VIGIL - A Public Opinion Forum - http://www.vigilonline.com/
H-12/3, Pari Street, Kalakshetra Colony,
Beasant Nagar, Chennai - 600-090 - India

Let me at the very outset assure all of you that this seminar is not intended to be merely an academic exercise. Kashmir is an emotive issue. It is an issue that has to be looked at emotively and intellectually, passionately and dispassionately and subjectively and objectively. There can be no one way of looking at it.

This seminar is also not intended to be a cathartic exercise where all of us collectively dispel our impotence, anger, anxiety and inability as a nation, to resolve the complex problem in Jammu and Kashmir decisively even after more than a decade of religious terrorism.

We have with us here today, people from diverse walks of life to participate in this seminar - from diverse ideologies, diverse areas of work, and diverse perspectives on issues.

Vigil is making an attempt to see if at the end of the day, all of us with our diverse orientation can manage to create a national mind on this issue.

Can we create a national mind on three or four issues concerning the nation?

In what discordant voices we the ruling elite speak, came through very clearly on two occasions.

The plane hijack to Kandahar in December 1999, and when we decided to conduct nuclear tests once again in Pokharan, in May 1998.

We, the intellectual class, stood exposed before the nation and revealed ourselves to be incapable of rising above our individuality. We who are so obsessed with international opinion, or more bluntly, what the white West thinks of us, care nothing about the damage we cause to this country’s image when we go public with our discordant voices. The ruling elite is abjectly guilty for failing to come together on any one single issue – be it Kargil, Kandahar or Kashmir.

We may express different opinions domestically if the intention is to debate the issue with a view to gaining a better understanding. But when we are confronted by hostile powers from outside we cannot afford to speak in discordant, deprecating voices, if the intention is merely competitive one-upmanship.

It is a representative group of the same ruling elite, which is gathered here today to discuss the tragedy of Jammu and Kashmir. VIGIL hopes that in sharing our thoughts today and in sharing our perceptions without animosity, we can create a common understanding of the problem. Because I firmly believe that our perception of the problem in Kashmir, our understanding, and any solution we derive therefrom, will ultimately be determined by the vision we have of this nation.

What is the understanding we have of this nation? There are sections of the ruling elite, which believes that we became a nation only after 1947. If this is the understanding we have of our nation, then our perception of the problem in J&K will also be influenced by this understanding and this in turn will influence the choice of the solution we may even now end up adopting. But there is also a group, which knows that this country is not merely a nation-state but a nation civilization. This sense of belonging to a nation or to a nation civilization is an emotive issue.

Our sense of belonging to something or somebody comes only through emotions. It is the intellect, which divides. This sense of belonging to this nation, our relationship to this motherland, has evolved over thousands of years. What binds us all are the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the puranas, our temples, our holy cities, the magnificent expressions of our creativity, and above all our common understanding of what is creation, what is God, the nature and purpose of human birth, and our worldview. This common and shared understanding has grown and evolved over thousands of years and it is this heritage, which binds us all as a nation.

If I am not emotionally connected with my family, the family is fragmented. A nation is no different. It cannot be held together by the intellect or the Constitution. I must have an emotional binding with my family, with my community and with my nation. The ruling elite has been guilty of using its intellect to undermine this emotion, this sense of belonging, both in private and in public discourse.

If we view this nation as a civilization with an unbroken documented history for the last 5000 years alone, then our understanding of the threat posed by Islamic fundamentalism to this emotional binding to our nation will be different. How we understand the problem in J&K would be different. How we derive our solution will also be different.

What is the problem in Kashmir today?

Kashmir is torn apart by religious terrorism. By Islamic terrorism, to be precise. Do we have the courage to name it as such?

And to deal with it appropriately?

These terrorists, these anti-national elements are a group of people who profess faith in a religion which does not subscribe to the concept of nation and which believes that one of the states in the Indian Union, which has been a victim of demographic aggression by the adherents of Islam, and which is today, consequently a Muslim-majority state, does not belong to the rest of the country, the majority of whose people profess another faith.

The state of J&K has been a victim of violent terrorist activities in the last decade, perpetrated by terrorists claiming to be devout Muslims. Does the ruling elite have the courage to acknowledge that the fundamental cause of the problem is this group of people believing that they are being devout Muslims by undertaking ‘jehad’ in Kashmir?

The Hizb-ul mujahiden the Jiash-e Mohammad, the Lashkar-e toiba, the Harkat ul ansar the JKLF, they are all Muslims, devout Muslims, who believe that their Islamic identity will not allow them to be the part of what they continue to perceive to be an unislamic State, and what is worse, to be a Hindu State.

Does the ruling elite have the courage not only to see this, but also to acknowledge it?

As long we sidestep this issue, as long as we bury our secular heads under stubborn, ‘liberal’ sands and do not want to call this violence by the name which it deserves to be called, the ruling elite will never enable the Indian State to deal appropriately with the situation obtaining in J&K today.

