The Indian war on Muslims and the occupied Kashmir

Dr. Firoz Mahboob Kamal

The war on the Indian Muslims

India’s war on Muslims is not new. It is ongoing since the country’s independence in 1947 from British rule. The Indian Hindutva leaders can’t reconcile the old wounds of defeat by the Muslims. They conveniently forget that such wounds are not specific to the Hindus, every nation on the earth has scars of such defeats. They consider the long Muslim rule in India as a denigrating stigma on their religious identity that haunts them all the time. The Muslims not only built the Taj Mahal and scores of other monuments in India but also built the Indian economy that could constitute at the time of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb about 27 per cent of the global GDP. Whereas when the British left India, India could constitute only 3 per cent of the world GDP. (Shashi Tharoor: Inglorious Empire). British historian William Dalrymple wrote, “In 1600, when the British East Indian Company was established, Great Britain had 1.8 per cent of the world GDP, and India had 22.5 per cent. (Professor Amartya Sen’s article published in Ananda Bazar).  The Muslim rulers never caused any famine in India; but the British caused a devastating famine in Bengal in 1769-70 -the richest province of India to kill one-third of its population. The British created another famine in Bengal in 1943 that killed 3 million.

The Hindus can forget and forgive the British colonial rule, loot, genocide and the destruction of the Indian economy, but can’t appreciate the patriotic rule of the Muslims. The Muslim rulers never take back the wealth from India to build palaces and cities in their ancestral lands in central Asia as the British did to cause massive development in the UK. Moreover, for the independence of India from British rule, Muslims gave more blood than the Hindus. In the India gate of Delhi, there is a list of martyrs, in that list, the Muslims outnumber the Hindus by a huge margin. But propaganda continues to vilify Muslims as the enemies of India.

Such a toxic Hindu mindset against Muslims influences Indian politics decisively. The emergence of the extremist Hindutva forces in politics indeed owes to such a hostile mindset. They consider the creation of Pakistan a victory of the Muslims and inimical to the Hindutva dream of an undivided India. The Hindutva leaders use the history of past Muslim rule and the creation of Pakistan to fuel the anger of the common Hindus. As result, an average Indian Hindu has become incurably sadist. They enjoy everything that harms or damage Muslim life, honour and property. And any Muslim succss anywhere in the world makes them Islamophobic and gloomy. Such an Islamophobic impact is visible in the Indian media after the recent Taliban victory in Afghanistan. 

India is the home of the highest number of the poorest people in the world. The average life span, infant mortality, child mortality, per capita income and GDP growth are inferior to that of Bangladesh. The Hindu caste system makes social and religious disintegration and exclusion obligatory. Hence it makes the inclusion of people of different religions, colours, and ethnicity in its political fabric impossible. This is why more than 200 million Muslims and 200 million Dalits stay excluded from the hierarchy of power and politics. India was united only three times in its whole history; that too by the non-Hindu rulers. They are the Buddhist ruler Ashoka, the various Muslim rulers and the British colonialists. In the name of religion, they follow the ancient ignorance like idol worshipping cow worshipping, snake worshipping, etc. Surprisingly, such primitive ignorance has become a matter of huge hubris in the Hindu psyche. Since they find no real glory to celebrate, they have made it a euphoric sport to harm, kill, lynch, humiliate and rape Muslims. In such a toxic milieu of anti-Muslim hatred, the anti-Muslim riots, exclusion of the Muslims from government jobs, eliminating them from politics, annulment of their citizenship rights and pushing back the Muslims into a neighbouring country like Bangladesh enjoy huge popularity among the Hindu majority. The Indian war on Muslims gets fuel from such an ideological cum political build-up.

Two war fronts

In its war on Muslims, India has two frontiers of hostilities. One is on the border against Pakistan. The other one is the internal war against Muslims living inside India. The Hindutva Hindus don’t feel happy to give Muslims survival rights inside India. Such a mindset gets loudly expressed in the popular Hindutva slogan in the streets. They shout with rancour that the Indian Muslims have only two destinations: either to Pakistan or to kabaristan (graveyard). The current Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government of India pursues such a Hindutva policy of Muslims’ exclusion officially. The National Citizenship Registration (NCR) is in fact a ploy to exclude millions of Muslims as foreign infiltrators –blamed to be from Bangladesh. However, the Indian government doesn’t give any factual basis. Since the socio-economic condition of Bangladesh is better than India, infiltration of Bangladeshis into India is baseless rhetoric only to serve the political agenda of the Hindutva elements.

