Untold Facts

Mumbai’s 26/11 Terrorists’ Attack and the Jammu & Kashmir Issue

It is alleged that the terrorists who made the serious attack on the 26th November in Mumbai having had amazingly overpowered the securities of Indian Government and of the installations (Hotel Taj, Oberoi etc.) were Pakistani citizens and connected to Lashkar E Tayyeba (LET). The lone young man arrested (nine said to be killed) alive stated to speaking fluent English unusual for any Pakistani of that young age that should indicate that such English speaker were not based in Pakistan but elsewhere. Further is known that some hold British Passports. Thus one can not be certain that they were all Pakistanis by birth but could be Muslims of the near about locality.

It is, however, true that the LET is rather a new organization compared to many other established not long ago but much more determined than any of the old ones for liberation of Jammu and Kashmir from Indian occupation. Since the LET was banned in Pakistan mainly due to pressure of India and for Pakistan to improve and maintain normal relation with India, it is only likely that they can not operate openly and so work underground, not necessarily in the soil of Pakistan. It is also likely that there might have many young men from the land of Jammu and Kashmir having close relations and links with Pakistan territory as the two areas are contiguous so far as who work in the organization underground for freedom from Indian rule or Azadi as they call it.

The movement and struggle for Azadi of the people of Jammu and Kashmir is clearly a stand, in India’s view, for ‘secession; of the state from Indian Union that she can not yield to for preservation of the entity. That is what stand India has been trying to preserve for the last 61 years.

There is, however, a lacuna. The post 1947 independent India that took her independent entity following the departure of the colonial power, the British, had been based on the Indian Independence Act of 1947 or to be exact, the 3rd June Plan of 1947. The Plan though materialized in the partition of the British Indian territory into two separate sovereign states, Pakistan and India, the position of Jammu and Kashmir like more than other 100 or so native feudal states, had clear offer in the official document to join either of the two new countries or to remain independent just as Pakistan and India had earned. Keeping with the provision of the 3rd June Plan, Jammu and Kashmir under the leadership of the populist leader Sheikh Abdullah opted to remain independent. But the feudal Hindu ruler Dogra Raja Hari Singh in defiance of the popular will of the people in about ten weeks after mid August 1947 made a secret deal with the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and joined India through a fraudulent document against the popular wishes of the overwhelming majority people who happened to be Muslims keeping Abdullah not only out of the deal but also his imprisonment by the Indian Government Prime Minister Pandit Nehru. However, as the fraudulence was unmasked by Pakistan and the world knew about and condemned the evil design of Nehru, he made open promises one after another that the final fate of the people of Jammu and Kashmir would be referred to and be decided by the express will or through referendum or self-determination of the people of Jammu and Kashmir under the UN supervision.

Unfortunately after a few years, Nehru went back on his promise on flimsy ground that Pakistan had joined alliance with some big power, and started to rule the people arbitrarily at whims without holding the promised referendum or allowing the process of self-determination that was essentially needed for respect of the wishes of the people. The popular leader Abdullah had to face long imprisonment, because, at that stage he refused to agree to annex the State into the Indian Union. But after Nehru’s death and Pakistan dismembered by India in 1971 through open armed aggression thus giving birth to independent Bangladesh in the soil and territory of East Pakistan, Nehru’s daughter and Prime Minster Indira bargained hard with Abdullah in 1975, freed him from long imprisonment and was persuaded to accede to India that he did at the fag end of his life. However, he made a bargain in that the Indian Constitution in Article 370 provided a special position that no other province India had. Thus Jammu and Kashmir became the only Muslim majority province of the Indian Union that according to the provision and partition plan of 1947 had to become a part or province of Pakistan by virtue of being Muslim majority area.

As was the Indian situation in reality, Muslims and lower castes in millions continued to face disadvantage and inequality, the Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir though being majority in the state, felt betrayed with all other Muslims on all India basis. Such realization gave birth to freedom movement in new vigor. Many organizations sprang up to fight for independence or Azadi. Laskar E Tayyeba happened to be the latest one of the many led by different leaders. One such young leader Maqbool Bhat (b.1938) of the Jammu Kashmir National Liberation Front (JKNLF) fighting for Azadi in early 1980s was captured, tried in camera and hanged to death on the 11 February, 1984. Bhat’s death as is natural with any freedom movement leaders did not cool the movement but added fuel to the fire.

