Hindu intifada-Kanchan Gupta

Posted Tue, 08/05/2008 - 12:17 by rkm

Images can have a profound impact and make a
lasting impression even on the most cynical among us. They can also act
as a force multiplier in a conflict zone. Recall the photographs and
television footage of teenaged Palestinian boys in Gaza and the West
Bank confronting Israeli tanks armed with no more than shepherd's
slings; of young men, their faces half-covered with handkerchiefs and kafiyeh,
racing through billowing clouds of tear gas to hurl stones at soldiers
armed with assault rifles; of middle-aged and old women violating
police pickets and defying curfew. That was the first time we heard of
a little-used Arabic word, intifada, which literally means to
shake off but in recent times has come to mean a rebellion premised on
the Biblical tale of David vanquishing Goliath, a relentless mass
protest born of festering anger, deep-seated grievance and
overwhelming, uncontrollable rage.
 
We are witnessing a similar intifada
in Jammu province where young and old, men and women, are locked in an
unequal battle with the police -- and, since Friday, the Army --
demanding the immediate revocation of the Government order cancelling
the transfer of 800 kanals of land to the Sri Amarnath Shrine
Board. The land was meant for creating temporary facilities for
pilgrims who trek to the Amarnath shrine every year, braving inclement
weather and jihadi attacks. This time, it's a Hindu intifada, an outpouring of pent-up anger which has brought life in Jammu and other towns and villages in the province to a standstill.
 
It's
been more than a month that the Hindus of Jammu have taken to the
streets, burning tyres, taunting policemen, braving tear gas and real
bullets, violating curfew and blockading the highway to Srinagar. The
images emanating from Jammu are eerily similar to those that emanated
from Gaza and the West Bank during the Palestinian intifada.
More tellingly, the tactics that have been adopted by the protesters
are those that have often brought Kashmir Valley to a standstill. If
you look at the photographs of the Hindu intifada, you will get a sense of how Jammu has decided to give Kashmir a taste of its own medicine -- in this case it is Dum Dum dawai.
 
The
details of the land transfer fiasco are well-known. The Congress-PDP
Government headed by Mr Ghulam Nabi Azad had instructed the Forest
Department to transfer the land to the SASB. Within days Muslims in the
Kashmir Valley, led and instigated by pro-Pakistani separatists, took
to the streets, insisting no land should be provided for pilgrim
facilities. The All-Party Hurriyat Conference spread three canards:
First, the transfer amounted to alienation of 'Kashmiri land'; second,
it would lead to intrusion of 'Hindu culture' in Muslim Kashmir; and,
third, it would cause ecological damage.
 
The
PDP, sensing an opportunity to revive its pro-separatist -- if not
brazenly anti-India/ anti-Hindu -- image in the run-up to the Assembly
election in Jammu & Kashmir, joined the protest and subsequently
withdrew from the Government. To his credit, Mr Azad stood firm and
refused to budge from his Government's decision, till Mr NN Vohra took
over as Governor, replacing Gen SK Sinha. Mr Vohra, in his capacity as
ex-officio chairman of the SASB, wrote a letter to Mr Azad, returning
the land and also offering to relinquish the board's task of organising
the annual yatra, thus making the pilgrimage to the Amarnath shrine subordinate to the Valley's Muslims über alle politics and Delhi's equally odious politics of Muslim appeasement.
 
Mr
Vohra reportedly sent his letter to Mr Azad at 8.30 pm on June 28. "The
news of that abject surrender provoked an explosion of outrage across
Jammu," says a senior member of the Amarnath Yatra Sangharsh Samiti, a
broad-based organisation without any political affiliation which is at
the forefront of the protest. "The Governor has violated the SASB Act.
He cannot act unilaterally. Any decision of the board has to be
endorsed by at least five members," says Prof Hari Om, academic and
activist. "He is also in contempt of the High Court which had passed an
interim order approving the transfer of 800 kanals of land to the board in Baltal," he adds.
 
For
all his efforts to appease the Muslim protesters in Kashmir Valley by
'returning' the land that had been allotted for Hindu pilgrims, Mr
Vohra was unable to save the Congress-PDP Government. The PDP pulled
out from the ruling alliance on June 28; on July 1, Mr Azad, obviously
under mounting pressure from his party bosses in Delhi, reversed the
earlier decision.
 
Meanwhile, in Jammu there was a spontaneous shutdown on June 30. "I don't recall such a massive bandh
in recent years," says a lawyer who has been involved with the protest;
he does not wish to be named, fearing harassment by authorities.
Neither do the protesters wish to be identified because they fear they
will be picked up from their homes by the police who take their
instructions from Srinagar.
 
So,
every morning, afternoon, evening and night, students, workers,
professionals, senior citizens and housewives take to the streets,
engaging the police in dogfights, hurling tear gas shells back at their
tormentors, chasing cops when they are outnumbered, retreating into
narrow alleys when the men in uniform regather, and then surging out
all over again. Their faces masked with handkerchiefs, they hurl
stones; their eyes reflecting their rage. Scores have been shot and
wounded; three of them have died; a young man was chased across
rooftops by the police -- he jumped to his death.
 
"Each
death only makes us more determined. We are not going to be bullied by
the Valley any more. Jammu wants a voice of its own. Jammu's Hindus
will no longer tolerate oppression by Kashmir's Muslims," says a young
protester, still in his teens, from his house in downtown Jammu. His
voice has just begun to crack.
 