Nevertheless, the project like sending Muslims to kabaristan (graveyard) gets executed through frequent genocidal massacres in the form of anti-Muslim riots. Even many Indian politicians told in public that such whole massacres in daylight can only happen with direct government patronage. In 2002, such a massacre went on for about a week in the capital of Gujrat under Narendra Modi’s direct watch. The following few examples of massacres can give some glimpses on how the task of sending Muslims to kabaristan (graveyard) gets executed in India. These are the Hyderabad genocide in 1948, the Gujrat riot in 1969, the Moradabad massacre in 1980, the Nellie genocide in 1983, the Gujrat riot in 1985, the Hashimpura massacre in 1987, the Bhagalpur massacre in Bihar in 1989, the Bombay riot in 1992, the Gujrat genocide in 2002, the Malagao bombing in 2006, the Muzaffarnagar riot in 2013, the Assam massacre in 2014, and the Delhi riot in 2020. These are only a few of thousands of anti-Muslim riots.

The Indian wars of occupation

The Hindutva Hindus believe in undivided India. Hence they exploit every opportunity to grab new land to expand their border. The Hindutva forces are divided into two brands: the hardcore one called RSS-BJP-Bishwa Hindu Parisad axis and the softcore one that includes Indian National Congress and other Hindu dominated political parties. The occupation of Kashmir, genocide in Hyderabad, demolition of Babri Mosque and many genocidal massacres took place under the so-called softcore Hindutva parties like Congress. 

After its independence in 1947, India started its war of occupation against the weakly neighbouring Indian states. During British rule, India had 550 princely states. As per declared principle, the princely states were given the right to join either Pakistan or India or could remain independent. But India used its military might to override such rights of the individual states. The ruler of Hyderabad wanted to stay independent, but the Indian Army invaded Hyderabad and launched a genocidal massacre to annex it. The Indian Army and the Hindutva terrorist killed about 200,000 Muslims in Hyderabad. Since Vallabhbhai Patel led the annexation cum genocides there, became the most revered Hindutva icon of Hindutva politics in India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government built Mr Patel’s statue in Gujrat which is the largest statue in the world. This way his anti-Muslim massacre has been glorified in India. 

India also annexed Junagarh and Manvadar by its military might in 1948. The Muslim rulers of both these states declared to join Pakistan. India justified the annexation of these two states on the basis of the majority Hindu population. But the Indian government reversed the same argument in the case of Kashmir. Kashmir is a Muslim majority state but India annexed it on the ground that its Hindu ruler acceded to India. The people were not given the right to join Pakistan or stay independent.  India also annexed Nagaland. Whereas Nagaland was never a part of India except for a brief period of the British occupation. India also occupied Sikkim, and it was done through political horse-trading and trickery.     

The genocide in Kashmir

India’s occupation of Kashmir is indeed a part of its constant war on Muslims and to expand its border. In Kashmir, the genocidal massacre, rape and torture is continuing since 1947. What happened to Muslims in Jammu in 1947 is catastrophic. It was a pure genocide. The Jammu region of Kashmir had a Muslim majority population before the massacre of 1947. The ruling Hindu Maharaja took a policy of Muslim cleansing of the state and started it from the southern district of Jammu. The RSS terrorists and Sikhs conducted the genocide with the Maharaja’s patronage. After the Muslim cleansing, Jammu becomes a Hindu majority district. Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi separated the Hindu majority Jammu from Kashmir and made it a federal territory. 

Horace Alexander while writing in The Spectator in January 1948 says, “Hindus and Sikhs of the Jammu area… apparently with at least the tacit consent of the Hindu state authorities, have driven many thousands of their Muslim neighbours from their homes”. Citing Gandhi –the Congress leader, he asserts that “some two hundred thousand are… not accounted for”. Christopher Sneddon, in his article “Kashmir: The Unwritten History” estimates that between 70,000 and 237,000 Muslims were killed in Jammu. (Quote from Karan Thapar’s article).

Arjun Appadurai and Arian Mack, in India’s World, believed that 200,000 could have been killed in Jammu and a further 500,000 have been displaced. Much higher figures were reported by the newspapers of the time. The Statesman suggested 500,000 Muslims were killed. The journalist Ved Bhasin and the scholar Ilyas Chattha claimed that the RSS was involved in the genocide -supported by Kashmir’s Maharaja Hari Singh. (Quote from Karan Thapar’s article).

