An Accent in Kashmir

http://www.newsline.com.pk/html/impressions.html

Indian Spring

MARCH 2001 ISSUE

- By Sairah Irshad Khan

A Muslim Indian explained why. ``Traditionally, the Indian Muslim has displayed a visible arrogance towards the Hindu faith. He has mocked his deities, shunned his beliefs and adopted the high moral ground in relation to the Hindu lifestyle. If this is the Indian Muslim, who has coexisted with the Hindu forever, it is presumed, naturally, that the Muslim from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan will be far more intolerant. The arrival of seven Pakistanis for the Kumbh and their obvious respect for Hindu customs, has therefore, made for a pleasant surprise. And this really is how we can build bridges, gulf the divide.``

Said an Indian Muslim businessman with a Pakistani wife and a large branch of his family on our side of the border, ``There used to be a time when Pakistanis would visit their relatives in India and speak of the quality of life they enjoyed in Pakistan as first-class citizens. The Indian Muslim would then bemoan his lot, and wonder whether he`d taken the right decision at Partition. But over the years, things changed. Between the Middle East, India`s economic boom, their own initiative, the Muslims have done better. Then along come the `mohajirs` from Pakistan with their tales of oppression and injustice, and suddenly the Indian Muslim thinks, `we`re not so badly off after all.``` He added that Kashmir has created another problem for the Indian Muslim. ``Always hard-pressed to prove his loyalty to his country, every time the Kashmir issue flares up, the loyalties of Muslims in India come under suspicion. Recently, I heard a group of Indian Muslims discussing the situation, and one of them turned around and said the Pakistanis are not interested in Muslims – only Kashmir. If they were, they`d worry about what happens to the huge Muslim community in India every time they instigate trouble in Kashmir.``

WEDNESDAY JANUARY 09 2002



Cover story

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0%2C%2C7-2002013426%2C00.html



A state of war



BY TREVOR FISHLOCK



The dispute over Kashmir has brought India and Pakistan to the brink of nuclear war. But why has this beautiful state become the subcontinent`s powder keg?



Poets hymned it as a land of love and languor. In 1627 the dying emperor Jahangir, who shaped its blissful gardens, was asked to name his last desire. “Only Kashmir,” he murmured. “Only Kashmir.”

India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, promised melodramatically that its name was written upon his heart. Today, millions make the same emotive claim.

Passions for Kashmir run hot and bitter, the bayonets almost touch and the urge for war is strong. Two rivals, two ideas, two faiths stand nose to nose in one of the world’s most dangerous places. One mistake or misjudgment and the spark falls on the fuse.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars, two of them over Kashmir. The great bulk of their armies are based along the frontier that runs through Punjab and Kashmir. The border is always tense.

In Kashmir there has been an almost permanent grumbling small war of artillery bombardment. Apart from the all-out conflicts, India and Pakistan have two or three times pulled back from the brink, and now the assessments of their military power have to include their nuclear capability. There was a particularly dangerous stand-off in 1990.

It was inevitable that the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament on December 13 would bring India and Pakistan once more to the edge of the abyss. It was an echo of the October suicide bomb attack on the Kashmir assembly. The Parliament in Delhi is the heart and emblem of what India stands for. Now India is raging.

Poor Kashmir. It lies in the Himalayan ramparts where the borders of India, Pakistan and China rub together. Reality mocks its beauty. There is no escaping the permeating melancholy of a land that lies under the gun. It is as if malevolent gods, jealous of its loveliness, placed a curse upon it.

The poison entered the garden in 1947 when the war-weary British quit their Indian empire and partitioned it. They had no wish to cut it up: one of their imperial achievements, they said, was to have united India and made it secure. They divided it to meet the demands of Muslim leaders who said that Hindus and Muslims could not live together in one country, that the communities formed two separate nations. Pakistan was therefore created as a homeland for the subcontinent’s Muslims.

