Ideology of Hindutva is Sheer Fascism: Swami Agnivesh

By Yoginder Sikand           November 21, 2008                           Muslim India 

Swami Agnivesh is the President of the Sarvadeshik Arya Pratinidhi Sabha ('World Council of the Arya Samaj'). A well-known social activist, he has played a leading role in the struggle against communalism in India , including against Hindutva terrorism, about which he talks in this interview with Yoginder Sikand.

Q: How do you explain the recent wave of bomb blasts that have taken place across India ? How can this dangerous phenomenon be tackled?

A: Clearly, behind such attacks is a certain ideology at work whose major objective is to create hatred between the different communities. That, rather than just killing innocent people, is the real objective of those behind these dastardly and cowardly acts. These forces, who could be both internal as well as external, and who could include extremist Hindus, extremist Muslims or others, clearly do not want people of the different communities to live in peace with each other.

Among the various steps that should be taken to counter this form of terrorism is for people to isolate the forces within their own respective religious communities that seek to foment communal hatred. If a Hindu name emerges as being behind a certain terrorist attack, it is for Hindus, in particular, to fiercely condemn such a person or organization, not just as a criminal but also as anti-Hindu. And the same holds true for how Muslims should respond if the person or outfit behind a terror attack bears a Muslim name. Terrorism cannot be tackled simply by the government machinery without this sort of social or public mobilization against it. In this, it is particularly crucial that we desist from branding or associating any particular community with terrorism, because terrorism does not know any barrier of community. It is wrong to associate t with any religion. It is also crucial, as I suggested, that if a person claiming to belong to a particular community engages in an act of terror, those others who also belong to the same community must fiercely condemn his act as not just being a crime but also a gross violation of the religious teachings of the community in question. Only then can these elements be denied any social sanction or support.

And this is now beginning to happen. A number of leading Muslim clerics have issued fatwas against any form of terrorism, no matter what the religion of the perpetrator. And so I would like Hindu leaders to also begin to say the same thing. Recently, I issued a statement on behalf of the Arya Samaj appealing to all Hindu religious leaders not to support those Hindutva activists who have been accused in the Modassa and Malegaon terror attack cases. I appealed to them to expose Hinduvta terrorists, for they are giving the entire Hindu community a bad name. I pointed out that numerous Muslim ulema or religious leaders have organized mass rallies and have issued fatwas condemning all forms of terrorism, including that engaged in by self-styled jihadist groups. Recently, I attended a huge inter-faith conference in Madrid to denounce all forms of terrorism, which was organized by the King of Saudi Arabia. I suggested that Hindu religious leaders should also do the same and forcefully condemn all forms of terrorism, including that done in the name of Hinduism or by Hindus, as anti-Hindu, anti-religion and anti-human.

I made the same point at the National Integration Council meeting that was recently held in Delhi , where I said that leading Indian maulvis are issuing fatwas against all forms of terrorism and organizing mass rallies, some of which I have also addressed, to denounce it, and I asked why Hindu religious leaders were not doing the same.

Q: What has been the result of this appeal of yours to Hindu religious leaders? Are they coming out to forcefully condemn terror engaged in by Hindutva groups, just as many Muslim clerics are now openly speaking against terrorism done in the name of Islam?

A: Unfortunately, many Hindu religious leaders continue to remain silent on this. To remain silent on such a heinous matter can, in some cases, be construed as tacit approval. But I am still making efforts to make them realize the gravity of the situation.

Q: In recent years there is a growing tendency in some circles to associate Islam, in particular, with terrorism. How do you see this development?

A: I think this is completely unfair. It is a product of the imperialist agenda of certain Western powers that need to create the spectre of radical Islamism as allegedly posing an immense threat to the West so as to help the West justify its continuing hegemony, its global power and its control over West Asian oil resources. Using this warped logic, and without any evidence, America has attacked and devastated Afghanistan and Iraq and seems to be bent on taking on the whole Muslim world. George Bush openly calls for a 'crusade', and thus seeks to lend credence to the thoroughly bankrupt theory of the 'clash of civilisations'. The Western media has been forcefully propagating this thesis, and now, especially after 9/11, large sections of the Indian media are also parroting the same bogus theory.

To repeat, to seek to associate terrorism with any religion or community is completely wrong. I think, and I have said this publicly, that George Bush is the world's No. 1 terrorist. It was the Western establishment that, along with its client regimes, created the Taliban and armed Saddam, and the Bin Laden family is a business partner of the Bush family. In the same way, the Congress, under Indira Gandhi, propped up Bhindaranwala, but he later turned into a Frankenstein. Likewise, the first victim of terrorism in free India , Mahatma Gandhi, was killed by a Hindu, not a Muslim. It was not a Muslim who killed Indira Gandhi or Rajiv Gandhi. And so you can easily see through the falsity of the slogan, 'All Muslims may not be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims' that is so frequently mouthed today.

Q: What do you have to say about the recent revelations about some Hindutva groups being involved in fomenting terrorism in India ?

A: Yes, this phenomenon exists and the media is gradually bringing it to light. Hindutva ideologues have been consistently seeking to equate Islam and Muslims with terrorism but now that evidence is surfacing of the close involvement of radical Hindutva outfits in terrorism they are saying that terrorism must not be sought to be associated with any religion. But this is precisely what they were doing all this while with regard to Islam. They are saying that the so-called Sadhvi who has been arrested in connection with the Malegaon blasts should not be called a 'terrorist'. Rather, they say, she should be termed as an 'accused' because the charges against her have not been as yet proved by the courts. But if that is the case, then why do they refer to the Muslims nabbed by the police, but against whom the courts have not passed their verdicts, as 'Islamic terrorists', without demanding the same sort of proof? You can call them 'suspects' or 'accused', but why jump to the conclusion that all of them are actually terrorists without the charges against them being proven?

There is ample evidence to show that Hindutva groups have been involved in planning and executing acts of terror, but, unfortunately, for its own political purposes, the Government has done little to curb this and has sought to play this down. Nor has the media given this the serious attention that it deserves. Such terror attacks obviously help the Hindutva lobby as they widen the Hindu-Muslim chasm, which, in turn, makes it easier to play on Hindu sentiments in order to win Hindu votes. One cannot rule out the possibility of Hindutva elements in being behind some of the other blasts besides the ones in Malegaon, Modassa, Nanded, Kanpur and so on that are now coming to light. Blasts could have been done by any group, Hindu or Muslim or whatever, but it is wrong to jump to a conclusion without proper investigation.

