Be Realistic
IN APRIL 1986, a group of Sikhs got together in Amritsar and declared what they called the independent state of Khalistan. At this time I wrote an article in the Hindustan Times, captioned ‘Acceptance of Reality’. This article was about the situation in Punjab and Kashmir. Addressing the people of Punjab and Kashmir, I warned them that the movements for an independent Punjab and an independent Kashmir would never succeed. I said that such movements were tantamount to breaking one’s head against the boulder of reality. Nothing could be gained from such movements, except, of course, some broken heads and worse. I advised the people of both states to be realistic, to accept the status quo and build their lives along positive lines.
The Sikhs realized this shortly thereafter and the militant movement for Khalistan soon came to an end. I am sure that, finally, the Kashmiris, too, will adopt this stance, but this might happen only after much suffering and destruction, indeed communal suicide.
The reason perhaps for this difference is that the Sikhs had no beautiful ideology to justify their death and destruction, whereas the Muslims can offer a beautiful justification even for such heinous acts as suicide bombing.
Here I would like to cite an experience worth mentioning. It was on January 27, 1992, that two educated Kashmiri Muslims came to meet me in Delhi. They were not members of any militant group. But they fully supported the Kashmiri militant movement. They were not active militants in the practical sense of the term but they certainly were so at the intellectual level.
In the course of our conversation, I told these men that their self-styled ‘Kashmir movement’ was not in any respect proper or acceptable. I said it was certainly not an Islamic jihad and it was obviously not going to establish an Islamic system. Nor, I added, did separation from India make any sense. The ‘movement’ could only spell more destruction for the Kashmirs. The men passionately defended the ‘movement’ and even claimed that the Kashmiris would shortly score a ‘glorious success’. Then, at my request, they penned a few words in my diary to which they appended their signatures. ‘Once we separate from India’, they wrote, ‘our land will become an Islamic Kashmir.’
I told the men that what they had written was nothing but baseless, wishful thinking. They would soon realize, I said, how mistaken and unrealistic they were. Then, I penned the following words in my diary in their presence.
‘If Kashmir separates from India, the independent state of Kashmir that would come into being or, if Kashmir joins Pakistan, the Pakistani province of Kashmir that would be formed, would be a ruined Kashmir. The choice before Kashmiris is not between Indian Kashmir and Pakistani Kashmir, but, rather, between Indian Kashmir and a destroyed Kashmir.’
18 years have now passed since this meeting. The developments that have taken place in these years clearly prove that the words of the Kashmiri mujahids were based on nothing but wishful thinking. On the other hand, whatever I had, with the grace of God, written in my dairy on that day and had told those men has become an undeniable truth. The developments over the last two decade have clearly indicated that what will truly benefit Kashmir is not independence or joining Pakistan, but rather being part of India and abandoning the path of violence in exchange for peaceful reconstruction and progress.
