Changing contours of a border state

Tukde tukde Jammu & Kashmir

Pushp Saraf

Dusting off whatever is left of the family archives I have come across a copy of “Gilgit before 1947” written by the late Brig Ghansar Singh Jamwal, who was betrayed by his own troops as Governor of the highly picturesque mountainous region leading to his arrest and the illegal occupation of the territory by Pakistan with the British connivance. The copy has been personally signed by the author on January I, 1984 (printed in 1983) and includes an unattached page carrying a handwritten announcement by him in print: “This book has been compiled by a man of 95 years more keen to leave an authentic record for posterity than winning literary laurels.” The 57-page book needs to be read with this in view. Its substantive contents are an extraordinary collection in our archival material much of which has been gifted by the family elders to the University of Jammu long ago with another big chunk collected by the State administration in recent years.

As a first-hand account of Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B), as the region is called currently, in a critical period of the sub-continent’s history the memoirs of Brig Ghansar Singh is of contemporary relevance. A major political and diplomatic war between India and Pakistan is already building up over the latter’s moves to formally absorb the territory, a part of Jammu and Kashmir as it had existed in 1947, in its Constitutional framework. It is considered only a matter of time before Pakistan grants G-B the status of its “provisional fifth province” to considerably bring it on a par with its four provinces namely Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. Islamabad has more than once announced its intentions in this regard and has done elaborate paperwork (Next article “What next after polls in Gilgit-Baltistan”).

Brig Ghansar Singh, working as Brigadier-General Staff of the J&K State Forces in the princely rule, was appointed Governor by Maharaja Hari Singh in July 1947. He was to take over from the British Political Agent, Lt Col Roger Bacon. The British had been given the area on lease for 60 years but with the termination of their rule in India it “automatically” returned to J&K and became part of India by virtue of the undivided State’s accession with the country on October 27, 1947. As the Governor, Brig Ghansar Singh managed to complete take-over formalities but before he could fully assert his authority he faced a mutiny (he has used the expression “revolution”) and was arrested in what turned out to be a well-planned conspiracy hatched by the British officers “leading to the fall of Gilgit”. In his own words: “The British officers had planned a scheme to discredit the State Administration and to bring about Pakistan.” According to him, “the general impression was that the British officers did not like the changeover … the Gilgit public, however, was highly pleased with the transfer of power and they welcomed the change, but were surprised to find that I had come alone”.

A perusal of his book leaves little doubt that the Brigadier’s Mission Gilgit was doomed right from the beginning. Immediately after his appointment he faced palace intrigues especially by the Maharaja’s Prime Minister Ram Chander Kak who was “not interested in my appointment”. The author’s lament was loud and clear: “I was pushed away by the responsible officers of the State without equipping me with the necessities of administration.” That explains why he had to “come alone” to G-B. His “general impression” was soon confirmed when he encountered demands from the ranks in the Gilgit Scouts (a force raised by the British on behalf of J&K) and personnel in the “whole civil administration” for, among other things, raise in wages. The soldiers and employees categorically told him that if their demands were not met they would “serve Pakistan.” Adding to his woes was an army company (6th Kashmir Infantry) sent as a replacement from Srinagar which shouted “Pakistan slogans” on the way to Gilgit. He brought the issue to the notice of the authorities in Srinagar but drew no response. In between, “Mohammedan officers of J&K State Forces contacted Scouts officers to establish Pakistan in Gilgit”.

Given this situation, Brig Ghansar Singh made up his mind to stand up till the last breath: “With full knowledge of the events and lack of cooperation on the part of the J&K authorities in Srinagar I prepared myself to lay down my life along with my colleagues for the sake of the State which our forefathers had once extended to that part of the country. I had a very good occasion to slip away but as my other colleagues and non-Muslim public could not be evacuated I decided to die on the spot along with them”.

Border Affairs

• Editorial : Tukde tukde Jammu & Kashmir
• What next after polls in Gilgit-Baltistan
• China-India crisis : Emerging factors
• Afghanistan : A silver lining in the midst of voilence
• Pakistan : Blowing hot and cold
• Bangladesh : Extremists spark a backlash
• Response : Sixth Schedule for Ladakh

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Arrest after Accession
He was arrested four days after the Accession. “On the night between 31 October 194 7 and I November 194 7 at 2 a.m. about I 00 Gilgit Scouts led by Major Brown, Lt Hidar Khan and Sub-Maj Babur Khan surrounded my house … I got revolver and slipped to the other room … I went up to my office room and outside I saw a lot of soldiers surrounding the bungalow. One round was fired in the air to frighten them away. They started firing in reply,” the Brigadier has recounted (Major William Alexander Brown commanded the Gilgit Scouts. Accompanying the Brigadier inside his house at that moment were his driver and orderly).

In the morning of November I, two officers approached him to convey the Scouts’ demand to surrender or else “all non-Muslims would be shot dead … I agreed”. “People from surrounding villages” gathered and protested but were threatened and duped into believing that “the Governor” had given hand-grenades to all non-Muslims “for the destruction of Muslim houses”. On November 3, 1947 Maj Brown hoisted the Pakistan flag. Brig Ghansar Singh was not invited to the ceremony. He was instead asked to sign a telegram “charge of Gilgit as handed over to Gilgit Government etc” and his resistance was overcome once again with threat to kill all non-Muslims. Communal passions were whipped up as was evident from the following observations made in the book: messages poured in “to either shoot all kafirs or convent them” (Kafirs refer to non-believers); “Hindus and Sikhs were all converted”; “for a few days such converts were well fed and entertained” and “there were three or four Sikhs living with our civil officers who were not converted.” After a long traumatic spell in confinement the Brigadier was set free on January 15, 1949.

The Brigadier’s conclusion was that Pakistan took the natives of Gilgit for a ride: “Gilgit people in the beginning were given the impression that they will rule Gi/git when Pakistan is established. They will be free from any foreign domination. On the establishment of Pakistan, people found that the governing machinery is all from Peshawar and the State Government is replaced by Pathan Government After comparing administration of both the Govt they have realised their blunder in supporting the revolution and in this area we have still sympathisers for the State administration.”

Oppression in Gilgit
His unambiguous observation has been proved right by subsequent events as well. For decades after unlawfully capturing the area Pakistan remained suspicious of the region’s J&K antecedents and deprived its natives of basic human and political rights. It suppressed its Shia majority even by pushing in Sunni extremist outfits at one time. It remote-controlled G-B from Islamabad, the Federal Capital, which it does even today even while granting the local population some freedom in recent years to democratically manage their affairs. There has been change in Pakistan’s approach during the last about 15 years somewhat loosening its grip step by step to allow the people to elect a governing apparatus. It has been emboldened by gradually increasing popular response especially in the latest November 15, 2020’s Assembly polls and is set to carry out its plan of formally usurping the territory as its “fifth province” with representation in the National Assembly and other Constitutional bodies which it has denied so far. Pakistan’s political class as a whole, the judiciary, powerful army and the media are on the same page in this regard. Their stance in fact has become all the more aggressive after the Central Government split and downgraded J&K on August 5, 2019.

India thus has a major challenge on hand. The Union Government’s response to Pakistan’s moves in and about G-B has been mostly rhetorical confined to strong words of condemnation. In the meantime it faces another challenger, China, in the region. Pakistan has opened G-B for China which was first permitted to acquire a part of it adjoining its Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) under a written agreement in 1963 and then allowed to choose it as a gateway for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). According to some reports China actually is prodding Pakistan to end the ambiguity about G-B’s status by making it a province as a guarantee for saving its investments.This view is at variance with the 1963 accord which has subjected the Chinese acquisition of 5180 square kilometres of land “to the final settlement of the Kashmir dispute between Pakistan and India.”

