First Published in  Rashtriya Sahara URDU

 

 

Eid Day, apart from the joyful festivities after the month long fast
of Ramzan, in Kishtwar, Jammu and Srinagar, brought violence and dread
of a return to deep divides and bloodshed.  To capitalise on division,
as is its metier and raison d’etre, the BJP sought to fish in troubled
waters and started screaming blood when a national leader was firmly
prevented from entering the riot striken area. The chief minister’s
response to BJP’s bloodletting, comparing its double-standards (a la
Gujarat 2002) apart, one question that Omar raised, none of the
political class has yet had the courage to,

“ Does the BJP go to any other parts of the country when there’s
communal violence? Why only Kishtwar?”

Frothing women leaders of the BJP stood exposed when they avoided the
question repeatedly put on national television. Faizabad, Mathur,
Bareilly, Pratapgadh, Meerut, Allahabad, Ghaziabad…..especially
where its own MPs had fomented trouble (Adityanath of Gorakhpur) and
the BJP had slyly stayed away…why then this hyperactivity by the BJP
for Kishtwar ?

Jammu and Kashmir offers a special territory for the divisive
programmes of the RSS-BJP-VHP combine. Only last year (March 2010) VHP
strongman Praveen Togadia’s ravings and rantings in Rajouri had caused
a riot to break out forcing the administration to impose a permanent
ban on his entry into the state.

In 2008, the Jammu region first and then the whole state had been
engulfed in violence shamelessly fuelled by the hate politics of the
RSS-BJP. Which is not to say, or underemphasise the cynical separatist
sentiments that have flowered in parts of J & K, using and misusing
Islam to foment violence and terror. They exist and we, you and I, as
much as the administration and the law of the law must speak and act
against them, too. However the cure for the pernicious trends of
separatism, sectarianism and communalism in the name of Islam can
never be the double dose of aggressive and brazen majoritarian and
divisive communalism as represented by the BJP.

Fortunately the peoples of Jammu and Kashmir understood this and
responded with promptness last week-end. How heartening it would have
been for Indians to have received these stories rather than the
proverbial slinging matches that seek no answers nor offer lasting
solutions.

Though I was away in Ahmedabad busy with the gruelling task of
preparing ongoing arguments in the Zakia Jafri protest petition being
currently argued, on my return I spoke at length to a friend working
for years in Jammu and Kashmir. Poonch town and district are not far
from the border and there was intense cross border firing just outside
Poonch time along the LOC last Saturday and Sunday.

Braving the odds, risking their all, all residents of Poonch town,
Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs et all led an impressive All Faith Peace March
with the help of a proactive district administration. Peace and
Harmony is what we want they said, not the violence of words, gunshots
and bombs.

Another such magical moment was captured when representatives of three
trade bodies of the Valley – the Kashmir Chamber of Commerce (headed
by Hamid Punjabi), the Kashmir Federation of Industry, the Kashmir
Economic Alliance (Haji Yasin Khan) and the Joint Chambers of Commerce
across the LOC (Mubin Shah) flew down to Jammu early Monday morning
(August 12) on a secret sensitive mission. They met with YB Sharma and
Annil Suri of the Jammu Chamber of Commerce and in a rare moment of
warmth and solidarity presented a joint front. Three truckers from the
Valley had been attacked and but for this timely and sensitive
people’s intervention, state-wide violence would have escalated and
resulted.

The choice for Poonch, Jammu and the Valley, as for all of us, be it
in Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Faizabad or elsewhere, has always been quite
simple. In the build up to conflict, when violence actually occurs and
during the raw, bloodied aftermath, which path do we choose? Which
story do we tell? The path of peace, re-building, harmony and justice
or the path of deepened division and lasting hatred ?

The Hindu brought us this wonderful real life tale. The contrast of a
wedding in the macabre ambience of death and destruction on the
colourful festival of Eid-ul-Fitr. Last Friday, the family of Dr.
Ashish Sharma, who was getting married to Dr. Sonia Sharma, had to
join the mandap at the bride’s home to solemnise the wedlock. “It was
like crossing a hellhole,” Ashish’s father Naresh Kumar Sharma, a
retired Excise and Taxation Officer, said.
“We are just six Hindu families among 300 Muslim households in
Shaheedi Mohalla. Hindus and Muslims were fighting pitched battles out
in the town. Over a hundred vehicles, shops and hotels had been
torched. A Hindu had been shot dead. A Muslim had been burnt alive.
His charred body was lying near Chowgan Grounds till midnight. “We had
managed to perform the havan. As we were close to the ritual of
Telwai, following which even a death can’t force cancellation of a
marriage, we began requesting the pandit for postponement. But our
Muslim neighbours, who were attending the function, said that the
wedding should not be deferred and promised to escort the baraat
through all the Muslim neighbourhoods. Thereupon, we proceeded with
the remaining rituals and called up my in-laws to be ready for
receiving the baraat,” Ashish, who runs an Ayurvedic clinic, told The Hindu.

In the evening, 70 Muslims escorted Ashish’s baraat to protect it from
possible attacks. Later, SHO Deepak Pathania escorted the caravan to
its destination. “Our classmate from Srinagar, Dr. Zahoor, made it a
point to be present all through the wedding. Forty of our friends and
relatives from Jammu and Delhi turned back on our request by telephone
when the
riots broke out. Only 25 men and four women attended the baraat. We
sent back all other women under the protection of our Muslim
neighbours. Our in-laws had sent a couple of vehicles to ferry us from
Sarkot to Pochal,” Ashish said. After 24 hours, the just-married
couple returned without being harassed or attacked by anyone from
Pochal to Shaheedi Mohalla. District Health Officer Dr. Wajid, who was
among the 70-strong Muslim
escort, said: “We are proud to belong to the religion that teaches us
universal brotherhood. Prophet Mohammad has said the minorities are my
sacred amaanat for the Muslim Ummat. It’s our religious obligation to
protect them. Apart from that, we have been living together like one
family for centuries. We all treat Nareshji as our brother, Ashish as
our son and his sister as our daughter. How could a handful of
marauders affect our relationship and strong bondage?

“Whenever there’s a Janaza, they join us; whenever, there is a funeral
procession, we join them. We eat, wear and live alike. They speak our
language [Kashmiri]. The only difference is that they go to a temple
and we go to a mosque for worshipping the Almighty. That never makes
us different,” Dr. Wajid said.

In 2005, the prime minister Manmohan Singh made one of his finest
speeches. He said: “Jammu and Kashmir is the finest expression of the
idea of India. Diversity of faith, culture, geography and language has
traditionally never been a source of conflict. In fact, the people of
this state celebrated diversity and lived in harmony for most of the
time. We now need to revive those bonds and that spirit of
accommodation and mutual respect, even while we sit down, in good
faith, to resolve many of our genuine differences. My vision, I have
stated many times before, is to build a Naya Jammu and Kashmir which
is symbolised by peace, prosperity and people’s power. As I have often
said, real empowerment is not about slogans. Only when every man,
woman and child, from Ladakh to Lakhanpur and from Kargil to Kathua
through Kashmir, feels secure, in every sense of the word, can we
truly say that people have been empowered.”

As we stand on the 66th anniversary of Indian independence reaffirm
this great Indian vision of an inclusive, syncretic nationhood, or a
divisive one?