Lefty Prof's List: Kashmir

• The presence of the Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh high court Chief Justice Pankaj Mithal at a seminar organised by an outfit linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), where he said that the inclusion of the terms “secular” and “socialist” in the Preamble of the constitution had “narrowed” India’s “spiritual image” has triggered controversy.

• A crisis was sparked in January 2018, when four senior judges of the Supreme Court held a press conference, alleging that the administration of justice was out of order and that “cases having far-reaching consequences for the nation and judiciary were selectively assigned to benches of preference without any rational basis”.

   

  Earlier this year, The Wire reported that a mobile SIM card registered in the name of a sitting Supreme Court judge was a potential target of surveillance using the Pegasus spyware, which is sold exclusively to “vetted governments”  by the Israeli tech firm NSO Group.
• Supreme Court registrars and the staffer who accused Justice Ranjan Gogoi, who was then the CJI, of sexual harassment in 2019 were also potential targets of surveillance using the weapons-grade spyware, raising disturbing questions about the influence of the executive over the judiciary.

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• By early 1947 an internal revolt against the Dogra rule had started in the Poonch region.
• In August 1947, a limited ‘Standstill Agreement’ between the Dogra Maharaja of Kashmir and Pakistan was put in place. The Dogra Maharaja sought a similar agreement with India, which was declined, India instead asking for a discussion in New Delhi with the Maharaja’s representative.
• From September 1947 (to October), one of the worst massacres in the history of Jammu & Kashmir was executed under the auspices of the Dogra Maharaja, against Muslims in Jammu. Horace Alexander wrote in ‘The Spectator’ (January 16, 1948), that the killings had "the tacit consent of State authority" and put the figure of this massacre at 200,000. The Times (London) in its report (‘Elimination of Muslims from Jammu’, Part II, 10th August 1948, p. 5) wrote "2,37,000 Muslims were systematically exterminated…… by all the forces of the Dogra State, headed by the Maharaja in person and aided by Hindus and Sikhs.”
• The Dogra rulers promised an inquiry, but did nothing to stop this orgy. Incidentally Kashmir valley did not record any communal violence even after these massacres had been reported. In spite of having been appointed as the ‘Chief Emergency Administrator’ on 30th October 1947, Sheikh Abdullah admitted to having known, but exerted nothing to prevent this carnage or punish the culprits. (‘Atishe Chinar’ page 312, 331).
• The Poonch rebels angered by news of these horrific massacres, many of whom had already fled to Pakistan, started organizing an armed mutiny against the Dogra Maharaja.
• On 22nd October 1947 these rebels with active support of tribesmen (and some Pakistani military officers) invaded the Dogra forces in Kashmir.
• The Dogra Maharaja looked towards India for military help, yet still nurturing his wish of an Independent Jammu & Kashmir.
• Indian claims on Jammu and Kashmir hang by the “Instrument of Accession” reported to have been signed between Maharaja Hari Singh and the then Governor General of India Lord Mountbatten. Alastair Lamb claims that it would have been impossible for V.P Menon to get the signatures of Maharaja on October 26th, since Menon would have to shuffle then between Delhi, Jammu, and Srinagar in a single day, while the Maharaja was in transit. Another puzzling fact is the overwriting of dates on the copies of ‘the accession document’ where ‘August’ has been overwritten with ‘October’,  clearly pointing to either such a document draft existing before the tribal invasion or doubting the veracity of the document itself (Alastair Lambs argument of the impossibility of the Maharaja signing it).
• Even though India has been claiming that its troops landed in Kashmir on 27th October (overnight) after the “Instrument of Accession” had been signed the previous day, there are inconsistencies to this version.  Indian troops in reality had reached Kashmir even before 27th October (even before the signing of the instrument of accession).
• The logistics and planning required for such military operations could not have been drafted and executed overnight between 26th and 27th October 1947. 
• the right of Dogra Maharajas to Kashmir was as good as of any other invading and occupying ruler, having no right whatsoever to decide the accession of Kashmir without involving the aspirations of its people.
• 27th October continues to be a dark phase for Kashmir, when military might trampled over civilian rights. A symbol of political treachery sold by India as military help, not to secure the commoners in Kashmir, but to secure a despotic king who in the following years was to be replaced by proxy rulers in democratic packing.