But let me come back to the Malegaon terror case. I recently held a press conference where I pointed out that a television channel, Sudarshan TV, which is very close to the RSS, reported the Malegaon bomb blast almost as soon as it had happened, before other, large channels reported it. This might be additional evidence of Hindutva radicals being behind the terror attack. And, of course, other possible evidence is also emerging. If the so-called Sadhvi and the army officer and others who are accused are found to be guilty, they must be socially ostracized by the Hindu society. If this so-called Sadhvi, dressed in the saffron robes of a sanyasin, is really involved in this blast it is a matter of great shame for Hindus. Hindutva terrorists are a blot on the name of Hindu society. It seems that they have taken upon themselves the task of giving Hinduism a bad name, to give it the shape of terrorism. In actual fact, they are enemies of Hinduism and the Hindu society. They want to divide and thereby destroy the country, using terror for building their vote-banks.

Q: Do you think there is any ideological link between radical Hindutva and terrorism? 

A: The roots of the notion of Hindutva go back to Savarkar, who coined the term in the 1920s. Before that, he appeared to champion Hindu-Muslim solidarity, but following his stay in jail in the Andaman Islands his views completely changed, and he then started claiming that the Hindus and Muslims of India were, in effect, two different nations. He appealed to Hindus to militarise themselves. He argued that those who did not follow religions that were born in India were not real patriots or genuine Indians. And so, according to this poisonous thesis, Muslims and Christians were to be considered as not true Indians, deserving of, at best, second-grade citizenship.

This thesis of Hindutva gave a handle to the proponents of a separate Muslim state of Pakistan . I am convinced that if there was no Hindutva, there would have been no separate Pakistan , and India would have remained one. And the millions of Muslims who stayed behind in India after the Partition I consider to be much more patriotic than the Hindutva-walas, because the former were offered the dream of a seeming utopia, of 'heaven', if they migrated to Pakistan , but they refused to migrate, and, instead, they stayed on in their homeland. And this they did despite all the immense threats, challenges and fear that they were forced to face, and despite the repeated anti-Muslim pogroms and pervasive discrimination. Who, then, can dare question their patriotism?

So, let me unhesitatingly say, yes, the ideology of Hindutva, as we know it, is inextricably linked to terrorism, in both theory as well as in practice. And I would go further and say that Hindutva is even worse than that—it is sheer fascism. Let me also say that the greatest victims and sufferers of Hindutva fascism will not be Muslims or Christians, but, rather, Hindus themselves.

Q: Why do you say that?

A: I say this because history clearly tells us that if any form of fascism is not combated by the community or people in whose name it claims to speak, it will eventually destroy that people or community. Thus, when Hitler went about massacring the Jews the German Christians remained silent, and because they did not oppose his Nazism they had to face huge loss of German life in the Second World War. When Bhindaranwale and his henchmen went about killing Hindus, many Sikhs remained quiet, and eventually more Sikhs than Hindus were killed by the Khalistanis. In Kashmir , self-styled Islamist extremists have killed many times more Muslims than Hindus. Likewise, because radical Islamist groups in Pakistan were fanned by the state, and there was no effective Muslim protest against them, they now pose a potent threat to the peace and prosperity of the people of Pakistan , the vast majority of who are Muslims, and many Pakistani Muslims have fallen victim to them. So, I find that there is no reason to believe that if Hindus do not speak out and assertively protest against Hindutva fascism they would not have to suffer immensely later. It will prove to be a disaster for them, and, besides this, it would only give India a bad name. I firmly believe that all forces, groups and people that are genuinely concerned about the welfare of India , must stand up against Hindutva fascism.

Q: What do you feel about the way the government has gone about seeking to tackle the problem of terrorism?

A: There is no uniform approach across the country. So, for instance, we witnessed the state-sponsored genocide and massive wave of terror in Gujarat in 2002, that caused the deaths of vast numbers of innocent Muslims. The way this genocide was launched, with such precision, made me suspect that one cannot rule out the possibility that the burning of the coach of Sabarmati Express might have been orchestrated by Modi himself to fan anti-Muslim hatred and garner Hindu votes.

But the role of the state in such heinous violence targeted against innocent people, which is a form of terrorism, did not start with Modi. The nefarious role of top bosses in the Congress Party in orchestrating the large-scale massacre of Sikhs in 1984 is well-known. So, various governments have sought to fan violence against minorities for their own political purposes, and no discussion of terrorism in India can leave out this crucial dimension.

We also have to talk of and speak out against other forms of terrorism. The killing of some 3000 innocent people in America on 9/11 was a terrible crime, and it must be condemned, but the West does not want us to talk of other forms of terrorism in which Western powers and elites are directly implicated. Some 7000 children die in India daily, mainly due to poverty, which is caused by a skewed and totally inhuman notion of 'development' propagated by Indian and Western elites. Is this not a form of terrorism also? In some senses, it is a worse form of terrorism, not only because it is of a far greater magnitude but also because it causes prolonged pain and suffering to its victims, unlike those who die in an instant in a terrorist attack. Some twenty-five thousand dowry-deaths of women are recorded every year in India . Is this not also a form of terrorism? Is not female foeticide a form of terrorism?

The point I am making is that all forms of terrorism, whether in the name of religion, community, nation, gender or whatever, needs to be sternly condemned and struggled against. Let us not be selective in our approach, because terrorism anywhere is a danger to humanity everywhere.
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Photo: Swami Agnivesh

Swami Agnivesh can be contacted on agnivesh70@gmail.com For more details about him and his work, see www.swamiagnivesh.com

Will Indian democracy survive against Hindutva cancer ?

By Jawed Naqvi *                20, November 2008                                Muslim India

India’s democracy locked in a life and death battle to survive

IT is not difficult to accept that Pakistani establishment, particularly its right wing politicians and entrenched India-haters within the army and bureaucracy, share a vested interest in the rise of Hindu religious zealots to the helm of power in New Delhi.

It serves their purpose in several ways. The growth of groups like Bharatiya Janata Party, the RSS and the Shiv Sena rationalises and justifies the partition to Pakistanis. So that’s an important psychological victory straightaway. India is innately Hindu in the communal sense and therefore the Muslim League was right in demanding a separate homeland for Indian Muslims, the argument gets repeated ad nauseum.

The other reason for Pakistani right to exult at the rise of the Hindutva forces is perverse. What better way to destroy the very idea of India as a viable secular democracy than by encouraging fascist mindsets to surge and prosper in that country, ad lib the votaries of this approach. This is not a far-fetched plot. Right-wingers in the Pakistani establishment have succeeded to a large extent in creating a Hindu replica of what they have licked into shape in Pakistan in six decades.

This growing resemblance had prompted progressive Pakistani poet Fehmida Riaz to lament in her poem when she visited India under BJP’s care: “Tum bilkul hum jaise nikley, ab tak kahaan chhupe thay bhai?” (So you have turned out to be just like us, brother. It’s taken you a while to get there though.) A third and equally widely shared argument given by the Pakistani establishment to applaud the BJP’s hold in India posits that only a hard-line nationalist party in Delhi could solve the “core issue” with Pakistan.

