Modi’s was by no means a sudden swoop on Kashmir. The build up to this eventuality was long and its roots lay in Hindu-Muslim animus built up over centuries. And this in turn had its roots in Muslim invasions and conquest of substantial parts of the sub-continent.
This brought together two systems of belief which were essentially intolerant of each other. Muslims were intolerant of any type of idol worship; while Hinduism, though pluralistic in its range of beliefs, was [and is] the most virulently intolerant socio-religious belief system in world history. Whereas most religions are based on the essential equality of men, Hinduism stands apart as one which is based on inequality. And as Hinduism evolved from Brahminism, the caste system, which was at its fringes during the time of the Rig Veda, in time became central to Hinduism around mid-first century A.D, so that for about 3000 years a substantial part of the Indian [Hindu] population, the Dalits etc, have been regarded as sub-human and treated worse. Their touch pollutes the “purity” of the higher castes and so they have been treated as “untouchables”. And just a shade above them, and constituting a majority of the Indian population are the Shudras. And though considered to be Hindus, they are prohibited from even hearing the sacred words of the Vedas! But alas, these “once born” Shudras also regard the Dalits as untouchable!
For a better part of about 800 years of largely Muslim rule in India, the Muslim and Hindu communities lived side by side in a well demarcated functional relationship; the Sufis moderated the space between them; while the kings who ruled them were severely pragmatic, following policies which served their self-interest best.
It is after 1857 when the Crown took India over from the East India Company that the British rulers took a strategic decision to deepen the divide between Hindus and Muslims, and to ally with the Hindus at the expense of the Muslims. This was quite natural when it is considered that the British had divested Muslims of their rulership of India making Hindus their natural allies, and also because the educated among the British had a historical memory going back to the crusades when the Muslim and Christian were enemies, and later this animus came to be defined in terms of the Christian and the Turk.
Among the first things the British did was to tinker with Indian history in such a manner, as to depict British justice as a foil against which to show the erstwhile Muslim “maladministration” as being geared against Hindu interests. By the late nineteenth century Hindu consciousness was sufficiently awoken so that Hindu revivalist movements began to sprout, some eventually mutating into movements like the RSS which nourished its followers on hatred against Muslims. These movements were acutely conscious of Hindu cowardice and the resultant inferiority complex, repeatedly referred to by Gandhi, which had generally come to infect this community, One of the aims of organizations like the RSS was to build up militant pride among the Hindus. In their enthusiasm to achieve this goal, bias against Muslims began to turn into outright hatred against them. As a matter of fact “the two- nation theory” was crafted and defined by two Bengali Brahmins, Raj Narain Basu and Nabha Gopal Mitra, towards the end of the 19ngh century. And these were followed by leaders of the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS–leaders like Bal Parmanand, Lala Lajpat Rai, Savarkar, and Golwalkar etc, well before this slogan was adopted by the Muslim League.
As a matter of fact the Muslim League adopted the two-nation theory more or less as the last resort, when all Jinnah’s efforts to come to a reasonable accommodation with the Congress party outrightly failed. And this resulted in the partition of India, where the seeds of a virulent Hindu nationalism grew apace till at last the BJP, which is basically an off shoot of the RSS, came to power. With Modi at its helm this party freed itself from all restraint and began to be defined by its encouragement of Muslim lynchings. Modi’s open annexation of Kashmir in brazen disregard of all international treaties and agreements etc was the most prominent marker [thus far] in the trajectory of the anti Muslim hatred which underpins and defines the Hinduvta ideology.
But alongside this, another trajectory was marking itself out. This was the trajectory of Pakistani leadership’s efforts to gut Pakistan out, loot its treasury, destroy all its institutions, land it in the claws of international lenders and under the FATF sword. As Pakistan was being brought to this stage, Kahmir was a forgotten subject, the country did not even have a foreign minister, was on the brink of being declared a state sponsor of terror, and did not even deign to bring the case of Kalbushen Yadav to international attention, because this would have meant furnishing cast iron proof that it was India which had been exporting terror to Pakistan. But India was to be saved all embarrassment because our PM’s [Nawaz Sharif’s] business relationships in that country had to be safeguarded at the cost of the highest national interest! In short, it was the goal of this leadership to bring the country to its knees–readied for slaughter.
These two trajectories intersected on 5 Aug 2019 when India was at its strongest, while a hollowed out tottering Pakistan lay wallowing in a state of debased helplessness, with no option other than to roll over and yell “foul”, with none there to hear its abject cry.
With Kashmiri screams of anguish drowned in a sea of international silence, and as 6 Sep lies a week away, it is worth reflecting if India would have dared to take its action of 5 Aug had it been faced with a strong vibrant and proud Pakistan!
The irony at its most bitter is that those who hold the power to guide Pakistan’s destiny are mentally paralyzed. They are blind to the overall forces arrayed against their country. These include a coalition of the most powerful states dedicated to undermining Pakistan; a fifth column within Pakistan which is daily becoming stronger, sustained as it is by the proceeds of that very plunder which has bankrupted the country; poor governance deteriorating daily because the government does not have the imagination to collect and deploy the best of human resource capital available to it, to improve governance; and a “plunder” economy which will take years to turn around.