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• Dr Baig despises the fight for independence and the human toll it exacts. What he sees is a people who have destroyed the thing they love most in its name. It was good to hear this said by someone who had a right to. It was all I could think, all the time I was there.
• I didn't challenge him on the idea that the Hindus had "left". When people, rich or poor, abandon their homes and flee from the threat of violence against them, they are usually described as having "left", like that was their decision. Srinagar, once a place where Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist lived peaceably side-by-side, all distinctively Kashmiri, is no longer such a place. The destruction of religious tolerance is another aspect of paradise lost.
• I have no doubt that a politically independent Kashmir would be a very fine thing. But it's an impossible dream.
• But, then as now, it was a territory coveted by India, Pakistan and China. Kashmir's Maharajah signed the princely state over to India in return for his own safety. If India gave it up now, Kashmir would be occupied by one or both of the others. That awful truth is clear to Dr Baig. The dream that Kashmiris have fought, suffered and died for is impossible.

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• Various estimates put the figure of existing NGOs up to 16,000.
• Government employees, close relatives of bureaucrats, politicians, well-off families and people who have been a part of counter insurgency think tanks, run a number of NGOs in the Valley.
• Kashmir Foundation for Peace and Developmental Studies (KFPDS) run by a former militant commander, Firdous Sayeed Baba alias Babar Badr, has been on the scene for many years now.
• He is also known to be very close to the former Intelligence Bureau (IB) chief A S Dullat, who for many years earlier and during NDA regime served as New Delhi’s point man on Kashmir affairs.
• Babar’s Foundation is political. Apart from publishing a quarterly magazine, “Hope”, this Foundation has organized many seminars on peace and reconciliation.
• Vice Chancellor of University of Jammu happen to be on the editorial advisory board of the New HOPE quarterly. It also aligned with a US based faith group International Centre for Religion and Diplomacy, and formed Institute for Reconciliation. Together they conducted “faith oriented” reconciliation workshops in both provinces of the state.
• New Delhi based Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS) in 2004 describes this Foundation as a group that “mainly undertakes projects given to them by the relevant official authorities, besides organizing public awareness campaigns.”
• The IPCS study also revealed a dramatic increase in the sprouting of NGOs during mid nineties.
• most of these NGOs were sponsored by the Government or one of the many governmental agencies working in J&K. “These NGOs, which have come to be called GONGOs or Governmental NGOs, sprang up in large numbers over a short span of time and exist till date, at least on paper,” Anirudh Suri of IPCS highlighted in the study.
• This mushrooming of NGOs interestingly coincides with the emergence of ‘Ikhwani’ phenomenon
• ANHAD. Run by the breakaway group of SEHMAT, a Delhi based NGO ANHAD is known to be close to the Congress party. It engages young boys and girls from colleges and universities for promoting communal harmony. Some of the participants after returning from a tour of Delhi recently have started dissociating from the NGO raising questions about the real intent behind their activity.
• According to a young and experienced NGO worker, Shaik Nazir who worked for the ‘Other Media’, a Delhi based NGO operating in Nepal, Northeast of India and Kashmir, the organization carries out its activity in close connivance and co-ordination with politically motivated bureaucrats, the army and a prominent pro independence separatist group.

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• Gauhar Siraj says:

     

  June 16, 2010 at 8:12 pm

    

  Ms.Yasmin Qureshi has made an error which I wish to address.

   

  In her write up Ms.Qureshi says this, “With the rise in arrests, torture, killings and rape by Indian soldiers, young men started taking up arms. Pakistan took advantage of the frustrations of the Kashmiris and started arming groups like Lashkar-i-Tayyaba and Harkatul Mujahedeen. The US-lead mujahedeen resistance movement in Afghanistan against the Soviets also had an influence in shaping the 1990s resistance. More than 300,000 Kashmiris, mostly Hindu pundits were displaced.”

   

  This figure of 300,000 Hindus having migrated from the Valley is not correct.

   

  Ms. Anuradha Bhasin Jhamwal, a Hindu herself and the executive director of Jammu City based Kashmir Times has squarely put this figure to a lie in her well researched and substantiated article of 2004 in COMMUNALISM COMBAT. Here is how Ms.Jhamwal has described the logic of the numbers in her article:

   

  “But first came the propaganda with its exaggerated statistics of Pandit killings and the number of those displaced. Statistics show that there couldn’t have been more than 160,000 Pandits in the Valley at the time of the exodus. But figures were inflated to 4 lakhs as many of those already settled outside the Valley also began to register themselves as displaced.”