It is of course left nicely unstated that the equation would also need Pakistan to be led by macho nationalists, and who better than the army to assume the role? Unfortunately, even left-oriented intellectuals on both sides of the border seem to subscribe to the view. Therefore, every time there was a lethal blast with heavy fatalities in India, and the government blamed the ISI, whether the spy agency was involved or inspired the perpetrators, the BJP gained in strength.

And given its affections for the BJP, the right wing establishment in Pakistan also must have felt good. For homegrown Indian Muslim groups, however, who stand accused of fomenting terrorist violence in India, it would seem preposterous to help fortify the BJP. Every time they carried out, if they did, a bomb attack at a temple or a busy bazaar they would have known that it could only recoil on them. It just didn’t make sense for an Indian Muslim group to vent its spleen against Hindutva leaders in emails to the media and then go on to attack innocent civilians in acts that could only be exploited by their enemies to win sympathy, and to target Muslim youths. It is this puzzle that may be about to be solved, wittingly or otherwise, by Indian sleuths. They appear to have unearthed a widely connected group of motivated Hindus in terror plots that were otherwise blamed on Indian Muslim groups.

This is a qualitatively new beginning in someone’s quest to revitalise faltering secular ideals of India. So who is this brave somebody who has picked up such amazing courage to call a spade a spade? It must require courage after all to link a serving lieutenant colonel in the Indian army to the bombing of the Samjhauta Express last year. Until last week the bombing of the Pakistan-bound passengers last year was being blamed on Pakistan, the ISI and terrorist groups based in Pakistan. The entire Indian establishment and much of the media were behind the thesis as is their wont. The sole political beneficiary of course was the BJP, its right wing sponsors and supporters. Now we are being told that a certain Lt-Col Shrikant Purohit had stolen 60kg of RDX explosives from the army’s warehouse in Jammu and Kashmir, transferring some of it to the perpetrators of the train blasts, which killed scores of Indian and Pakistani passengers.

Lt-Col Purohit is said to be a key player in a fanatical group called Abhinav Bharat, or New India. It has emerged as the unlikely hub of a terror network across the country. The discovery has embarrassed the army and it has backed a thorough probe. The outcome of the Purohit probe could determine the fate of democracy in India. The stakes are huge. The world is watching. So who is the gritty person who may have triggered what could be a decisive battle between fascism and democracy in India? Is it Prime Minister Manmohan Singh? It’s possible. He is in all likelihood prepared to call it a day after this tenure since the chances of the Congress winning the next elections because of his policies are remote. He has nothing to lose by taking a chance. Or is it Congress leader Sonia Gandhi? With the probe, she may have found the one big ticket that could clear the path for her party’s return to power. My own guess is that the ongoing investigations would not be possible without the involvement of National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan, although the secular lobbies in the country seriously mistrust him. There was perhaps a hint of something like this about to happen, strangely enough, when the national security advisers of India and Pakistan found themselves in a potentially groundbreaking embrace last month. That was when the two agreed that the problems they now faced were “more internal than external”.

Was the impulse for the meeting a homegrown master move by Narayanan to help his bosses regain their secular halo or did it come from Washington as often happens between the two countries? The overriding American interest as we know is primarily to get its problems in Pakistan and Afghanistan sorted out. And to that effect, as President-elect Barack Obama has suggested, bilateral issues between Pakistan and India could not be left ignored. Which means: Pakistan should be asked to stop fomenting terrorism in India and India should deliver the doable in Kashmir and, now, in Afghanistan too where its influence worries Islamabad.

The problem is that Pakistan could only stop what it had started, but it could hardly be in a position to do much about something like Samjhauta Express bombing for obvious reasons. The problem appears to have been discussed between the two national security advisers. “I told the prime minister after today’s talks that I agree with you sir that we share a common destiny with Pakistan,” Narayanan told Mahmud Ali Durrani in a dinner speech that went largely unreported.

If this is so, a keen American interest under Obama in the threats posed by Hindutva militants, who derive their financial strength from America, cannot be ruled out. This despite claims by a few that somebody tainted with Hindutva is already in the Obama transition team. It was President Clinton after all who refused to agree with India’s official claims, when he visited Delhi in March 2000 that a group of Sikh civilians were massacred just then in Kashmir by Pakistani militants.

Clinton’s thoughts on the Chittisinghpura massacre are contained in former US Secretary of State Madeline Albright’s book titled: The Mighty and the Almighty Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs.

He wrote: “During my visit to India in 2000, some Hindu militants decided to vent their outrage by murdering thirty-eight Sikhs in cold blood. If I hadn’t made the trip, the victims would probably still be alive. If I hadn’t made the trip because I feared what religious extremists might do, I couldn’t have done my job as president of the United States. The nature of America is such that many people define themselves—or a part of themselves—in relation to it, for or against. This is part of the reality in which our leaders must operate.” Words of wisdom the new president would do well to heed.

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Photo: Title page of Ram Puniyani's book,'INDIAN DEMOCRACY, PLURALISM and MINORITIES' published by Global Media Publications. 

The writer is Dawn's correspondent in Delhi. He can be contacted at, jawednaqvi@gmail.com.

DAWN, 17, November 2008

Kashmir’s Kangaroo Elections

By Arjimand Hussain Talib             20/11/ 2008                          Muslim India

A credible democracy goes beyond holding elections under laboratory conditions

Western media is fond of using the term ’kangaroo’ with any set up which is overly ambitious and minuscule. Local courts run by dreaded Tamil Tigers in Northern Sri Lanka are generally called as ’kangaroo courts’. Governments run by despots or autocrats in poor and unstable African ’banana republics’ are often referred to as ’kangaroo regimes.’ Going by that logic, J&K is about to have what one can safely call ’kangaroo elections.’

As thousands of additional troops pour in into the Valley and persecution of those who peacefully oppose them rise to new heights, some very uneasy questions arise. Are these elections really credible? Is it right to say that these elections would establish democratic credibility of the ruling system in Kashmir?

Let us look at the environment wherein these elections are being held. All those people who oppose these elections by democratic and peaceful means have either been jailed or persecuted. It is no more a battle of ideas. This year’s popular people’s movement against the land transfer to Amarnath Shrine Board was a watershed in many respects. The most important thing to happen was a near total transition of Kashmir’s political movement into a peaceful one. Even those who are normally labelled as ’hawks’ or ’hardliners’ had exhibited willingness for total rejection of the armed path to achieve their goals. The current crack down on these groups and individuals may again erode their faith in peaceful democratic means of achieving their political goals. This misguided crack down might again push another generation to taking up arms, thereby initiating another cycle of violence and counter violence. Most importantly, it is eroding the new Kashmiri generation’s residual faith in India’s democracy in allowing peaceful political dissent.