Britain ruled India with the co-operation of more than 500 Indian princes, a galaxy of maharajahs, rajahs, ranas, raos, khans, mirs, jams, nizams and nawabs, loyal to the British crown, well-oiled with flattery, some fantastically rich and a few of them barmy. In the summer of 1947, these rulers had to choose whether to take their states into India or Pakistan. It was a personal decision, without referendum.

Public opinion hardly came into it. Most princes joined India. Most knew that they would be extinguishing themselves as a ruling class, but it was clear to all but a few that the game was up. On the eve of independence, all the princes had made up their minds except four.

The Maharajah of Kashmir, Sir Hari Singh, was one of the ditherers. He was vain, pompous and addicted to hunting bears and shooting ducks. As a young man he had an unfortunate scrape in London, being found in bed with a woman at the Savoy Hotel and milked for a lot of money by a blackmailer pretending to be the woman’s husband.

At Partition, Kashmir, more fully known as Jammu and Kashmir, was in a key position: a prize because it was a large state and famously beautiful, a honeymooners’ resort of lakes and cool alpine meadows.

Given its place on the map, it could have swung either to India or to Pakistan. Because of its overwhelming Muslim majority, Pakistan’s new leaders expected that it would join their Islamic entity. But the maharajah had to decide — and he was a Hindu. This was not unusual. In princely India, Muslims often ruled Hindus and vice versa. But Hari Singh dithered. He could not believe that the British would really go home. He did not want to join Pakistan because he could not bear the thought of his state being subsumed. He dreamt that Kashmir could somehow be an independent country and he could keep his power.

India and Pakistan became independent in August. Hari Singh was still dithering in October. As he fiddled, the storm broke. Thousands of Pathan warriors from the North-West Frontier, bordering Afghanistan, rushed into Kashmir, vowing to seize it for Pakistan. Although they were a rabble, they might have succeeded. They were close to Srinagar, the capital, when they were delayed by their lust for loot and women. While they pillaged towns and raped girls and nuns, the hapless Hari Singh gathered up his diamonds and Purdey shotguns and fled his palace in a motorcade.

India acted fast and decisively. In a flurry of action the maharajah agreed to join India, and Indian forces flew to save Srinagar. This was the first Kashmir war, not an all-out confrontation but a series of fights and communal conflicts. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of Pakistan, wanted to send the new Pakistan regular Army into action, but did not do so when the absurdity of the situation was pointed out to him: the forces of India and Pakistan shared a commander-in-chief, Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, while many officers on both sides were British.

Kashmir was left divided along the line where fighting stopped in 1948. A United Nations ceasefire came into force on January 1, 1949. In 1965 Pakistan tried and failed to annexe Kashmir and was defeated in brief and bitter fighting. At one stage Indian forces were almost at the gates of Lahore and could easily have taken it. Pakistan’s leaders believed that Kashmiris would welcome Pakistani troops as liberators. It was a shock that they did not. In 1971 India and Pakistan went to war again, India assisting the secession of East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh. Pakistan was left truncated and humiliated.

Yet the story of a vacillating maharajah and the ensuing bloody quarrel over territory is only the half of it.

Kashmir is a tragedy for its divided people and a continuing source of danger in a subcontinent inhabited by a fifth of the world’s population. The tragedy has deep roots. Kashmir is the offspring of bitterly divorced parents. Pakistan aches for it but will never possess it. India will never let it go: it is not negotiable. The trouble is that both sides define themselves by this feud.

Their mutual suspicions date from the 8th-century Muslim conquest of western India and the many hundreds of years of Mogul rule that were brought to an end by the British Raj. For India’s Hindu majority, independence in 1947 was a reclamation of their vast land, the end of centuries of foreign domination. Nehru and others believed passionately that this new India would be a daring concept, an embracing of all its religious, linguistic and regional diversity, a magnificent secular state.

The steely and intractable Jinnah did not believe it. His new country of Pakistan grew out of that scepticism, the belief that Muslims in India would be vulnerable, second-class citizens.