To whitewash Islamic fundamentalism, and to keep the tattered ‘secular’ phraseology from falling apart, the ruling elite continues to justify the violence by calling it lack of opportunity, not enough employment, not enough development, misguided youth, corrupt politicians, criminal bureaucracy, foreign hand and everything else, except the truth.

And as long as we believe in the political correctness of euphemisms, we are not going to get at the root of the problem and we are not going to be arriving at a solution, commensurate with the nature of the problem. This foolishness is further compounded by what is euphemistically called ‘international pressure’ on the Indian State to resolve the problem at the earliest. There is really no such thing as international pressure. It is pressure from one nation and its dependent satellites.

International pressure is an expression of ‘power’ and power is basically the capacity to compel something or somebody to think and act in a particular way. In today’s context, what we are really referring to is the USA’s capacity to force India to act in a way she does not want to or in a way which does not suit her national interests.

The ruling elite could have served India’s interests had it been a nationalist elite, committed to serving the best interests of this country. But the ruling elite is largely a group, which hankers to be a part of the ‘international bureaucracy’, and instead of speaking to the rest of the world on behalf of India, is today speaking to all of us on behalf of this ‘international pressure’ group. A nationalist ruling elite would use Kashmir as a context to do several things to make structural adjustments to post-cold war regional and international world order, in favour of India.

China recently executed an Islamic leader for what its local, provincial judiciary trying the case described as the treasonable act of trying to establish an Islamic State on ‘native soil’.

Does our judiciary have the vision to pass such a judgement? Or the courage to imply that Islam is alien to the ethos of this civilization?

Sanatana dharma welcomed every thought, every faith, every refugee to this land and offered them protection.

Every thought flourished, every faith flourished. But the moment practitioners of alien faiths constituted the majority of the regional population, through demographic aggression, this civilization has lost territory, this nation’s borders have shrunk. This has been our historical experience. Partition did not answer the problem posed by the Muslims of the subcontinent in 1947. I do not see how any kind of compromise now is going to help the Kashmir problem, where again it is the Muslims of the region demanding yet another partition.

Partition did not serve the purpose at the time of the Mahabharatha, it did not resolve the problem in 1947 and it is not going to help us deal with the aggression of alien faiths now or in the future. No matter how many times Bhishma spoke the language of reason, no matter how many times Krishna adopted the path of peace, the Pandavas had to ultimately physically confront Duryodhana and Shakuni in war.

If some thoughts and ideologies are not amenable to peace, are not amenable to reason or negotiation, you have to confront them ultimately physically, in a war. This has been our experience. The Islamic terrorists in Pakistan have acknowledged that Kashmir is only the gateway to India. They are not going to stop with Kashmir. God forbid they succeed in Kashmir, they are going to set their eyes on nothing else than fragmenting India.

Islam and Christianity will not rest until they have homogenized the world to their faith. Both religions indeed exhort their faithful to convert the entire world through any means to their faith. It is Sanatana Dharma alone, which can live with diversity. Other thoughts believe in homogenization and this is the danger.

China and India find themselves placed in the unique position of civilizations reduced to becoming nation-states. And that is why China, not burdened with democracy, could execute an Islamic fundamentalist for treason and not have the rest of the world even whimper about it.

It has been India’s historical experience and China also knows it well, that whenever there have arisen pockets in Indian soil with a concentration of a majority of people of the region practicing Islam, we have lost that territory and lost the Indian civilizational thought too. Kingsley Davis, referring to the partition of 1947, called it the demographic and geographic basis for partition.

Whenever India has lost territory, it is Hindus who have lost territory. Our ruling elite, which does not wish to see the truth, let alone speak about it, ought to look at the data available on the total territory under the sway of the major religions of the world. They should compare the data of territory under Hindu religion and compare it with total territory under the control of Islam and Christianity and then tell us all if we should indeed continue to pretend that Hindus and Hinduism are not under siege in this country!

How many from among the ruling elite, will have the courage to admit at the end of the day that Islam is posing a threat to Sanatana Dharma. Adherents of Islam, devout adherents of Islam, declare openly that Jihad is their religious duty. That, to be a true Muslim, they have to undertake Jihad.

Let us understand one thing very clearly - there is no metaphysics in Islam. Let not the neutralised Hindus say that jihad belongs to the realm of the spirit or metaphysics. Muslims have never said anything so silly. Let these Hindus not interpret Islam for us. I would rather that we all listened very carefully to what the Muslims are themselves saying about jihad. Sometimes their silence on the issue is equally significant.

At the end of the day Vigil would like the seminar to arrive at some kind of common understanding of the nature of the problem that this nation is confronting. What is it that past governments have done to confront the problem and what is it that the present government is doing. The effectiveness and inadequacies of the measures of successive governments, what are the solutions we can offer, practical solutions which are in tune with our national interests and which can be implemented and enforced. Solutions, which are in keeping with the ethos of our civilization, solutions in keeping with the nature of the threat.

Let us strive for such an understanding.

Let us have a free and honest discussion on all issues and concerns, which we all think deserve our attention.

Let us attempt to create here in this auditorium, a national mind on Jammu and Kashmir.

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