This writer as a member of the first and the only Indian journalists’ team to visit G-B in 2004 was witness to China’s palpable influence in the region. Our group had also got an opportunity to travel on the Karakoram Highway known as the China-Pakistan Friendship Highway which is described as the Eighth Wonder of the World because of its location in a high and tough mountainous terrain. Since then the Chinese presence has gone up manifold.

Two intruders join hands
Pakistan has resisted all demands for including G-B in another major chunk of J&K it has under its illegal occupation which it governs as “Azad” Jammu and Kashmir. As a result J&K has been divided into three administrative entities across the Line of Control (LoC) – two managed by Pakistan and one by China. We in this country know the entire region under Pakistan’s unlawful possession as the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). The so-called “Azad” J&K with a nominated “President” and an elected “Prime Minister” and the Supreme Court (separate from the apex court of Pakistan) as well as the High Court has Muzaffarabad as its capital. G-B’s Capital is Gilgit; it has limited judicial and legislative dispensation which, as pointed out earlier, is likely to be further empowered. Together both “AJK” and G-B are under the effective control of Pakistan’s Ministry for Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit­Baltistan which toys with the occupants of high-sounding offices in “AJK” at will. (Redrawing the map after dividing J&K State into two UTs the Union Government has included “AJK” in J&K and G-B in Ladakh).

China governs an area of 5180 kilometres of G-B as a constituent of Taxkorgan and Yecheng counties of the XUAR. It has another part of J&K under its control separated by what is known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC) which is presently a flashpoint between Indian and Chinese forces. A year before the 1963 agreement with Pakistan, China had inflicted a full­fledged war on an unsuspecting India grabbing 37555 square kilometres of Aksai Chin in Leh district. China administers this area as part of its Xinjiang and Tibet autonomous regions (mostly Hotan county in Xinjiang). China had infiltrated into the territory way back in the 1950s and used 179 kilometres of it to complete a I 200-kilometre long road linking Xinjiang and Western Tibet. China carried out the exercise without India knowing it in time. It is a matter of record.

The contours of J&K changed again in 1971 following the India-Pakistan war.The Jammu region suffered the loss of Chhamb village while India retained the territories it had gained in the Kargil sector where the war erupted again in 1990 with India showing exemplary military and diplomatic restraint to maintain the sanctity of the LoC after pushing the Pakistani invaders out.

On August 5, 2019 the Union Government wrote the epitaph of the J&K State by splitting it into two union territories of J&K and Ladakh. The J&K State as it had existed at the time of the Accession in 1947 is as a consequence presently divided into six separate administrative units among three countries. Legally and logically India ought to have been the sole occupant. Stung by India’s August 5, 2019 actions Pakistan has accelerated its pace for the total control of G-B in retaliation. For its part China too has decried the Indian move evidently in a bid to project itself as a key player in J&K on the strength of its earlier possessions and the projects in G-B. It is simultaneously trying to gain more land in Leh as a consequence of which there is standoff between two forces in the trans-Himalayan region at this writing.

Fissiparous tendencies
It seems that the process of disintegration will not stop here. This is indicated by the December 22 results of the District Development Council (DDC) elections in the UT of J&K on both sides of the Pir Panjal.The overall outcome suggests a rejection of the Union Government’s decisions to knock the teeth out of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution guaranteeing special status to J&K and divide the State into two UTs.The sentiment in this regard is overwhelming in Kashmir, one of the two provinces of the UT, and quite powerful in the hills of Jammu, the other province. The anti-Muslim actions and utterances of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in the rest of the country and their followers in the plains of Jammu have found a resounding echo in the Muslim-majority areas. Regional political parties under the joint banner of the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD) have spoken up in the face of the indiscriminate use of draconian laws like the Public Safety Act (PSA) and got a majority of seats in the Valley and substantial number of them in the Jammu region. Only six districts of the Jammu region out of the total 20 in the UT have strongly voted for the Bharatiya Janata Party which is interpreted as support for the party-led Central Government’s decisions. Unlike the BJP, the PAGD and its constituents have, as always in the past, contended with the secessionist elements on their home turf although almost all separatist leaders are behind the bar.

The voting pattern once again confirms acute polarisation on religious lines. This is interpreted as the two regions of Kashmir and Jammu drifting apart which may not be true. In reality, society is divided and sub-divided. Sections of the uprooted Kashmiri Pandit community have been seeking a separate UT for them within the Valley. The Jammu region is worse placed. On the one hand, there is slogan of “a separate Jammu state” being raised in its plains. There are on the other hand visions of “Pir Panjal range” and “the Chinab Valley” evoked in different corners of its vast hilly track.

Uncertain future
An ideal situation will be to get the better of fissiparous tendencies. This is easier said given the BJP’s aggressive politics in the name of Hindutva to the extent of ridiculing its political rivals as a “gang”. Resultantly all regional parties and the Congress, which has done better in the DDC elections than expected, find themselves pushed to the wall invariably crying foul for being denied the freedom of movement according to their choice after having been ignored in the decisions abrogating J&K as a State along with Articles 370 and 35-A of the Indian Constitution. The constituents of the PAGD have even while seeking exclusivity stood for India. More often there have been alliances between them and the national parties. The Indira Gandhi-Sheikh Abdullah accord of 1975 stands out as a high point.

With the separation of Buddhist Leh and Shia-majority Kargil, both of which are part of the Ladakh UT, J&K has lost its shine both as “mini-India” for being home to all main religions and “the crown of the country” because of its location on top of the country’s map.

The future is uncertain. There continues to be intrusions from China and Pakistan. Border talks with China are on.Votaries of peace between India and Pakistan have always been active. Suggestions have been mooted for the conversion of the LoC into International Border and Gilgit-Baltistan, rich in flora and fauna, into a big environmental park for the sake of peace between the two countries.
In addition there are tensions at home. The possibility, therefore, that J&K will once again assume its original form is bleak. Its condition reminds of Mohammad Rafi’s famous song “Ek dil ke tukde hazar hue .. Koi yahan gira koi wahan gira.” (My heart is shattered into a thousand pieces …. these broken pieces are scattered here and there”).

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Ladakh: New dimensions

Border Affairs

• Editorial : Ladakh-New dimensions
• Sixth Schedule for Ladakh : A Popular movement
• Why Tsewang Rigzin was arrested
• Cracking the China-India logjam
• Gilgit-Baltistan : Imran Khan dangles provincial carrot
• Pakistan : Focus again on TTP
• Afghan peace talks begin : Hope and despair
• Bangladesh : Tracking the killers
• Response : Timely articles

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During August and September the internal situation in Leh district of the union territory of Ladakh became quite volatile even as China continued to adopt aggressive postures on the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Such scenario could have been a cause of serious concern. Domestic tensions always come in handy for hostile elements to try to exploit for their ends. Nobody, however, believed that the situation in Leh in particular and Ladakh as a whole would deteriorate to that extent. It was because the natives of Ladakh had a rich history of proven nationalist credentials right from 1947. Their political voices at times for seeking an enhanced status within the Constitution might not be music to the ears of many at the helm. But it is a heartening reality that they have always rallied behind the armed forces as and when China and Pakistan, both of which are next door, have attempted to cross the Line of Control (LoC) and the LAC. It was just a coincidence that their latest movement for inclusion in the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution to ward off real and perceived assaults on their social, cultural, linguistic, ethnic and environmental identity after being elevated as UT on October 31, 2019 began at a time when China had openly adopted a belligerent approach. They took care to ensure that while they fought for their self-respect they did or said nothing which could harm the country’s interests. In a first-hand account Thupstan Chhewang, a leader of the movement who has been twice Lok Sabha member from Ladakh and has left electoral politics, explains the genesis and popularity of their agitation. It is to be welcomed that leaders of the movement and the Union Home Ministry have decided to sort out the issue through discussions. It shows maturity on their part. The situation had threatened to go out of hand because of certain unwarranted provocative actions and utterances of the people in authority. Peace and stability are important in border regions in particular. Inimical forces, foreign agents and infiltrators always wait in the wings to fiddle with the local sentiments. They should be given no cause of comfort. We trust that Union Home Minister Amit Shah would carry forward his timely intervention. He has committed himself to address the genuine demands of the people of Ladakh who in turn have praised him for his initial response. That he has recognised the apolitical nature of the movement is an indication that his feedback is correct. As a result of their truce the passage for the elections to the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (Leh) has been cleared. It is a matter of satisfaction. There is also merit in the understanding that gradually the scope of dialogue would have to be widened to include all stakeholders especially Kargil district, which is the other constituent of Ladakh, to find an effective and lasting solution. In another informative article which directly concerns Ladakh well-known China expert P. S. Suryanarayana has a close look at the latest moves involving India and China. He has drawn attention to several new features that have emerged in the relations between the two countries including “claim lines” that appear to have replaced the “control line.”

