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r. Ayesha Siddiqa, a prominent analyst and visiting scholar from Pakistan, recently gave a talk at Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington, one of the leading think tanks dealing with South Asian matters, which highlighted some of the above. “It is too late for Pakistan to turn back from the path that it has embarked on," she said. "The nation’s political and strategic culture is hostage to three As – Army, Allah and America. The country that Pakistan was envisaged to be at the time of its creation by its founder does not exist anymore, nor can we go back.”
I thought long and hard about what Dr. Siddiqa said. She is no amateur. She recently finished her tenure as the Senior Visiting Professor at the prestigious Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Her background is equally impressive. She received her Ph.D. in War Studies from the King’s College, University of London, and has taught at the Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, and at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. Her scholarly books on Pakistan’s military are universally recognized for intellect and details. She painted a dismal picture of Pakistan’s future.
Her observations about the behaviour of Pakistani intellectuals and secular civil society, who failed to take notice of slow changes in the social and religious landscape around them, reminded me of the classical tale about boiling a frog in a pot. If a frog is thrown in a pot of boiling water, it will invariably jump out of the pot and try to save itself. But if the same frog is thrown in a pot of cold water that is heated very gradually, the frog does not realize it is being cooked, and sadly by the time the realisation dawns, it is too late to jump out because of its ebbing strength.
I could feel Dr. Siddiqa's pain about Pakistan. It made me equally concerned about the worsening political and social situation in Kashmir. Is Kashmir getting “cooked” slowly without anyone realizing it? Or directly put: Do Kashmiri intellectuals realize how rapidly social and religious landscape is deteriorating around them to the point that Kashmir valley is slowly turning into a mini-Pakistan?
Dr. Siddiqa said a few other things in her lecture that were equally disturbing. She conducted a poll among students in the top 10 elite universities of Pakistan. These students, mostly belonging to the ruling elite (wealthy feudal families or senior military officers with mostly secular upbringing and life style), will eventually define the future of the nation. Surprisingly, the poll results indicated that these students, coming mostly from liberal backgrounds, valued their pan-Islamic identity as more important than their national or even family identity, and while a majority of respondents agreed that “al-Qaeda is a terrorist organization,” a resounding majority also agreed with the Pakistan government’s decision to strip “Ahmadis” of their Muslim identity, and most respondents (potential future leaders) viewed only Sunnis as true Muslims. It conveys a very disturbing trend in Pakistan that is increasingly hostile to pluralism, religious tolerance and minorities.
Can such disturbing trends evolve in Kashmir? I believe that depends on who is assessing the situation. I have noted an increasingly shrinking space for religious minorities in Kashmir who fled Kashmir two decades back. They are unlikely to return given the unsettled situation in the valley today. The civil society in Kashmir, unlike the civil society anywhere else in the world, is mostly engaged in a political discourse, and does very little to highlight the plight of the needy, the infirm and the under-represented sections of the society. Consequently, most non-political issues are brushed under the rug, and any sectarian strife is conveniently soft-peddled as the work of “various agencies” just as in Pakistan everything is conveniently blamed on "Indian agencies"
There was something else that Dr. Siddiqa said which applies to Kashmir as well and disturbs me even more. She said as the Pakistani government liberalized media licenses, the media, while becoming "freer" has also turned less "independent", and most op-ed pieces harp on repetitive themes. As a result, not only has the public debate shrunk to a narrow point of view, but there is a concerted effort to organize, control, and manipulate the “national narrative” so that major news events are interpreted in a certain way leaving no room for any debate, challenge or diversity in views and opinions. This struck a chord with me. In the two recent cases of social unrest in the valley that I have analysed in detail, dealing with the Amarnath Shrine agitation in 2008 and the Shopian tragedy in 2009, I noted that even though there were no explicit facts to support the serious allegations raised by the vehement protesters in the valley, yet the “narrative” in Kashmir was tightly controlled in the media to reflect a consistently identical interpretation of events that was not borne by known facts but clearly conveyed a certain political agenda and outcome.
It is easy to brush off any inference that Kashmir is going to turn into another Pakistan. In fact, Kashmiris would rather not be associated with Pakistan, as determined by the opinion poll conducted by the Chatham House in 2009 on both sides of the Line of Control (LoC), and released in May 2010. On the Indian side of Kashmir, only 2% opted to join Pakistan (28% opted to join India, whereas 43% opted for independence), but the reality is reflected in the hold that Islamists have over Kashmiri society today. Many will argue that Kashmir's real problem is a public desire for "azadi", but a truly independence-seeking public would be inclusive and bring all constituencies and diverse interests on board. That is not so in Kashmir where the anti-India liberation movement is stridently radical and fundamentalist in its outlook and appeal. Indeed, harvesting religious sentiments is the "low hanging fruit" that even so called pro-India political parties in Kashmir find convenient to pluck, reinforcing a subtle agenda to capitalize on the narrative that is increasingly strident and pan-Islamic in its undertones. Just as many consider Pakistan’s "war against terrorism" as an aggravating factor in the already tense situation in Pakistan, the same can be said about Kashmir where law and order issues aggravate the social and cultural shift towards deepening radicalism.
Are the two “hot spots,” Pakistan and Kashmir, similar? There are some startling similarities. Pakistan suffers from a lack of land reform, where a feudal class is deeply entrenched in ruling the country with support from the military. The two entities have numerous times switched their roles in running the country, but in so far as the common man in Pakistan is concerned, the results are similar whether it is the economy or the law and order situation. In Kashmir, a successful land reform occurred just after independence, but feudalism reared its head through political snobbery that was created by the Article 370. The law that was introduced in the Indian constitution to preserve Kashmir’s indigenous identity and heritage has been consistently abused by political oligarchs in the valley to preserve their feudal control by deliberately seeding and manipulating alienation among the public, while replacing good governance with nepotism, corruption and shady deals.