The way some sorts of perfect laboratory conditions are being created for these elections seem astonishing. State machinery is at total disposal of those who are taking part in these elections. Tax payers’ money is being used to fund election campaigns of parties, providing them free transportation, accommodation and almost everything that normally political parties are supposed to pay for themselves. Security agencies are systematically isolating the areas going for elections; leaving no scope for dissent or disapproval to the manner these elections are being held. The recent news reports about infliction of torture on some of the Hurriyat leaders engaged in a purely peaceful political campaign is a shame. Illegal detention of hundreds of other anti-election activists is staring in the eyes of those who are calling these elections "path breaking."

On the other hand, we see overt and covert means are being used to influence and gag the media. The ban on local cable news channels and the subsequent enforcement of the so-called "code of conduct", which seeks to arm twist, promote elections and those who support it and discourage airing of popular public expressions of peaceful decent is simply undemocratic. Newspapers have been asked not to run any news items or opinions questioning the elections. State-owned media is black outing even the day to day events happening in the State. There is no mention of declared or undeclared curfews, arrests and the crack down on opposing political activists in the official media. It sounds more of a propaganda machine – typical of communist authoritarian regimes. India’s private media, both print and electronic, seem to have shut down their Kashmir offices for now.

It is true that Kashmir’s governance today is in a shambles. The way the State’s affairs are being run by a handful of bureaucrats – no matter how well meaning - is a disaster in itself. True, a better governance system is urgently needed, but are these elections the answer?

These elections have a historic baggage of contradictions. Theoretically, they are not only meant to establish a basic governance system, they are designed to represent a political intent too. And that is where the fault lies. The reason a big mass of Kashmiri population is allergic to this exercise is that they are meant to thumb impress a political statement which they do not believe in. Establishment of basic governance structures by way of popular will does not mean ratification of a political statement concerning the question of sovereignty and identity. For example, when Palestinians vote for local government issues, they are not supposed to ratify the larger political system they are forced to live in. The Irish nationalists ventured into the electoral arena for local governance only when oath to the British Crown as a pre-condition was abolished.

When parties like the NC and the PDP say that this electoral exercise is only meant for choosing a local government and not making a statement on the larger political question of Kashmir, they are being misleading. On a number of occasions in the past these parties have sought to stake claim to ’sole representation’ of the Kashmiri people and their political aspirations. On several occasions leaders like Farooq Abdullah and Mufti Syed have gone to international forums like the UN, negating people’s yearning for right to self determination and establishing their sole representative character by virtue of their election for local governance issues. The latest Indo-Pak spat at the UN made the Indian representative reinforce his country’s stand that with elections being held regularly in Kashmir, there is no scope for a plebiscite.

Today’s ground realities in Kashmir have some unmistakable messages too. The writings on the wall are there for all to see. Pro-election political parties are able to hold only kangaroo public meetings of a few hundred people at most. The public fury which they are facing in spite of tough security cover and control is an eye opener. When Congress Party activist, Peerzada Syed, was stoned and chased away by angry villagers in South Kashmir this week on his election campaign, a political statement is already made. Similarly, when Qazi Afzal was made to chant the Azadi (freedom) slogan by the villagers from whom he was seeking votes in Ganderbal this week, the message sent is loud and clear. The militarisation of the electoral exercise is another serious issue. Thousands of additional armed forces are being pumped into the Valley for "reinforcing" the already present 700,000 personnel. Any electoral exercise being carried out under the shadow of such massive presence of armed forces is in itself questionable.

When New Delhi says that this massive presence is to ensure free and fair elections, it makes little sense. It is common knowledge that militancy is at its lowest ebb in Kashmir since in very inception. It appears that militant groups are in no mood to influence the current political environment. Their taking a back seat can be interpreted as their respect to the latest people’s peaceful movement. This new mood is by no means insignificant. In other words, the field is open for peaceful battle of ideas. New Delhi and local pro-Indian parties like the NC, PDP, ANC, PDF, CPI (M), etc. believe that even if 20-25 per cent of people vote, they would have a reason to cheer this kangaroo electoral exercise as a victory. This is again misleading. Kashmir’s current eligible voter count is far greater than the one official figure portray. It is common knowledge that a big percentage of Kashmiris – including this writer – are not registered as voters, and, so, do not reflect in overall numbers. So an official 20 per cent may actually mean a voter turn-out of 10 per cent or even below. An electoral exercise which claims establishment of a "democratic" order with 10 per cent vote is indeed a bad show. It is as much important for pro-Indian political parties to realise as for New Delhi.

The biggest problem of this electoral exercise in Kashmir is that it happens under certain laboratory conditions. These laboratory conditions prop up non entities – individuals and groups alike - over night. These conditions seek to create favourable conditions for these non entities and facilitate their proliferation. These conditions bulldoze dissent and opposing political thoughts. These laboratory conditions inhibit the media from providing space or time to opposing ideologies.

An electoral exercise in an environment where the media is being censored cannot be credible. Use of force to subdue a popular and peaceful sentiment for the right to self determination and seeking establishment of a façade of democracy is a shame. That is what is being done in Kashmir.

Looking at the costs all sides have paid throughout the long years of conflict in Kashmir, there is no substitute to peace building. The recent transition of Kashmir’s political movement had given a golden opportunity to help discard violence from its political landscape. Coercion and ruthless suppression of peaceful political dissent might take us back to the square one. Any electoral exercise meant to establish democratic credibility of a system needs more than elections. Democracy cannot be so narrow in its meaning and scope.
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Arjimand Hussain Talib is a Srinagar based writer. He is engineer by training and writes regularly for Greater Kashmir, leading English daily from Srinagar Kashmir.
 Article courtesy: South Asia Citizens Web

Islamophobia In the West: How Muslims Should Respond ?

By Maulana Waris Mazhari            November, 19 2008              Muslim India

(Translated by Yoginder Sikand) 

Islamophobia is by no means a new phenomenon. Rather, it goes back to the earliest period of Islamic history. A massive storm of anti-Muslim hatred emerged and spread across large parts of the then Christian world with the expansion of Muslim political rule, from the early eighth century onwards. It was this that, in large measure, propelled the Crusades, which played a major role in propagating and perpetuating deeply-held negative stereotypes about Islam and Muslims in the West. A major role in this regard was played by the Church and Christian polemicists. They spread such erroneous propaganda about Islam which today many Christians themselves feel embarrassed about.