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Finally we wake up

The following headlines and their timings speak for themselves: “Relations with China: Why Aksai Chin is our part,” by Tsering Samphel, Border Affairs October-December 2004; “Dragon swallows international treaties on Tibet: Why should we match China move by move?” by Tsering Samphel, Border Affairs July-September 2008; “The Dragon’s fangs,” by Pushp Saraf, Border Affairs, July-October-December 2009; “Chinese incursions into Leh district: We must match the Dragon’s aggression,’ by Tsering Dorjay, Border Affairs July-October-December 2009; “A first-hand account: Chinese threat to Leh continues unabated,” by Thupstan Chhewang, Border Affairs October-December 2011; “Land and people next door to China,” by Pushp Saraf. Border Affairs April-June 2013; “Continuing tragedy of Leh’s Changthang: Need to check China, natural calamities,” by Tsering Phuntsog, Border Affairs April-June 2013; “China’s focus on Ladakh,” by Thupstan Chhewang, July-September 2016; and “Nomads of Changthang: Life remains a challenge,” by T. Phuntsog, Border Affairs July-September 2017. (Leh district was earlier part of the state of Jammu and Kashmir and along with the adjoining Kargil district constituted the Ladakh division which has been separated from J&K and elevated as a union territory in 2019. A truncated J&K has been abolished as a state and demoted as a UT).

Samphel, a former legislator, Thupstan, twice member of the Lok Sabha and the first Chief Executive Councillor of the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council, Leh (LAHDC-Leh) and Dorjay a former Cabinet minister of the undivided J&K and an ex-CEC of the LAHDC-Leh, are well-known public figures of Ladakh. Phuntsog has retired as a senior government functionary and is widely respected for his knowledge of the picturesque Changthang plateau of Ladakh. All of them know their land and its people like the palms of their hands. Whatever their political affiliations they have been unanimous in expressing their concern over China repeatedly stalling the local nomadic population from grazing in their traditional pastures.

Border Affairs

• Editorial : Finally we wake up
• How China made inroads into Ladakh region
• Namgyal deserved a better farewell
• Ties with China back at the brink
• The old man and the sea
• Afghanistan : Hope is not yet lost
• Pakistan : Return of Terrorism
• Gilgit-Baltistan Assembly polls
• Bangladesh : Hunt for fugitive killers
• Response : Angry neighbours

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Border Affairs has published photographs only on two occasions ever since it began publication in 1999. One of them was when Thupstan and Dorjay undertook a joint trip to the areas where the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China had demolished our structures (Border Affairs October-December 2011).

Our endeavour has been to highlight the threat we face from China in a territory a major chunk of which it has already taken away from us in the 1962 war. Actually China seems to be aiming to become a third player in J&K and to that end it will keep the Kashmir dispute alive in international forums, That it is already calling the shots in Gilgit-Baltistan, another part of J&K under Pakistan’s illegal occupation, is only too well known.

With this background in view it is somewhat comforting that the country has finally woken up to the threat in Ladakh. What makes our hearts ache though is that this has become possible only after supreme sacrifice by our 20 soldiers in a brawl with the Chinese intruders. The first two articles in this issue — one by Samphel and the other by veteran journalist P.S. Suryanarayana — follow up the Galwan bloodshed taking an overview of the ground realities and diplomatic moves.

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18-year old murder mystery deepens

Who killed Daniel Pearl?

Pushp Saraf

American journalist and author Asra Q. Nomani has recounted her last meeting with slain Wall Street Journal South Asia Bureau chief Daniel Pearl in an article “This is Danny Pearl’s final story” in 2014: “Twelve years ago, on January 23, 2002, Danny left my home in Karachi, Pakistan, for an interview and never came back. Like so many of our peers, we had each put down roots in Pakistan to report on America’s so-called war on terror. I was on book leave from the journal. finishing a memoir. Danny, the newspaper’s South Asia bureau chief, and his wife Mariane were living in Islamabad. They’d come to see me for a few days so Danny could do an interview for a story about Richard Reid, the Englishman who had packed his shoes with explosives and tried to blow up an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami three days before Christmas 200 I. The plan was for Danny and Mariane to vacation in Dubai after Danny’s meeting. Mariane was five months pregnant He had just texted me: ‘It’s a boy!!!!!’ That afternoon, a swarm of green parrots squawked overhead and the scent of jasmine flowers drifted through the air as Mariane and I stood outside my house on Zamzama Street and watched Danny’s cab pull away. ‘See you later, buddy; I said. We couldn’t have known that Pakistani militants would kidnap Danny. That they would keep him for days and then release strange and confusing ransom notes alternately identifying him as a CIA operative and a reporter and showing photos of him in a striped tracksuit, bound and with his head bowed beneath the barrel of a gun. Not in our worst nightmares could we have imagined what happened after that On February 21, 2002, a courier for Danny’s captors met an FBI agent at the Karachi Sheraton and handed over a three-minute propaganda video glorifying his ghastly end. Danny is without his glasses in the footage, with a few days’ stubble. He professes his Jewish heritage and criticises the alliance between the US and Israel-obviously reading from a script-as the sound of exploding mortars blasts in the background. Then, silence. Suddenly Danny is on his back and a hand holding a long knife saws furiously at his throat The next frame comes quickly-the video has obviously been edited-and shows Danny supine, a bloody swamp in place of his neck. The film cuts to the killer holding Danny’s head up high by his hair for a good ten seconds. Clearly, it was meant for the world to see-and after jihadis circulated it online and CBS News aired parts on its evening broadcast, millions did. A year later, KSM was captured and taken by US intelligence officials to a secret detention centre, where he was tortured and waterboarded throughout months of interrogations. During that time, and again after being transferred to the prison at Guantanamo, KSM confessed to his membership in al-Qaeda and to plotting a long list of terrorist attacks including the 199 3 World Trade Centre explosion, Richard Reid’s botched shoe bombing, and 9/12. He also confessed to cutting off Danny’s head. A US military commission charged KSM and his four accomplices with terrorism, hijacking, conspiracy, and murder for killing 2976 people on September 11.” (KSM stands for Khan Sheikh Mohammed, a Pakistani terrorist and member of al-Qaeda —-also spelt as Al Qaeda, al Qa’eda, al-Qaidah, AI­Qaidah, AI Qaidah, AI Qaida,al-Qaida — who in March 2007 is widely reported to have confessed at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, a US military prison located within a naval base on the coast of Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, “to masterminding the September 11 attacks, the Richard Reid shoe bombing attempt to blow up an airliner, the Bali nightclub bombing in Indonesia, the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing, the murder of Daniel Pearl.” He was not charged with Pearl’s murder because, according to one report, there was apprehension that the manner of securing evidence against him might not be legally tenable).

