Four Things That Indian Hindus Must Understand About Their Muslim Compatriots

I've been reading a lot of highly polarising stuff on social media, and it has slowly been dawning on me that a lot of Hindus, even nominally educated ones, have been intellectually lazy in not taking the time to analyse the facts about their Muslim compatriots.

Many of them have strong opinions that seem to be backed by facts, but their logic is a bit dodgy.

I would like to spell out the four fundamental flaws in their logic.

1. Worldwide Islamic terrorism has little involvement from Indian Muslims

2. The Kashmir problem does not concern Muslims in the rest of India

3. Bangladeshi Muslim immigration is different from the population growth of Indian Muslims

4. Mediaeval Muslim invaders have very few genetic links to modern Indian Muslims

Let me elaborate.

1. Worldwide Islamic terrorism has little involvement from  Indian Muslims

Since September 2001, the world has rudely awoken to the problem of Islamic terror, and Muslims are now looked upon with suspicion worldwide. Acts of Islamic terror in Western countries have been carried out by Muslims from many countries. However, hardly any have been from India. 

The curious case of the Indian Muslim and terror did not escape the notice of Time Magazine, which carried an item in its April 10, 2015 issue - "What India Can Teach Us About Muslims And Assimilation".

Since the rise of ISIS in Syria and the establishment of a putative caliphate, Muslims from around the world have travelled there to become part of the group, with a couple of notable exceptions - India and Indonesia. There are hardly any ISIS recruits from these two countries.

Perhaps the best certificate, though, is the left-handed one from Zakir Musa, a former member of the Hizb-ul-Mujaheddin who joined Al Qaeda. He called Indian Muslims "shameless" for not joining the global jihad.

There is thus sufficient evidence that the Indian Muslim is a breed apart, and deserves a greater degree of trust and reciprocal goodwill.

2. The Kashmir problem does not concern Muslims in the rest of India

Kashmir has been a simmering problem for India ever since independence. Part of the problem has been fomented by the Pakistani army, but that doesn't fully explain it. Part of the problem has been the periodic dishonesty of the Indian government (rigged elections in 1987, for example), and a heavy-handed approach to security (AFSPA and the human rights violations it condones), but those don't fully explain it either. An unspoken aspect of the Kashmir problem is a fairly widespread desire for an Islamic state, and the readiness of the more extreme separatists to simply eliminate their moderate counterparts.

So there definitely is a hardline Islamist element to the never-ending violence in Kashmir, and a major part of it is local in origin. This can be frustrating and infuriating to the average Indian, who sees Kashmir as always getting favourable treatment (both through the protections of Article 370 and the investments made by the Indian state into J & K). The expulsion of Kashmiri Hindus (the Pandits) from the valley during the 1990s also exacerbates this feeling.

However, Muslims in the rest of India have nothing to do with Kashmir. There is hardly any support for Kashmiri separatism expressed by Muslim groups in the rest of India. The non-Kashmiri Muslim voice has been remarkably muted on this issue. Hence there is no reason for any frustration that Indian Hindus may feel about Kashmir to spill over towards Muslims in the rest of India. Apart from the accident of sharing a religion, there is nothing in common between the latter and the separatists in Kashmir.

3. Bangladeshi Muslim immigration is different from the population growth of Indian Muslims

There is a serious problem of illegal immigration of people from Bangladesh into the northeastern states of India and West Bengal, and from there, into the rest of India. Some estimates put the number of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in India at 20 million. Not only is illegal immigration indefensible, it also threatens to rapidly change the demographics of Indian states, turning many districts and electoral constituencies into Muslim-majority ones and potentially shifting the balance of political power within India. Clearly, this is a serious national security problem that needs to be urgently tackled.

However, the problem of Bangladeshi immigration is not to be conflated with the population growth rate of Muslims in the rest of India. In this context, I have often heard the scaremongering message that "Muslims will outnumber Hindus in 30-40 years".

I found this such a remarkably precise and potentially falsifiable statement that I immediately got to work with a spreadsheet, and the last four decades of census data. I saw that over these four decades, both Hindu and Muslim growth rates have been steadily falling, and also that the Muslim growth rate has always been higher than the Hindu growth rate. I extrapolated forward for the next 40 years, by factoring in continuing falls in both Hindu and Muslim rates of population growth, but also ensuring that the Muslim growth rate remained above the Hindu one throughout. I also had to keep my growth rates from becoming too high, because otherwise the total Indian population would exceed reasonable limits.

As I had pretty much expected, the highest percentage of the total population that my model projected for Indian Muslims in 40 years was 19%. A more realistic set of growth rate figures put this percentage at 16% (at which time the total Indian population would be about 1.7 billion). This is a far cry from the 50+% that the term "outnumber" implies.

The myth of a soon-to-be Muslim majority is precisely that - a myth. Fortunately, it's extremely easy to refute with a spreadsheet and some independent thinking

It's clear that Indian Muslims are in no position to threaten the numerical dominance of Hindus any time in the foreseeable future, so the majority should stop thinking of itself as a threatened minority.

4. Mediaeval Muslim invaders have very few genetic links to modern Indian Muslims

Genetically speaking, Indian Muslims are virtually identical to their Hindu neighbours. The overwhelming majority of them are of Indian stock and are descendants of converts to Islam from Hinduism. With some (highly diluted) exceptions, they are not descendants of Turks, Mongols, Persians, Afghans or any of the other Muslim races that invaded, conquered and plundered India centuries ago.