The legacy of this medieval Christian Islamophobic propaganda lives on even today. Thus, according to a recent survey conducted by an American Muslim organization, Council for American Islamic Relations, a fourth of Americans hold extremely negative views about Islam, and half of all Americans see Islam in a negative light. Only two per cent of Americans have a good knowledge of Islam. It can thus be said that despite the centuries of Muslim-Christian relations, most Westerners have no proper idea of what Islam actually is.

From the late eighteenth century, an increasing number of Western scholars and travellers began taking an interest in studying Islam and Muslim societies. This soon took the form of a veritable movement or a specialized discipline, known as Orientalism. From its inception, Orientalism was deeply influenced by the Christian missionary agenda as well as by Western imperialism, both of which it served. Although, in this way, Orientalism had a very stark negative dimension, it played a crucial role in seeking to bridge the divide between the West and the East. Orientalists produced a massive amount of literature on 'Oriental' societies, including on Muslim societies and Islam. According to Edward Said, in the period between 1800 and 1950 alone, Orientalist scholars penned some 60,000 books, mainly in different European languages, on West Asia.

Following the Second World War, Western and Muslim scholars began moving in the direction of seeking to understand each other in a more balanced and serious fashion. A major cause for this was the migration of a sizeable number of Muslim scholars to the West. Another reason was the emergence of serious initiatives to promote Muslim-Christian dialogue and harmony. However, the outbreak of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 led to the rapid upsurge of Islamophobic sentiments in the West. And, after that, it appears that carefully-organised attempts are being made on a menacing scale in the West to further fan these hatreds by seeking to project, through very poisonous propaganda, the image of Muslims as allegedly bloody monsters. The attacks of 9/11 gave a tremendous boost to this Islamophobic discourse, the ideological groundwork for which was done by self-styled Islamic 'experts' such as Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis.

The Present Context

The present context, following the events of 9/11, has proven to be horrific as far as Muslims are concerned. Islamophobia has now taken the place once occupied in the Western imagination by Anti-Semitism, and aggressive efforts are underway in the West directed against Islam and Muslims. Earlier, this was the handiwork mainly of certain extremist Christian evangelical groups, but now key political and social groups and forces in the West are also engaged in it. In fact, these groups and forces are, in a sense, even more virulent, and their propaganda and actions more hard-hitting, than that of fiercely anti-Muslim Christian organizations because, particularly in Europe, the latter do not enjoy overwhelming public support. It is clear that these forces are directly opposed to Islam as such, acting on the advice of the likes of Samuel Huntington, who argues that the underlying problem of relations between the West and Muslims is not 'Islamic fundamentalism', but, rather, Islam itself.

The anti-Islamic project and propaganda in the West can be attributed, then, to two basic forces: 'secular fundamentalists' and 'religious fundamentalists'. The former have a huge influence in Western governments, bureaucracies, multinational corporations, the media, universities, strategic think-tanks, charitable foundations and branches of the United Nations. These forces can, as I have suggested earlier, be regarded as a greater challenge and threat to Islam and Muslims than Western Christian and Jewish religious fundamentalists, because they have a much greater influence and say in their own societies as well as globally. They have a decisive role in moulding the opinions of governments and peoples. Unfortunately, Muslims focus all their attention and ire not on these forces but on Western religious fundamentalists instead.

Christian evangelicals and Christian Zionists in the West, Jewish Zionists in the West and Israel and Hindutva ideologues in India have worked to create a climate of Islamophobia throughout the world. There are now a vast number of fiercely anti-Islamic Christian preachers who receive the open support of American imperialists. They call themselves 'Doctors', 'Professors' and 'Reverends', and this gives them and their stridently anti-Islamic propaganda greater legitimacy among their flock.

Causes of Contemporary Islamophobia

Islamophobia can be traced to multiple causes. One of the most salient of these is the fact that Islam represents a particular ideology and way of life which is fundamentally opposed, in several crucial ways, to Western liberalism, consumerism and capitalism. Of course, and lamentably so, the Islamic ideology and system have nowhere been in existence in their full or proper form for centuries. Yet, the West regards these as a threat and challenge to the dominant Western world-view. To add to this, the West needs an enemy to seek to justify its global hegemony and its imperialist designs, particularly in poorer countries of the global South. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has conjured up Islam as its new opponent to serve this role. This has been facilitated by the obvious fact that today, with the decline of Communism, the only potent challenge that Western Imperialism and Capitalism face is from Islam.

Yet another factor fuelling the Islamophobic rage in the West is the alternative posed to the West by the Islamic moral code and its growing popularity and revival among Muslims in many countries. Unfortunately, the emotionally-driven methods that were sought to be used to enforce this code in Iran and Afghanistan by Islamic groups have further antagonized the West. To add to this is the issue of the strong relations between the West, particularly America, and Israel. In these countries, especially America, Jewish Zionist forces enjoy considerable economic and political clout, and Israel itself, which is at the forefront of global Islamophobia, serves as a major tool for American imperialism and for keeping the Arab world under American control

What the Muslim Response Should Be

In this context, the crucial question to ask ourselves is how Islamophobia, being so aggressively pursued and promoted by powerful forces in the West today, can be effectively responded to. Unfortunately, Muslim scholars and activists have not given this question much serious consideration, being guided mainly by feelings of revenge and reaction, mainly at the political level. They have not worked out any effective intellectual, instead of simply physical, response. Many of our intellectuals live in their own secluded ivory towers, doing nothing at all practical. To make matters worse, they are generally divided among themselves on narrow sectarian lines and seek to promote sectarian interests. Many of these people are actually working with, or being used by, Western anti-Muslim forces for their own ends.

Muslim scholars from South Asia have a particularly important role to play today in countering Islamophobia, because, unlike in several countries in the Arab world, there is much greater intellectual freedom in this region. South Asian Muslim scholars must devote adequate attention to studying and understanding the psyche, worldview and ideologies of various Islamophobic forces, their methods of working and the consequences of their activities and propaganda.

South Asian madrasas could have taken up this task more effectively than other Muslim institutions. Unfortunately, however, much of their syllabus is badly outdated and they have as yet developed neither the consciousness of the need to study the challenge of contemporary Islamophobia in a serious, scholarly fashion, nor the necessary intellectual tools needed for this purpose. For this to happen, madrasas must include such subjects in their curriculum as would enable their students to gain a proper understanding of modern social, political, economic and cultural conditions and challenges. This is indispensable for them to be able to provide effective and appropriate guidance to Muslims and to others as well in response to the phenomenon of mounting Islamophobia worldwide.
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Photo: In this photo the minaret of the Mahmud mosque is pictured close to a Christian church in Zurich, Switzerland. Photograph: Christian Hartmann/ Reuters.
(Source:'Islamophobia: Swiss far right seeks vote on minarets ban' by Ian Traynor, Europe editor, the guardian)
A graduate of the Dar ul-Ulum, Deoband, and the Nadwat ul-Ulema madrasa in Lucknow, Maulana Waris Mazhari is the editor of the New Delhi-based Urdu journal Tarjuman Dar ul-Ulum, the official organ of the Deoband Madrasa's Graduates' Association. He can be contacted on mazhariwaris@gmail.com

Britain Grapples With Role for Islamic Justice

Muslim India Topics: Shariah (Islamic Law)

Despite uproar, Shariah takes hold quitly among Muslims

By Elaine Sciolino                                   November, 19 2008                      Muslim India

LONDON — The woman in black wanted an Islamic divorce. She told the religious judge that her husband hit her, cursed her and wanted her dead.

