What must be our policy in Kashmir? - Dr Subramanian Swamy

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Kashmir defines Indian identity

Subramanian Swamy

India should henceforth refuse to engage in any dialogue on Kashmir except one in which the other side accepts the whole of Kashmir as an integral and inalienable part of India.

Recently, some columnists have advocated that India should let go of Kashmir. While not wanting to wear patriotism on my sleeve, I would say that the silent suffering majority of India wants none of this. The 'Kashmir issue,' in fact, can no more be solved by dialogue either with the Pakistanis or the Hurriyat, leave alone the constitutional impossibility of allowing it to secede. This is because we do not know what kind of Pakistan there will be in a few years from now.

The Pakistan army today, according to all informed sources available to me, has a majority of captains and colonels who owe allegiance to the Taliban and Islamist fundamentalism. In another five years, these middle ranks will reach, through normal promotions, the corps commander level. We know that the government in Pakistan has always been controlled by the seven corps commanders of the army. Therefore a Taliban government in Pakistan five years hence seems a highly probable outcome. Jihad, that is, war against India will be the logical consequence of that outcome.

Since the Hurriyat in Kashmir is an organisation that cannot go against Pakistan, India has about five years to prepare for a decisive and defining struggle with Pakistan. We must prepare to win it to avoid the balkanisation of India. We therefore should refute those Indian columnists, academics, and politicians who crave or preen themselves on being popular in Pakistan, by sounding reasonable and secular on the issue of Kashmir.

Never part with it

Kashmir, in fact, is now our defining identity. It is a touchstone for our resolve to preserve our national integrity. The population of that State may be majority Muslim but the land and its history is predominantly Hindu. For our commitment to the survival of the ancient civilisation of India and the composite culture that secularists talk of, we have not only to win that coming inevitable war but also resolve never to part with Kashmir.

I will not blame the jihadis for the coming war. They are, after all, programmed that way by their understanding of Islamist theology. I will blame ourselves for not understanding their understanding of the fundamentals of Islam. It is foolish therefore in the face of this reality to expound the banal sentiment that "all Muslims are not terrorists or fanatics." Of course that proposition is true.

However, the Islam of the cutting edge of Muslim fundamentalism by leaders such as Osama Bin Laden is in Sira and Hadith, and now increasingly followed in Pakistan. It calls on the faithful to wage war against the infidels (who cannot strike back effectively) and crush them. This is why the Kashmiri Hindu Pandits were driven out in the first place.

The struggle for Kashmir by the jihadis is thus not just for independence. By their own declaration, they want a Darul Islam there, with the state becoming a part of the Caliphate. We cannot allow, in our national security interests, such a state to emerge on our frontiers. Hence the question of parting with Kashmir cannot arise. We have to go all out to retain Kashmir as part of India wherein Hindus and Muslims can live in peace and harmony.

Pakistanis often cite the United Nations resolutions on Kashmir to argue for a plebiscite. This obfuscates the fact of accession of the State to India. The legality of the Instrument of Accession signed in favour of India by the then Maharaja of J&K, Hari Singh, on October 26, 1947 has to prevail anyway. To disregard it will create a plethora of legal issues, including what will become the status of the Maharaja if we abrogate this Instrument and re-open the question of Partition itself. In that case, for example, will Dr. Karan Singh, Maharaja Hari Singh's son, have a claim to be regarded again as an independent and sovereign King of J&K?

On the Junagadh issue, Pakistan held the Instrument once signed to be "final, irrevocable, and not requiring the wishes of the people to be ascertained [emphasis added]." That is the correct legal position. But the Junagadh Nawab, after signing the Instrument in favour of Pakistan, invaded the neighbouring princely states, states that had acceded to India. This violated the terms of the Indian Independence Act (1947) enacted by the British Parliament. So when the Indian Army was moved by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel to defend these areas, the Nawab, fearful of the consequences, ran away to Pakistan. His subjects, mostly Hindu and abandoned, welcomed the Indian army to Junagadh.

Furthermore, on what legal basis can we de novo seek to ascertain the wishes of the people of J&K as Pakistan asks, when the Indian Independence Act makes no provision for this? After all, it was this same Act that created a legal entity called Pakistan, carved out from united India. India under the Act was a settled and continuing entity out which the British Parliament made a new entity called Pakistan. Never in previous history was there was a country called Pakistan. The idea itself was conceptualised as recently as 1940 and legalised only in 1947.

