No one appears to have any clue to the possible reason or reasons why the Kashmiri terrorists kidnapped Professor Mushirul Haq in the first instance. It is, of course, possible that they chose him just because he happened to occupy a prominent position as vice-chancellor of Kashmir University and/or because he offered an easy target. But this is speculation.
The problem can, however, be approached from a different angle as well. We can legitimately interpret the fact of his assassination to mean that the terrorists did not like him enough to let him off, once it became reasonably clear to them that, this time, the government was unlikely to agree to release terrorists in exchange for the hostages. He was, in their eyes, apparently not a big enough asset for the Muslim community to be preserved even at the risk of some loss of face for them.
I say ‘some loss of face’ because they would, in any case, have killed H.L. Khera and that would have sufficed to drive home to the Indian government and the people the point that they mean business and cannot be trifled with. In other words, I do not regard the assassination of Haq and his assistant, Abdul Ghani, as having been necessary for the terrorists for the purpose of administering a warning to New Delhi for the future.
On the contrary, the terrorists would have secured a propaganda advantage vis-a-vis the Muslim community if they had spared the lives of Haq and Ghani. Apparently they did not care enough for opinion of Indian Muslims, or they detested Prof. Haq too much to engage in such a calculation.
It is not my case that Indian Muslims have been deeply offended by the cold-blooded murder of Prof. Haq and Ghani. For there is just no evidence to that effect. By and large, the Muslim leaders, such as they are, have chosen to remain silent on the episode. My case is that if the terrorists had spared Haq and Ghani because they were Muslims, they would have won a measure of sympathy among the community and that this they have not cared to do.
This is understandable inasmuch as the Kashmiri Muslims have not seen themselves wholly as part of the larger Muslim ummah in the sub-continent, that this has accounted for their ambivalence towards both India and Pakistan, that Sheikh Abdullah embodied this ambivalence, and that this was the main reason why he managed to retain a grip on Kashmiri Muslims despite his otherwise abysmal record of incompetence, nepotism and corruption and of rigging the very first election in the state.
It is, however, naive and/or dishonest on our part to ignore, as most Indian politicians and commentators do, a definite pro-Pakistan tilt among the Kashmiri Muslims from the time of the state’s accession to the Indian Union itself. This tilt has found expression from time to time in the demand for plebiscite and demonstrations of pro-Pakistan sentiments by way of the hoisting of the Pakistani flag on shops in various towns.
The Sheikh, in my view, reconciled himself to Kashmir’s permanent union with India only in the context of the triumph of Indian arms in the war with Pakistan in 1971, followed by the Simla agreement in 1972 whereby Bhutto not only explicitly dropped his country’s early insistence on plebiscite as a solution to the Kashmir dispute, but also agreed to the conversion of the UN-determined ceasefire line into a more rational India-Pakistan determined line of control. Had Indira Gandhi felt free to make a deal with the Sheikh, the agreement of 1976 could have been achieved much earlier.
The point I wish to make is that the explosion of pro-Independence and the pro-Pakistan sentiment is neither as sudden as most of us appear to think, nor is it essentially the product of the mistakes Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi are widely said to have made, the former in dismissing Farooq Abdullah in 1984 and the latter in forcing a coalition with the Congress in 1987. The situation in Kashmir has, of course, deteriorated dramatically. But this has at least as much to do with other developments as with Indira Gandhi’s and Rajiv Gandhi’s alleged crimes.
Indira Gandhi, I am in a position to vouch, played a significant role in persuading the Sheikh when he was about to die to name Farooq Abdullah as his successor in preference to his son-in law, G.M. Shah, and she was quite uneasy with the decision to replace Farooq Abdullah with Shah as chief minister in 1984. The explanation she gave me spoke of her desperation.
The Generals, she said, were complaining that he was not acting against the secessionists. So Farooq Abdullah had to go. But what about Shah? His wife, the Sheikh’s daughter, was the sanest and the most dependable among the Sheikh’s progeny and she would be able to ensure that Shah behaved. Pathetic, you would say. Desperate, I would say.
The reasons for the dramatic change for the worse in the valley, as I see them, bring me back to Prof. Haq. Indeed, this is one reason why I have begun this piece with a discussion on his assassination.
Haq wrote a small 110-page book entitled Islam In Secular India which was published in 1972. The book, as the title itself shows, does not deal with Kashmir as such. It deals with the response of the Muslims in India as a whole to the concept and the fact of a secular polity in the country. But it also throws light on developments in Kashmir.
I have not known Haq. But on the basis of what he has written in the above book, I can say that Haq did not belong to the category of men either like M.C. Chagla and Hamid Dalwai, that is liberals who had more or less despaired of Indian Muslims joining the modern world, or of Marxist and leftists who can, in a sense, be said to have turned their back on Islam as an institution if not as a faith. Like Prof. Mujeeb, Haq was deeply sympathetic to the ‘dilemma’ (his term) of Indian Muslims in that he can neither wish modem India away nor come to terms with it. That is what makes it particularly valuable.
Haq quotes a statement by Jamaat-i-Islami (Hind) to make a distinction between a secular state as a “political institution which guarantees religious freedom to its citizens” and the philosophy of secularism which is “hostile to religion” and then adds: “The Indian Muslims generally hold ‘Islam’ as ‘faith’ and Shariah or ‘the practical exhibition of faith’ to be inseparable. Faith must show in action. And action has to be strictly in line with the rules and regulations formulated by the fuqaha (jurists) in the golden days of Islam…”
He then quotes the late Mir Mustaq Ahmed, chairman of the Secular Forum (Delhi), as saying that secularism entailed an attitude of ‘positive respect’ for all religions and the response to it by Maulana Akhlaq Ahmed Qasimi, of the Delhi Jamiyat-i-Ulama. The maulana said: “Positive respect breeds nothing but stagnancy… Two diametrically opposed viewpoints can tolerate each other, but they cannot be expected to respect each other.’
Haq then adds that the dilemma in the minds of Indian Muslims is unlikely to be resolved in favour of secularism “so long as the community is dependent on the Ulama for religious guidance” and the Ulama are able to establish madrasas (religious schools) which, of course, the Indian Constitution allows them to do. And if instead of the early ‘70s, he was writing in the late ‘70s when the Arab world was flush with petro-dollars, he would no doubt have added that following in the steps of the founding fathers, the rulers of India had allowed Arab money to pour into the madrasas.
The Professor deals with the establishment of madrasas in only UP and Bihar and only up to 1970-71. Since then the number has increased. The numbers are important but even more important is what is taught there. The “text-books are all in Arabic” and the emphasis is on traditional and religious subjects. All moves to bring the curriculum up to date have been frustrated. “The students are discouraged from extra-curricular readings and are told: ‘Your reading is not a table of a public library. This is a madrasah’s table… No book should be read which casts doubt against (sic) cherished ideals’.
This is the foundation on which the structure of terrorism and secessionism has been raised in Kashmir and this is the foundation on which Muslim communalism rests in the Union as a whole. The 11-year Zia rule in Pakistan, with its emphasis on Nizam-e-Mustafa, on the one hand, and acquisition of enormous military power, on the other, has, in my assessment, been a significant factor in strengthening these trends.
Mercifully Indira-Rajiv Gandhi reign has ensured that in the military field we are in a position to cope with the challenge. But, equally unmercifully, the intellectual comprehension of the nature and magnitude of the challenge remains confused, which the present set-up seems determined to aggravate, with much of the elite more than willing to lend a helping hand.
Sunday Mail, 22 April 1990