Treating Indian Muslims as "Baabar ke aulaad" (children of the Moghul invader Baabar) is not only not based on fact, it is needlessly harsh. If the forefathers of Indian Muslims were originally Hindus (who were probably converted at swordpoint), they were probably victimised to an even greater extent than the Hindus who managed to hold out. This understanding should lead to greater empathy and a feeling of oneness, rather than alienation.

So, to repeat what I said at the beginning of this post, I believe many Indian Hindus have been intellectually lazy in not thinking deeply enough about the four distinctions I have made here. That may explain the flawed reasoning and needless paranoia that I see on social media. A cool head and the application of logic can lead to a much more reassuring worldview than an ideology based on fear and suspicion.

In addition, it would not just be unfair, but also needlessly self-defeating, to treat a loyal group of fellow Indians with suspicion. Continued "othering" of a group of people can cause alienation, and perhaps even radicalise a few in the process. It would be a tragic irony if the myth of the "enemy within" turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Three PR Failures Of The Hindu Right

The BJP's General Secretary and RSS ideologue Ram Madhav recently appeared on Al Jazeera's Head to Head program, to face a tough interviewer and a fairly hostile guest panel and audience. His performance, which can be seen below, was nothing short of dismal, with a couple of needless gaffes thrown in.

It couldn't just be biased editing - the BJP spokesman was on the ropes or on the mat most of the time

While readers of this blog may watch the video themselves to draw their own conclusions, my analysis of Ram Madhav's failure is as follows.

1. On the topic of the interview itself, "Is Modi's India flirting with fascism?", he had the difficult job of convincing the audience that the situation on the ground was no worse than in the past, and that there was no climate of intolerance as the government's critics have often alleged.

2. On India-Pakistan relations, especially Kashmir, he had to sell non-Indians on the legitimacy of the decades-long Indian diplomatic position.

3. On the RSS/BJP's ideology, he had to make the case for "Hindu nationalism", explain what his organisation means by exhorting religious minorities to be "culturally Hindu", and to clarify related concepts such as "Akhand Bharat" (an "undivided India" that includes Pakistan and Bangladesh, on which I have written before), which could otherwise be construed as military expansionism.

At the end of the interview, it can be safely surmised that he utterly failed to communicate his party's point of view and to convince his audience on these three points. The angry buzz of right-wing sympathisers on social media, blaming everyone but him on the debacle (and indeed, blaming him only for being "too soft"), confirms my assessment that he got a shellacking.

What would I have done in his place?

On the first point, I believe there is little he could have done except engage in whataboutery. There is indisputable evidence that intolerance of criticism of the ruling party and its ideology has reached new depths. It would be dishonest of me to even attempt to formulate an argument for him to use, since I believe the allegation is spot-on.

On Kashmir, Ram Madhav had a wonderful opportunity to explain India's diplomatic stand, because a liberal audience such as the one he had is inherently favourable to an inclusive, as opposed to a parochial, philosophy. Madhav should have taken a step back from the Kashmir dispute to discuss its roots in the partition of British India into India and Pakistan.

He should have asked for a voice vote from the audience between Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of a secular state where all citizens would be treated equally regardless of religion, and MA Jinnah's Two-Nation Theory, under which Hindus were deemed incapable of living together with Muslims under a fair dispensation, and hence required to yield the Muslims their own state.

He should have pointed out how these two diametrically opposed philosophies predictably played out in real-life, since Pakistan's religious minorities decreased from about 23% of the population at independence to about 2% today, and the Muslim population in India increased from 10% in the 1951 census to 14% today.

Having won the voice vote, he should have proceeded to show how Pakistan's claim to Kashmir rested entirely on this parochial Two-Nation Theory, and was thus morally inferior to India's more enlightened and inclusive position.

Further, he should have pointed out that Pakistan made the first, pre-emptive and aggressive move in invading Kashmir in 1948 to take it by force, and that the line of control today dates back to when and where India stopped that aggression.

He should have ended with the hardline position that Pakistan has proven it cannot look after its minorities, and hence all of Kashmir should be with India.

On the Hindutva ideology, Ram Madhav would have faced a trickier challenge, since the Sangh's ideology is self-contradictory. It is true that there is an inherent liberalism of thought within the mainstream Hindu religion with regard to various schools of philosophy, yet the RSS itself has sought to make Hinduism less freewheeling and more rigidly doctrinaire in an effort to coalesce political support for itself. Nevertheless, if Madhav had downplayed the more recent Hindutva philosophy espoused by the RSS, and fallen back on the original pluralistic worldview of the religion that it claims to represent, he could have scored a few points.

From my own discussions with more moderate sympathisers of the Hindu Right, I can attempt to formulate a hypothetical line of argument for Ram Madhav, even if I don't agree with it myself.

The argument is that there are three broad approaches to religious belief:

The first is what can loosely be called the "Abrahamic philosophy" represented by Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Although the three religions have irreconcilable differences among themselves, what they have in common is the exclusivist attitude that their view alone is the right one, and all others are wrong. Others must convert to their doctrine in order to be saved in a spiritual sense.

The second is what can be called "Western secularism", which operates by denying religion any legitimacy in the public sphere. Religion is deemed to be a private matter, which must not influence public policy. The state and church must remain separate, and the state must treat all citizens equally, regardless of the faith they may profess.

The third approach is the "Hindu" one, which neither denies the legitimacy of religious belief in the public sphere, nor claims exclusive validity for its own brand. This can be seen as positive rather than negative when contrasted with Western secularism, since it affirms rather than denies what is dear to a majority of the world's people. It is also inclusive in contrast to the Abrahamic religions, since it respects the beliefs of every individual as true and as a valid path to "the truth" and to their spiritual salvation.