But her husband was opposed, and the Islamic scholar adjudicating the case seemed determined to keep the couple together. So, sensing defeat, she brought our her secret weapon: her father.

In walked a bearded man in long robes who described his son-in-law as a hot-tempered man who had duped his daughter, evaded the police and humiliated his family.

The judge promptly reversed himself and recommended divorce.

This is Islamic justice, British style. Despite a raucous national debate over the limits of religious tolerance and the pre-eminence of British law, the tenets of Shariah, or Islamic law, are increasingly being applied to everyday life in cities across the country.

The Church of England has its own ecclesiastical courts. British Jews have had their own “beth din” courts for more than a century.

But ever since the archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, called in February for aspects of Islamic Shariah to be embraced alongside the traditional legal system, the government has been grappling with a public furor over the issue, assuaging critics while trying to reassure a wary and at times disaffected Muslim population that its traditions have a place in British society.

Boxed between the two, the government has taken a stance both cautious and confusing, a sign of how volatile almost any discussion of the role of Britain’s nearly two million Muslims can become.

“There is nothing whatever in English law that prevents people abiding by Shariah principles if they wish to, provided they do not come into conflict with English law,” the justice minister, Jack Straw, said last month. But he added that British law would “always remain supreme,” and that “regardless of religious belief, we are all equal before the law.”

Conservatives and liberals alike — many of them unaware that the Islamic courts had been functioning at all, much less for years — have repeatedly denounced the courts as poor substitutes for British jurisprudence.

They argue that the Islamic tribunals’ proceedings are secretive, with no accountability and no standards for judges’ training or decisions.

Critics also point to cases of domestic violence in which Islamic scholars have tried to keep marriages together by ordering husbands to take classes in anger management, leaving the wives so intimidated that they have withdrawn their complaints from the police.

“They’re hostages to fortune,” said Parvin Ali, founding director of the Fatima Women’s Network, a women’s help group based in Leicester. Speaking of the courts, she said, “There is no outside monitoring, no protection, no records kept, no guarantee that justice will prevail.”

But as the uproar continues, the popularity of the courts among Muslims has blossomed.

Some of the informal councils, as the courts are known, have been giving advice and handing down judgments to Muslims for more than two decades.

Yet the councils have expanded significantly in number and prominence in recent years, with some Islamic scholars reporting a 50 percent increase in cases since 2005.

Almost all of the cases involve women asking for divorce, and through word of mouth and an ambitious use of the Internet, courts like the small, unadorned building in London where the father stepped in to plead his daughter’s case have become magnets for Muslim women seeking to escape loveless marriages — not only from Britain but sometimes also from Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands and Germany.

Other cases involve disputes over property, labor, inheritances and physical injury. The tribunals stay away from criminal cases that might call for the imposition of punishments like lashing or stoning.

Indeed, most of the courts’ judgments have no standing under British civil law. But for the parties who come before them, the courts offer something more important: the imprimatur of God.

“We do not want to give the impression that Muslims are an isolated community seeking a separate legal system in this country,” said Shahid Raza, who adjudicates disputes from an Islamic center in the West London suburb of Ealing.

“We are not asking for criminal Shariah law — chopping of hands or stoning to death,” he continued. “Ninety-nine percent of our cases are divorce cases in which women are seeking relief. We are helping women. We are doing a service.”

Still, there is ample room for clashes with British custom. Three months ago, for example, a wealthy Bangladeshi family asked Dr. Raza’s council to resolve an inheritance dispute. It was resolved according to Shariah, he said. That meant the male heirs received twice as much as the female heirs.

Courts in the United States have endorsed Islamic and other religious tribunals, as in 2003, when a Texas appeals court referred a divorce case to a local council called the Texas Islamic Court.

But Shariah has been rejected in the West as well.

The Canadian province of Ontario had allowed rabbinical courts and Christian courts to resolve some civil and family disputes with binding rulings under a 1991 law. But when the Islamic Institute on Civil Justice there tried to create a Shariah court, it was attacked as a violation of the rights of Muslim women.

As a result, Ontario changed the entire system in 2006 to strip the rulings of any religious arbitration of legal validity or enforceability.

In Britain, beth din courts do not decide whether a Jewish couple’s marriage should end. They simply put their stamp of approval on the dissolution of the marriage when both parties agree to it. The beth din also adheres to the rules of Britain’s 1996 Arbitration Act and can function as an official court of arbitration in the consensual resolution of other civil disputes, like inheritance or business conflicts.

“People often come to us for reasons of speed, cost and secrecy,” said David Frei, registrar of the London Beth Din. “There’s nothing to prevent Muslims from doing the same thing.”

In Britain’s Islamic councils, however, if a wife wants a divorce and the husband does not, the Shariah court can grant her unilateral request to dissolve the marriage.

Most Shariah councils do not recognize the Arbitration Act, although Mr. Straw has been pushing them in recent months to do so. The main reason for their opposition is that they do not want the state involved in what they consider to be matters of religion.

The conflict over British Shariah courts comes at a time when Islamic principles are being extended to other areas of daily life in Britain.

There are now five wholly Islamic banks in the country and a score more that comply with Shariah.

An insurance company last summer began British advertising for “car insurance that’s right for your faith” because it does not violate certain Islamic prohibitions, like the one against gambling.

Britain’s first Shariah-compliant prepaid MasterCard was begun in August.

Here in London, Suhaib Hasan’s “courtroom” is a sparsely furnished office of the Islamic Shariah Council in Leyton, a working-class neighborhood in the eastern corner of the city. It has no lawyers or court stenographer, no recording device or computer, so Dr. Hasan takes partial notes in longhand.

“Please, will you give him another chance?” he asked the woman in black who was seeking divorce — that is, before she brought in the weighty voice of her father.

“No, no!” the woman, a 24-year-old employment consultant who had come seeking justice from 200 miles away, replied. “I gave him too many chances. He is an evil, evil man.”

“I’ll give you one month’s time to try to reconcile,” Dr. Hasan ruled.

Then her father tipped the scales.

“He was not a cucumber that we could cut open to know that he was rotten inside,” the father testified. “The only solution is divorce.”

