Chrar: Operation Devastation-V
Undue encouragement to Pandits irritated Muslims

From B L Kak

Any document, any write-up, any research work on Jammu and Kashmir cannot be complete unless something is mentioned about Kashmiri Pandits. And the book, written by two Kashmir-watchers, GN Gauhar and Shahwar, Gowhar has, in unambiguous terms, pronounced that the encouragement which a small section of the Kashmiri Pandits received in New Delhi created apprehensions, misguiding the minds of the Kashmiri Muslims and Jammu Dogras.

Even the Ladakh Buddhists, the book asserted, felt discriminated against. These apprehensions were "fortified by the proportion of the employees recruited" in the departments of the Government of India in Jammu and Kashmir, in Central corporations, agencies, nationalised banks etc.

The book has quoted GN Gauhar as saying: "It was in 1976 that I, as president, Kashmir Cultural Organisation, convinced Mr VC Shukla, Central Minister for Information and Broadcasting, about the disproportionate bulk recruited from the Kashmiri Pandit minority, constituting less than 5 per cent of the entire population, especially in the State branches of the I&B Ministry". At that time, only 36 per cent Muslims from J&K were employed in those departments in Kashmir, whereas 58 per cent were from the Pandit community.

Of the 36 per cent employees, the biggest chunk, according to the book, belonged to Class IV functionaries. This was also the case with other offices, bank branches and the regional offices of various corporations. "Further, it was more intolerable to dub the Kashmiri Muslim inferior in intellectual acumen to the Kashmiri Pandit-only to justify the injustice perpetuated", the book says.

In a pointed reference to the "fact" that the Kashmiri Pandit dominated every walk of public life and all the Government offices, Gauhar and Gowhar recalled that two high-powered commissions headed by retired chief justices of India were appointed to probe and suggest measures when the Pandit community alleged discrimination. On the other hand, when the majority community (of Muslims) agitated with similar demands, they were dubbed as pro-Pakistan or inefficient, the book lamented.

Yet another finding in the book: The arrest and detention of Sheikh Abdullah in 1953 had fortified the views projected by the All J&K Muslim Conference, J&K Kisan Conference and other parties that India would never abide by its promises and commitments. Earlier, in 1947, the Kashmiris were made to believe that the Pathans were determined to annex Kashmir with Pakistan under duress and not due to the voluntary participation of its people.

On the other hand, India promised that its forces did not enter the borders of J&K for its annexation or for any other expansionist desire, but for the principle to defend Kashmir against its forcible annexation. "So, theirs was a welcome entry. But immediately their (India’s) pretensions stood exposed for which several factors are contributory", the book said.

Gauhar and Gowhar have wished the posterity to know that the two personalities who were pivotal and responsible for carving the Indo-Kashmir relationship were Jawaharlal Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah. And Gauhar and Gowhar insisted: "The former had a clear mandate from his people to act, whereas the latter, in spite of his charisma and popularity with a section of the people of the State, had not obtained any formal mandate. He (the Sheikh) had cunningly run away, rather than to face the people in the 1946 elections held under the rule of Maharaja".

After the cessation of hostilities between India and Pakistan in 1947-48, and after the situation started limping towards normalcy, the Indian leadership, according to the book, started vacillating, which disillusioned their most trusted link, Sheikh Abdullah, and "eroded the faith of the people" in their commitment. The first ever elections, in 1950-51, proved to be what the book has termed as "a death blow" to the image of India with the people. "It dashed to the ground the expectations of all the pro-democratic forces in Jammu and Kashmir", Gauhar and Gowhar said and alleged: "Out of the 75 electoral constituencies of the Constituent Assembly, not a single one witnessed even a fake contest. All were chosen by Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah by connivance and with the positive support of Nehru".

The Kashmiri people, the two writers have recorded, realised that they were deceived, cheated and treated merely "like a disputed dead stock". The Kashmiri people has hosted receptions for Indian leaders, particularly Mr Nehru, on the belief that he was the "saviour of the right of self-determination". Mr Nehru, the book also emphasised, had in unequivocal terms assured them many times that there were the judges of their destiny.

Gauhar and Gowhar have deemed it necessary to refer to the ‘farce’ of elections played with the people of J&K in 1957 and 1962, which, they insisted, consolidated the belief that, for India, the State of Jammu and Kashmir only had the "status of an occupied colony which had no right to elect its rulers".