Pakistan was an invented state, a by-product of the great Indian struggle for independence. It evolved in the last few years of British rule among people who wanted to escape religious and political discrimination in the new order. Landowners especially thought they would lose out in India. Democracy barely made the journey to Pakistan.

In a sense Pakistan remains stranded in 1947. Its great debate has centred for half a century on what it is for and what it should be. Jinnah mused that it could be a secular country. But in that case, what was the point of Partition? Some of his successors said that Pakistan was nothing if not Islamic and determined to make it more so, a military theocracy.

Yet Islam proved an unreliable glue. It did not cement Pakistan and East Pakistan. Bangladesh erupted as the assertion of Bengali language and culture. Nor did it cement the disparate parts of Pakistan itself — Punjab, Baluchistan, Sindh and the North- West Frontier — or, indeed, the many shades of Islamic belief. Thus Kashmir is useful, the “unfinished business of Partition”. However much Pakistanis disagree about the nature of their society, they find common cause in Kashmir, the belief that they were robbed in 1947. This is the unifying insult. It is why Pakistan has supported Kashmiri insurgents. India’s treatment of Kashmiris during the long years of internal strife are held as proof that Jinnah was right, that Muslims needed their homeland.

It is true that India could have managed Kashmir more wisely, less roughly. But Pakistan has to live with the fact that there are more Muslims in India than in Pakistan. India has the second largest Muslim population in the world: evidently Hindus and Muslims do live together in a secular society, Nehru’s idea of India, even if it is not always easy. And Kashmir, the only Indian state with a Muslim majority, is in Indian minds the shining fact of secular India. Its existence throws the question to Pakistan again: what was Partition for? India has a powerful idea of its identity. It is the giant of South Asia, its Armed Forces are huge and it is proud of its democracy, even if this is somewhat battered. Pakistan, on the other hand, does not enjoy such a positive identity. It thinks of itself in terms of its neighbour and endures the negative of being Not India.

It means that even if the impossible were to happen, that Kashmir should somehow become part of Pakistan, the anxieties and insecurities of Pakistan would endure. There would have to be another issue by which Pakistan could seek to establish its identity and purpose.

In the meantime the two nations face each other again — and judging from what we see and hear, there are many on both sides desperate to fight. Centuries of prejudice are poured into the funnel of Kashmir.

People on both sides treasure the slights of history. There is an endless misunderstanding of each other’s beliefs and opinions. Estrangement is total. Trivial matters become huge. Hindu nationalists complain that Muslims cheer for Pakistan during Test matches. In both India and Pakistan, keen teams of monitors comb through guide books and encyclopaedias searching for maps that might contain instances of “cartographic aggression” — inaccuracies that seem to favour one side or the other.

Words are traps, and there is a sense that a comma could cause a crisis. But the opinions of outsiders are not welcome. For this is a feud between cousins, a quarrel in the family. It could hardly be more acrid and perilous.

http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-2000814232059.htm

Camps train Kashmir-based militants

By Aamir Latif

SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES

SHIKARPUR, Pakistan — Ahmad Jan says he has trained hundreds of Islamic militants to fight for independence in the Indian-held portion of Kashmir, where stepped-up violence before India`s Independence Day celebrations killed 16 persons and wounded dozens more.

Employing techniques they have learned at his training camps in the Afghan city of Kandahar, the militants use suicide squads to attack military facilities and stage deadly encounters with Indian soldiers, the soft-spoken, 27-year-old explained calmly.

His statements contradict repeated claims from Afghanistan`s Taleban rulers, who acknowledge the existence of camps like that where Mr. Jan works, but say they are used only to train fighters for the civil war in northeastern Afghanistan.

Mr. Jan, a black belt in karate who wears his black hair in long strands, said in an interview that he serves alongside his older brother, Ibrahim, as an instructor for Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, one of the main Islamic groups fighting Indian forces in Kashmir, where fighting with Indian forces has claimed 30,000 lives.

