manlion
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India was not going to be a mirror image of Pakistan, a land created for a single religion. Instead pluralism was to be India’s creed, and a secular India laid claim to Kashmir by promising justice for all faiths. But today if secular India is replaced by a de facto Hindu Rashtra does the very premise of Kashmir’s accession begin to look flawed?
Kashmir is ours, but Kashmiris are jihadis, thunder internet nationalists signaling that they prefer the real estate over the inhabitants. Today Kashmir is a cantonment, patrolled by lakhs of security forces, its residents policed 24×7, many of its youth blinded by pellet guns, stone-pelters poised in bloody conflict with India’s army. India’s secular project has failed in Kashmir and Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s Two-Nation Theory (of Hindus and Muslims being two nations who simply cannot live together) looks triumphant
The image of a Kashmiri strapped to an army jeep is already viral, a textbook symbol of individual powerlessness against a military machine, comparable in its starkness to the lone figure confronting a tank in Tiananmen Square. Both army and protesters are tragically brutalised: exhausted troops have been pushed to the brink by wave upon wave of furiously protesting youth brought up on a daily regimen of death, imprisonment and perceptions of injustice.
In fact, the crisis in Kashmir shows India’s inability to accept real diversity. Muslims are only acceptable when they’re in small numbers, not when they exist in large numbers as in UP or form the majority as in Kashmir. Azaadi’s not a political sentiment anymore but an Islamic identity-centred ideological war against the perceived Hindu Rashtra.
For Pakistan, Kashmir remains Partition’s unfinished agenda, their hatred of ‘Hindu rule’ has spawned a terror machine. Yet the Indian state too has never been able to fully accept the citizenship of the Kashmiri Muslim. Jat protests became violent, the Hardik Patel-led protest led to the torching of homes. Were pellet guns used in either Haryana or Gujarat? No, because unlike Jats or Gujaratis, every Kashmiri protester is seen as a closet jihadist or an agent of Pakistan.
Similarly Hindutva nationalism seeks to subsume caste and regional identities into an overarching Hindu fold. The beef eater, the rationalist, the slogan-shouting student are unacceptable to this nationalism. So is the Kashmiri Muslim.
Kashmiri students face daily discrimination in universities in the rest of India. The shocking case of Mohammad Rafiq Shah wrongly imprisoned for 12 years is only another example of how the Indian state looks on the Kashmiri Muslim: guilty even after being proved innocent. Delivering governance and justice on the ground in Kashmir has always been the ultimate litmus test for India’s credentials as a secular society. It’s a test that India has failed.
Today gau rakshaks who reflect Hindu rage on the one side and stone-palters who reflect Muslim grievance reveal a brutal divide. The Kashmir crisis is a comprehensive collapse of India’s secular project as a whole. Perhaps Jinnah was right all along. Perhaps the Mahatma dreamed an impossible dream. Perhaps Nehru’s idea of India was only a utopia.
http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/bloody-mary/jinnahs-2-nation-theory-triumphs-in-kashmir/
Kashmir is ours, but Kashmiris are jihadis, thunder internet nationalists signaling that they prefer the real estate over the inhabitants. Today Kashmir is a cantonment, patrolled by lakhs of security forces, its residents policed 24×7, many of its youth blinded by pellet guns, stone-pelters poised in bloody conflict with India’s army. India’s secular project has failed in Kashmir and Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s Two-Nation Theory (of Hindus and Muslims being two nations who simply cannot live together) looks triumphant
The image of a Kashmiri strapped to an army jeep is already viral, a textbook symbol of individual powerlessness against a military machine, comparable in its starkness to the lone figure confronting a tank in Tiananmen Square. Both army and protesters are tragically brutalised: exhausted troops have been pushed to the brink by wave upon wave of furiously protesting youth brought up on a daily regimen of death, imprisonment and perceptions of injustice.
In fact, the crisis in Kashmir shows India’s inability to accept real diversity. Muslims are only acceptable when they’re in small numbers, not when they exist in large numbers as in UP or form the majority as in Kashmir. Azaadi’s not a political sentiment anymore but an Islamic identity-centred ideological war against the perceived Hindu Rashtra.
For Pakistan, Kashmir remains Partition’s unfinished agenda, their hatred of ‘Hindu rule’ has spawned a terror machine. Yet the Indian state too has never been able to fully accept the citizenship of the Kashmiri Muslim. Jat protests became violent, the Hardik Patel-led protest led to the torching of homes. Were pellet guns used in either Haryana or Gujarat? No, because unlike Jats or Gujaratis, every Kashmiri protester is seen as a closet jihadist or an agent of Pakistan.
Similarly Hindutva nationalism seeks to subsume caste and regional identities into an overarching Hindu fold. The beef eater, the rationalist, the slogan-shouting student are unacceptable to this nationalism. So is the Kashmiri Muslim.
Kashmiri students face daily discrimination in universities in the rest of India. The shocking case of Mohammad Rafiq Shah wrongly imprisoned for 12 years is only another example of how the Indian state looks on the Kashmiri Muslim: guilty even after being proved innocent. Delivering governance and justice on the ground in Kashmir has always been the ultimate litmus test for India’s credentials as a secular society. It’s a test that India has failed.
Today gau rakshaks who reflect Hindu rage on the one side and stone-palters who reflect Muslim grievance reveal a brutal divide. The Kashmir crisis is a comprehensive collapse of India’s secular project as a whole. Perhaps Jinnah was right all along. Perhaps the Mahatma dreamed an impossible dream. Perhaps Nehru’s idea of India was only a utopia.
http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/bloody-mary/jinnahs-2-nation-theory-triumphs-in-kashmir/