There was, to quote Gauhar and Gowhar, "one more cause of annoyance with India, which specifically applied to Chrar-e-Sharief". The people in Chrar witnessed and observed that in the Jammu hills, the shrine of Mata Vaishno Devi which, before 1947, had a limited appeal, now attracted lakhs of pilgrims from all over India. "The people here felt that had Pakistan similar access to J&K, Chrar would have attracted an equal, if not more, number of pilgrims".

The verdict from Gauhar and Gowhar: The complete denial of freedom of thought and expression, denial of fundamental and even basic human rights and the continued law of the jungle perpetuated upon the Kashmir people caused hatred against both the policy and the policy-maker. It is for these and other reasons that there was a complete contrast between the situations of 1947 and 1965.

With the outbreak of full-fledged war between India and Pakistan in 1965, the speople of Kashmir, the book states, were for Pakistan and were against India. "Hence, in mosques and shrines and particularly in the shrine of the Sheikh at Chrar and in its khanqah, people openly prayed for the success of Pakistan".

(To be continued)

Tehelka puts media in eye of the storm
Men, Matters & Memories

By M L Kotru

Thanks to the Tehelka tapes, the media is once again in the eye of the storm-despised by the wrong-doers but seen by most as the means to ensure that ''men may be governed by reason and truth'', as Thomas Jafferson, the third US President once put it. The political class is aghast and outraged and some within it overjoyed, not because the crooks have been caught but because it opens up an opportunity for them to reach out for the pot of honey. The ruling party, with so much at stake, has every reason to scream foul, to call the media, Tehelka in particular, names and the Opposition, like the ones before it, including the present ruling party when it sat in the opposition, applauding the investigative genius of the reporters involved in the tortuous, yet professionally rewarding experience. After all how often is the media able to nail the political malcontents as Tehelka did: two party presidents willing to accept bribes, one actually caught by the hidden camera while grabbing wads of currency notes. Not that such disclosures have in the past caused disgraced politicians to say their byes to politics. The Laloos, the Jayalalithas et al, they continue to surface in spite of being charge-sheeted or even convicted.

Italy, Japan, Korea, USA and even permissive France and the British have sent errant politicians, including Presidents and PMs to jail, impeached them or simply sent them into political wilderness. But in the land of the Buddha and Gandhi, not to forget Satyameva Jayate, politicians have attained the status of sacred cows. If the NDA leaders are fretting and fuming- and running scared- they have themselves to blame; they obviously forgot the basics of fund-raising and they did it so recklessly that sympathy even from their own flock is hard to come by. So, be it Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, George Fernandes, Bangaru Laxman or Jaya Jaitley they need to do some introspection rather than throw mud at the fool-proof investigation undertaken by a set of determined professional journalists, What must be hurting most is that the NDA men may have come so close to losing power as a consequence of the Tehelka investigation and, worse, the Congress Party, which was the butt of their ridicule through the 80s and early 90s, is now calling the kettle black.

In the 70s, 80s, and the 90s not a day, not a week, not a month passed without the media-electronic in the post mid-90s-exposing the shenanigans of Indian politicians in New Delhi and in the States. Be it the urea scam, the JMM scam, the Bofors scam, the fodder scam, etc. etc, all of these came in a flood as it were. Each time the betrayers of public trust would rise in near unison to decry the media, just the kind we are witnessing in the aftermath of the Tehelka disclosures. Tehelka is being villified for having blown the lid off the wheeling dealing a highest political levels and if one is to go by the whining response of the dramatis personae you would think that the website has committed a grave impropriety by exposing the wheels and deals of the political class. Some have even raised the moral and ethical issue of reporters using hidden cameras. Had they not done that, can you imagine a Bangaru Laxman admitting that he accepted Rs One Lakh in cash from the Tehelka reporters posing as arms dealers? Would Jaya Jaitley have acknowledged the fact that she received the fake dealers in the Defence Minister's house or that she told them to deposit Rs two lakhs with a party functionary? Or R K Jain, the Samata Treasurer and saffronite R K Gupta crowing crores a if they were talking of annas and paisas. Remember all the documentation the Indian Express, the Hindu and the Statesman backed up their stories with on the Bofors scam; these for the most part were pooh poohed by the ruling party of the day. They called these fictitions. That was in the late 80s.