Apparently convinced, Dr. Hasan said he would recommend divorce at the London Central Mosque, where he and several other religious scholars meet once a month to give final approval to cases like this.

Dr. Hasan, a silver-bearded, Saudi-educated scholar of Pakistani origin, handles the Pakistani community; an Egyptian ministers to the ethnic Arab community, while a Bangladeshi and a Somali work with their own communities.

The council in Leyton is one of the oldest and largest courts in the country. It has been quietly resolving disputes since 1982 and has dealt with more than 7,000 divorce cases.

Under some interpretations of Islamic law, a woman needs the blessing of a scholar of Islamic jurisprudence to be divorced, while a man can simply say three times that he is divorcing his wife.

Dr. Hasan counsels women that they must have their civil marriages dissolved in the British civil system.

“We always try to keep the marriages together, especially when there are children,” said Dr. Hasan’s wife, Shakila Qurashi, who works as an unofficial counselor for women.

If the husband beats her, she should go to the police and have a divorce, Ms. Qurashi said. “But if he’s slapped her only once or something like that,” she said, “and he admits he has made a mistake and promised not to do it again, then we say, ‘You have to forgive.’ ”

One recent afternoon, the waiting room was full of women and their family members.

A Pakistan-born 33-year-old mother of five explained that her husband would beat her and her children. “He threatens to kill us,” she said, as her daughter translated from Urdu. “He calls me a Jew and an infidel.” Dr. Hasan told her to immediately get police protection and request an Islamic divorce.

Another woman, 25, wanted out of a two-year-old arranged marriage with a man who refused to consummate the relationship. Dr. Hasan counseled dialogue.

“Until we see the husband,” he said, “we can’t be sure that what you’re saying is true.”
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Photo: In this photo Dr. Suhaib Hasan spoke with a woman who was trying to divorce her husband in London.
Source: Article courtesy The New York Times. A version of this article appeared in print on November 19, 2008, on page A1 of the New York edition.

Humanitarian Disaster And News Blackout In Gaza

News from the Islamic World

By Cherrie Heywood                  November,18 2008                    Muslim India

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Nov 18 (IPS) - Israel has imposed a virtual news blackout on the Gaza Strip. For the last ten days no foreign journalists have been able to enter the besieged territory to report on the escalating humanitarian crisis caused by Israel's complete closure of Gaza's borders for the last two weeks.

Steve Gutkin, the AP bureau chief in Jerusalem and head of Israel's Foreign Press Association, said that he personally "knows of no foreign journalist that has been allowed into Gaza in the last week."

Gutkin said that "while Israel has barred foreign press from entering Gaza in the past, the length of the current ban makes it unprecedented." He added that he has received no "plausible or acceptable" explanation for the ban from the Israeli government.

AP has relied on reports from two of its journalists who were able to enter Gaza days before the closure began and are currently stuck there.

A delegation of European Union parliamentarians was also prevented from entering Gaza to assess the situation on the ground and to hold talks with Hamas leaders. They subsequently broke the naval siege of Gaza by entering the coast's territorial waters from Cyprus by boat, defying the Israeli navy.

During talks held with Hamas, the EU parliamentarians were able to get a historic commitment from the Islamic organisation to recognise Israel's right to exist within the internationally recognised 1967 borders. Hamas further offered a long-term ceasefire in return for Israel legitimising Palestinian rights.

Israel also prevented 20 European Union consul-generals from entering Gaza on Thursday. On Sunday Israeli border police prevented 15 trucks loaded with medication from entering the Gaza Strip.

EU commissioner for external relations and European neighbourhood policy, Bentita Ferrero-Waldner, has expressed strong reservations. "I am profoundly concerned about the consequences for the Gazan population of the complete closure of all Gaza crossings for deliveries of fuel and basic humanitarian assistance," Ferrero-Waldner said in a statement Friday.

Karen AbuZayd, head of the UN Relief and Welfare Agency (UNRWA) which cares for Palestinian refugees, added that it was unusual for Israel not to let basic food and medicines in. "This has alarmed us more than usual because it's never been quite so long and so bad, and there has never been so much negative response on what we need," she said.

Israel closed the borders following a barrage of rockets fired by Palestinian resistance fighters at Israeli towns bordering the Gaza Strip.

The tit-for-tat violence began on Nov. 4 when the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) launched a cross-border raid into Gaza, breaking a shaky five-month ceasefire with Hamas. The purpose was ostensibly to destroy a tunnel built by Palestinians allegedly to smuggle captured Israeli soldiers.

More than 20 Palestinians were killed in Israeli raids. Two Israelis were lightly injured in the subsequent rocket attacks.

The timing of Israel's breach of the ceasefire is curious in that hundreds of these smuggling tunnels have existed ever since Hamas took over the strip in June last year. They have been used to smuggle everyday necessities as well as arms because the territory is hermetically sealed by Israel.

John Ging, director of UNRWA in Gaza, who has lived there for the past three years, questioned the alleged security reasoning behind the closure. Since the ceasefire went into place this summer, Ging said, fewer supplies have passed through the crossing than in the beginning of 2006, when the western Negev in Israel suffered incessant rocket fire from Gaza.

At that time the Palestinian Authority (PA), which is supported by Israel and the international community, was ruling Gaza in a unity government with Hamas.

"Last week we were unable to feed 60,000 of Gaza's neediest refugees due to our warehouses running out of food. UNRWA supplies half of Gaza's population of 1.5 million people with emergency rations, and 20,000 people are fed per day when there are adequate supplies," Ging told IPS.

Seventy percent of Gaza experienced electricity blackouts after Israel prevented deliveries of diesel fuel, forcing Gaza's main power plant to close down.

"The Israelis were only allowing 2.2 to 2.5 million litres of fuel in per week prior to the closure, which was the minimum required to operate the power plant. The plant has a capacity for 20 million litres and this would last two months under normal circumstances and tide over emergency periods. But this has all run out," Ging said.

Kan'an Ubeid, deputy chief of the Palestinian Energy Authority, said at a press conference in Gaza that in addition to the shutdown of the diesel-fuelled power plant, the electric network bringing in power from Israel collapsed due to increased pressure on the system.

Gazans also ran out of cooking gas while Gaza's Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU) was forced to pump tonnes of untreated sewage into the ocean due to fuel shortages and the lack of spare parts for equipment in need of repairs and new parts.

Much of this will flow back into Gaza's underground water table, and the threat of contaminated drinking water spreading diseases has increased.

Meanwhile, the emergency and ambulance services director-general, Mu'awiyya Hassanein, says Gaza's health ministry is short of more than 300 types of necessary medication.