Regardless of the factual merits of the above argument, it will undoubtedly appeal to many. This is the argument Ram Madhav should have used to justify his organisation's socio-religious position.

Flowing from this, he could have argued that an Indian belonging to a minority religion could be deemed to be "culturally Hindu" if they merely accorded others the respect that they expected for themselves. In other words, if they shed the intolerant and exclusivist aspect of their own religion's doctrine and adopted the Hindu approach of mutual respect, then they would be "culturally Hindu". I have no doubt that Madhav would have won over a sizeable proportion of his audience with that argument.

Further, he could have used this to explain Akhand Bharat (undivided India). He did do a half-decent job of explaining it in any case, by saying it was to be a voluntary coming together of the peoples of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh at some point in the future, but it could have been an even more powerful argument had he linked it to the "Hindu" philosophy of mutual respect.

[As an atheist, I personally favour Western secularism, since I don't believe religion has any validity in either the public or private spheres, but we are talking here about what Ram Madhav could have said, not what I believe.]

To sum up, I think the Hindutva organisations need to do a much better job of explaining themselves to a worldwide audience, because they are losing the PR war pretty badly. To a large extent, they do deserve it, because their philosophy is intolerant, and their stormtroopers (both the street goons and the online trolls) have cemented that reputation. However, some of their main ideological opponents, i.e., Islamists and fundamentalist Christians, are no saints either. These latter groups deserve to face a strong intellectual challenge to their intolerance, and this is possible from a position that is rooted in the broader Hindu tradition (See Lisa Miller's Newsweek article "We are all Hindus now").

Unfortunately for the Hindu Right, the BJP/RSS is probably the last entity that can lay claim to that tolerant philosophy. Someone else needs to make that argument. Ram Madhav's comprehensive humiliation before an international audience should have made that amply clear.

Kashmir As Bollywood's Tormented Muse

I want to talk about some special Indian movies made in the last decade - Dil Se, Shaurya, Fanaa and now Haider. The common thread running through all these movies is, of course, Kashmir.

I have not seen Dil Se except for its two captivating song sequences (Chaiyya Chaiyya and the title song Dil Se Re). However, the one significant point that the film dared to raise was the issue of atrocities by the Indian armed forces in Kashmir, with the female protagonist depicted as a victim of rape trauma. That must have riled the right wing, but uncomfortable facts need to be faced, and if a movie can bring an issue into the public consciousness, then more power to the moviemakers.

Fanaa was a very well-made, emotionally charged film (as are most of Aamir Khan's films), but what damaged it for me was its dishonest premise. The film shows an independent Kashmiri terrorist group holding the governments of both India and Pakistan to ransom. The premise that Pakistan is an innocent victim of Kashmiri terror is so laughable that even the most gullible peacenik would be embarrassed to repeat it. Still, Fanaa holds its place in the annals of Bollywood as a significant statement about Kashmir and its relationship to India, even if it is a projection of what Indians want Kashmiris to feel.

The two remaining movies are remakes. Shaurya was a remake of "A Few Good Men" and Haider is an adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Surprisingly, the Indian adaptations don't look like imitations but as genuine, standalone classics. I believe that their choice of Kashmir as background is the reason. In Kashmir, India has a genuine trove of torment and suffering that can facilitate powerful storytelling because of its authenticity. An Indian movie like Madras Café (reviewed by me here) that dealt with the Sri Lankan crisis can only be partly authentic, because it was, after all, about another country's war, another society's pain. Indeed, almost half of that movie is devoted to the one aspect of the Sri Lankan civil war that actually impacted India - the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. The best movie about the Sri Lankan civil war will probably come from a Sri Lankan filmmaker (probably a Tamil) who has first-hand knowledge of the pain of those years.

But back to Bollywood and Kashmir.

Kashmir is what made Shaurya (in my opinion) a much better movie than A Few Good Men (and the latter was pretty darn good!). The Hollywood original came out in the year 1992, at a time of relative peace between the fall of the Soviet Union (1989) and the sudden advent of Islamic terror (Sept 11, 2001). Colonel Jessup's imagery of a "wall" defending the US that he mans is therefore not very convincing in the absence of a credible danger to the US. However, when a similar situation is retold in the context of the Indian army's presence in the restive state of Kashmir, it is credible and real. Colonel Jessup's Indian counterpart, Brigadier Pratap (chillingly played by Kay Kay Menon) exudes both moral certainty and menace in equal measure. The blurred line between defending one's country against Islamist insurgents and outright Islamophobia is the very substantive issue Shaurya explores, not a fictitious "code red" as in the Hollywood blockbuster.

Kay Kay Menon brings out the menace of Brigadier Pratap in this short clip from Shaurya. It would take a brave officer indeed to call him to the witness stand.

I can watch Shaurya again and again, and it gives me goose pimples because it is so close to real-life. Heck, I'd say the only unrealistic part of Shaurya was that justice was served in the end. Human rights violations like what the movie depicted have occurred many times in Kashmir without the perpetrators having to face justice as in the movie.

The "You can't handle the truth" speech

The issue of Kashmir divides Indian left-liberals and nationalists, and the divide appears unbridgeable. To the former, it is clear as day that the will of a people should be respected even if it is unpalatable to others, hence if the majority of Kashmiris want independence from India, they should be allowed to go their way. To the latter, it is unacceptable that the blood of Indian soldiers should have been spilt in vain, unacceptable that after multiple successful conflicts with Pakistan over Kashmir, India should meekly roll over and let the state go. The borders of India are inviolate to a nationalist, and if keeping those borders intact involves denying basic freedoms to a people (sometimes quite brutally), then such measures are justified.