The group, which has a few other camps in and around Kandahar, changed its name from Harkat-ul-Ansar after being listed as a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department.

The group was blamed in 1995 for the disappearance of five foreign tourists, including two Americans, who were kidnapped in Kashmir. One was found beheaded and the others are believed to have been murdered.

Mr. Jan denied that his organization had ever kidnapped or murdered foreigners, including American citizens. But even if it has been branded as terrorist, ``the juggernaut of Jihad [holy war] cannot be reversed,`` Mr. Jan said in his hometown of Shikarpur, 250 miles north of Karachi, where he returns occasionally to visit his family.

Thousands of armed police and paramilitary personnel were in place on the streets of the Kashmiri capital, Srinagar, yesterday, braced for attacks from groups like Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. Today is India`s Independence Day, traditionally a time for attacks by the Kashmir insurgents.

Kashmir`s largest Muslim separatist group, the Hizbul Mujahideen, claimed responsibility for two land-mine attacks on a convoy of buses carrying border guards to Srinigar to help with security. The attacks killed six and wounded 40, 10 of them critically, the Associated Press reported.

Also yesterday, an army foot patrol sighted militants in a remote, mountainous area 160 miles north of Jammu and opened fire on them. An ensuing gunbattle left 10 rebels dead, Maj. Gen. P.P.S. Bindra said. No army casualties were reported.

Mr. Jan said it was the teachings of Islam that led him to join the mujahideen, which sent him for ``special task force`` training at the Afghan city of Khost. He transferred to the training camp in Kandahar two years ago.

``Training of all kinds including martial arts and sophisticated weapons is being imparted in my camp. I am responsible for martial arts training,`` he said of his duties.

Mr. Jan maintained that neither the Pakistan government nor the Taleban movement had any role in the running of the camps.

``The Taleban do not have total control in Afghanistan,`` he said. ``The local commanders and people of various cities like Kandahar have accepted the Taleban regime, but [the Taleban] have no authority in the outskirts of Afghanistan.``

Asked how the mujahideen was able to travel from Afghanistan across Pakistan to reach Kashmir, Mr. Jan noted with a wide smile that the two countries share a rugged 1,375-mile border.

``The Pakistani government cannot control the border with Afghanistan,`` he said. ``There are various ways to enter Afghanistan without confronting the security forces, although they often do not give us a hard time.``

Asked about financing for the training camps, he said there was ``no single person or group`` who provided the money.

``The whole Pakistani nation is behind us. We do not have any funding problems, the people of Pakistan give us more than generously. I can count a number of people who give hundreds of thousands of rupees every month for the cause of Jihad.``

Mr. Jan remained silent for some time when asked about suspicions that some of the money came from the Afghan-based Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, accused of masterminding the bomb attacks that killed 212 persons at two embassies in Africa last year.

``Not exactly,`` he said. ``We do not receive any direct funding from Osama, although we support him and his mission unequivocally.`` He refused to comment further on the matter.

The Shankaracharya Rock temple in Srinagar is not so ancient as per :

http://216.32.165.70/travel/1998/jan/20shan.htm

-arun gupta

Murad,

This is subsequent to clarifications given by you. While agreeing with several parts of your well-written travel report, I notice a subtle attempt at (shall I say, ``revisionist``) re-interpretation of history. I, in particular notice your account about ``Mihirakula, recent convert to Hinduism``.

This article (and your earlier article, Pagan conversion...) indicates a desire to redefine “Hinduism”, and to portray it as a violent religion. Your article also indicates that your definition of Hinduism is different from the one followed by millions of “Hindus”. Though I am not an expert on “Hinduism”, let me attempt to clarify that definition for you. ``Hindu`` was a word coined to denote people living east of Indus. People of this region were in general idol worshippers or animist. Though regions or group of people had a prime deity, binding factor was belief that god can be reached by multiple paths. This permitted different faiths and practices to coexist. As indicated in the references given at the end of this posting, there were different groups, some worshipping Shiva, other worshipping Indra and still other worshipping Vishnu. There were numerous local gods. Research indicates that while several central Asian tribes were Shivaites (e.g. Shakas, Kushans, white huns), tribes in Persian region were sun worshippers. There were some areas where ``asur/ ashur culture`` was prevalent. East and central India was dominated by animists. Though each group had a ``main god``, other gods were also accommodated in their hierarchy. This is not to say that clashes never happened.