Border Affairs

• Editorial : Who killed Daniel Pearl?
• J&K politics enters new phase
• Turmoil in Ladakh again
• Peace deals of Afghanistan : Taliban buying time?
• Pakistan : Hafiz Saeed’s conviction gives only partial relief
• Gilgit-Baltistan : Back at centre-stage
• Bangladesh : Pique over ‘reputational damage’
• Response : ‘Bending history’

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(CIA is abbreviation of the US’s civilian foreign intelligence service Central Intelligence Agency. FBI is the US’s investigating agency Federal Bureau of Investigation probing crimes threatening national security and the video mentioned in Nomani’s reminiscence as having been handed over to its agent was titled “The Slaughter of the Spy-journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl” and showed his mutilated body and his recorded statement: “My name is Daniel Pearl. I’m a Jewish American from Encino, California, USA. I come from, uh, on my father’s side the family is Zionist. My father’s Jewish, my mother’s Jewish, I’m Jewish. My family follows Judaism. We’ve made numerous family visits to Israel.” He was beheaded on February 1 , 2002 and his severed head and decomposed body cut into ten pieces was found buried in a shallow grave about 30 kilometres from Karachi on May 16, 2002).

On February 4, 2002, Pearl’s wife Mariane set in motion the process for investigation by writing to the Station House Officer of Artillery Maidan Police Station, Karachi, about the disappearance of her husband from January 23 and seeking registration of a case with the “request you that return my husband from his kidnappers.” She made a few important observations in her letter: (a) the taxi driver who had driven Pearl had dropped him outside a restaurant after which his whereabouts were not known; and (b) she learnt of her husband’s kidnapping from an email on January 27. The email carried photographs showing him “held in detention in inhuman conditions.” The “writer(s)” of the email wrote that they had abducted him in “retaliation for the imprisonment of Pakistani men by the US Government in Cuba and other complaints.” The email sought “the provision of lawyers to Pakistanis detained in the US, the release of the Pakistanis jailed in Cuba to Pakistan, the return of former Taliban ambassador Mulla Zaeef to Pakistan and the delivery of F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan on the repayment of money allocated for those F-16 jets as well as 15 percent interest” In another email received by her on January 30 the “unknown accused” threatened to kill Pearl if their demands were not met within 24 hours.

The police with the assistance of the FBI moved rather swiftly and the Anti-Terrorism Court Hyderabad Division and Mirpurkhas Division on July 15, 2002 sentenced British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh (incidentally one of the three terrorists India had flown from its jails to secure the release of passengers of an Indian Airlines flight hijacked to Kandahar in Afghanistan in 1999; he was involved in the abduction and murder of four Western tourists in the south of the Kashmir Valley in 1994) to death and three other accused namely Fahad Nasim Ahmed, Syed Salman Saqib and Sheikh Muhammad Adil to life imprisonment apart from a fine of Rs 5 lakh each in case of non­payment of which they were to undergo sentence for five more years. All four convicts were directed to jointly pay a sum of Rs 20 lakh to be given to the widow and son of Pearl. The convicts approached the Sindh High Court at Karachi challenging the trial court’s order and seeking their release pleading innocence. The Government also filed an appeal seeking the enhancement of sentence from life imprisonment to death for Fahad, Salman and Adil.

A division bench of the High Court consisting of Justice Mohammad Karim Khan Agha and Justice Muhammad Saleem Jesar on April 2, 2020 set aside the trial court order. It acquitted Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh of the murder charge and set free three other accused. Omar Sheikh was convicted only of the kidnapping charge and sentenced to seven years rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs 20 lakhs to be paid to Pearl’s widow and son.

After 18 years the issue is back to square one. The all-important question is who killed Daniel Pearl: it remains unanswered. The US is furious. Responsible sections of press in Pakistan are up in arms. So is the media across the globe which is haunted by the highly publicised image of a handcuffed colleague with a gun at his head who was subsequently killed in the line of duty. The US State Department has described the overturning of the convictions of four men as an “affront to victims of terrorism everywhere.” Senior US diplomat Alice Wells has tweeted: “Those responsible for Daniel’s heinous kidnapping and murder must face the full measure of justice.” Pakistan’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Shah Mahmood Qureshi justified the US Government’s apprehension as “natural”, saying that the decision will be challenged in the apex court: “The forum of appeal exists, we are going to use it and then see if higher courts decide to keep the SHC’s decision intact or set it aside.”

Sensing the angry reaction, the Sindh Government of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) acted fast and rearrested and detained the four before their release (A notification issued by the Sindh Home Department in this regard said inter alia: ” … whereas the Government of Sindh on the basis of request and considering the merits of the case is satisfied that there is serious apprehension of public safety in case the persons are released, that they may act against the interest of the country and public and presence of Ahmed Omar Sheikh, Fahad Nasim Ahmed, Syed Salman Saqib and Sheikh Muhammad Adil at any public place is likely to prove great threat to the public safety and cause breach of peace and tranquility… In exercise of the powers under Section 3(I) of the West Pakistan Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance, 1960, the Government of Sindh has sufficient reason to believe that Ahmed Omar Sheikh, Fahad Nasim Ahmed, Syed Salman Saqib and Sheikh Muhammad Adil be arrested and detained for a period of three months from the date of arrest Their custody shall be placed under the senior superintendent of Central Prison, Karachi.” A newspaper report quoting “a source privy to the development” has said: “The security administration believes that the police and other law enforcement agencies cannot take any risk involving security of the city, province and of the freed persons at these challenging times when focus of the entire security apparatus is to maintain the lockdown imposed to prevent the coronavirus outbreak in the country”).

Although governed by the rival Pakistan Tehreek-e-lnsaf (PTI) of cricketer-turned-Prime Minister lmran Khan the Federal Government shared the concern of its provincial government saying that it is “well aware of the facts of the judgment .. Federal Government is concerned about the decision … however, as per constitutional scheme of things prosecution in criminal matters is a provincial subject, therefore similar concern has been shared with the Government of Sindh. .. Government of Pakistan has asked Government of Sindh to dedicate its best resources in the pursuance of appeal before the Honorable Supreme Court of Pakistan … Government of Sindh has been advised to consult Attorney General for Pakistan in the matter as well.” lt has added: “Government of Pakistan reiterates its commitment to follow due process under the laws of the country to bring terrorists to task”.