The day after the June 30 bandh,
Jammu flared up with street marches and protest rallies. The
authorities responded by clamping curfew, in an effort to force people
to remain indoors, till July 7. Women came out of their homes and dared
the police to shoot them. An enduring image of the Hindu intifada
is that of an aged woman, a Pandit who was forced out of the Valley
along with her family and three lakh other Pandits in the early days of
jihadi terror, threatening a Kalashnikov-sporting policeman at a curfew picket with her tattered and torn slipper.
 
On
July 7, the Congress-PDP Government officially exited office; the next
day the Sangharsh Samiti suspended its agitation, giving the Governor a
fortnight's time to either have the land restored to the SASB or resign
from office. "Mr Vohra did neither. He only added fuel to the fire by
telling some people who went to plead with him, 'Why should I bother
about Jammu? Does Jammu matter? Does Jammu exist?' He has been
insensitive and his actions have only served to provoke the
protesters," says a senior official in the Jammu administration.
 
"Years
of neglect of Jammu by Kashmir has resulted in what you are seeing
today. The people are frustrated. The Pandits have at last found a
platform to vent their anger. Jammu has more people than Kashmir, but
the lion's share always goes to the Valley," says Prof Hari Om.
 
Jammu
province has 37 Assembly seats and two Lok Sabha constituencies.
Kashmir Valley has 46 Assembly seats and elects three Lok Sabha MPs. Of
the 37 Assembly constituencies in Jammu province, 25 have a
Hindu-majority population; the remaining 12 have a Muslim-majority
profile. "Our voice naturally gets drowned," says an advocate who is a
member of the Sangharsh Samiti.
 
The natural beneficiary of the Hindu intifada
would be the BJP. It could end up sweeping all the Hindu-majority seats
in Jammu province and even emerge as the single-largest party in the
next Assembly. The Muslim vote in the Valley would be divided between
the National Conference and the PDP. The Congress could get wiped out
-- it has little to claim as support in the Valley; following the intifada in Jammu, it can't look forward to winning 15 seats in this province as it did in 2002.
 
This
should have set alarm bells ringing at the Congress headquarters in
Delhi. Strangely, the party's 'high command' doesn't seem to care. Or
so it would seem from the near non-response to the protest.
 
Mr
Vohra and his patrons in Delhi have "clearly underestimated the
determination of Jammu's long-suffering Hindus who have had to cope
with denial and deprivation for decades as the State Government focuses
only on the Kashmir Valley," the advocate-activist says.
 
This
explains what happened on July 22. Kuldeep Raj Dogra, in his mid-30s,
who was participating in a hungerstrike at Jammu's Parade Ground,
decided to do something tragically dramatic: He consumed poison, stood
up to read out a passionately patriotic poem he had penned, faltered
and fell dead. "It was his way of registering his protest against Mr
Omar Abdullah's speech in Parliament ... he was incensed by the
National Conference leader's duplicity," says Prof Hari Om.
 
The
police panicked. They forcibly took away Kuldeep's body to his
hometown, Bisnah, 15 km from Jammu, and "tried to cremate it using old
tyres, kerosene oil and liquor", according to a Sangharsh Samiti
leader. Kuldeep's widow, Shilpi, tried to prevent the cremation and
raised a hue and cry. The police have been accused of "insulting,
abusing and assaulting" Shilpi to silence her. But a huge crowd
gathered and snatched Kuldeep's body from the police. It was taken to
Jammu and the situation subsequently just went out of control.
 
Since then, the Hindu intifada
has gathered both force and speed. Curfew has been clamped on all of
Jammu and Samba. The Army has been called out. The Governor has been
virtually forced to remain confined within the Raj Bhavan by protesters
who continue to gather at the gates in large numbers with every passing
hour. Mr Vohra's 'eight-point formula', which included "allowing" the
SASB to "maintain infrastructure during the yatra period", to
end the deadlock, has been spurned. The Sangharsh Samiti is adamant
that it will settle for nothing less than restoration of the 800 kanals of land to the SASB for Hindu pilgrims.
 
Just
how determined the protesters are can be gauged from the manner in
which thousands of them laid siege to the airport after hearing that Mr
Farooq Abdullah of the National Conference and PDP president Mehbooba
Mufti were flying in. They had to be flown from the airport to the Raj
Bhavan in a helicopter after the protesters refused to let them
through.
 
Since Friday night, the intifada
has escalated and spread to virtually every corner of Jammu province.
Protesters, defying curfew, have been relentlessly pouring out into the
streets throughout the night, daring policemen and Army personnel to
shoot them. Two men were shot dead, 35 were injured when the police
fired on protesters ransacking the District Magistrate's office in
Samba. By mid-afternoon on Saturday, the intifada was truly raging in Jammu and beyond.
 
All
trucks headed for Srinagar have been stopped by protesters at Samba and
on the Jammu-Pathankot national highway. No trucks are being allowed to
enter Jammu from Srinagar. Kashmir's Muslims could yet get to know what
it feels like to be at the receiving end of popular fury and mass
anger, as opposed to the Valley's made-in-Pakistan rage.

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---------------- Note: Content of this blog post is writer's personal opinion and may not be SanghParivar.org or Sangh's view.