Why Abdul Qadir's ghost is having the last laugh in Kashmir
The people are still led by the Pied Pipers who are alien to Jammu and Kashmir's inclusive cultural ethos and pluralist political history.
The ghost of Abdul Qadir, which haunts Kashmir even today, is having the last laugh. A non-state actor, a non-Kashmiri, your quintessential Pied Piper making the townspeople dance to his tunes and his cause, he led them all the way to stone pelting, protesting, killing and turning them against their own, into their watery graves.
As a state, we collectively grieved, along with our Maharaja, the 21 people who died on July 13, 1931. Eighty-five years later, the region still bears the spectre of his ghost and the grieving has not ceased.
The cause and effect of July 13 is lost on the people it affects the most. The day is marked every year but the events leading up to the unfortunate incidents that followed, remain shrouded in half-truths.
The understanding of the far-reaching effects and the precedents that were set that day are not understood in all their entirety. Misguided are those who thought it was a Kashmiri cause that people rose for that summer of 1931. The cause was never a Kashmiri one. Not then, not now.
In 1929, the Indian subcontinent was calling for Poorna Swaraj. In this backdrop was Jammu and Kashmir, the largest and the only princely state which remained proudly independent, refusing to give in to the imperial designs of the British.
The British had been trying hard to settle their residents in Jammu and Kashmir. They were successful in doing so in 1889. Then, in 1925, Maharaja Hari Singh ascended and immediately asked the Britsh resident in Srinagar to remove the Union Jack from the Residency Building.
He also made sure that the resident stayed in Sialkot in winter, when the durbar moved to Jammu. Maharaja Hari Singh insisted on asserting the kingdom's complete sovereignty by ordering the use of only the state flag in Gilgit.
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| Crowds resorted to stone pelting, setting fire to the police lines. (Reuters) |
The Maharaja became a further cause of rankle when during the First Round Table Conference in London in 1930, he stood for India's position of honour and equality in the British Commonwealth of Nations.
A Maharaja who refused to toe their line could be best broken with the policy of "divide and rule", a tactic which the Britishers had mastered already and Jammu and Kashmir became their latest playing field.
Thanks to the active abetment of the British, the Muslims from the Jammu region, Mirpur, Poonch and Muzaffarabad started coming under the influence of communal politicians of Punjab.
After the First Round Table Conference, the media in Punjab had suddenly and curiously woken up to the dominant Muslim character of Jammu and Kashmir and the fact that it was being ruled by a Hindu dynasty.
Not far away in Kashmir, the Muslim Reading Club and some of its ambitious members began nurturing communal and seditious ideas.
Ironically, the Club comprised of newly-educated Muslim youth, who were a product of the Maharaja's visionary and progressive educational policies. He had made education free and compulsory and taken many steps to especially encourage his Muslim subjects – such as making Urdu the official language of the state.
He gave liberal scholarships to those who wanted to pursue their education in Indian universities and many of the Reading Club members had returned home with degrees from Aligarh Muslim University. One of the leading members of the Muslim Reading Club, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, who managed to land the job of a teacher, despite severe limitations of a state on the brink of a famine, seeing the opportunity, rose against the very hand that had given him education and a chance at a better life.
On June 21, 1931, a meeting was organised by the Muslim Reading Club at the holy shrine Khanqah of Shah Hamadan to elect a representative body of Kashmiri Muslims, as suggested by Maharaja Hari Singh, in order to submit a memorandum of their grievances and demands to him.
Out of the 11 nominated representatives, seven were from Kashmir and four from Jammu. Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah was one of the representatives. On this fateful day, Abdul Qadir, a non-state subject, a non-Kashmiri, made a seditious speech after the Friday prayers in the precincts of this holy shrine. He had suddenly entered the state as a cook of a British major and this was clearly a cover-up for his actual role of a British agent.
As recorded in Tarikh-i-Hurriyat, this agent provocateur in his speech addressing the Muslims, asked them to use greater force, relying on their own strength to wage a relentless war against oppression. He pointed towards the palace and incited the crowds to raze it to the ground. He said, "We have no machine guns but have plenty of stones and brickbats".