By what mechanism then can Pakistan seek to amend or even disregard the Act, without unwittingly undermining the legal status of Pakistan itself? That is, if the Instrument of Accession is called into question, will not Partition itself be subject to challenge as without legal basis on the same consideration?

I raise this question also because of the constitutional futility of pursuing the issue of the secession of Kashmir. In the case of Beruberi in Eastern India, the transfer of that area to Bangladesh, although agreed to, has been enmeshed in prolonged litigation in the Indian Supreme Court. This is because Article 1 of the Indian Constitution bars the de-merger of any Indian territory after 1950.

Another argument advanced by these columnists is that if Kashmiri Muslims do not want live in India, it is against human rights to force them to do so. That argument is contradicted by the Bangladesh example. The area of that country was first created by Partition. In 1971, Indian army jawans created Bangladesh out of Pakistan in circumstances well known to all. But despite that, millions of Bengali Muslims have come into India as illegal immigrants and are quite happy to be working with Hindus in India. But Partition was agreed to by Hindus for those Muslims whom Jinnah said could not bear to live under alleged Hindu hegemony. Now, after getting their territory, a large number of Bangladeshis Muslims are voting with their feet to proclaim that they are happy to live in India with Hindus.

Similarly, after getting Kashmir as an independent country, Kashmiri Muslims may, like their Bangladesh counterparts, come to live in India anyway! What then is the point of severing Kashmir from India as these columnists suggest?

India should henceforth refuse to engage in any dialogue on Kashmir except one in which the other side accepts the whole of Kashmir as an integral and inalienable part of India. The people of Kashmir should be left in no doubt in their mind where the overwhelming number of citizens of India stand on the future of the State. Therefore, those who, at this crucial juncture of our history, advocate any dilution of this stand are leading the people of Kashmir to more misery. They are encouraging the forces of jihad to keep at their nefarious activities by raising hopes that, with rising costs, India will capitulate. Any democratically elected Indian government knows that it can never capitulate on issues of national integrity and risk an upheaval. The Ramar Setu and Amarnath issues have proved that beyond doubt. Advocating letting go of Kashmir therefore is a dangerous exercise in futility.

(The writer is a former Union Law Minister.)

http://www.hindu.com/2008/09/25/stories/2008092551321100.htm

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KASHMIR IS THE DEFINING ISSUE OF INDIAN IDENTITY

by Subramanian Swamy

This article was submitted on july 16, 2008. It was a lecture delivered on July 9, 2008 to Indian students and American scholars at MIT.

I believe that the Kashmir "issue"[1] can no more be solved by dialogue either with the Pakistanis or the Hurriyat[2] This is because the Pakistan army has now a majority of captains and colonels owing allegiance to the Taliban. In another five years, they will reach, by promotions, the corp commander level. We know that the government in Pakistan is controlled by the seven corp commanders of the army. Therefore a Taliban government in Pakistan is inevitable and a jehad against India the logical consequence of the same. In turn the Hurriyat is an organization that cannot go against Pakistan.

Hence India has about five years to prepare for a decisive and defining war with Pakistan and we must prepare to win it. We therefore have to throw out of office in the coming elections all those Indian politicians who crave or preen themselves on being popular in Pakistan by sounding reasonable and secular as also equivocating on every issue. For the survival of the ancient civilization of India we have to win that inevitable war and recover the whole of Kashmir.

I will not blame the jehadis for the coming war. They are after all programmed that way by Islamic theology. I will blame ourselves for not understanding the fundamentals of Islam as propounded in the Sira and the Hadith. It teaches that if Muslims are in a majority, they must rule [Darul Islam], and then everyone else is a dhimmi and a kafir who do not have equal rights of worship. Thus in Saudi Arabia, you cannot even display a picture of a Hindu god inside your own home! When Muslims are in a hopeless minority, then Sira and Hadith urges Muslims to make a deal with the majority and make no demands [Darul Ahad]. In US and Australia for example, Muslims will therefore never ask for separate shariat personal law. If Muslims are not hopelessly in a minority, then Islam directs that true Muslims conduct subversions and act against all human values to leverage their position [Darul Harab] to become of defining influence in the polity and ultimately rulers. We saw this in Kashmir recently when the government was made to cave in on the most humane gesture of allotting land to make Hindu pilgrims feel comfortable while on arduous journey to Amarnath caves. And we have it on the authority of the Chief Minister of the state that the agitation against the allotment was financed by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