Following up its commitment the Sindh Government moved the appeal before the Supreme Court on April 22 challenging the High Court order. Provincial Prosecutor General Dr Fiaz Shah based the appeal on the grounds that the “last seen evidence”, “impersonation” and “identification parade” was proved against the accused persons and maintained by the trial court. In addition, the Sindh Government has put forward the following arguments while seeking death penalty for all the accused in three separate criminal petitions filed on the same grounds: the offences created a sense of fear and terror in the minds of the public at large, both nationally and internationally, and as such all the accused were guilty of the charges leveled against them on all counts; the video showing the committing of murder of the reporter had been verified by a public official (an expert from the Pakistan Television Corporation) and was never challenged; in view of the collective proof along with the clear and categorical confessional statements of the accused and the co-accused, the acquittal and modification of sentence by the High Court was not sustainable and was liable to be set aside; the evidence of natural and independent witnesses confirmed the demand of ransom made by the accused – a fact also stood proven through documentary evidence. As such the acquittal of the accused as well as the modification of sentence to the extent of co-accused was illegal and unlawful; the accused persons acted to achieve nefarious designs and committed the offences that fall under the Anti­ Terrorism Act, 1997 and this factum was also accepted and admitted by the High Court in its judgment, but the High Court took a glaring contradictory view while acquitting the accused and modifying the sentence of the co-accused – a decision which could not be sustained in the eye of law and thus caused serious miscarriage of justice; the High Court erred in dealing with the legal question of burden of proof as the prosecution had safely discharged the burden to prove the guilt of the accused by producing cogent and sufficient evidence; the accused persons failed to produce any material to create a doubt against the evidence produced by the prosecution. Rather the co-accused during remand categorically admitted his guilt before the trial judge that he committed the offences in league with other accused who also voluntarily confessed their involvement before the trial court; the offences were proven that all accused in connivance with each other committed the crime and they were vicariously liable for committal of all offences, including the murder of Daniel Pearl; the admission of guilt by the co-accused during remand before ATC Karachi is part of judicial proceedings and thus legal sanctity is attached thereto under relevant law but the High Court did not consider this important fact in true perspective thereby seriously misled itself to the conclusion arrived at in April 2 verdict; the High Court also failed to appreciate the aggravating factors involved in the case. On the contrary the acquittal of the accused and modification of death sentence in the absence of the mitigating circumstance caused serious miscarriage of justice and violates the principles settled down by the apex court; the High Court also misconceived the confessional statements to be inadmissible in evidence where no rebuttal came on record against such confessional statements nor any of the accused filed any complaint against the recording of such confessional statements; in the absence of this irrefutable piece of evidence, the discarding of confessional statement on the ground of delay of 27 days and element of presumptive inducement was completely unwarranted as the certificate attached with the confessional statement of the accused carried weight and legal sanctity; the High Court neither referred to nor considered the established impersonation of the co-accused corroborated through identification parade. The voluntary judicial confessions made by the accused Salman Saqib and Fahad Nasim before the competent court were retracted on flimsy premises, yet the High Court while giving undue weightage to such retraction did not consider the principles settled by the apex court — according to a 2019 judgment even a retracted confession could form the basis for conviction if found voluntarily and truthful. The rule laid down by the Supreme Court was not followed in the Daniel Pearl case, resulting in grave miscarriage of justice; the High Court did not appreciate that there was overwhelming incriminating evidence on record against the accused connecting them to the offences with which they were charged adding that they had committed offences they were charged for in league with each other with their common intention and object and were liable to be punished accordingly (the mention of the co-accused is about Ahmed Omer Saeed Sheikh).

In an editorial appropriately titled “Whodunnit,” The Express Tribune has noted that “the names of high-profile figures like alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and al-Qaeda member Saif al-Adel also came up during the course of investigation.” The newspaper has observed: “… murder mystery deepens – nearly two decades on… The abduction of Pearl, 38, from Karachi and his subsequent decapitation somewhere in Pakistan – captured on camera and released in the form of a video clip – led to massive international outrage at a time when Islamabad was – in the wake of 9/11 – under severe pressure from the US to eliminate terror networks operating on its soil… That all four who remained under trial for years and years could not be sentenced over the gruesome murder shows that either the prosecution had lost interest in proving the long-running case or it was under some sort of pressure. And if the acquittal of the mentioned accused has really come on merit, it means that the years of investigation had been wasted on the wrong people while real culprits remained untroubled … The search for the killer thus continues”

Dawn too has referred to Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and dwelt at length about the antecedents of Omar Sheikh, ” … one of the most dangerous and wily militants the world has yet seen,” in a hard-hitting editorial “Verdict in Daniel Pearl case”: “Pearl’s abduction and beheading in January 2002, a few months after 9/11, is a grisly signpost in the history of militancy in Pakistan. It catapulted local terrorist networks into the global ‘war on terror’, and not only because of the victim’s nationality: the operation that culminated in Pearl’s murder was an early example of the nexus between homegrown extremists and Al Qaeda, the foremost international terrorist outfit at the time. Moreover, his death marked the beginning of an open season on journalists reporting on militancy …. there were many reasons for police and intelligence agencies to build a watertight case against the individuals involved – 2 7, according to details unearthed by two international, highly regarded investigative journalism bodies. As it turned out, only four, including Sheikh, were eventually charged and convicted. Some were killed in ‘police encounters’ while others remained free. Over the course of nearly two decades, several names surfaced as being part of the conspiracy- among them the alleged mastermind of the 9111 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed … Aside from the Daniel Pearl case, Sheikh is also suspected of having played a role in planning one of the assassination attempts against Gen Musharraf. Indeed, so cunning and resourceful is he that even from behind bars, he attempted to heighten Pakistan-India tensions in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks by making hoax calls to Pakistan’s then president and chief of army staff. An individual like Omar Saeed Sheikh is a danger to state and society … must bring to book all those responsible for Daniel Pearl’s terrible fate.” This is a voice of reason and sanity and must prevail.

The post BA V21, No3, 2020 appeared first on Border Affairs.

Bending history –Pushp Saraf

It was a clash of former princes, both reveling in heady past laced with current achievements, in the Lok Sabha almost four decades ago.  One was Dr Karan Singh, the scion of the erstwhile Dogra ruling family of Jammu and Kashmir. He had made a bold democratic transition joining active politics as the youngest member of the Indira Gandhi Cabinet leaving behind the post of constitutional head of J&K which he had first acquired by virtue of his royal lineage in the critical 1947. The other was the late Dr Karni Singh, the last ruler of Bikaner in Rajasthan who was an Olympian shooter and an elected parliamentarian of quarter of a century experience.

A heated wordy duel turned personal. Dr Karan Singh prided himself on the fact that his father had acceded to India. Unyielding, Dr Karni Singh retorted that the only difference was that “my father” was the first to accede while “his father” was the last.

What would have Dr Karni Singh said had he known then that the one to accede the last might end having the last laugh? 

October 26, the day in 1947 when Maharaja Hari Singh, father of Dr Karan Singh, signed the Instrument of Accession belatedly overcoming his urge for retaining his independent empire, has been declared a gazetted holiday (Accession Day) in the Union Territory of J&K in the official calendar for 2020.  This is not without irony. The move has been made within months of the abolition of J&K as a state. It is the delayed commemoration of the delayed accession of a non-existent state!

J&K as it existed in 1947 was already divided and sub-divided with China and Pakistan also illegally occupying and swapping parts of it has been further split with Ladakh carved out of it as a union territory. Which part will observe what as a holiday? Ladakh would rather celebrate October 31, the date on which its demand for separation from J&K was met. The clarity that marks the “Goa Liberation Day” (December 19) and the “Puducherry De jure Transfer Day” (November 1) is missing in the declaration of October 26 as a local public holiday

Border Affairs

• Editorial : Bending history
• New direction in China’s policy on Indo-Pak issues
• Sixth Schedule for Ladakh : Debate is wide open
• Removal of J&K Speaker
• Pakistan : Army chief becomes a shuttlecock
• Death to Musharraf most unlikely!
• Cost of terror
• Bangladesh : Tackling extremism, terrorism
• Response : ‘Jashn-e-Kashmir’

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The Bharatiya Janata Party has never bothered about the emotional integration of the Valley with the rest of the country. This is only too well known. It now seems determined to bend history according to its own perception. The first step has been to do away with the Muslim-majority J&K as a state. It has been followed with the cancellation of two public holidays on July 13 (Martyrs’ Day observed in memory of 22 people of the Valley killed in a protest in 1931 outside Srinagar’s Central Jail) and December 5 (the birth anniversary of Sheikh Abdullah, the most popular Kashmiri leader who stood up against Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s religion-based two-nation theory and endorsed J&K’s accession with India signed by Maharaja Hari Singh. The Sheikh enjoyed a unique status in the national and sub-continental politics. He converted the fundamentalist pro-Pakistan Muslim Conference into secular National Conference in July 1939 to align with the Congress fighting for independence and lead a popular movement against the feudal order. As a member of the Indian Constituent Assembly he signed an original copy of the Constitution in Hindi. New Delhi issued a postal stamp in his memory in 1988. In recognition of his exceptional role, President Zail Singh made a notable departure from protocol to attend his funeral procession following his death as the J&K Chief Minister in Srinagar on September 8, 1982. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was also present on the occasion. Union Home Minister Amit Shah has often referred to Nehru holding the Sheikh in prison for 11 years to justify his own government’s action of detaining a large number of mainstream and separatist J&K leaders. One small bit of information has escaped his attention. The late Bharatiya Jan Sangh president Prem Nath Dogra, who belonged to the Jammu region of the erstwhile J&K state, was among the first to greet the Sheikh on his coming out of the prison even though he had never spoken against his detention without trial).