The left/right divide is actually quite understandable when the concept of morality is dissected, as psychologist Steven Pinker has done. According to Pinker, morality consists of 5 strands - fairness, harm, community, authority and purity.

The ranking and placement of moral spheres also divides the cultures of liberals and conservatives in the United States. Many bones of contention, like homosexuality, atheism and one-parent families from the right, or racial imbalances, sweatshops and executive pay from the left, reflect different weightings of the spheres. In a large Web survey, Haidt found that liberals put a lopsided moral weight on harm and fairness while playing down group loyalty, authority and purity. Conservatives instead place a moderately high weight on all five. It’s not surprising that each side thinks it is driven by lofty ethical values and that the other side is base and unprincipled.

I believe either Pinker or the Haidt survey is being a bit too charitable to the Conservatives. I think that Conservatives place a lopsided moral weight on community, authority and purity at the expense of fairness and harm, rather than being even-handed about all five strands. Only this explains why right-leaning people in many countries tend to downplay human rights violations by "our boys in uniform" and view any criticism of the armed forces as unpatriotic, even treasonous. The right wing in India tends to deflect criticism of human rights violations in Kashmir by talking about the wrongs suffered by the Hindu Kashmiri Pundits at the hands of Muslim militants (as if two wrongs could ever make a right).

It may be surmised from the above paragraphs that I am a left-leaning liberal, and that is largely true, but there is a twist. Yes, I am completely against giving untrammelled powers to men in uniform, and completely against torture as an instrument of intelligence gathering. Yet I also believe that the Kashmiri separatists are deluded in their demands for Azaadi (freedom). Not only is their desire not shared by Pakistan (which will swallow up an independent Kashmir within minutes of its birth), but it is also quite possibly unviable.

I am speaking not just of economic viability but also of political viability. It may be possible for Kashmir to remake itself as an Asian Switzerland, - a scenic tourist paradise, politically neutral and with unique exports. However, it is people, not natural resources, that make a nation. I'm afraid the track record of Muslim states has not been very encouraging. Kashmir has had a multicultural past, with Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs sharing the region with Muslims, who have also been divided into Sunni and Shia sects, and subsects like the Salafis, Deobandis and Barelvis. Today, the Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs have disappeared from the Kashmir valley, the Shias are isolated in the Gilgit region (under Pakistani occupation), and Wahhabi-influenced Sunnis have extinguished most traces of syncretism. It may be politically incorrect to say it, but Muslim states have a disturbing tendency to fracture along sectarian lines and disintegrate with violence and bloodshed. Would an independent Kashmir become Switzerland or Syria? Call me cynical, but my money is on Syria.

For this one reason alone, I believe Kashmir would be better off staying with India. India is a flawed democracy (with many of those flaws stemming from its treatment of Kashmir), but I think the greatest hope for Kashmir's autonomy, peace and progress will come from its integration into India rather than from independence.

Haider is the latest Bollywood movie to rake up Kashmir in the Indian consciousness (See my review here). That story has offended many (notably nationalistic Indians, who believe it glorifies terrorists and demonises the Indian army). There is even a trending Twitter campaign to #BoycottHaider, but this piece by an ex-armyman, no less, explains why the world needs more stories like Haider.

What we need is more dialogue about Kashmir and other contentious issues, not less. A democracy must not shy away from discussing difficult topics, and Bollywood movies are a great way to start the conversation. In Kashmir, Bollywood has found both its muse and a gold mine.

Kashmiris Should Beware The Exasperation Of The Liberal Indian

"Beware the fury of the patient man", said John Dryden a long time ago.

I'm one of the most liberal-humanist specimens one could find, subscribing as I do to a near-libertarian philosophy (I only draw the line at gun rights) and a deep and abiding suspicion of governments, corporations and society itself as forces inimical to the individual.

Still, Kashmir vexes me. If I can blurt my feelings out in one short sentence, it is that Kashmiris should stop being so precious.

The fuss they make about an Indian prime minister visiting the state! Shutting down an entire state in protest?

Kashmiris (and by that I mean the Muslim separatist agitators) need to take a long hard look at themselves, their environment, and their choices.

An independent Kashmir is not what Pakistan has been fighting for, and the people of Kashmir will experience a frying-pan-to-fire situation if they ever find themselves out of the Indian union. True independence is easier dreamt about than achieved.

Kashmir as an independent state is unlikely to be viable, in either an economic or social sense. Kashmir is a landlocked state that will depend on the goodwill of its neighbours to survive economically, and that goodwill is going to prove a scarce commodity since both India and Pakistan will be put offside by Kashmiri independence. Socially too, as Mirwaiz Umar Farooq himself admitted, the Kashmiri Muslim populace is itself divided into Wahabi, Salafi, Barelvi and Deobandi sects, not to mention the Shias of Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir. Not to put too fine a point on it, Muslim sects have shown time and again that they will turn on one another with murderous ferocity the moment they are left alone with no external enemy to unify them. Iraq and Syria are the latest tragic examples. Kashmiris should be careful what they wish for. The killings will not stop after independence. Only their ability to blame the Indian army will.

Who is it in Kashmir who wants independence anyway? Only Muslims in the Kashmir valley. The Buddhists of Ladakh and the Hindus of Jammu know better than to trust their fate to the tender mercies of a Muslim majority, and would opt to stay with India. The examples of Pakistan and Bangladesh serve as a reminder, if one is required, of what happens to religious minorities in Muslim states. If it comes to a plebiscite, India will play its cards so that Kashmir is splintered even further. After all, the will of the people is the will of the people, and if the Ladakh and Jammu regions vote for India, who can deny them their choice?