   

  “11- Estimate of population of Hindus in Kashmir Valley in 1990: The 1981 census in the Kashmir Valley records 125,000 Hindus (1981 Jammu and Kashmir Census Report). Taking the 30 per cent increase in the total population over the period 1971-1981 and extrapolating it to the period 1981-1990, we get an estimated total Hindu population of the Valley in 1990 as 162,500.”

   

  This lie of 300,000 was floated by the Kashmiri Hindus and it seems to have fooled even the rights activists now.

   

  Here is the link to Ms. Anuradha Bhasin Jhamwal’s 2004 article: http://www.sabrang.com/cc/archive/2005/jan05/cover.html.

   

  Thank you.

   

  Gauhar Siraj
   NEW DELHI, INDIA

• The Population of Jammu and Kashmir according to the 2011 census stands at about 12 million, making it the 19th most populated state in India.
• area of about 220000 sq. km. making it the 10th largest state
• literacy rate in the state is about 68%
• In total Jammu and Kashmir (JK) state comprises 22 districts.
• The population of Jammu and Kashmir forms 1.04 percent of India in 2011.
• Out of total population of Jammu and Kashmir, 27.38% people live in urban regions.
• Population Growth 19.42 % 36.42 %

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• He said, “Pandit community is a part of our society and we share responsibility to protect the property and lands of those migrated outside state.” 

   

   

   

  Geelani, during his meeting with a Pandit delegation, said that administration is “morally and legally bound to protect life and property of minority community. However, quite the reverse is happening in our state and it has failed and proved a biggest threat for people, he said.

• A new book, ‘Shaheed Afzal Guru- His Last Message’, which is a compilation of letters written by Guru before the hanging, eulogises suicide bombers and calls ‘jihad’ the only solution to “liberate Kashmir from shackles of India”.
• Referring to the phrase ‘means define the end and the end does not define the means’ frequently, Guru is quoted by the author calling for ‘renewed jihad’ in page after page in the 94-page book.

• For over 12 days, south Kashmir's Shopian town has been reeling under an indefinite curfew that was imposed after five persons were killed in two firing incidents in Gagaran village adjacent to the town.
• On September 7, when the entire state administration was busy providing security to the much hyped concert conducted by Zubin Mehta in the 17th century Shalimar Mughal Garden in Srinagar, four people were killed when guards posted at the paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) camp at Gagaran fired at them.

  • Indirect rule entails this sort of framing. Don't blame us: this is a problem of law and order, and that's a state responsibility.

  • Note that the report implicitly holds the state administration responsible for not "providing security" in the streets of Shopian. The poor CRPF troopers--left "providing security" by firing at unarmed and innocent youth. The writer thus places the analysis within the framework of colonial law and order.

• The state government is doing whatever it can to ensure that the incident does not result in violence at other places that would endanger the fragile peace in Kashmir.

   

  Ministers of the National Conference-Congress coalition have also visited the town, but the bereaved families have so far refused to meet them.
• Given the fact that during the communal clashes in Kishtwar town of the Jammu region the state government had to seek the army's help to control the sectarian clashes in the Valley, sending the CRPF to the barracks and removing them from law and order duties would definitely be a tough call for Chief Minister Omar Abdullah to take.

  • This isn't about "law and order" but about occupation.

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• The flip-flops on matters strategic, our response to the Chinese belligerence in Ladakh, cutting of subsidies (and its subsequent reversal) to Bhutan and our discomfiture in importing oil at cheaper rates from Iran due the danger of annoying America have brought to fore the oft-repeated doubt, “Does India have a strategic culture?”
• In a recent seminar, a former foreign secretary opined that the absence of cordial relations with any neighbour proved that India does not have a strategic culture. An academic countered by stating a contrary view seen from a Pakistani side, “India has two-thirds of Kashmir, has reduced Pakistan to a rump by creating Bangladesh, has been instrumental in casting it as a terrorist state and despite going nuclear has got accepted in the nuclear community through its strategic positioning!” The diplomat countered that if India had the strategic sense, continued military action in 1948 would have got back the entire J&K resulting in a common border with Afghanistan and denying Pakistan a common one with China! The land route from India to Afghanistan and Central Asia would have got Pakistan in a pincer besides giving us a direct link to the region and its natural resources, and so the arguments went.
• We had our time under the sun during the Mauryan and Gupta Empire. Kautilya’s Arthshastra, enunciated 2,400 years ago, is touted as proof of India possessing a tradition of having a strategic outlook, but our independence in thought and action had a long interlude due to our bondage as we came to be ruled by a succession of dynasties and empires from the Islamic Sultanates in the North to Vijaynagar in the South followed by the Mughals from and then the British.
• The continuity in indigenous governance pan-India was broken and the hue of existential experiences lost as we became nonentities in the strategic machinations of the conquerors. If anybody’s strategic culture matured through the experience, it was that of the invaders and not of the “native” Indians who simply assimilated the intruders who stayed on
• Despite the stunning victory in 1971, the absence of a sense of history and grounding in realpolitik made us return 93,000 POWs without finalisation of the Kashmir imbroglio from our position of strength; the acceptance of Bhutto’s unwritten promise at Simla by our national leadership showed our naiveté for we hadn’t learnt that being a good boy in this world fetches only additional headaches.
• The writer, a retired Air Vice Marshal, is a distinguished fellow at Centre for Air Power Studies.