By playing around with the holiday calendar the BJP has sent an unmistakable signal about what it thinks of the Valley and its leaders (technically the Union Territory Government of J&K has notified the new holiday schedule. Everyone knows that a UT Government in our dispensation is proxy of the Central Government which is presently headed by the BJP). It has paved the way for the further disintegration of J&K.  Two regions of Kashmir and Jammu would look at each other with more suspicion than before despite a bold attempt by a concerned small section of population on both sides of the Pir Panjal to hold them together whatever the odds). The writing on the wall for a secular and united J&K which became part of the country in 1947 is clear. The anti-Sheikh as well as the pro-October 26 holiday lobbies in the Jammu region are happy. It does not seem to matter that October 26 is a grim reminder that August 15 was bypassed at a decisive turn in history with Maharaja Hari Singh unable to timely put aside his personal ambition.

The fears in the Valley about the forcible change in its demography which already exist after the Union Government knocked the teeth out of Article 370 on August 5 would be further strengthened now. Basharat Masood of the Indian Express has rightly “explained” the impact of the cancellation of the “two existing public holidays” and the introduction of “a new one”: “The Muslim majority in Jammu and Kashmir sees this as a reflection of the Centre’s assertion, and as a move against their own assertion of their Muslim identity…The BJP leaders, most of whom hailed from Jammu, also stayed away from government functions organised to commemorate those killed in 1931…It was Abdullah, a close friend and political ally of Jawaharlal Nehru, who converted the Muslim Conference into the secular National Conference in 1939. Unlike the Muslim Conference, the NC advocated a future with secular India rather than with Pakistan. Once the tallest leader of Kashmir, Abdullah saw his popularity dwindle over the years, but his party continued to advocate Kashmir’s future with India…Many people see this as an effort to erase the role of Sheikh Abdullah, and J&K’s Muslim assertion. They see it also as a refusal to recognise Kashmir’s popular Muslim leaders who sided with India in 1947, and leaders who continue to identify with India. It also raises a question mark over the revival of a political process in Jammu and Kashmir. After the abrogation of Jammu & Kashmir’s special status and division of the state into two Union Territories, the government has cracked down even on mainstream political parties, jailed their leaders and workers including three former Chief Ministers, and stayed away from any political engagement. The move comes when normalcy is yet to return even five months after the abrogation.”

All signs are that the BJP wants to enforce its anti-pluralist idea of peace and stability on the land and the people. Its leaders are roaming around freely unlike their political rivals who have been lodged in regular and makeshift jails in the Valley and the rest of the country and are from time to time shut out in its stronghold of the Jammu region. They are thumping their chests over the Central Government’s “achievements” successfully camouflaging in the process their well-founded apprehensions about the natives’ concerns about their land and jobs triggered by the abrogation of the state and its special status. Since the party neither has the necessary organisational capability giving it total sway nor acquired the moral authority over all men and matters it does not want to risk the loss of the current unbridled power by holding assembly polls. It is heavily dependent upon the state apparatus which is increasingly exposed to the charge of being pliable. Political opponents are forced into submission and put under house arrest at the slightest pretext. The continuing detention of Farooq Abdullah, a political stalwart and a sitting member of the Lok Sabha who has been the chief minister five times, under the Public Safety Act (PSA), and ex-chief ministers Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti along with their senior associates, is a sordid chapter of the present scenario. Their party colleagues in the Jammu region as well as leaders of the other parties including Congress are holding out despite being denied on most of the occasions the right of carrying out their legitimate activities. It speaks of their courage of conviction. As is well known by now the Internet services are disrupted. Education and its quality especially in the Valley is a serious casualty with poor attendance in schools and colleges.

Non-BJP leaders in the Jammu region, especially of the National Conference, People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Congress and the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) speak up through every possible means they are allowed to use. The thrust of their argument is that political leaders should be set free soon and their activities allowed to be resumed. Lifting of curbs and the restoration of Internet services are among their major demands.

In a joint press release on January 5, 2020, marking five months of detention of Farooq Abdullah, Omar Abdullah and others, top NC leaders of Jammu  including provincial president Devinder Singh Rana, Ajay Sadhotra, Surjeet Singh Salathia, Rattan Lal Gupta, Syed Mushtaq Ahmed Bukhari, Sheikh Bashir Ahmed, Rachpal Singh. Kashmira Singh, Khalid Najeeb Suharwardy and Javeed Rana, have expressed anguish over slapping of the PSA on Farooq Abdullah and its extension by three months in utter disregard of “his towering political stature in the country and contribution towards nation building and steering J&K to peace, tranquility and development despite numerous challenges over the decades.” They have also “highlighted the huge contribution of Omar in maintaining peace and harmony, recalling his earnest appeal for maintaining calm and tranquility hours before his detention on the midnight of August 4 last year.”

Senior Pradesh Congress leader and chief spokesperson Ravinder Sharma wonders: “Why the BJP leaders are allowed to move freely, while curbs are being put on the opposition to keep them away from the public.” This question is on the lips of every right-thinking person. Since there is no categorical reply all claims to normalcy will be taken with a pinch of salt. The BJP is unmindful. Confident of its overwhelming command over the power structure it is going ahead with selective retention of history. It has evidently closed its ears to Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s nazm (verse) “Hum dekhenge” making waves in this country at the moment.

The post BA V21, No2, 2020 appeared first on Border Affairs.

Jashn-e-Kashmir: Denial, demotion and dejection – Pushp Saraf

While growing up in the KashmirValley in the mid-1950s I was exposed to a cultural extravaganza Jashn-e-Kashmir (Festival of Kashmir) at the highly picturesque Mughal Gardens in Srinagar. This would be an evening of fun and frolic, of songs and dances, and, of course, the mouth-watering ‘Wazwan”, the ultimate multi-course meal in Kashmiri cuisine. The “high” and “mighty” of politics and bureaucracy would ensure that their presence was noticed along with the best practitioners of fine arts.

It was a dazzling sensory experience on the banks of the Dal Lake.

As the years rolled by, the realisaion set in that all is not gold that glitters. The ‘1ashn” — the first of which was held in 1956 — was part of a grand strategy to camouflage the bitter truth of widespread tension and anger that prevailed below the surface over the arrest of local hero and “Prime Minister” (the designation then of the popular head of J&K) Sheikh Abdullah and his popular associates in the National Conference,J&K’s premier political outfit, in 1953. It was meant to project that all is well in J&K especially the Valley. Similar scintillating shows were held far and wide.

Almost a decade later, as a teenager, I came across another spectacular phenomenon although it was minus all the sponsored light, action and drama. This was while travelling with the Sheikh after his release from the jail where he spent I I years. It was the sight of common people, especially women, dancing and singing hymns in his praise. It was a breathtaking celebration on public roads in which the masses were involved of their accord. Then as a student of Srinagar’s Sri Pratap College, it was my first introduction to the appeal of a mass leader who was then the moving spirit behind the secessionist Plebiscite Front.Amazingly, the masses had moved along with him from one end of the political spectrum — rejection of the two-nation theory based on religion to accede to India in 1947 to the demand for the right to self-determination in the 1950s and 1960s — and then again to India following his historic written 1975 accord with then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

Border Affairs

• Editorial : Jashn-e-Kashmir: Denial,demotion and dejection
• Double bonanza for Ladakh: UT and Sixth Schedule
• Pakistan : Opposition’s search for unity
• Bangladesh : Slanging match
• Response : Unity against terrorism

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The official ‘Jashn” had not succeeded in turning the people away from him.