Lastly, as economies go, India is ramping up while Pakistan is winding down (although the terrorist state may take another decade to finally sputter and die). If Kashmiris are smart, they will try and latch on to one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, because that is what India is projected to be.

India has had enough of the Kashmiri stalemate, and it's not just Hindu right-wingers who want to see an end to the special status of Jammu and Kashmir as codified in Article 370 of the Indian constitution. The move to repeal Article 370 has broad support across all Indians, and it will happen sooner or later. Pakistan is not in a position to stop any Indian moves within its own territory, and the world (i.e., the West, Russia and China) has no more sympathy for Muslim separatist movements. It's only the Muslim world that could back Kashmiri separatism, but even this support is hardly likely to be unanimous or whole-hearted. Middle Eastern regimes are wary of extremist monsters like the ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) and AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb), so the Indian government could receive covert support even from many nominally Muslim countries in its face-off with Kashmiri separatists.

All in all, the Kashmir issue has festered for too long. Pakistan needs to disappear (which it will) and the Kashmiris need to set aside their juvenile ideas of independence and come to the party. The Indian juggernaut cannot be stopped, because things have reached a stage when even liberals have had enough.

Kashmir as District 9

It need hardly be said that Kashmir is a complex and highly nuanced problem with no simple solution and indeed, no simple characterisation either. For an analogy, take your typical science-fiction movie pitting humans against aliens. In a movie like Independence Day, the aliens are incorrigibly evil and the humans are heroic freedom fighters. In E.T., the alien is cute and harmless and human officialdom is sinister and needs to be thwarted.

Kashmir though, is a lot like the movie District 9, in which neither side is good or evil.

Gritty realism where everyone is deeply flawed

Everyone in District 9, human or alien, is just wretched, pathetic and hopeless. That's the movie I'm reminded of whenever I think about Kashmir. The Indian government, the Indian army, the Pakistani government, the Pakistani army, pan-Islamic "militants", Kashmiri Muslims, Kashmiri Pundits, - all wretched, pathetic, and hopeless. I'm sorry if I either offended or left out anyone. This is what I honestly feel as a non-Kashmiri Indian who only gets to read the dribs and drabs of information coming out of that region.

Not a feel-good movie, not a feel-good reality

So here are just a bunch of random thoughts, in no particular order, that will have to do in lieu of a comprehensive analysis or a policy prescription.

1. Agreement on the status of Kashmir is virtually impossible because the terms of the debate are incompatible. Pakistan thinks it has an open-and-shut case because of the Two-Nation Theory that was used to justify its own creation. Hindus and Muslims cannot live together in a single country, so the Muslim-majority parts of India should by rights form Pakistan, the argument goes. Kashmir is majority Muslim, hence it naturally belongs with Pakistan. India rejects the Two-Nation Theory altogether because India is a secular state. Kashmir must stay with India, because being Muslim is not a reason not to be Indian. After all, we have 150 million Muslims who are Indians. No agreement is possible because Hindus and Muslims can either live together in peace (India's argument) or they cannot (Pakistan's argument). Both cannot simultaneously be true. There is thus no principle on the basis of which the Kashmir issue can be settled.

2. Pakistan ruined its case by acting rather than by talking. The invasion by Pashtuns backed by the Pakistani army in 1947 was a pre-emptive grab, which India's countermove prevented from fully succeeding. Pakistan managed to grab about a third of the state but damaged its own case by being an aggressor. The 1965 war and the Kargil war were simply Pakistan being its natural, obsessive, impulsive self. They will destroy themselves but never stop trying to get Kashmir by any means possible. I don't know whether to admire the Pakistanis for their tenacity, fear them for their fanaticism or pity them for their shortsighted self-destruction.

3. But this is District 9, remember? There are no good guys. India rigged the Kashmir elections in 1987. That was simply awful and unacceptable. India shot itself in the foot big time. That blunder continues to reverberate to this day.

4. Pakistan's support for terror in Kashmir is unacceptable. The rest of the world turned a blind eye in the past, treating Kashmir as a strictly bilateral dispute. But now the West has also received a taste of Islamic terror and is no longer neutral or sympathetic to the cause of Kashmiri freedom. Among the region's big powers, Russia has its Chechens and China its Uighurs in Central Asia. Kashmir would be another Central Asian Muslim nation. It's true that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom-fighter, but more and more nations now see him as terrorist rather than freedom-fighter. The cause of Kashmiri freedom likely has no backers at all, except in the OIC.

5. India is inexplicably and embarrassingly paranoid about Kashmir and refuses to discuss the issue openly as a democracy should be doing. The latest incident of banning the screening of a documentary and forcing a seminar to be cancelled (officially, "postponed") is shameful. Why is a democracy afraid of free speech? Blocking free discussion on Kashmir embarrasses Indians and convinces everybody that India has something to hide or that India is in the wrong on Kashmir.

6. I'm afraid I'm not a cheerleader for men in uniform. Men in uniform with guns and no accountability are dangerous. The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act is a licence to commit atrocities. Yes, a soldier may risk his life defending his country against enemy soldiers and terrorists. The same soldier can also torture someone on suspicion or rape a woman when given a chance. Both extremes of behaviour are perfectly possible. Rather than treat our soldiers as unimpeachably noble martyrs against whom no criticism will be tolerated, we need to balance their deployment with layers of control systems, transparency and accountability. A free press does not handicap the soldier. It keeps him honest and out of mischief. India has ruined both Kashmir and the Indian army through decades of giving the army a free hand beyond the pale of media scrutiny. On top of it all, Indians who don't unquestioningly support the army are considered unpatriotic.

