A 'secular' attack on the Kashmiri

July 25, 2014. Local inhabitants attack the Kheer Bhavani temple, Tulmula, Kashmir. They damage its gates by heavy stone pelting and threaten the pilgrims inside the temple, all the while raising pro-Pakistan and anti-India slogans. Coverage of the shameful event – twitter, facebook, an inside page story of a few newspapers of Kashmir. No mention in the mainstream media (MSM).

For the uninitiated, Kheer Bhavani, the shrine of Ragnya Devi is considered the premier worshipping site of Kashmiri Hindus, even more so ever since Sharada Peeth became out of bounds for its devotees. In spite of having been forced into exile, even during worst of the terrorism years, Kashmiris from all over the globe made a once-a-year pilgrimage to this ancient temple to offer rice-porridge to Ragnya Bhagwati. Even for the secularists, this shrine is of critical importance as each year, the annual mela would provide an opportunity to the CM of the day to pose with an old Kashmiri exile, smiling to the cameras, all of this proving that the chimeral Kashmiriyat was very much alive and kicking.

This attack on the temple has coincided with a strike in Kashmir Valley, protesting against the Kashmiri Hindu efforts to restart those religious yatras (Kaunsar Naag, Harmukh, Surveshwar, Dhyaneshwar, Thejwaer, Harshawar etc) which had been stopped for the last two and a half decades on account of terrorism and their exile from the Valley. The ostensible excuses may seem strange but still bear reproduction, if for nothing, simply to highlight their absurdity and the rabid nature of Islamic separatism which wants nothing but to erase the last vestiges of non-Islamic presence from the valley.

The perpetually aggrieved Kashmiri Muslim has the following objections against the Kashmiri Hindu efforts to practice their religion peacefully:

1.    “I have not heard of these yatras being conducted for last so many decades”

2.    “At Amarnath, you at least have an ice Shivling. These other yatras have no idol, no object of reverence but simply lakes, mountains and springs. So, there is no reason why you should conduct the yatra.”

3.    These yatras have been invented by the Indian Government which wants to Hinduise Kashmir. Under the pretence of yatra, the Indian Government plans to resettle large number of non-Kashmiri Hindus to alter the demographics of Kashmir.

4.    “Your yatras will destroy the fragile ecology of these areas”

It does not take a very high degree of intelligence to determine that no emotion other than a visceral hatred of the non-Islamic presence in Kashmir has given rise to these objections of the ‘secular’ communalists. The many lost decades did not witness any of the above pilgrimages simply because the dispossessed exiles were not in a position to undertake them. It is akin to the classic case of the bully taking possession of an object by force and then claiming right of possession even though it was he who had dispossessed the weak.

As regards the supposed absence of any object of veneration in these yatras – well, by Islamic contention itself, Hindus are pagans par excellence. After all, which other people manage to find divinity in both the animate and the inanimate, stupid enough to lack the power of discrimination and worship the stone, the tree, the cow, the snake, the mountain and the rive? Does the fervent Islamist not know that a Hindu’s trip to the sources of rivers, of mountains, of sacred ponds and springs are a homage to the spot, to that very miracle of nature? More importantly, is it the Islamist who will decide how and what the Hindu will worship? In the all-pervading atmosphere of dimmitude, perhaps yes! After all, isn’t the MSM discourse on Moradabad riots full of homilies on how the generous Muslims ‘allowed’ the Hindus to build a temple, on how they ‘allowed’ the Hindus to celebrate Holi and use a loudspeaker once a year on Mahashivaratri and how the perfidious Hindu, goaded by the Talibanasque BJP has sought rights which they do not deserve, more so because they form a small minority on those ‘secular’ lands?