Jawaharlal Nehru’s acquiescence in the Sheikh’s incarceration and, worse still, in the oppression of the pro-India opposition parties constitutes a sad chapter of J&K’s political history between 1953 and 1964. Indeed, Nehru was one of the greatest democrats of his era who played a stellar role in strengthening democracy and secularism in the independent country in its formative years. It was also because of leaders like him, Sardar Patel and the Sheikh that the Muslim-majority J&K joined a secular India rejecting a Muslim Pakistan. How could he subsequently shut his eyes — actually become a party — to the repressive measures adopted against pro-India political rivals in J&K? This can’t be easily explained.The late Y. D. Gundevia, his foreign secretary and a distinguished bureaucrat who was involved in Kashmir affairs in the 1960s, has tried to answer the question in his book “Outside the archives.” According to him, Nehru was misled by “Home Ministry files” (intelligence reports) which portrayed a negative picture of pro-India opposition leaders fighting puppet regimes in the state.

It is only well known that the Sadar-e-Riyasat (the designation then of the Governor) Karan Singh and Deputy”Prime Minister” and Home Minister Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad along with his deputy D.P. Dhar planned the Sheikh’s arrest by ensuring that he was woken up from his sleep and taken into custody in the hill resort of Gulmarg. Bakshi was ironically the closest confidant of the Sheikh. The Sheikh could never forgive the Bakshi for his betrayal and refused to condole his death when he passed away in 1972.The succeeding “Prime Ministers”/Chief Ministers of J&K also had August 9, 1953 firmly etched on their minds and never parted with the Home portfolio.

National parties take plunge

A government born of what was a conspiracy could not have delivered because of the resultant loss of popular goodwill. Bakshi became the “Prime Minister” following the Sheikh’s arrest and dismissal. He himself was the product of a popular movement and a fairly good administrator. However, once controlling the levers of power he became extremely intolerant of the opposition and practiced a “gun or gold” policy rewarding his loyalists and severely punishing the rivals. He became jittery when the Praja Socialist Party (PSP), then the third largest party in the country, set up it.s unit in J&K — the first nationalist party to do so with it.sown constitution — on November 9, 1954 and the Praja Parishad, till then a regional outfit working in tandem with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), converted itself into the state unit of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh ( earlier avatar of the Bharatiya Janata Party) the same day.

The PSP posed an inter-regional challenge to the Bakshi’s National Conference, virtually an adjunct of the Congress, including in the Valley. It opposed detentions without trial, believed in respect for all regions as well as in winning over hostile elements through dialogue and presented a liberal and secular face of the country. The Jan Sangh, on the other hand, took a strident pro-Hindu and pro-Jammu stance in the country’s only Muslim­majority state garnering mass support in the Hindu-dominated areas of the Jammu region. In fact, it.s entire politics was built around the slogan of “Ek desh mein do Vidhan, Ek desh mein do Pradhan, Ek desh mein do Nishan nahi challenge, nahi chalenge” (A single country can’t have two constitutions, two prime ministers,and two national emblems).The party had initially gone along with a vacillating Maharaja Hari Singh. It was embarrassed as the Maharaja was forced by circumstances to drop his independence plans and opt for accession with India which was delayed. To overcome its discomfiture it raised the demand for complete merger with India assuming no responsibility for strengthening the willing association of Muslims in the Valley with the rest of the country. It cared litde for sensitive issues like Article 370 of the Indian Constitution guaranteeing special status to J&K. It ignored the larger sentiment in the Valley though it had a good leader there in Tika Lal Taploo who was assassinated by the militants in Srinagar on September 14, 1989 in the first wave of terrorist killings of pro-India and liberal leaders that began with the murder of NC leaderYusuf Halwai on August 21, 1989 (once during an informal discussion with me BJP veteran Kidar Nath Sahani described him as the “second Maqbool Sherwani”, a 19-year old follower of the Sheikh who became a legend when he was nailed on a wooden cross and repeatedly shot by Pakistani raiders on November 7, 1947) and also took toll of Maulana Masoodi, a member of the Indian Constituent Assembly, on December 13, 1990 along with several other sane voices.

In the Jam mu region, the Jan Sangh benefitted on different occasions from the presence of three top leaders Balraj Madhok, Premnath Dogra and Kidar Nath Sahani of whom Mr Madhok and Mr Sahani even after moving to the larger national spectrum kept in close touch with the state. Mr Dogra too became all-India president of the Jan Sangh and was a noble leader enjoying general goodwill. He was a government servant for long and was prematurely retired as WazirWazarat (Deputy Commissioner) of Muzaffarabad, now the Capital city of “Azad” Kashmir, as the occupied territory across the Line of Control (LoC) is locally known, when he was not even 45, long before the retirement age of 62. He was “punished for handling situation in the Muslim stronghold of Muzaffarabad in a way that spared the Muslims of any firing or lathi­ charge, unlike some other towns in the state, while the local Hindus and Sikhs who were in a minority also remained safe.” In simple language he refused to follow orders for opening fire on peaceful Muslim demonstrators.

Personal experience

The PSP’s emergence,its emphasis on probity in public life and the electoral and intellectual challenge it posed unnerved the Bakshi. My late father Om Prakash Saraf, a Gandhian to the core, was the founder-chairman of the J&K unit of the PSP and was among the first to challenge the Bakshi’s nominees in the Valley that too in the prestigious Amirakadal assembly constituency, then the nerve centre of Kashmir politics, in the first assembly polls held under the auspices of the Election Commission of India in 1962. He had earlier been expelled from the NC by the Sheikh for not having supported his campaign for evicting Maharaja Hari Singh from the state even though he had worked for and celebrated his abdication. Wherever we stayed in Jammu or Srinagar — it was mostly in rented accommodation — our premises would be surrounded by plainclothesmen. Father’s public meetings were invariably disrupted and he was also once detained in Kathua on the national highway in the Jammu region when he was returning home by bus after attending a PSP meeting in the national capital. He left the PSP in 1964 when some of its national leaders, including his friend Asoka Mehta, joined the Congress. He did not join the Congress and returned to active politics only during Emergency to stand up against it as one of the key leaders of the state Janata Party along with Maulana Masoodi and Thakur Baldev Singh.

Some of the leading lights of the PSP like Devi Dass Thakur, Balraj Puri Abdul Gani Goni,AdarshAnand,Acharya Nand Kumar;”Gauhar” Ghulam Nabi andAmrit Malhotra made it big on the national spectrum in political, legal and diplomatic fields. {My father and grandfather Lala Mulk Raj Saraf, who founded J&K’s first newspaper namely”Ranbir” in 1924, worked for the state’s emotional integration with the rest of the country. The “Ranbir” invited the wrath of the Maharaja and the British India Government and was banned on a couple of occasions including on May 9, 1930 for reporting Mahatma Gandhi’s arrest in “British India” and, to quote the official order, “disgraceful demonstrations which lately took place in the city of Jammu in connection with the arrest” and on June 23, 1947 for pleading the state’s immediate accession with India and the Sheikh’s release from jail which was viewed by the Maharaja’s administration as threats to “public safety” and “maintenance of public order” before, ironically, “falling martyr’: to quote media reports of that period, “to the “hero (Sheikh Abdullah) it created” on May 18, 1950 as the Sheikh’s “advisers began to adopt taaics which were more reprehensible than even those adopted by an autocratic regime in the past to stifle the voice of the Ranbir.” Maharaja Hari Singh, in a bid to retain his independence, offered the Standstill Agreement “on all matters on which these exist at present with the out.going British Indian Government. .. pending settlement of details and formal execution of fresh agreement” to both Pakistan and India; Pakistan accepted it only to stab the Maharaja in the back by organising a tribal raid hurrying him to settle for accession with India).