Sammy Hassan, a spokesman from Gaza city's main Shifa hospital said only urgent surgery was being carried out. "We have delayed all non-urgent surgery as our small generator has stopped working, as we can't import a vital spare part.

"We are down to 30,000 litres of fuel left to run the larger generator which is used when electricity is cut. Under the current circumstances with no electricity we require 10,000 litres per day," Hassan told IPS.

Philip Luther, deputy director of Amnesty International's Middle East programme, said that Israel's latest tightening of the blockade had "made an already dire humanitarian situation markedly worse. This is nothing short of collective punishment on Gaza's civilian population, and it must stop immediately."

Following international pressure and protests from the EU, Israel allowed 30 trucks of humanitarian aid to enter the strip Monday. "It will last a matter of days," said UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness. "But then what?"

Oxfam's spokesman in Jerusalem Michael Bailey, who coordinates a number of humanitarian projects in Gaza, said this response was entirely inadequate.

"Thirty trucks of aid after a closure of 10 days is insufficient. What we need is a complete revision of the embargo on Gaza. Dialogue with the relevant political leaders is the only way forward," Bailey told IPS.

"Both Israel and Gaza's other neighbours need to put the human rights and essential needs of Gazans above all considerations if there is to be a way out of this quagmire."

Copyright © 2008 IPS-Inter Press Service.
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Photo: Breakout from Gaza

Source: Inter Press Service

Kashmir Conflict And The Emerging Political Scene In South Asia

By Shah Faisal                                           Muslim India

Srinagar :: The sequence of events in Jammu & Kashmir since May 26, 2008 has once again added some definite firmness to the possibility of an early conflict resolution. With the calls of separation being echoed by many czars of the Indian civil-society, it seems imminent that the familiar cycle of quiescence-chaos-quiescence may finally break now in favour of an acceptable conclusion.

However, parallel to the emergence of a novel political scene in Kashmir, a lot more action and drama has heated-up the regional and the larger global race-course also, something that will have an important bearing on the final outcome of Kashmir dispute in times to come.

To serve as a premise for further argument, three important observations need to be made at this point. One that the Indian establishment has almost frankly demonstrated now a deep seated malaise regarding the Kashmir issue. Walking away from that old and bold crown-of-the-head rhetoric, the Kashmir is now being plainly seen as a gangrene-of-the-limb scenario. This admission is in itself going to be of immense relevance in the times to come.

Secondly, the image of India as an Asian megalith has also suffered formidable insult from its defiant immediate neighbours recently. In past few months, the Nepal and Bangladesh in a fit of assertiveness have not hesitated to thumb their noses openly at India by aspiring for a warmer hand-shake with China. This is besides the ever-increasing distance between India and its other neighbours who are not enjoying the economic rise of India.

And lastly, the Nuclear Deal between US and India coupled with deteriorating US-Pakistan ties on Taliban issue will also affect the further course of Kashmiri resistance movement in their own queer ways.

When we say realisation and admission by India of the bitter realities in Kashmir, we automatically stand up to accept the inevitability of separation. The fact is that the earlier rigid stance and faked confidence has been replaced to a large extent by a strong feeling of disillusionment and surrender. Under such circumstances, India would agree to let go even tomorrow but for that handful of internal and international compulsions faced by it.

India's problem is two-fold. On one side are the questions of strategic interest. The apprehension of losing out to emboldened North Eastern and Naxalite movements. The fear of a national hue and cry against the nerve-breaking decision. But it is evident that the most important reservations are related to external circumstances of India. As has been said earlier, the India finds the possibility of secession totally adverse to its regional and international image as for now. The fear is that with birth of a China-led power-bloc in Asia, there is every risk that sooner or later India may find itself completely gheraoed by a chain of increasingly reluctant nations. As such an independent Kashmir will just complete the loop that has Pakistan and Afghanistan as one limb and China-Nepal-Myanmar as the other. After having tested missiles at the behest of Chinese technology, the Bangladesh can be seen as becoming the knot of this scary loop around India.

As such, these regional developments torpedo the scarce amount of hard-managed Indian will to go for one-time dispute resolution in wake of the present uprising in Kashmir. Thus the current Indian establishment seems to be pitched against a very tricky situation, making it difficult to handle the crisis faithfully and balance the internal and external compulsions in favour of a useful solution. So it can be said with fair degree of confidence, that unless India reassures its place in the troubled power-equation of South Asia, not much head-way can be expected on the Kashmir issue from its side. And till then it is going to be the same old story of evasion, unrest and deadlock.

Then remains the question of 123 Agreement and its affect on the Kashmir issue. It seems in the long-run this deal is perhaps going to be in favour of Kashmir, although apparently it points otherwise. By jumping into the arms of America, India has only addressed the insecurities imposed on it by the ever-rising influence of various antagonistic powers in the Asian continent. For India it is a way of dealing with this so called "Evil-Bow" formed by Pakistan-Afghanistan-China-Nepal-Myanmar and Bangladesh, despite superficial pretensions of friendship with the later trio. However, after regaining its confidence and veto in the regional matters, there is every like-hood that India will renounce its iron-fist policy on the Kashmir issue in favour of long-term gains.

These gainswill be in the form of reduced terrorism threat to India, and lesser defense expenditure, once having redefined its strategic interests and creating a higher level of deterence . Here the argument can not be refuted on the basis of a presumption that a more mighty-India will act with even more rigidity in future. It is because; India has already realized the futility of its integral-part rhetoric and the perils of a forceful military occupation.

In coming years the nations are going to be over-busy in altogether different wars of survival and a powerful India will have a new set of challenges to confront, so as to affect the course of all existent problem-phenomena, including the Kashmir issue.

In midst of all this fury, special mention of Pakistan needs to be made. The way things are shaping up, it seems Pakistan may soon solemnize its marriage to China by gradually coming out of the American charm. Under present conditions of a US-centric world order , it will cause an added disadvantage to a China-backed Pakistan by passing on the reins of Kashmir issue further into the hands of a US-aided India. That means the negotiability of Kashmir dispute may in future reduce to a differently bilateral India-Kashmir domain to sheer disappointment of Pakistan. If that happens ever, the chances of an Independent Kashmir will increase as much as scuttling the hope of a Kashmir that cedes to Pakistan.

In times to come there is going to be a lot of churning and shaking and Kashmir issue will increasingly get connected to movements on the global platform. Although no one can risk his money on betting for an early conflict resolution, the way nations are experimenting with newer power equations day in and day out, it can easily be fathomed out that the days of conflict are numbered.
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Photo: Veiled Kashmiri women voters stand outside a polling booth to cast their votes during the first phase of local elections in Bandipora, 60 km (37 miles) north of Srinagar, November 17, 2008     REUTERS/Fayaz Kabli

Shah Faisal is a Freelance Columnist based in Srinagar-190001
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