If the devil was ever caught quoting scriptures you had only to listen to the stunning explanations of Bangaru Laxman and Jaya Jaitley, followed by George Fernandes himself-and all of it with enviable sang-froid. The need for the media to occupy the adversary role was clear to the founding fathers. That's why they inscribed freedom of speech and expression as one of our basic rights. Without Press freedom they knew the other freedoms would fall. For governments by their nature tend to oppress and supress. And a government without watchdog would soon oppress the people it was created to serve. Thomas Jefferson understood that the Press as the watch-dog, must be free to criticise and condemn, to expose and oppose, unlike our politicians who somehow believe that conduct in high places, occupied by them, courtesy their electors, must remain beyond reproach or scrutiny. Not for them Jefferson's words: ''Where it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter''. Jefferson did not retreat from this position even when, towards the end of his first term in office, he was unfairly and bitterly ''abused'' by some newspapers. He wrote to a friend : 'No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact that men may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be to leave open to him all avenues of truth. The most effective hitherto found, is the freedom of the Press. It's therefore the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions.''

Put these observations made nearly three centuries ago against the backdrop of Prime Minister Vajpayee's admonition to the media the day after he was compelled to ''permit'' George Fernandes to resign, three days after the Tehelka disclosures, asking it to act responsibly in dealing with matters concerning the country's defence. That's what Jafferson fears when he says ''Press is the first shut up by those who fear the investigations of their actions''. If I am not wrong it was the very same Mr Vajpayee who virtually blew his tip off in the Rajya Sabha, of which he was a member then, over Bofors. He even questioned the efficacy of the gun which no one had and about which he was to learn himself in Kargil, years later. So enraged was he by the kickbacks allegedly received by Rajiv Gandhi and some others. That messiah of the poor V P Singh rode into Prime Ministerial office on the barrel of the Bofors gun. And who had blown the whistle on Bofors first-the media. Investigative journalism of the type used in the Tehelka expose becomes inevitable and necessary, if you will, when you run into a wall manned by well-heeled spin masters, working overtime on outside budgets to ''protect'' our Ministers. There are no Press officers or media advisers of the government to brief those who search for concealed facts. During my near half century as a reporter, I have never known of a Press officer calling a Press conference to confirm ministerial or bureaucratic wrongdoing. Yes, leaks were made available to the pliable or trusted men whenever it suited a politician. Men in power and those seeking it, do not relish having their cozy relationships exposed, their source of money bared and their blunders brought to light. They obstruct investigative reporters. The last thing people at the top of government want to see are stories about governmental wrongs. They know exposure will bring an end to power.

Take a look at the working of our governments after the first decade or so of independence. It has undergone a qualitative change since Nehru formed his first government. His government was committed to certain values which were pretty neatly defined in the sub-conscious perceptions of the entire nation. New Delhi at the time was a neat, clean and civilized city, the presence of large numbers of refugees notwithstanding. There were major problems to be faced but the entire nation was at peace with itself. The government had a fair idea of what was to be done and it earnestly tried to do it. Yes, there were a couple of mini scandals even then like the budget leakage, the jeep scandal, the Mundhra scam etc. but all were sorted out in the full glare of parliamentary debate and two important Ministers. T T Krishnamachari and Krishna Menon, were made to resign.

The Governments that followed had been made up of a totally different ''material''. These have been outrageously cumbersome and corrupt as against Nehru's cabinet which for most part was sleek, manageable and clean. Coarser men and women have since formed well-knit coteries in New Delhi as much as in the State capitals, and between them they have been playing kind of musical chairs, one lot succeeding the other, each picking up a few hundred crores here and there becoming a routine. A Prime Minister may decide to import wheat even when the country doesn't need it, another might give his kin free rein to mint money including by entering into fictitious deals. Others may use Air Force aircraft and even high security surveillance aircraft as if they were so many taxis and refuse to pay up when demands are raised for purely private use of the aircraft.

In the changed scenario, the role of the media has acquired newer dimensions. The watchdog role, even an adversorial one, is what the media, both print and electronic, will have to increasingly adopt, if only to rein in the uncivil elements who seem to have taken control of the Indian polity. Surely politicians will resist it; they will place impediments in the way of honest professionals, raising the ''security'' walls even higher. The test lies in the media's ability to beat the rascals at their game, even if that sometimes means employing unorthodox ways which may not approximate to politicians' understanding of the ethical.