the vote-mongering Nehruvian, secular, Indo-Italian captured  Congress and  the regional parties .

2)      Sir Md Iqbal while delivering the presidential address at the  21^st annual session of the  All India Musim League on the afternoon  of  Monday , 29^th Dec  1930 at Allahabad outlined the  vision of  an independent state of  Muslim majority  provinces in north-western India, thus  becoming the  first politician to articulate  what would become known as the two-nation theory  - that Muslims are a distinct nation  that deserves political   independence from other religions and communities of  India.  In his address  he outlined a vision of an independent state for Muslim majority  provinces  in north-western India “ I would like to see the Punjab,  North-west frontier  province Sindh and Baluchistan”, he said.   Allama  Iqbal defined the Muslims of India  as a nation.  And suggested that there could be no possibility of peace in the country unless and until they were recognized as a nation  …………it was the  only way in which both the Muslims and the Hindus would prosper  in accordance with their  respective cultural  values.  In his speech he emphasized that unlike  Christianity, Islam came with  “legal concepts”,  with “civic significance”, with its “religious ideals” considered as inseparable from social order: therefore the   construction of a  policy on national lines, if it means  a displacement of the Islamic  principles and solidarity, is simply unthinkable to a Muslim.

3)      Maulana Md.Ali  a leader of the khilafat movement called Mahatma Gandhi  a brother when Indian National Congress became a partner of the khilafat movement in the hope that it would lead to Hindu-Muslim unity in the fight for freedom of India. When khilafat movement came to naught as the Sultan of Turney  was deposed and expelled, speaking at  Aligarh and Ajmere (1924) said:

“However pure Mr. Gandhi’s character may be, he must appear to be from the point of view of religion inferior to any Musalaman, even though he be without character”.

The Statement created a great stir. Many did not believe that Mr. Mohamed Ali, who testified to so much veneration for Mr. Gandhi was capable of entertaining such ungenerous and contemptuous sentiments about him.  When Mr. Mohamed Ali was speaking in a meeting held at Amina Baug  Park in Lucknow, he was asked whether the sentiments attributed to him were true.  Mr. Mohamed Ali without any hesitation or compunction replied.

Yes! According to my religion and creed, I do hold an adulterous and a fallen Musalman to be  better than Mr. Gandhi”

4)      Md. Ali Jinnah on the  nature of Islam and Hinduism :

Excerpts from Mohammed Ali Jinnah

 Presidential address at

All India Muslim League Lahore Session, March, 1940

“……………………It is extremely difficult to appreciate why our Hindu friends fail to understand the real nature of Islam and Hinduism.  They are not religions in the strict sense of the word, but are, in fact, different and distinct social orders and it is a dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality, and this misconception of one Indian nation has gone far beyond the limits and is the cause of most of our troubles and will lead India to destruction if we fail to revise our notions in time. The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, and literature.  They neither intermarry, (only Hindu girls marry Moslems, but they have to convert to Islam – Ed) nor interdine together and, indeed they belong to two different civilizations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions.  Their aspects on life and of life are different. It is quite clear that Hindus and Mussalmans derive their inspiration from different sources of history.  They have different epics, different heroes and different episodes.  Very often the hero of one is a foe of the other and, likewise, their victories and defeats overlap. To yoke together two such nations under a single state, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to growing discontent and final destruction of any fabric that may be so built up for the Government of such a state…….”