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• General Raymond T. Odierno was in an upbeat mood. He had just returned from a visit to India. He was profuse in his praise for the Indian Army. He said the US Army had to learn a lot from its Indian counterpart.
• He visited the Indian Army’s Northern Command, responsible for the borders with Pakistan and China, and interacted with the staff and commanders there. The Northern Command has the Srinagar-based 15 Corps and Nagrota-based 16 Corps which look after the counter-insurgency operations in the State. General Odierno thus gained firsthand knowledge of India’s counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations, particularly in Jammu and Kashmir.
• He made clear what the strategy is: “to continue to rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region”.
• Highly impressed by the Indian military’s successful counter-insurgency operations, he said: “The US would like to learn from the Indian experience as to how to fight militants in a tough environment and difficult terrain as in Afghanistan.”
• The General expressed interest in conducting US-India joint exercises in Kashmir. “The US may be interested in but still need to take a look at by sending people to train in these types of environment,” he said. Indian and US troops have held joint exercises in the mountainous Ladakh region in 2003. The renewed interest in Kashmir has a reason. “The basis of our continued relationship will be the sharing of information about what they face on a day-to-day basis with Pakistan as well as with China.”
• The General could as well go to Tel Aviv to learn about the strategy and tactics of counter-terrorism in India. During the visit by (then) Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to New Delhi in January 2002, a Foreign Ministry spokes-person said: “India finds it increasingly beneficial to learn from Israel’s experience in dealing with terrorism since Israel too has long suffered from cross-border terrorism.”
• India and Israel not only exchange crucial intelligence information on what they call “Islamist terrorist groups” but Israel is also ‘helping’ India to ‘fight terrorism’ in Kashmir by providing important logistical support such as specialised surveillance equipment, cooperation on intelligence gathering, and joint exercises.
• Jane’s Defence Weekly reported in March 2000 that Israeli security officers were regularly visiting the Kashmir border. Jane’s Terrorism and Security Monitor (August 14, 2001): “Israeli intelligence have been intensifying their relations with Indian security apparatus and are now understood to be heavily involved in helping New Delhi combat Islamic militants in the disputed province of Kashmir.”
• The Jerusalem Post reported on February 3, 2003 that India was sending three battalions of nearly 3000 Indian soldiers to Israel for specialised anti-insurgency training.
• India and the USA have counter-terrorism cooperation from 2001 buttressed by the Framework Agreement on Defence Cooperation between the two countries, signed in June 2005
• There is also enough reason for India to have serious doubts about the US commitment to bilateral cooperation in the absence of transparency in Washington’s actions. The prime example of the David Headley case stands out. India was surprised by accounts that the US was aware of Headley’s connections and movements much before his arrest as a terrorist.
• As Lisa Curtis of the Heritage Foundation said in her testimony before the US House of Representatives’ Committee on Foreign Affairs’ Sub-committee on Terrorism and Non-prolife-ration on September 14, 2012, “It took almost nine months before Indian authorities were given direct access to Headley. The US failure to pursue arrest and prosecution of Pakistani intelligence officers named by Headley as being involved in the 2008 Mumbai attack has also reinforced Indian beliefs that the US will gloss over Pakistani involvement in India so long as Pakistan continues to cooperate with the US against groups that attack America. By choosing to view the activities of the Al-Qaeda and other Pak-based terrorist groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba through a separate lens, US officials have failed to hold Pakistan accountable for dealing effectively with terrorists located on its territory.”

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