The Bakshi appeared to rejoice in the harassment of his political opponents. What was galling was that Nehru went along with him to the extent of dubbing his critics, who were for strengthening the state’s integration with India but were opposed to a corrupt and vindictive state administration, as “enemies of the nation.” When Nehru woke up to the reality it was too late (he sacked the Bakshi under his famous “Kamaraj plan”, agreed to the withdrawal of the “Kashmir conspiracy case” against the Sheikh and his close associates facilitating their release and invited the Sheikh to stay with him at the Prime Minister’s residence in New Delhi. It was a dramatic reversal of fortunes in which the Bakshi not only lost power but also later landed in jail under the Defence of India Rules).

Jashn-e-Kashmir was the Bakshi’s idea of creating a feel-good environment to knock off the bitter memories of 1953 and its bloody aftermath. He himself said it was intended as a break from “tension and politics” and was “a fitting climax to the conditions of normalcy and the change-over in 1953.” Hafsa Kanjwal, a history professor in the United States, has mentioned in a chapter on the festival in her dissertation “Building a new Kashmir: Bakshi Ghulam Muhammad and the politics of state formation in a disputed territory” submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy {History and Women’s Studies) in The University of Michigan 2017: “While a number of writers offered an indirect social critique of this period, some, like Rahman Rahi, took on Bakshi himself. … Perhaps no account of Bakshi’s rule was as damning as Rehman’s satirical poem in Kashmiri, Maefi Nama (apology) … He joined the bureaucracy under Bakshi and took part in Jashn-e-Kashmir… In the poem the poet apologises for having insulted ‘the golden-laden ruler’, referring to Bakshi…Later on, he suggests the ruler was insulted because Rahi had dared to mention the ineffectiveness of a particular policy. Evoking a series of images, the poet satirises the ruler’s dictatorial style (‘if someone dares to smell a rose without your due permission that is mutiny’), and his total control over all aspects of life in the country, including life and death, ‘if you call a mirage a sea, that will be the reality; if you call blood ‘Zam Zam’, who has the guts to say it is not?; if you call stumbling dance, who can question you?; an insane person with whom you are happy, he gets the seal of being a dervish; if you are not ready to tolerate Socrates you will give him poison; whom am I to challenge you?”(Zam Zam is a well in Mecca whose water is considered holy).

In his nineties now, Rahman Rahi is the only Kashmiri litterateur to have been honoured with the country’s prestigious Jnanpith award.

History repeats itself

Jashn-e-Kashmir comes to mind at this point in history because of the celebrations by the BJP and a section of population in the rest of the country over the abolition of J&K’s special status and its bifurcation into two union territories on August S and 6.The Bakshi organised his show because he was conscious that he had to regain his and his government’s popularity and credibility eroded by the Sheikh’s arrest. At least he had the satisfaction of doing whatever he did on the home turf. The irony of the BJP’s merriment over the successful culmination of a long-held belief is that it is not shared by the area and the population in the name of which it is being held. The dominant sentiment of J&K (except that of the Ladakh region} has not been taken into account even as the state has been subjected to the ignominy of becoming the first to be demoted to a union territory. It is not surprising, therefore, that normal life in J&K has been thrown out of gear ever since the Union Government scrapped Article 35-A and nullified the basic emphasis of Article 370 on August 5, There has been a virtual shutdown in the Valley in particular. How can it be a cause for celebration in a democracy that an entire population is under lockdown in a part of the country: there is communication blockade, denial of freedom of expression, detention without trial of a large number of mainstream leaders, lawyers and human rights activists? How can it be explained to the people running around in search of their relatives lodged in different jails in the country?

There is denial of the historical context in which J&K merged with India, demotion of one of the most vibrant states and, as a result, widespread dejection. The Union Government has extracted a heavy price from J&K for its own abject failure to control militancy.
In the Jammu region, a BJP stronghold otherwise, the initial enthusiasm is giving way to despondency over the loss of the statehood of a historic state which extended its territory first to Kashmir and then to Ladakh (The full title of Maharaja Hari Singh when the circumstances compelled him to sign the Instrument of Accession in 194 7 was “Shriman lndar Mahandar Rajrajeshwar Maharajadhiraj Shri Hari Singhji, Jammu Kashmir Naresh Tatha Tibbet adi Deshadhipathr’). It is coupled with an uneasy feeling over the future of children deprived of their privileged status and the loss of land to affluent business persons from outside (top BJP leaders like Speaker Nirmal Singh are going around to alleviate the local concerns with the assurance that domicile certificates may be issued to “protea the interests of locals in respect to land and state jobs,” and Governor Satya Pal Malik himself has spoken that “their identity is neither at stake nor has been tampered with.’} The feeling is sinking as if Jammu has been used as a guinea pig in a broader scheme despite its proven nationalist credentials and massive contribution to the armed forces. The BJP has exposed itself to the charge of having acted with an eye on the electorate in the rest of the country. The Jammu region has never sought a UT status. So is the case with the Valley. Ladakh is the only region which has got it after a long struggle as it has mostly found itself crushed between Kashmir and Jammu evoking the Swahili saying: “When two elephants fight, the grass suffers; and, when the same two elephants make love, the grass also suffers.”

Detentions without trial

Even during the Bakshi’s time or during Emergency later there has not been such large-scale detention of mainstream opposition leaders on both sides of the Pir Panjal range as at the time of this writing. The BJP has cracked the whip on them before going ahead with unilateral announcements on August 5. One former chief minister Farooq Abdullah has been formally arrested under the draconian Public Safety Act (PSA) after having been put under house arrest all along. Two other former chief ministers Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti are confined to makeshift jails. A fourth ex-chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, who is also Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, has had to invoke the Supreme Court’s intervention to visit his home state after his three attempts were scuttled forcing him to return from Srinagar and Jammu airports.

Almost everybody who is anybody in J&K’s mainstream opposition politics, leave alone separatist spectrum, is under detention. The mainstream and separatist politicians have thus been pushed on the same side of the fence with the former facing the sarcastic “we-told-you­-so” (implying that New Delhi would let down you) looks from their traditional opponents. The judiciary’s intervention has been evoked by relatives and party members to meet their detained family members and leaders and to ensure that the ailing Communist Party of India-Marxist stalwart Yusuf Tarigami gets proper treatment at the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi. In the Jammu region, popular leaders like Devinder Singh Rana, provincial president of the NC, Harsh Dev Singh of the National Panthers Party and Raman Bhalla of the Congress have been put under house arrest as have been many others. Any mention of a leader holding a press conference makes the administration edgy and it moves in swiftly to thwart it. Except for the Governor and BJP leaders there is no political face visible on the ground.

Indeed, it is amazing that the leaders, who have undergone detentions without trial during Emergency as many BJ P leaders have and know that as a strategy it can boomerang on its practitioners, should evoke the same tactic to silence their ideological rivals.

Besides protests by concerned citizens and sections of the media, occasionally important individual voices have also been raised against the manner of diluting the state’s special status as by former top cop Julius Ribeiro, who tackled terrorism with a strong hand in Punjab in the
1980s (“From the police point of view. I will give full marks. But from the moralistic, I would not do. The people are supposed to be involved … Getting people on the side is the most important thing and that the government will have to do. Otherwise, you get this trouble. Getting people on your side is the crux of the matter’J; Kannan Gopinathan, an AGMUT (Arunachal Pradesh-­Goa-Mizoram-Union Territories (excluding Andaman and Nicobar Islands) cadre IAS officer; and S. Sasikanth Senthil, a Karnataka cadre IAS officer, both of whom have quit the elite service in disappointment, the latter taking a broader view with his assertion that “fundamental building blocks of democracy are being compromised in an unprecedented manner.”

To read full editorial please download

Border Affairs

• Editorial : Jashn-e-Kashmir: Denial,demotion and dejection
• Double bonanza for Ladakh: UT and Sixth Schedule
• Pakistan : Opposition’s search for unity
• Bangladesh : Slanging match
• Response : Unity against terrorism

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