javad Beigh
Last week, India’s Home Minister, Amit Shah during his first visit to the newly carved Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir after the abrogation of Article 370 and Article 35A of the constitution of India had inaugurated and flagged off direct flight between Srinagar & Sharjah from Srinagar’s Sheikh Ul-Alam International Airport, that revived the direct airlink between Kashmir valley and the United Arab Emirates after 11 years.
This was widely praised and welcomed by Kashmiri population, which has deep economic and religious ties with UAE and wider Saudi Arabian Peninsular Muslim nations. However, Pakistan’s blunt and rude refusal to allow the use of its airspace for the flight, which makes an alternate route longer by an hour and the ticket more expensive has come as a shock to Muslim majority inhabitants of Kashmir valley, who are angry at this gesture of Pakistan, which claims to be a “well-wisher” of Kashmiri people.
This has once again raised a pertinent question, which many people among Kashmir’s Muslim community refuse to discuss – Is Pakistan a so called “well-wisher” or an enemy of Kashmiri Muslim population?
It is important to add that there is a large diaspora of Kashmiri Muslim community that works in Gulf nations of Arabian Peninsula. They send millions of dollars of annual remittance both to India as well as their families back home in different parts of Kashmir valley, every year. Furthermore, Saudi Arabia also being the most important religious place for global Muslim community, thousands of Kashmiri Muslims go for performing both Hajj and Umrah to holy cities of Mecca & Madina in Saudi Arabia. United Arab Emirates is one of the most important transition points for Kashmiri Muslims to take a flight from India to Arabian Peninsula. Furthermore, cities like Dubai and Sharjah are also home to large Kashmiri Muslim diaspora, which works in U.A.E.
Pakistan lays its claim over Kashmir largely based on common religious adherence of Islam by majority communities in both Pakistan and Kashmir valley, but can Pakistan really claim to be a friend of Kashmiri Muslims by indulging in these cheap tactics, which cause inconvenience to Kashmiri Muslims?
Pakistan’s track record on its claim of being “defender of Islam” and “Muslim ummah” is highly contestable and debatable. To begin with, Pakistan, which was conceived as home to “entire” Muslim population of British India, never actually was home to “entire” Muslim communities of South Asia. A large number of nearly one third of the total Muslim population chose to willingly remain and be part of the Republic of India, including Muslims of Kashmir valley. Further, the so called “Pakistan” that was created through bloody communal and religious partition of British India by Mohammad Ali Jinnah, ceased to exist, when West Pakistan and East Pakistan were torn apart after Punjabi Muslim army and civilian government centered in West Pakistan orchestrated one of the bloodiest suppressions of its own people in East Pakistan, who were Bengalis. The liberation of Dhaka, which carved out an independent nation of Bangladesh from former East Pakistan came after West Pakistani Punjabi Muslim army killed 30 lakh Bengalis and raped 8 Lakh Bengali women in East Pakistan.
Most Kashmiri Muslims, who glorify Pakistan never dwell deep into the fact that Pakistan is not a Muslim country but a Punjabi upper caste feudal Muslim dominated nation, which was accidently created on the soil of Western Punjab in the name of Islam. It is not only Bengali Muslims of East Pakistan, who paid a terrible price of the castest and racist brutality of Punjabi Muslims of West Pakistan, but the left over nation of West Pakistan, which is now simply called “Pakistan” has also become a trap and torture chamber for Balochi Muslims, Sindhi Muslims, Pashtun Muslims, Mohajir Muslims (Urdu speaking Muslims, who migrated from UP & Bihar to West Pakistan in 1947) and Muslims of Gilgit & Baltistan, who continue to suffer the colonial and racist policies of Punjabi Muslim establishment that dominates, Pakistani army, spy agency and civilian government.
Kashmiri Muslim population knows but still likes to remain in denial that Pakistan wants revenge for its dismemberment for which it holds India and Hindus responsible and it is merely using Kashmiri Muslims to take shot at India. It is really unfortunate that Kashmiri Muslims have been allowing themselves to be sacrificed for evil designs of Punjabi Muslims of Pakistan since last three decades. Pakistani Punjabi Muslim is one the most cruel and heartless communities that even tortures its own poor lower caste Punjabi Muslims, especially those living in southern Pakistani Punjab, where rich upper caste Pakistani Punjabi based mostly in Northern Pakistan Punjab recruit children of mostly poor and lower caste Punjabi Muslim families for various religious and political jihad that different Pakistani terrorist organizations are running against India, Afghanistan and Iran.
Pakistani Punjabi Muslims that run Pakistan’s army, institutions and government have been exploiting the religious sentiments of Kashmiri Muslims to take its own revenge from India for the creation of Bangladesh. Pakistani Punjabi Muslims first tried to create chaos, death and destruction in Indian Punjab by misguiding Sikhs against the union of India and when that failed miserably, they turned towards Kashmiri Muslims and exploited, an essentially a political grievance of Kashmiris against Delhi to turn it into a militant, jihadi, terrorist, separatist movement by sending guns in Kashmir valley, that eventually destroyed the very social fabric of Kashmir valley and tore it apart.
Pakistani Punjabi Muslim is friend of no one. It betrayed its own Bengali Muslim brothers and sisters from East Pakistan in 1971 and has been torturing, tormenting and killings its own Muslim citizens, who are non-Punjabis like Balochis, Sindhis, Mohajirs and Pashtuns. Pakistani Punjabi Muslim has never been a friend or well wisher of Kashmiri Muslims ever. It has been using blood and bodies of Kashmiri Muslims only to extract its revenge from India for the fall of Dhaka. It is high time that majority Muslim community of Kashmir accepts this fact and thwarts further attempts of Pakistani Punjabi Muslims to use blood of Kashmiri Muslims for its political agenda.
(The author is Senior Political Leader & General Secretary of People’s Democratic Front)
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