Kishtwar is burning not just because Pakistan has ulterior motives and Hurriyat elements are on the rise in Jammu & Kashmir. It’s as much the result of the State Government’s divisive vote-bank politics
Mob violence and arson on Eid in Kishtwar, Jammu & Kashmir, have shocked consciences and reopened wounds of competing nationalisms, mutual religious insecurities and communal polarisation. The carefully constructed multicultural mosaic of the State has been exposed as brittle and inflammable by the group clashes which claimed three lives and left dozens injured.
The ripple effects have convulsed not just the Jammu region, of which Kishtwar is one of the districts, but spread to Kashmir Valley via shutdowns and protests by partisan actors with multiple versions and grievances. Not since the controversy over the temporary land acquisition for the Amarnath pilgrimage in 2008 has a conflagration of this severity occurred between civilian communities in the State. As was the case then, the repercussions of mayhem in broad daylight in Kishtwar will be felt on electoral politics and identity-based social cleavages that have roiled India’s most sensitive State since inception.
Separatist agenda
Rioting in Jammu & Kashmir is unlike communal conflicts that erupt elsewhere in the country. As the bone of contention in the historical dispute between India and Pakistan, nothing untoward that happens in the State is purely domestic or a routine scrap. Spasmodic shocks in the Valley reverberate throughout the South Asian landmass, heighten and reinvent old animosities, and lay the foundation for more trouble in the future. These episodes sustain a vicious cycle where grudges pile on and reincarnate in fresh contexts.
With an estimated population breakup of 60 per cent Muslims and 40 per cent Hindus, Kishtwar has bad memories of small-scale looting and vandalism against shops owned mostly by Hindu minorities in 1993, 1998, 2003 and 2008. The occupational division in Kishtwar’s markets is one of mostly Hindu traders and Muslim customers. The inter-linkage through commerce and civic associations, which are bound by a common Kishtwari sub-culture and poetic heritage, looks solid except when mishaps tear it apart.
One of the main causes for the widening fissures in Kishtwar in recent years is the bid by pro-Pakistan and pro-independence separatists from the Valley to more aggressively extend their politics to the Muslim-majority districts of Jammu. Kishtwar is among only four districts in the Jammu region that have Muslim majorities. While Muslims of the Jammu area are ethno-linguistically different from those of Kashmir Valley, the Islamisation agenda of anti-India separatists in the State has caused a convergence of ideological stances along religious lines.
The moves by the anti-India Hurriyat Conference to “revive lost connections” between Kashmiri Muslims and their coreligionists in the Chenab Valley (of which Kishtwar is the crown jewel), and the traditional ‘Greater Kashmir’ sentiment which counts Chenab as an extension of the Valley, have politicised young Muslims in Kishtwar around the pro-Pakistan and pro-independence platforms.
Just as the mosque is the main mobilising institution for separatism in the Valley, the Muslim-majority districts of the Jammu region are witnessing closer coordination among separatists, local imams, Pakistani agent provocateurs and jihadis. India’s intelligence agencies are tracking networks of “on ground workers” (OGWs) of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) who are “mixed up with locals” to fuel hatred for Hindus.
When jihadi infiltration across the line of Control (loC) between India and Pakistan dips seasonally, these OGWs spur Jammu’s Muslim community to take up mass civil disobedience and coordinate their agitation with brethren in the Valley.
The potent combination of hardline Islamic clerics and their partners from the Valley and Pakistan has converted the Hindu-Muslim equation into a full-fledged tussle between Indian nationalism and ‘Greater Kashmir’ secessionism. If one examines the politics of a Kishtwar mullah called Farooq Ahmad Kitchloo, who leads the prayers in the local Jamia Masjid, it would be evident that the clerical class of Jammu’s Muslim community has radicalised congregations. According to local sources who cannot be named because of safety concerns, this imam had urged his followers to carry shotguns in the Eid procession that culminated in the ugly rioting and deaths on August 9.
I spoke to eyewitnesses from Kishtwar about the behaviour of the protagonists of the Eid procession and learnt that they were blatantly political rather than religious or spiritual. The sloganeering was along by-now familiar lines of ‘long live Pakistan’ and
‘Indian Dogs Go Home’. The Hurriyat’s fundamentalist leader, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, had earlier ensured through his operatives on the ground in Kishtwar that the Eid gatherers would also display posters of what the separatists consider to be martyrs wrongfully done to death by Indian authorities —
Maqbool Bhat and Afzal Guru.
Far from being a peaceful march through Hindu villages en route to the Kishtwar town centre, this Eid parade was outright provocative and designed to taunt supporters of India’s control over Jammu & Kashmir. local Kishtwaris also told this author that it is not uncommon for some of the ringleaders of hardcore elements in this crowd to loudly celebrate Pakistan’s Independence Day, August 14, every year as their own. The bigotry is so deep-rooted that one must do a psychoanalytical study of Kishtwar-based Hurriyat representatives and Islamists like Abdul Qayoom Mattu and Syed Shabir Ahmed (both arrested by the police on charges of instigating people to violence on Eid) to gauge the potent mix of religion and politics.