It is foolish therefore in the face of this reality to expound the banal sentiment that "all Muslims are not terrorists or fanatics". Of course that is true. Or that Koran is a message of peace. May be it is. However, the Islam of the cutting edge of Muslim thought propounded by leaders such as Osama Bin Laden is in Sira and Hadith, which calls on the faithful to wage war against the infidels who cannot strike back effectively and crush them.

The struggle for Kashmir by the jehadis thus is not just for independence. They instead want a Darul Islam there and for the state to become a part of the Caliphate. Hindus are a special target because despite Iran, Iraq, Egypt and other countries becoming majority Muslim after less than two decades of conquest and brutalization, India after a thousand years of massacres, mayhem and rape remained dominantly Hindu. This is a living affront for the fundamentalist Muslim, and in their seminaries and madrassas in Iran and Saudi Arabia, they even today debate and agonize over it.

Contrary to the British imperialist propaganda, Hindus did not just lie down and be conquered by foreign invaders. Hindu fighting spirit had never dimmed even if weakened by traitors within. Periodically Hindus rose in revolt symbolized by the Vijayanagaram empire [which lasted 300 years] or in Shivaji's bravery, or Guru Gobind Singh's campaigns or the Mahratta national onslaught.

Most of us thus remained Hindus, defiant, even if in poverty and misery singing Vande Mataram.[3] This is the true history of India which the fundamentalist Muslim and the British imperialist historians cannot bear to acknowledge.

Accommodation and compromise with Islamic terrorists is self-defeating and suicidal. We have instead to fight back, for which Kashmir is the starting point. Hindu renaissance, long overdue, will be nurtured if we look for an opportunity to seize back the occupied areas of Kashmir, and make the jehadis feel that in India there can only be Darul Ahad for Muslims. We had opportunities earlier to demonstrate that: e.g.,in 1948, 1971, 1999, and 2001. But we let it go.

Hence, let there be no more intellectual confusion about the identity of India as a Hindu Rashtra [Nation], which means a land of Hindus and those others who acknowledge proudly that their ancestors are Hindus. If Muslims acknowledge this truth, then they are welcome as a part of our family. And those who do not so acknowledge cannot be equal citizens in India. Hence, we shall not agree to any more truncation of Indian territory

We have to therefore disown UN Resolutions and India-Pakistan treaties such as signed in Simla [1972] as unauthorized Nehruvian policy blunders. The legality of the Instrument of Accession signed in favour of India by the then Maharaja of J&K on October 26, 1947 has to prevail. Otherwise it will create a plethora of legal issues including what will become the status of the Maharaja if we abrogate this Instrument. Will Dr. Karan Singh, the son of Maharaja Hari Singh, have then a claim to be regarded again as an independent and sovereign King of J&K? In the Junagadh issue, Pakistan had held the Instrument once signed is "final, irrevocable, and not requiring the wishes of the people to be ascertained". That is the correct position. But the Junagadh Nawab after signing the Instrument in favour of Pakistan, invaded the neighbouring princely states, states which had acceded to India. So when the Indian Army was moved by Patel to defend these areas, the Nawab ran away to Pakistan. His subjects were mostly Hindu who then welcomed the Indian army.

Furthermore, on what legal basis can we de novo seek to ascertain the wishes of the people of J&K when the Indian Independence Act [1947] passed by the British Parliament makes no provision for the same? After all it was this same Act which created a legal entity called Pakistan, carved out from the united India. India under the Act was a settled and continuing entity out which the British Parliament made a new entity called Pakistan. Never in previous history there was ever a country called Pakistan. The concept itself was formulated only in 1947.

By what mechanism can then Pakistan today seek to amend or even de-recognise the Act without unwittingly undermining the legal status of Pakistan itself? That is, if the Instrument of Accession is called into question, will not Partition itself be subject to challenge as without legal basis on the same consideration? I raise this question also because in the case of Beruberi in Eastern India, the transfer of that area to Bangla Desh although agreed to, has been enmeshed in prolonged litigation in the Indian Supreme Court because of Article 1 of the Indian Constitution which bars de-merger of any Indian territory after 1950.