Most of these groups influenced each other and to say that any one was less ``Hindu`` than other is wrong. I will argue that by today`s definition, all of those groups should be called ``Hindus``. Perhaps you can compare them to various Muslim sub-religions e.g. Shia, Sunnis etc.

Early Buddhism developed very much in a similar fashion. Its religious books are full of references to Indra, Indrani, Airavat and other Hindu gods. Even now, image of Gautam Budhha is kept in many temples along with other deities. In Nepal, Ladakh and Sikkim you can find Budhha’s image coexisting with those of “Hindu gods”. You are certainly aware that Rudra is an integral part of Tibetan Buddhism images. I have read several Chinese tales that refer to “White monkey god, Hanuman”. Garuda and Nagas are inseparable part of architecture of Buddhist monasteries in Nepal, China, Thailand etc.

That being said, I will now comment on specific points from your article. Your reference to “Mihirakula, recently converted to Hinduism” is an attempt to make Hinduism responsible for Mihirakula’s cruelty. First correction required is that white hunas, residing in central asia were followers of Shiva and Mihirkula was not a recent convert. His father Tomarana and Mihirkula, both shaivaites were part of a war like tribe. They were not specifically attacking Buddhism. They were looting remnants of largely Hindu Gupta kingdom. Mihirakula was finally confronted by a pan-Hindu alliance of Yashovarman of Kannauj and Baladitya, the Gupta emperor.

Your references to the Buddhist temples at Badrinath and kedarnath getting replaced by “Hindu” are not supported by any historical evidence. I have read several of Younghusband’s accounts and couldn’t identify the references pointed by you. I am trying to get my books on Younghusband from India and will write more details on him later. I will not frankly consider Younghusband a very truthful teller of history. I never had a chance to read Oakley’s book but based on my travels and reading of many other books, I will suggest that one of the reasons behind disappearance of Buddhism in Himalayas may have been its slow re-absorption by mainstream Hinduism.

I will speculate that perhaps Islam & Christianity will also get modified and accommodated with various other “Hindu” faiths in this “beyond Indus - Hindu” part of world.

Following are some of my references

Later Indo-Scythians, Alexander Cunningham, Indological Book House, India (1962 (1893))

The Political History of the Hunas in India, Atreyi Biswas, Munshiram Manoharlal, New Delhi (1973)

Peoples and languages in pre-islamic indus valley --Dr. Tariq Rahman, Fulbright Visiting Fellow

The Royal Patrons of the University of Nalanda, Rev. H. Heras, S.J., M.A. Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society, PART I. Vol. XIV 1928

Encyclopedia Britanica

Regards

happy #76

Thanks. I found the Lotus Temple unforgettable, too. And by its pictures, the Sydney Opera House is also very lovely. I read somewhere how when it was just getting built, it was generally considered just too unconventional and not expected to turn out well!

Re mosques, there is a famous `blue` mosque in Samarkhand I have to definately go see someday.

Sadhana

PPS:

`Chatracter` + chatty character!

t.h.o. #73

Buckminister Fuller would be `Happy` indeed:)

I thought all road led to Egypt and China via Mexico and Rome!

Onion: that is life. Don`t we peel it crying?

Gaudi: And yet another twist! You missed that.

Pamela Anderson? Got to hand it to you. Don`t know though, whether to attribute this to your insight, sense of humour or obsession. Aakar, you know this chatracter. Help!

;)

regards,

temporal

PS: And am still ambivalent about the art you pursue.

