70-years of Alienation of Kashmiri people is a national disgrace

Let us not trivialise the Kashmir problem, its history and current situation. The solution for the Kashmir problem cannot come from abroad: not from the United Nations Security Council, or from anyone else. It must be the result of dialogue. It is the job of the Government of India to manage the integration of people of Kashmir with people of India and it is essential to discuss with people of Kashmir. Given that Kashmir is integral part of India; people of Kashmir are integral part of the collective called the people of India. There is nothing for us to discuss with Pakistan or someone else with regard to our people and our territory. 

In the first half of the 1st millennium, the Kashmir region became an important centre of Hinduism and later of Buddhism; later in the ninth century, Shaivism arose. Islamisation in Kashmir took place during 13th to 15th century and led to the eventual decline of the Kashmir Shaivism. However, the achievements of the previous civilizations were not lost.

In 1339, Shah Mir became the first Muslim ruler of Kashmir, inaugurating the Shah Mir Dynasty. For the next five centuries, Muslim monarchs ruled Kashmir, including the Mughal Empire, who ruled from 1586 until 1751, and the Afghan Durrani Empire, which ruled from 1747 until 1819. That year, the Sikhs, under Ranjit Singh, annexed Kashmir. In 1846, after the Sikh defeat in the First Anglo-Sikh War, and upon the purchase of the region from the British under the Treaty of Amritsar, the Raja of Jammu, Gulab Singh, became the new ruler of Kashmir. The rule of his descendants, under the suzerainty (or tutelage) of the British Crown, lasted until 1947. Maharaja Hari Singh, great-grandson of Gulab Singh, who had ascended the throne of Kashmir in 1925, was the reigning monarch in 1947 at the conclusion of British rule of the subcontinent and the subsequent partition of the British Indian Empire into the newly independent Union of India and the Dominion of Pakistan.

Following huge riots in Jammu, in October 1947, Pashtuns from Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province recruited by the Poonch rebels, invaded Kashmir. The tribesmen engaged in looting and killing along the way into a guerrilla campaign in a mission to frighten Hari Singh into submission. Maharaja Hari Singh appealed to the Government of India for assistance, and the Governor-General Lord Mountbatten agreed on the condition that the ruler accedes to India. The Instrument of Accession is a legal document executed by Hari Singh, ruler of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, on 26 October 1947. By executing this document under the provisions of the Indian Independence Act 1947, Maharaja Hari Singh agreed to accede to the Dominion of India. Once the Maharaja signed the Instrument of Accession, Indian soldiers entered Kashmir and drove the Pakistani-sponsored irregulars from all but a small section of the state.

Due to a botch up in handling of the foreign affairs and international relations by the then self anointed Indian political leadership comprising of Nehru and Mountbatten, and the aspiring new political leader of Kashmir - Sheikh Abdullah, former princely state which had diligently and legally acceded to India, became a disputed territory, and is now administered by three countries: India, Pakistan, and the People's Republic of China. Historically, Kashmir referred to the Kashmir Valley. Today, it denotes a larger area that includes the Indian-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir (which consists of Jammu, the Kashmir Valley, and Ladakh), the Pakistan-administered territories of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit–Baltistan, and the Chinese-administered regions of Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoram Tract.

The problem about lack of integration of Kashmiri people with rest of Indian people is not a "race struggle" or a "class struggle" as is made out to be by our wise people who were educated based on the Marxist political economy. We finally understood how wrong the whole ideology is.

Historically, Kashmiri people were always Indian people. Gaps or fissures among people were a consequence of the Mughal-Muslim rule which had led to creation of Indian-Muslims and then driven a wedge between the Indian-Hindus and the Indian Muslims. This fault line between the two Indian groups were not limited to just the Kashmir valley but had spread all over India. This fault line culminated into dismembering of India into Pakistan and the persisting Hindu-Muslim friction in modern India.

Mass integration of Kashmiri people with people of India could not have been a spontaneous process. It had to be something which was to be organized by the political elites of India and Kashmir. Mass integration creates cultural, social and political conflicts, shocks and tensions. It challenges the structure of society that has been gradually developed over centuries, maybe even millennia.

Individual integration by Raja Hari Singh was a matter of considerable individual courage and the product of an individual or family will. Mass integration is a totally different phenomenon. The gregarious nature of mass integration makes decision making much less important than it is during individual integration. Mass integration remains a dicey act, but mass integration increases the courage in an individual that is necessary for any integration. Mass integration also has the effect of changing the objectives of people who are integrating. The goal is no longer to be assimilated into the new world, but to strengthen one's old way of life.

What is strange with mass integration is the willingness of people who are integrating to benefit only from the advantages available to them. Also at work, often, is the will to extend their home world to their host country and to transform it gradually according to their own tradition. Such a transformation is not the primary intention of every one among those who are integrating; but this intention encourages political or religious activists.

The mass integration that we should have witnessed did not involve the individual, but the crowd, the collective, the group. Unfortunately, some individuals monopolised the process – by posturing for conditional integration and grant of special rights to themselves. This caused polarisation and hardening of the other extreme pole where some other individuals opposed the integration and advocated secession and separation. Sympathy towards the individual posturing makes sense only with individual migration. An individual Kashmiri is not the culprit; he is a victim, and not just a victim of the tragic situation in his own state, but the victim of the wrong assumptions of the multi-culturalist Indian elites who are supposedly overseeing the mass integration of Kashmiri people into India but do not even hesitate for a moment to actually mass alienate those people. Crowd, mass behaviour does not deserve the same consideration. It is the Indian and Kashmiri political elites, who have been the biggest stumbling block in way of people integration.

Both the Kashmiri-Indians and Non-Kashmiri-Indians should stand in the shoes of the other side, be able to find a solution. No masterminding from abroad.

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