Secular manipulation
Besides Islamisation at the grassroots, the tragic communal violence in Kishtwar owed much to the machinations of elected politicians of the State who love a good riot like few others. lacking cross-religious unifying personalities, politics in the State has veered towards Yugoslavia-style mobilisation by zealots through engineered and orchestrated acts of humiliation of one’s own kindred by the ‘other’ side.
The colossal administrative failure of the State Government to rush in security forces on time into Kishtwar or order those already present to stop arsonists from going berserk for nine hours on August 9 has met universal condemnation. It is a supreme irony that the Minister of State for Home Affairs, Sajjad Kitchloo, was there on the spot throughout the gory day in Kishtwar and did nothing to halt the indiscriminate attacks. That arsonists could access weapons from an ammunition shop owned by Kitchloo and use them wantonly, while policemen watched mutely, belie his claims that “secularism is the bedrock of my political ideology”. His ex post facto resignation has come as scanty solace to civilians who lost loved ones and property.
Why did the State Government fail to nip the violence in the bud before it snowballed into a stormIJ This side of the story is ever-so-familiar in the annals of India’s theoretically sound but practically misused doctrine of secularism. Kitchloo’s ruling National Conference (NC) has bungled governance in Jammu & Kashmir since 2009. Bigwigs of the NC are wary of being routed by their arch rivals from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in the coming Assembly elections. As per the crooked calculation of so-called secularists of the NC, a violent dustup along Hindu versus Muslim lines, in which the ruling party is seen to be sympathetic to Muslims, would help consolidate a crucial vote-bank and keep the PDP at bay and put Hindu nationalist parties out of contention for seats in the Assembly.
The coalition bane
The halcyon days of Sheikh Abdullah, the grandfather of Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, single-handedly sweeping elections in the State are long gone. The contemporary imperative of coalitions to obtain a majority in the Assembly is, in one sense, the glue that binds parties from the Valley with those in Jammu and ladakh. But this coalition structure has also hindered sound governance and stoked religious polarisation.
The NC is replaying the worst forms of patronage politics and ‘lite communalism’ knowing that its power-sharing coalition with the Congress entails ceding the chief ministership to the latter if the two allies jointly win the approaching elections. The thinking within the NC’s top brass is that it will “lose” either way this time, that is, if the PDP wins or even if the NC wins in tandem with the Congress. Why govern and pre-emptively douse fires when the incentive structure of the coalition musical chairs in the State is loaded against the NCIJ
Unlike instances where coalition uncertainty can force parties to deliver on promises to people, the unusual situation of the State as a hotbed for terrorism and foreign intrigue has produced a convoluted alliance politics. Politicians simultaneously swear allegiance to the Indian Constitution and stoke forces that want to destroy the Indian ideal of coexistence of different communities.
The original sin
Pro-independence and pro-Pakistan residents of Jammu & Kashmir argue that the riots in Kishtwar were caused mainly due to building resentment of local Muslims against harassment by the Village Defence Committee (VDC) militias hailing from Hindu-majority rural areas surrounding Kishtwar town. Separatists in the Valley and their local allies in Muslim-majority districts of Jammu accuse VDCs of committing human rights abuses and “social crimes” against Muslims, which in turn force the latter to retaliate.
Kishtwar is undoubtedly heavily militarised due to VDCs as well as superior-armed jihadis trained in Pakistan. Although separatists claim that terrorists have melted away, not a month passes in Kishtwar without some cell of lashkar-e-Tayyeba or its affiliates being busted by the Army for plotting attacks.
If VDCs were disbanded or disarmed, separatists predict that all Hindu-Muslim tensions in the Jammu region would dissipate. But minorities of Kishtwar are petrified of the fate that the Hindu minorities of Valley (the Pandits) faced in 1990 when they were ethnically cleansed and driven out of their ancestral homes. One young Kishtwari Hindu I spoke to asked balefully whether, in the absence of VDCs, “would we not face the same fate as the PanditsIJ”
The original sin of the State against the Pandits is intrinsically connected to the strong faith of minorities in the need for VDCs in Kishtwar, Doda, Poonch and Rajouri districts. The warped secularism that has reigned in Jammu & Kashmir has never assured minorities of equal rights and protection, despite the humungous presence of the Army and state police forces across the State. The post-riot melee in Kishtwar has shown how the State paraphernalia is not necessarily always loaded against only one religious community. The utter incompetence and criminal collusion of the State Government in abetting the crisis in Kishtwar leaves minorities even more fearful and dependent on VDCs.
long walk to peace
Kishtwar’s famed civil society and silent majority may gradually reassert themselves through peace marches and rebuild trust between communities. Some kind of ‘normalcy’ could emerge through the quotidian matrix of economic exchanges. But the ghosts of 1990, the push by the Hurriyat and their Pakistani patrons deeper into Jammu, the alienation fuelled by the Army’s counter-insurgency, and the electoral games and gimmicks of self-professed secular politicians leave the State in a deep structural morass where abnormal is the norm.
On paper, the solutions are crystal clear: Depoliticise religious ceremonies, develop a robust law enforcement machinery to deter miscreants, create inclusive local institutions like schools and literary associations where all communities can mingle, deliver justice against armed assailants of all shades, and overcome the poisonous logic of Partition that marks people by religion. Ask Kishtwaris if any one of these ideas will work and they will roll their eyes in disbelief.
The writer is a Professor and Dean at the Jindal School of International Affairs