Wajahat Habibullah in his “My Kashmir: The Dying of the Light” suggests two reasons. First, it occurred when communal riots and brutal massacres were happening right across northern India. In that bigger outrage, this smaller tragedy seems to have been forgotten. But the second reason is intriguing. It exposes the complicity of Sheikh Abdullah, then the undisputed leader of the Kashmir Valley in the crime. He could draw attention to this massacre, but he deliberately chose to ignore it because the Muslims of Jammu did not support his National Conference but were inclined towards Jinnah’s Muslim League. The Sheikh’s politics seems to have silenced his conscience! (Quote from Karan Thapar’s article). In the face of such a crime, silence or negligence is nothing but complicity in the crime. And Shaikh Abdullah committed that crime deliberately.

During the last three decades of the intensified war since the 1980s, the Indian Army have killed about 100,000 Kashmiris and raped hundreds of women. Torturing, killing and raping have become routine brutality of the Indian Army in Kashmir. What happened on January 21, 1990, in Gawkadal, Srinagar is horrific. Indian Army killed 52 unarmed civilians and injured 250 –reported by Human Rights Watch. On January 6 1993, the Indian Border Security Force (BSF) killed 43 unarmed civilians in Sopore in Kashmir who were travelling on a bus. On October 22, 1993, in Bijbehara, the BSF killed 51 civilians. It has been reported by Amnesty International. On 29 and 30 May 2009 at Bongam in Shopira district, the Indian Army men abducted, raped, and murdered two young women and their bodies were drowned in a stream. These are only a few examples and tips of an iceberg.

The Indian rulers have no shame, no integrity, no common sense and no honesty. Even the common Indians don’t show intellectual soundness either. What low morale and an ideological sense that they still worship cows, snakes, mountains, rivers, naked sadhus, etc., and drink cow urine. It is shame that they could elect a man like Narendra Modi who is the murderer of more than 3 thousand people in Gujrat. How a man with an iota of moral sense can do that? What a shame that Mr Modi still believes that his ancestral Indians could fly in the sky and could transplant elephants’ noses on humans. Surprisingly, these fantasies are taught in schools. Many Hindus also believe that cow urine contains gold and can cure Covid-19.

Peaceful solution blocked

India has blocked any sort of peaceful solution to the Kashmir issue. A peaceful solution is only possible if the legitimate rights of the people are honoured and justice is delivered. Justice is not the continuation of the military occupation. But the Indian government doesn’t show any interest in that. They have taken a warpath and want to sustain the occupation by continuous war. The Indians show their pride in democracy. They boast India as the largest democratic state in the world. But they don’t allow democracy to work in Kashmir.

Democracy means respecting people’s verdicts. But in Kashmir, India is imposing its own agenda and ignores people’s wishes. India claims that Kashmir is an integral part of India. That is the wish of the Hindutva Hindus. Do the people of Kashmir subscribe to such an Indian view? That could be only proven by a plebiscite that Jawaharlal Nehru promised to conduct in 1948 –as it was planned in the UNO Security Council proposal for the peaceful solution of the Kashmir problem. The UNO Security Council appointed the US Admiral Nimitz to conduct a plebiscite in Kashmir. But India didn’t allow Admiral Nimitz to enter Kashmir and to do that. Thus India betrayed its own promise with the support of Soviet Russia.

India reiterates bilateral dialogue with Pakistan to solve the Kashmir problem. But it puts a red line by saying that Kashmir is India’s integral part. Thus the wish of the Kashmiri people is kept off the table of any bilateral dialogue. Pakistan is not allowed to question that wishful claim of India. So the door of a negotiated solution to the Kashmir problem is unilaterally closed by India. Now there remains only a single option, and that is a liberation war. Even a Kashmiri child understand that. Such a liberation war is called jihad in Islam. But India –like any other occupying forces label such a liberation war as terrorism.  

The way-forward

The Indian war of occupation going on for more than 30 years in Kashmir.  India has deployed more than 600,000 troops to crush a few thousand mujahids. India has employed the most sophisticated weapons bought from the USA and Israel. But still, they see no success even in the distant future. It is already causing huge economic bleed to the poor Indian economy. The Indians have yet to learn that Islam’s jihad is undefeatable. The jihad of the mujahids has another undefeatable Power on the top of it. He is the All-Powerful Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’la. Any victory in war is decided only by Him.

If war is a perfect jihad, its ownership does not stay in the hands of mujahids. It is owned by Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’la. And All-Powerful Allah decides its fate. This indeed gives the undefeatable strength to jihad. The Army of Angels come down from the haven to fight with the mujahids to give victory. The Muslim history is full of such Divine help starting from the first war against the infidels in the field of Badar. This is why the ragtag poorly armed Muslims could defeat huge Armies of Roman and Persian Empires –the contemporary World Powers. It may look fantasy to a non-Muslim. But a Muslim can never be a true Muslim unless he or she believes in such an undefeatable Power of Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’la.