He was prosecuted on the charges of sedition, in the court of sessions judge, but due to the resentment of the locals, the hearing was shifted to central jail, Srinagar. The local Kashmiris gathered into frenzied mobs demanding the release of a non-state actor, who had not contributed to the state in any positive manner and was far removed from its reality and welfare.
The locals fell an easy prey to external conspiracy.
Despite the precautionary measures taken by the administration, a large mob stormed the jail demanding entry. This could not be legally permitted and even the two Muslim lawyers, who were representing the accused, pleaded with the crowds to leave. This further enraged the crowds and they resorted to stone pelting, setting fire to the police lines.
Water, electricity and telephone connections were cut off by the crowds leading to rioting inside the jails. The police force was called in and when the district magistrate's orders to disperse were defied, a desperate police force opened fire. This did break up the crowds but they went on to loot Hindu shops at Safakadal, Ganji and Nawakadal. This was followed by atrocities committed against the Hindus living there.
A people and a region which prides itself in its unique identity, its Kashmiriyat and fiercely stands for non-interference of the non-state subjects in its internal affairs, ironically fell prey to an outsider.
They rose for a cause which was never theirs to begin with, committing crimes against their own Hindu brethren and doing great disservice to themselves and their future generations by starting a precedent which has not seen an end yet. They played right into the hands of a non-state actor, and upcoming local politicians who milked the situation to their advantage.
The Kashmiris still remain an instrument in the hands of the same forces, unwise in their choice of leadership and influence. The beautiful culture that is Kashmiriyat suddenly saw it acceptable to use a place of faith and worship as a pulpit for inciting hatred and leasing communal forces into a pluralistic society after every Friday prayer.
They turned against the Dogras who were serving the state for a century. They turned against a Maharaja who had declared that justice was his religion. All the Dogra Maharajas had worked hard for the development of Kashmir.
Amongst other things, there was economic development due to road connectivity, the construction of the Ranbir Canal, setting up of silk industries, the passing of Land Alienation Act which benefited the tenants who were mostly Muslims.
Independent of the British, the state had its own Ranbir Dand Vidhi. Fair and just systems like a panchayat court which had eight members, four each from Hindu and Muslim communities.
How easily did the Kashmiris forget that it was the then Yuvraj Hari Singh's agricultural policies which saved the Valley from the clutches of a severe famine in 1921. The people of the Valley had acknowledged him as a saviour when he ordered the release of foodgrains for the relief of his people.
In 1921, to further worsen a tense situation, the British had facilitated Muslim Jathas from Punjab to enter the state through Mirpur under the pretext of supporting the Muslims of Kashmir. This trend has only taken a worse turn with the infiltration of foreign mercenaries crossing the porous borders to terrorise.
Why is it so easy to influence and provoke? The external hand is easy to spot but it rules because of weakness within. Kashmiris remain ignorant of facts and live in a false reality.
Those who rise for Kashmir on the behest of non-State forces that are playing nothing but politics, are actually being manipulated and are fooling none other than themselves. The skewed perceptions have only been self-destructive.
A speech by Abdul Qadir then blinded the Kashmiris and changed their thinking. An ideology, which was hostile to its local environment, was given birth to so many years ago and it has only continued to grow under the patronage of both non-state actors and state actors, causing much suffering to everybody.
As a Dogra, I deeply regret the lives lost but I am also pained that nothing has changed in the many years that have passed. The Kashmiris mostly remain victims of the same policy and are still unable to distinguish between apna and paraya.
The National Conference was quick to declare July 13 as Martyrs Day, but they never looked into the mysterious disappearance of Abdul Qadir immediately after the unfolding of the untoward incident.
The incident was a result of conspiracy and it became a convenient tool for upward political mobility for many. The unholy nexus of politics and religion reared its ugly head and Jammu and Kashmir has still not been successful in severing it. We are still led by the Pied Pipers who are alien to Jammu and Kashmir's cultural ethos and political history.
The state is another game for them to play with and its people objects to be played against each other. It is time to remove the blinders and see the reality which is staring at us in our faces.
The inability to shake off the leeches who are sucking the state dry off its wealth in people, pluralistic culture and resources will lead to another hundred years of despair.
It is time to send the Pied Pipers packing and taking control of our destinies. Let's put the ghost of Abdul Qadir to rest forever.