5)      Syed Shah Geelani (b.29-09-1929   d. 01-09-2021)

The victims by appeasing and eulogising separatist leaders like Syed Shah Geelani. From journalists to politicians to judges to intellectuals, anyone who has had anything to say or do about the Kashmir problem has had to break bread with this man, knowing fully well that he was equally responsible for the Kashmiri Hindu genocide and ethnic cleansing. He was feted unceasingly while he was alive, and he is fondly remembered even in death. Geelani was responsible for pushing Kashmir into religious fanaticism, communal bigotry, genocide, Hindu exodus and untold misery. A man is known and understood best by his own words. So let me quote the words of Geelani from his book Nava-e-Hurriyat:

(a) India is a bigger enemy of Islam and Muslims than even Israel; (b) Muslims are a qaum wholly separate from the Hindus. Muslims are a complete separate nation on the basis of their religion, culture, civilisation, customs and practices, and thought. Their nationalism and the foundation of their unity cannot be based on their homeland, race, language, colour or economic system. The basis of their unity  is Islam and Islam alone; (c) Pakistan was created for the hegemony of Islam and for establishing an Islamic system. Pakistan is the land of the dreams of all Kashmiris because it was won in the name of Islam; (d) Accession to India would result in the Kashmiri Muslims having to live perpetually under Hindu slavery. The entire struggle of the Kashmiri people is for the sake of Islam and for accession to Pakistan; (e) Kashmir must become an Islamic State. Our goal is the establishment of Islamic government. Our struggle is for the sake of Islam; (f) Islam removes people from the slavery of people, (but secularism makes the people slaves of Delhi. The on-going struggle against Indian rule in Kashmir is not an ordinary war, but, rather, a jihad; (g) I plead with the Afghan mujahidin to come forward to help liberate us from India and, by doing so, express their bond of Islamic brotherhood and religious commitment; (h) In the light of the Quran, it has now become incumbent on the people of Pakistan to engage in jihad in Kashmir. In fact, participating in the Kashmir jihad is now a binding duty incumbent not just  on the Pakistani Muslims but, rather, the entire worldwide Muslim ummah.  (Source:  Pages: 17,18 & 19 from the Book, “Hindus in Hindu Rashtra” by Ananda Ranganathan)  

6)      Gandhiji did not  condemn the Moplahs’(Muslims of Kerala, descendants of Hindu women Arab Muslim traders)  vandalism and demoniac acts against Hindus (Aug 1922 -Jan 1923). He described the Moplahs as “god-fearing” people and declared that “they are fighting for what they consider as religion and in a manner they consider as religious”

7)      Dr. Ambedkar  : Pakistaniat as DNA

 “I do not  think the  demand  for Pakistan is  the  result of mere  political distemper, which will pass away with the  efflux of time.  As I read the  situation, it seems to me that it is a characteristic in the  biological sense of the  term which  the  Muslim body politic has developed in the   same  manner as an  organism develops a characteristic. Whether it will survive or not, in the  process of natural  selection, must  depend upon the  forces that may become  operative in the  struggle for  existence  between Hindus and Musalmans

- Dr. Ambedkar  in the  book, “Pakistan or  the Partition of India”(1940)

8)      Dr Ambedkar’s happiness at “separation of India from Pakistan”:

  Dr Ambedkar was happy at the partition of India. He expressed his happiness in the following words: “  I was glad that India  was separated from Pakistan. I was the philosopher so to say,  of Pakistan  . I  advocated Pakistan  because I felt that it was only by partition that Hindus  would not  only be independent but free.  If India and  Pakistan had remained united in one state, Hindus would be not  independent  would have been in the mercy of Muslims.  A merely independent  India   would not have been a free India  from the point of view of the  Hindus. It would have been a government  of one country  by two nations  and of these two,  the Muslims without question would have been  ruling race  notwithstanding Hindu Mahasabha  and   Jana Sangh. When  partition took place  I felt that  God  was willing to  lift his curse and let India be  one great and  prosperous nation.  But I fear that the curse may fall again. For I  find that those who are advocating linguistic states have at heart an idea of making the regional language as their  official  language.  This will be the death knell   to the idea of united India.   With regional language  as official language the ideal to make India  one united country and to make Indians , “Indians First Indians Last”,  will vanish.                  ( Dr. Baba Saheb Ambedkar’s  Writings and  Speeches, Vol- 1,  Page- 146).

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