7. A very large number of Kashmiris killed have been at the hands of "militants" (terrorists). It's not just the Indian army that's doing the killing in Kashmir, much as the propaganda may proclaim otherwise.

8. "The right to self-determination of the Kashmiri people" sounds grand. But just who are the Kashmiri people? There are Muslims in the Kashmir valley, Hindus in Jammu and Buddhists in Ladakh, not all of whom would want the same thing. Does the majority vote of these groups decide the matter, or should we split the vote by region and decide the fate of each region separately?

9. Oh, and what about Pakistan-occupied Kashmir? Shouldn't we put that to a vote as well? How about the part of Kashmir that Pakistan gifted to China?

10. If self-determination is such a sacred thing, can we talk about Tibet or Baluchistan while we're about it?

11. What about the Kashmiri Pundits (Hindus) who were driven out of the state by "militancy" (terrorism)? Don't their votes count? If the Muslim majority in Kashmir votes to split from India, should the Pundits lose their land because of it? Kashmiri Muslims were quite happy to stay silent while the Pundits were ethnically cleansed from Kashmir. Many of them are now occupying the property of the Pundits who had to flee. They're unlikely to support a return of the Pundits. On the Pundit issue, both the "militants" (terrorists) and ordinary Kashmiri Muslims have a lot to answer for.

12. There are huge double-standards in the Muslim world when it comes to outrage about the treatment of Muslims as opposed to non-Muslims. The Pundit issue illustrates this perfectly. The world is supposed to feel outrage at India's treatment of Kashmiris because they are Muslims and India is seen as a Kaffir nation. No comparable outrage accompanies the killing by Muslims of other Muslims or of non-Muslims - Islam's double-standards on display. No sir, humanity is greater than the Ummah. "Universal" brotherhood based only on the Ummah is parochial and hardly universal.

13. Pakistan and Kashmir - their interests probably diverge more than either side will let on. From whatever accounts I have read, most Kashmiris want independence rather than merger with Pakistan. I don't believe Pakistan will respect that. A country that has bankrupted itself fighting a much larger one in its obsession to "get back" what it views as its rightful territory will not bother to play nice with Kashmiri nationalism once India is out of the picture.

14. India's position has weakened because prolonged army rule has made India unpopular in Kashmir. The unpopularity may be irreversible.

15. Pakistan's position has weakened because the country's economy has stalled and terrorism has now come under heavy international scrutiny. The US is no longer an ally willing to turn a blind eye.

16. The independence-minded Kashmiri Muslim's position has weakened because there is no sympathy for Muslim discontent in any non-Muslim country anymore. Islam's stock is at its lowest.

In short, Kashmir is still a stalemate, but it's in a spiral. Nobody can win. Just add frustration and resignation to the hatred already there. Kashmir is District 9 - wretched, pathetic and hopeless.

Kashmir and the Indian Conscience

Here’s a brutally frank write-up on Kashmir in the UK’s Guardian that should give liberal, educated Indians pause. The author is not a Kashmiri Muslim. Nor is he a biased Pakistani or ignorant Westerner, as our convenient stereotypes go. From his name (Pankaj Mishra), he is Hindu and of Indian origin.

I suffer great moral pangs on the issue of Kashmir, and articles like this only reinforce them. My only quibble with this otherwise powerful article is its complete silence on the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus (the Pundits). The author should have followed his own advice and dealt with that additional “messy reality concealed by stirring abstractions”, as he put it. But that omission should not cause us to sweep the larger issue under the carpet.

Indians have a certain healthy wariness towards men in uniform (the police more than the army, which is generally invisible in daily life). How many Indians would enter a police station with a jaunty step? One of the luxuries of being part of the middle or upper classes is the relative ability to lead one's life without ever coming into contact with the police. But there is no escaping the constant stream of stories (in the Indian press, not the "biased" Western media) of “death in police custody” and “encounter killings”. There is probably more than a grain of truth to what is being said about the behaviour of India's men in uniform in Kashmir. False notions of patriotism should not prevent Indians from speaking up about it. We are humans first and our national identity comes second. Indians shouldn’t go on the defensive and refuse to look seriously at the issue just because Pakistan raises the Kashmir issue for its own opportunistic reasons.

It would be good if Indians themselves could bring pressure on the Indian government to dramatically improve the situation in Kashmir. Even if we believe that a plebiscite or independence for part of the region (the Kashmir Valley) is a bridge too far, we can at least insist on greater press access and more honest reporting on Kashmir. That may shame the authorities into providing a lighter touch and better administration.

It’s the least we can do.

The Indian Blind Spot towards Pakistan

I realised today that I have been guilty of the same blind spot towards Pakistan as so many other Indians.

For all their sophistication, Indian elites continue to understand Pakistan primarily with reference to the events of 1947. Anything else is incidental, not essential. The established Indian paradigms for explaining Pakistan, its actions and its institutions, its state and society, have not undergone any significant shift since the Partition. The tropes remain the same: religion and elite manipulation explain everything. It is as if the pre-Partition politics of the Muslim League continues to be the politics of Pakistan—with slight non-essential variations. More than 60 years on, the factors may be different but little else has changed.