Re: Sadhana

Funny you should mention the Delhi Bahai temple. It is the ONLY Bahai temple that is not a dome! Please visit http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bahai/temple.html for links to pictures of all Bahai temples.

Looking at the pictures it is obvious how the onion dome is the inspiration for most of these structures. The reference is obviously to where Abdul Baha was from. But you will also notice how all structures try to incorporate local architectural vernacular. The one in Chicago has western classical elements while the ones in Uganda, Samoa & Panama take inspiration from indigenous tent/ teepee structures. The departure in Delhi is significant because of the Lotus form. It ends up being not a dome but a radial cluster of hyperbolic paraboloids. See Jorn Utzorn`s Sydney Opera house for another cluster of `Hyper-paras`. This is also interesting because the shape of a lotus petal (as depicted in the temple) is nothing but an ogive (onion) arch.

In my opinion the Delhi Bahai temple is one of the most staggering and awe inspiring spaces in the world.

Speaking of Lotus shaped Onion forms. There is a temple in Baroda called the EME temple because it was designed and built by the EME cops of the Army. It was primarily constructed as a place of worship for the residents of the cant but became such an icon that the whole town uses it. It looks very similar to the Bahai temple but it was solely constructed from Aluminum salvaged from wreckage of a single plane crash. It has a pantheon of the Four major Indian religions located in four corners of the central space. If I remember correctly Hinduism was given North and Islam East. Pretty awesome sight watching people of different faith praying under the same roof and then inter mingling.

Happy One #73:

That was very funny. You made me smile. Wonder how Rsaxena and Krashid reacted, after all the intllectual debate on onions, domes and onion shaped domes. :)

Thanks.

Satyavadi

Re: all the hooplah about pyaaz

Why spin the observation about onion-shaped domes into anything more than that?

the happy one #73

How about the beautiful Baha`i Lotus temple in N. Delhi? Is that a geodesic dome?

Types of domes:

1. Semi-Circular: Invented by the Romans who also invented the Arch. Basically a bunch of arches stacked radially. This form of a dome has since been used in all schools of architecture (all roads lead to Rome :).

2. Onion: Invented by Islamic architects in the 8th century. The use of this dome spread to Russia, Bavaria & Spain where its use was widespread because of its quick snow shedding shape. The onion dome is actually associated more with Kremlin than with Tehran. Ironically most domes in the sub continent are structurally semi-circular but appear to have an onion profile due to the decorative capital. This dome is also called ogive or cupola (named in the honor of its inventor Francis `don vito` Ford :)

3. Pendentive: A brilliant Byzantine invention to take a square floor plan and segmentally converting it into a circular dome. Prime example is the great Hagia Sofia in Istanbul (Nobody`s business but the Turks`:).

4. Geodesic: The modern version popularized by the late Bucky Fuller. Basically using the tetrahedron (the most structurally stable solid) as a module to construct domes of various frequencies. What Bucky did not know was that due to its popularity amongst nomadic free loving flower children this kind of dome would see more action than any other kind...well, accept for the next kind...

5. Anderson: These kinds of domes named after their most celebrated user Ms. Pam Lee Anderson come in two kinds... silicone and saline. Not known for their structural integrity but appreciated by many for their stunning aesthetic qualities these domes embody the new American ethos in all its glorious splendor.

So there.... nothing wrong with a dome looking like a pyaaz... just another kind of a dome... nothing derogatory about it at all.

PS: Just looking to see if hatred can be drowned by nonsensical trivia!

Asim, how will you wash your hands of the blood of Kashmiri victims of Pakistani Hizbul bombs in Srinagar?

RSaxena #70

Are you really talking about inverted onions.

Lookey here now Pakis. Uncle Salahuddin, that austere and great leader, had the following to say:

``ISLAMABAD: Hizbul Mujahideen on Saturday urged Pakistan to send troops into the Kashmir region, even if it means a war in South Asia. ``Pakistan should physically involve itself in Kashmir. We want war because war will solve the issue,`` Hizbul chief Syed Salahuddin said..``