The excuse that the Indian Government wants to ‘Hinduise’ Kashmir is nothing but self-induced hallucination on the part of the Islamist. We have a state of affair where even the Jammu region has seen massacres and riots designed to force exodus of the minority Hindu from areas of mixed demography like Doda, Kishtwar and Rajaouri. Can Hindus really count among their ranks people with Islamist like fanaticism, who would be willing to settle in hostile, unfamiliar terrain, where each day would bring new dangers to life and limb? If, for argument’s sake, we assume both availability of such people and a Government design to settle them in these regions, will nature allow them to survive on what are essentially mountains, cut off from civilization, accessible only through trekking routes and anyway, under the snow for over six months a year? However, what use is logic and common sense to that fanatic who participated in a mass movement against the Amarnath Shrine Board’s desire to construct temporary shelters for Amarnath Yatra pilgrims on lands which are non-accessible for over eight months a year! And… even if the Hindu does want to Hinduise Kashmir, then what exactly is wrong? Is not the Hindu a citizen of Kashmir? Does she not a right to practice her religion like her sisters belonging to a different faith? What crime has she committed if she wants to maintain and celebrate the civilizational links of the land of Sharika Devi with rest of India?

The only valid concern is ecological damage. However, this excuse loses credibility when the same Kashmiri protesting religious tourism has no problem with commercial/adventure tourists. As against a few hundred yatris, thousands anyway trek to the Kaunsar Naag lake each year and no squeak is ever heard on the 'havoc' they wreak on the Kashmiri ecology. And in any case, environmental degradation is not a concern which cannot be addressed significantly through focused rules and implementation by both Government and pilgrim agencies.

Only a few weeks back, pilgrims and langar organisers were attacked at Baltal. Numerous tents were burnt, people assaulted, property worth lakhs damaged and pilgrims were left to fend for themselves without food and shelter. Other than this riot, vehicles carrying Amarnath pilgrims have been subject to stone pelting on numerous occasions this year. But of course, leave aside the ‘secular’ MSM, these events have been of little concern even for the ‘Hindu Nationalist’ BJP.

The way Kashmiri Islamists manage to discover nefarious schemes in almost all acts of Govt of India, the same way, our ‘secularists’ have managed to create an alternate reality of ‘Kashmiriyat’ under which the Kashmiri Hindu was cared for by the benign Muslim. In this alternate world, the only oppression was of the Dogra kings on Kashmiri Muslims, the only massacres were those of some Muslims in the aftermath of Partition. In this land, the Kashmiri Hindu ‘migrated’ from the valley on her own accord, under a revolting scheme hatched by the RSS and implemented by Jagmohan. For the ‘secularist’, there is no better example of the large-heartedness of the Kashmiri Islamist than the Amarnath Yatra, where the locals not only ‘allow’ the pilgrimage but also ‘facilitate’ it, of course oblivious of its financial implications to them. Now, such secularists cannot obviously be expected to berate the liberal Kashmiri Muslim for a Baltal or a Kheer Bhavani. And certainly, if the gorilla becomes too big to ignore, one or the other ‘secular’ fact-finding missions would certainly discover that the injuries sustained by the Hindus would be self-inflicted and their grievances, imaginary.

Yet, at one level, it is more the Nationalist Hindu who is to blame when she indulges in such breast-beating, berating the MSM for ignoring attacks on her person and identity. For so many years, the MSM has been nothing, if not consistent in ridiculing the Hindu angst in service of ‘secularism’. For the MSM, the only issues worth covering with vituperative fury would be some random comment and supposed forced feeding. Why cannot the Nationalist Hindu create a systemic alternate discourse where the need for validation from these ‘secularists’ would not arise? Alas, it may not be, for even the supposed ‘outsider’ who got elected in face of no-holds-barred attacks of these very secularists, seems to have decided to make all out efforts to win their approval. We have seen what happened to a previous regime which embarked on such defeatist and meaningless endevour. History will repeat itself and leave behind in its trail, tears of the Hindu who does not have the right to speak even for herself!

Update

The J&K State Government has succumbed to Islamist pressure and withdrawn permission to the Kaunsar Naag yatra. This is of course not an attack on the religious rights of minorities of Kashmir for no act of Islamists can be anything but kosher for our 'seculars'.