That quote by Pakistani journalist Khurram Hussain sums it up accurately. He goes on to say

This view is deeply flawed. It reflects a serious confusion about the founding event of contemporary Pakistani society. The Partition has a mesmerising quality that blinds the mind, a kind of notional heft that far outweighs its real significance to modern South Asian politics. The concerns of the state of Pakistan, the anxieties of its society, and the analytic frames of its intellectual and media elites have as their primary reference not 1947 but the traumatic vivisection of the country in 1971 (emphasis mine). Indians have naturally focused on their own vivisection, their own dismemberment; but for Pakistan, they have focused on the wrong date. This mix-up has important consequences.

I would encourage as many people as possible to read this article, especially Indians. It is an eye-opener, because Indians typically do not realise how traumatic the 1971 war must have been to Pakistan. India's own defeat at the hands of China in 1962 is seared into the collective consciousness of more than one generation of Indians and is responsible for a deep and abiding distrust of China throughout the country. And this is even without an event as traumatic as the vivisection of the country. Indeed, contemporary commentary on the Indo-China border war now pins the blame on Indian foreign minister Krishna Menon's aggressive "Forward Policy" which had the effect of provoking China without actually having the military might to back up that aggressiveness. To the credit of the Chinese, they withdrew to their pre-conflict positions after making their point.

If Indians can be permanently scarred by such a relatively minor humiliation, one can imagine how much deeper the psychological wounds must be for Pakistanis, who lost half their territory (in terms of population). Indians have been naively oblivious to the impact of the 1971 war on their neighbours, and hence the entire approach to Pakistan has been one of righteous indignation - a country under attack from a "state sponsor of terror". But this is a great example of the saying, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom-fighter." Pakistan sees itself as the wronged party. India is an existential threat to that country because it has dismembered it once before. Never mind that India isn't interested in doing it a second time. What matters is that Pakistanis believe it can happen again.

Looking at how difficult it is for Indians to trust China after 1962, one can readily understand that Pakistanis would be extremely unwilling to trust India after 1971.

And so I have a curious idea for a solution to the eternal India-Pakistan conflict. I don't believe the peaceful resolution of the Kashmir dispute will necessarily solve the fundamental issue, because Pakistan needs something stronger to assuage its hurt. Pakistan will have to wrest Kashmir from India in a war that it wins. That is the only way 1971 can be avenged.

My idea is that the Indian government should apologise (yes, apologise) to Pakistan for breaking up the country in 1971. It has nothing to do with right and wrong and everything to do with emotion and moving forward. If the two countries are to move past the distrust, then Pakistanis must be made to feel India's genuine lack of interest in further harming their country. It would be better still if the leaders of India and Pakistan stood on a stage at the Wagah border and alternately apologised to each other's people for a list of perceived wrongs. That would clear the air and make other problems easier to solve, such as Kashmir.

The prize is a South Asian Federation that will be bigger and potentially greater than China.

Resumption of India-Pakistan Trade - Good News or Bad News?

With the noise of the US election rising to a crescendo, a development in a faraway part of the world is understandably going unnoticed. After sixty years, a trade route between India and Pakistan has tentatively opened. Reports by the Voice of America, The Guardian and The New York Times cover slightly different aspects of the story.

I have three simultaneous reactions to this development:

There's naive internationalist liberal me: "This is great news! Trade bonds between nations strengthen peace. When countries become economically interdependent, the chances for conflict between them recede. This is the first step towards peace in our time. How wonderful that India and Pakistan can finally enjoy normal relations! South Asia as a whole will now prosper."

Then there's paranoid me: "This isn't about trade between India and Pakistan. It's a lifeline to Indian-controlled Kashmir to help it support itself through trade with Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. Never a big fan of India (in spite of the Indian taxpayer-funded largesse continuously poured into that province), Kashmir probably now sees a way to cement its ties to "the other side". It's a wedge that Pakistan is driving between India and Indian-controlled Kashmir. This is the economic unification of Kashmir at India's expense. There's nothing here for India or Indians to rejoice about."

Finally, there's geopolitically cynical me: "India is squandering the chance to do to Pakistan what Reagan's America did to the Soviet Union - exploit its bigger and faster-growing economy to bankrupt its military rival and dictate peace on its own terms. Why throw a lifeline to someone who doesn't like you? As Ray Kroc of McDonald's said, when you see a competitor drowning, you stick a hose down his throat. India should throw Kashmir out into the cold, even into Pakistan's waiting arms, then force the pyrrhic victor to come crawling back a few years later to sue for peace and beg for a chance to share in the prosperity of its (by then) superpower neighbour."

So what do I finally think? I don't know. A little of each of the above, I guess. One thing I'm sure about - Indians are too sentimental a race to elect a Reagan. Even the biggest hawks in the previous Hindu right-wing BJP government turned out to be doves on Pakistan, a reality that India's smaller neighbour cunningly understands and exploits. So fortunately for Pakistan, India will never press home an advantage even against a proven enemy.

Enemy? Surely that's a tad harsh? Well, Pakistan's civilian president blurted out the truth in a rare moment of candour (i.e., that India has never been a threat to Pakistan). If only the reverse was also true...

As always, I'm hopeful about peace in our time and all that, but not optimistic.

India, Inc. should sell off its loss-making Kashmir division

If you were the CEO of a multi-trillion dollar enterprise and you had a division that was making losses for years, diverting resources from more profitable divisions, creating bad press for the organisation and contributing to poor employee morale, what would you do?

India, Inc. is an enterprise in exactly that situation. For sixty years since Independence, Kashmir (or more correctly, the Kashmir province of the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir) has been a black hole consuming endless resources in terms of both money and human life and providing no tangible benefits in return. It's ironic that India, the back-office of the world, which is selling the business benefits of outsourcing to a host of global corporations, has failed to apply the same hard-nosed business principles when it comes to its own affairs. Have the CEO (the PM), his management team (the cabinet) and the board (members of parliament) been managing the enterprise in the best possible way to further the interests of their shareholders (the Indian people)?