Indian army jawans[4] created Bangla Desh out of Pakistan. But despite that, and drunk with their Darul Islam status, the Bengali Muslims have not only driven out the Hindus or butchered them or forcibly converted them but millions of Bengali Muslims have sneaked into India and are happily working with Hindus in India. Partition was agreed to by Hindus only for those Muslims who could not bear to live under Hindu hegemony. And now after getting their territory, they cannot now say that they are happy to live in India with Hindus.

Hence, a virat Hindu Rashtra [nation] should tell Bangla Desh to take back their Muslims or hand over one-third of Bangla Desh territory as compensation. If they do not agree, then we must send two divisions of Indian army from Sylhet to Khulna and annex one third of north Bangla Desh as our due for bearing the economic and political burden of Bangla Deshis in our country. This will make our access to Assam and Northeast much easier too.But most of all it will send a powerful and salutary signal to Pakistani terrorists that Hindus will no more be passive.

These actions are possible if we gear up diplomatically for it. Today the world is sick of the terrorism and the greed of Muslims nations to make money out the sale of oil which they have got by sheer accident of geology. Hence, we must make strong allies. Israel is one such country. We must find ways to make China see our interests. It can be done if we know how to come to an understanding with them. This is essential for isolating Pakistan. At present China has begun to see the tinder box that Pakistan has become. Uighurs from Xinjiang have been to madrassas of Pakistan for training in subversion in Urumuchi and to sabotage the Beijing Olympics This worries China. It should concern us too.

Hence to lay the foundation for the liberation of Kashmir, we must have President's Rule for some time. India should refuse to engage in any dialogue on Kashmir in which the other side does not accept the whole of Kashmir as an integral and inalienable part of India. The people of Kashmir should be left in no doubt in their minds where the citizens of Hindu Rashtra stand on the future of the state: that it lies with us. Every Hindu has a claim on Kashmir. I for one claim it because my gotra [lineage, clan] is Kashyapa. It was RShi Kashyapa who invented Kashmir out the Dal lake. Hence my claim.

We should undo the "cleansing" of the state of Kashmiri Hindu Pandits by sending 1 million ex-servicemen and families into the Kashmir valley for re-settlement. Article 370 of the Constitution will have to be removed for that purpose, but according to the Constitution itself, it is supposed to be a "temporary provision" not requiring a Parliamentary two-thirds majority for amendment. It can be erased by a Presidential Notification on the recommendation of the Union Cabinet.

Then we await a war. We do not have to go to war with Pakistan on Kashmir because a Talibanised Pakistan will provide us with the opportunity. What I am advocating here is that we prepare mentally and militarily for that eventuality, and having been provided that opportunity, go for the jackpot -- to use an American slang.

Editor's End Notes (Not part of the Original article)

[1] Kashmir Issue. Because of agitation by Indian Muslims, India was partitioned in 1947 into two independent states: India and Pakistan. This was accompanied by a large population exchange. When the dust settled, Pakistan was mostly Muslim, India was Hindu with a sizable Muslim population. To read the excellent analysis by Jeffrey Weiss, "India and Pakistan -- a Cautionary Tale for Israel and Palestine," click here. Muslims have continued to agitate for more territory.

[2] The Hurriyat is an umbrella group of Muslim political, business and religious organizations, which have banded together to promote Kashmir separatism. As noted on www.satp.org: "Since the international community frowned upon the resort to violence by non-state actors, the Hurriyat was an ideal platform to promote the Kashmiri secessionist cause." The Hurriyat views Kashmir as the 'unfinished agenda of Partition.'

[3] Vande Mataram ("Hail to the Mother(land") is India's especially beloved song, its nationalist song, which since the late 1800s conveyed the Indian desire to be free of British rule. It visualizes the nation as Mother Durga, a Hindu goddess. It was rejected as the national anthem because its imagery was considered offensive to Muslims.

[4] Young man. Private soldier.

Subramanian Swamy is an economist, who has taught on the university level both in India and U.S.A. He was a founding member of the Janata Party in India and has served as a cabinet minister. He has promoted normalizing relations with China and Israel. Contact him by email at ilky@sify.com

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