Polemics over Pulwama

Rajesh Ramachandran

The more Meghalaya Governor Tathagata Roy continues in office and attacks Kashmiris, the greater the damage to the nation. Unfortunately, his is not a lone voice. He merely lends a face, a name and the stamp of constitutional authority to a divisive agenda. The ‘Kashmiris as terrorists’ equation is a deeply dividing political ploy, which frames the Pulwama attack in a communal context instead of what it really is — a terrorist attack backed by an inimical neighbour. The Pulwama attack has suddenly replaced Ram temple or triple talaq as a political tool to gather mobs in the name of Hindutva. The processions exhibiting muscular nationalism being taken out in the wake of the Pulwama attack in residential colonies in many parts of North India have a communal ring to their slogans. The question now being asked is not why such anger over one terrorist attack, but whether this would turn into a landslide support for the BJP in the General Election round the corner.

Pulwama has been so completely politicised and communalised that the primary Opposition party feels compelled to question the Prime Minister for hugging the visiting Saudi Arabian Crown Prince. The underlying communal message is not lost on anyone. Sure, the Saudi prince chose to visit Pakistan before touching down in New Delhi, but the reaction would not have been the same had it been a European leader. The entire polity is allowing itself to get communalised. The Kashmiri terrorist is no longer just a terrorist but a Muslim, and all victims of terrorist attacks are being seen as Islam’s victims. There cannot be a worse proposition for a diverse, multi-religious nation than this agenda. When a Kashmiri is boycotted because he or she is a Muslim by a person occupying a high constitutional office, it is almost as if the British policy of a separate electorate for Muslims — which led to the creation of Pakistan — is getting re-enacted again, this time with the active help of Hindutva politicians.

Sure, religious secessionism and the two-nation theory are at the heart of the Kashmiri insurgency. It is impossible for India to accept another Partition, particularly when Hindus and Muslims live together all over the country. So, any attempt to divide the nation yet again in the name of religion will not get contained in just one province of the country. What is applicable to Kashmir will be applicable to the rest of the country. In that context, the Kashmiri religious secessionism has to be defeated ideologically, politically and militarily; whereas isolating Kashmiris because of their religion will only exacerbate their alienation and help in strengthening their resolve to claim separate nationhood in the name of that very religion.

Have these so-called Hindutva ideologues ever thought about the politicians of the Valley who carry the Indian flag, the policemen on the ground who procure valuable intelligence to defeat the next terror attack, the local bureaucrats who run the government, and those who join the armed forces to fight their own neighbours and the foreign jihadis? Of course not! With just one tweet, all of these Kashmiris have been equated to their own enemies. And all of them, already under pressure at home, have lost their credibility. While their wards, studying in Dehradun or Chandigarh or Gurugram or Jaipur, are forced to return home, they still have to fight the Islamist terrorists every day, all day. Our ruling dispensation and dominant political shouting matches have become so shrill that there is no interlude of sanity to listen to the wails of an ordinary Kashmiri caught among the foreign jihadi, Pakistani spymasters and Hindutva zealots.

India is not Israel. We are a composite culture or a compost dump of communities, where the more divisive we get the more difficult it is to forge a nation. A Pulwama may win an election for some but at what cost? There is every possibility of an Islamist radical from Karnataka or Assam triggering a similar attack. How would that attack get framed? Well, cartoonists have a great way of explaining these complex situations. R Prasad, in one of his recent cartoons in The Economic Times posed the question: Why should Kashmiris be treated differently from Chhattisgarhias? The biggest attack on the CRPF happened in April 2010 at Chintalnar village in Dantewada in Chhattisgarh, when 76 paramilitary soldiers were brutally killed by the Maoists. There was no exhibition of anger or public outpouring of grief or disbursal of relief by Bollywood to the families of the martyrs. In fact, they were not even being hailed as martyrs across the nation. Why?

Former PM Manmohan Singh had termed Maoists the gravest threat to national security. In fact, they have a history of undermining the nation even in 1971, when they supported Pakistan because China — their source of all wisdom — was supporting the rape and murder of lakhs of people of East Pakistan. Maoists are the ones who have always supported religious secessionism on various campuses, including the JNU. They made Afzal Guru fashionable and have continuously extended legal help to secessionist terrorists in jail. They had also openly worked for the Tamil Tigers all through the last Eelam war. Since universities have always been recruitment centres for all kinds of spy agencies, some of them could even have been working for one agency or the other.

Yet, they were never collectively treated as Andhraites (most of their leaders are from Andhra) or Telugus or Brahmins or Velamas because of Ganapathy’s caste or of Kishenji’s. Someone who wants to overthrow the Constitution should be dealt with as an insurgent. Let not his innocent neighbour be targeted, lest there should be no one to protect the neighbourhood.