Soon after execution of Maqbul Bhat at his prime at 42, Jagmohon took up as the Governor of Indian held Jammu and Kashmir. He hold to the post for nearly six years and on retirement in 1991, wrote a voluminous book of 794 pages in 1994, titled rightly ‘My Frozen Turbulence in Kashmir’ that contains his day to day experience there both as an insider of the government and about the determined activities of the freedom fighters against Indian rule. He had therein an observation, ‘What is happening now is the inevitable consequence of not facing the truth…such people (in administration) are not only digging their own graves but also of united India’ (1994 Edn, P.652). He meant so not only about the security forces and administration but also about the ‘quisling’ politicians. The Oxford University Professor Emeritus Dr Tapan Roy Chowdhury on the 1st December (08) morning (Dhaka Time) used a similar term with the BBC Radio (London) for the Indian politicians following the Bombay incident of 26/11 as ‘DURBRITTO’ in Bengali language or in English meaning rogue.

Thus the alleged terrorists and all their activities including the Mumbai 26/11 one have to be seen and measured in the greater perspective of their intents and goals for Azadi. Their mode of action programs may not be condoned but one can not overlook their deep frustration that has built up over the period of decades that the Indian Government and politicians had continually had played roles of rogues divorced of any ethical and moral values.

Dr. Angana Chatterji, a Bengali of Kolkata ( India) and Associate Professor of Cultural and Anthropological Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies, while on a fact finding study tour in Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir in June this year, just like another humanist writer Arundhati Roy continuing her sympathy for the cause of Azadi of the of the people of Jammu and Kashmir, has made public what she found there in her latest article, ‘Mass Graves in Kashmir’, all of Muslims labeled as ‘terrorists’, published in the October- December issue of the London based Lisa journal. Although all those killed over the two decades by the ever present 500,000 Indian army and security forces summarily labeled them as ‘terrorists’, but they identified themselves as the patriotic proud freedom fighters and so also their near ones deeply respect them as such. Dr. Angana stated some account of the ill fate of the so-called ‘terrorists’ as follows:
‘Nearly two decades of genocidal violence record 70,000+ dead, 8,000+ disappeared, 60,000+ tortured, 50,000+ orphaned, incalculable sexualized gendered violence….Kashmir’s only hospital with services for mental health received 68,000 patients…. Repressions of struggles for self-determination and international politics/policies have yielded severe consequences, creating a juncture at which the failure of governance intersects with a culture of grief’ (P. 46).

India boasts of her ‘democracy’ and many others equally euphemistically call India the ‘largest democracy’. How about just response of the Indian government to the democratic wishes of the people that in the form of the self–determination issue of the people of Jammu and Kashmir has been pending in the UN agenda for over five decades now? M J Akbar, the renowned journalist, the Congress Party follower and a secularist had long 23 years ago reminded the Indian rulers in his book, ‘India Siege Within’ (Penguin, 1985), for the crucial need of sticking to the faith in democracy and respect for others inalienable right for self-determination including those in Jammu and Kashmir for India’s own survival. Another great writer of India Khushwant Singh in his thought-provoking book ‘The End of India’ (Penguin, 2003), as I understood, appealed for the same liberal democracy and to shun the psyche of uprooting the ‘common enemy according to them is the ‘foreigner’, namely the Muslims and Christians who must be forced into a subordinate status or hounded out or even decimated’ (P.128). Maolana Abul Kalam Azad, the staunchest of the Congress leaders and a ‘comrade’ of Nehru but a Muslim scholar advised in mid 1950s soon before his death that ‘It is to the interest of India and Pakistan that they should develop friendly relations and act in cooperation with one another. Any other course of action can lead to only to greater trouble’ (India Wins Freedom, Orient Longman, 1988 Edn., P.249). Would they learn and see through the root causes of the terrorism, particularly among the people of Jammu and Kashmir for realization of their inalienable birth right and dear cause for self determination before jumping summarily on to witch hunting not only for the alleged terrorists but also against the Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir. Taking excuse of the Mumbai issue, any adventure to teach any military lesson to Pakistan may not help India but only exacerbate sufferings of her millions of poor people just as that may be for the Pakistanis as well.
Terror attacks in India are not exclusive to her but such attacks are almost a regular matter in Pakistan as well. The devastating recent bomb attack in the five star Islamabad Marriot Hotel is still fresh in memory almost of all. Both the Hindu communalists and terrorists of the RSS variety etc. are not uncommon in India as one may recall the Indian Guzrat massacre perpetrated years ago by them against nearly a thousand of Muslim men women and children in a single go and unbelievably at the behest of the seating government Chief Minister!

India would be well advised if she would sooner than later honor the promise earlier given to the people of Jammu and Kashmir for the right of self determination that would certainly stop not only terrorism but also establish durable peace in the region.

Author: Dr. M.T. Hussain
Dhaka-1206