In jihad, the Mujahids have a solemn duty. They must make their war 100 per cent pure jihad. They must protect it from the toxic venom of nationalism, tribalism, secularism, and other vile ideas. Otherwise, such ideological pollution kills the spirit of jihad and causes delinking from Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’la. Then it causes deprivation of His help. Exactly that happened in the case of PLO. Mr Yasser Arafat and his secular colleagues under the influence of Jamal Abdel Nasser and other Arab nationalists made the war against Israeli occupation a secular nationalist war; therefore failed terribly. Instead of relying on Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’la, the leaders of the PLO now look for political, intellectual, and media support from the western secular liberals. They get euphoric seeing big pro-Palestine protest rallies in the streets of the west.

In order to sustain such support of the western secularists, they stay vigilant against the Islamisation of their struggle. As if, these liberals will bring victory against the Israeli occupation. Only the de-Islamised fools can subscribe to such a utopian wish. In fact, this is a ploy to allure Palestinians away from jihad. Such protest rallies in the western cities couldn’t reduce the Israeli atrocities. The Israeli settlement colonisation, eviction of the Palestinians and torture on Palestinian men, women and children continue unabated. And Gaza still remains as an open-air prison.

Jihad is the sure and quick gateway to paradise. This is the Qur’anic promise for those who engage in jihad. This is the defensive wing of Islam. Like Islamic faith, jihad is never limited by any ethnic or geographic border. Those who look for quick entry to paradise, rush at their own expense to find a field of perfect jihad. This is why the mujahids from all over the Muslim World joined the jihad in Afghanistan. So, if it is a pure jihad, the mujahids of Kashmir will not be left alone. Moreover, a true mujahid never retires; it is his life-long ibadah. Hence his struggle for paradise continues. That was the practice of the Muslims in the golden days of Islam. Hence, those who ended their jihad in Afghanistan will join the jihad in Kashmir. The Indian leaders understand that; hence they are now trembling. But the mujahids must keep perseverance and patience (sabr). To keep such perseverance and patience is indeed a major trial for every believer. If they keep continuing doing their jihad, Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’la surely does His Own job, too. He never breaks Hid promise.

The Afghan experience

The Kashmiri mujahids have a lot to learn from the Taliban. The Taliban waited for 20 years with perseverance and patience in their jihad. Thousands of them became Shaheed and maimed. In the end, they got Divine help and won the victory. An elephant can’t return alive if enters a den of dragons. Dragons can’t crush an elephant but take the strategy to make elephants bleed to death. The same way the aggressor Army can’t go victorious from the land of mujahids. The Afghan mujahids proved it three times. In 1842, the Afghan mujahids made the whole invading British Army vanish; only one soldier could return alive. In the 1980s, they caused Soviet Russia to bleed to collapse and disintegration. The same strategy worked against the mightiest World Power like the USA and its more than 50 partner countries. They got the most humiliating defeat in history. In the 1960s, the same strategy worked against a World Power like France in Algeria.

India is not stronger than the USA, Soviet Russia and France. So the Kashmiri mujahids must not underestimate themselves. They should apply the same strategy against India. It may take ten or twenty years, but the day will surely come when India –like the USA will beg for a safe retreat from Kashmir. One can’t end enemies’ occupation by a dialogue. It never worked in the whole of human history. There exists no political solution to military occupation. The military solution is the only solution. The Taleban in Afghanistan proved that. The PLO failed in its struggle because its secularist leaders worked for the political solution of military occupation. They neglected jihad. As a result, Mr Yasser Arafat met captivity and death under the Israeli occupation.

War is the only option against the enemy’s war. Even the most humble and peace-loving Prophet (peace be upon him) couldn’t make any peaceful political solution with the enemies. He had to take the military option. So it is the Prophet (peace be upon him)’s legacy to take that path. Secularist Shaikh Abdullah of Kashmir failed badly because he pursued a path of political solution with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of India. He didn’t meet any success but faced long-time jail and humiliation. Islam shows path not only in five times prayer and other rituals but also in struggles against the enemies. And it is jihad –the greatest ibadah in Islam. Those who live without jihad, have to live without dignity and freedom under the enemy’s occupation. How can Kashmiri Muslims take that path of humiliation and slavery? 05/09/2021