This is a case fit for a business school discussion. What should the management do with this chronically loss-making division?

I don't believe the Kashmir question has ever been phrased in business terms before, which is why it has so far been a taboo subject that "patriots" have been expected never to question.

At long last, a section of the intelligentsia has begun to think the unthinkable and voice their thoughts in print. Vir Sanghvi, Jug Suraiya and Swaminathan S Aiyar are 3 prominent columnists who have written up some very eloguent arguments about "letting Kashmir go". I particularly like Vir Sanghvi's article. The well-known activist and author Arundhati Roy (who wrote "The God of Small Things") summed up the collective national fatigue with Kashmir by saying "India needs aazaadi (freedom) from Kashmir as much as - if not more than - Kashmir needs aazaadi from India."

And it's not just a flight of fancy by some elites sitting in their ivory towers. The response to this idea from the general population has been dramatic. A recent poll conducted in 9 Indian cities showed that fully 30% of the country's (urban) population agrees with the idea of letting Kashmir go. So much for an unthinkable idea! I'm sure as time goes on, the idea will gain more supporters. After all, the debate has just begun, and there is already so much pent-up support.

Imagine the benefits that can ensue when a loss-making activity is stopped and funds are immediately available for profit-generating ones instead. India badly needs investment in infrastructure, especially in transport, power and communications. Investment in infrastructure is a multiplier in economic terms. It accelerates economic growth. China has shown the world that growth rates in excess of 10% a year are sustainable. India needs to aim for such a target, and throw every spare resource into achieving that target. The prize is the potential status of being not just the world's largest democracy (already achieved), not just the world's most populous country (projected to happen by 2050), but being nothing less than the world's biggest economy! With a population potentially greater than China's and with more favourable demographics, this is not a pipe-dream. But it requires vision, planning and investment to get there. Worthless diversions like Kashmir are an unaffordable luxury to a country with a far greater tryst with destiny. Kashmir is a needless drain on India's precious resources.

But the idea is still a wrenching one. I grew up in India and the image of the Indian map in my mind is the (untrue) official Indian one with an undivided Kashmir shown as fully Indian territory. That became the "look" of India to me and, I'm sure, to hundreds of millions of Indians. I could almost see a person standing with their left arm around Bangla Desh and face turned westwards. Foreign publications that showed a truer map with the actual line of control as the border were rubber-stamped with the bristly phrase "The external boundaries of India as depicted are neither correct nor authentic", or something of that sort. Yes, the Indian map without Jammu and Kashmir looks admittedly ghastly. It looks like India has been beheaded. That would be my initial, emotional response. A map with Kashmir alone gone would look like India has (literally) lost face. But I can swallow that and look beyond it.

When you analyse and break them down, I guess the only reasons against a sell-off would be national security, logistical complexity, national pride and what I'd call "sunk costs".

The "sunk costs" argument is the easiest to debunk. Essentially, this is saying, "India has spent so much money and sacrificed so many lives to retain Kashmir. If we give up Kashmir now, it will be a waste of all that money and all those brave soldiers would have died in vain." The argument against it is simple: "We should stop throwing good money after bad, and we will prevent even more soldiers from dying unnecessarily by putting a stop to this pointless exercise." After all, the Kashmir situation doesn't look like it is going to turn the corner anytime soon. Why put up with this haemorrhage in good money and good men indefinitely?

National pride is a trickier issue. There's no rationalism here, so it's hard to argue with someone with a strong opinion. However, the issue can be reframed in a number of ways.

1. The prosperity of India is far, far more important than the retention of Kashmir. Our national pride should be in our socio-economic achievements, in bringing prosperity and egalitarianism to an already democratic society. Kashmir is tiny compared to the current and potential achievements of India.
2. Kashmir is needlessly giving India a bad name. We are being equated with a colonial power. We, who struggled to get the British out of India! We, who sympathise with Tibet to the extent that the Dalai Lama and his followers have enjoyed political asylum in India since 1959. We, who are overwhelmingly opposed to the American war in Iraq. How can we now behave the same way as a colonial oppressor and stay on in a place where we're clearly not wanted?
3. Even the Soviet Union allowed its republics to secede. Where is the shame in letting a recalcitrant province go its own way?

I don't know how convincing these arguments will be, but as I said before, the debate has just begun, and there will be more and better arguments.

That leaves national security and logistics.

The national security argument can cut both ways. What I call the "domino theory" held by many hardliners says that giving up Kashmir today will require India to give up other territories tomorrow. I'm not convinced, and I think this is just paranoia. Secessionist movements in other parts of the country have been tamed without territorial concessions, and it must be remembered that none of them has been a festering wound like Kashmir. [We will create more festering wounds unless we move quickly to redress the legitimate grievances of victims upon victims of communal violence in our country.] The point is, the Kashmir situation has probably deteriorated beyond the point where a solution can be found within the framework of the Indian union.

On the other hand, consider the fact that Kashmir has always been the single most important irritant between India and Pakistan, responsible for every single armed conflict between the two countries (except the 1971 war). There has been no progress on a South Asian free trade zone thanks to the antagonism between its two biggest countries. A huge economic bonanza awaits the region once the Kashmir issue gets settled. When the economies of the region get inextricably intertwined, war becomes an increasingly distant possibility. Strategically, there is in fact a strong national security argument in favour of letting Kashmir go.

Finally, the tricky issue of logistics. We remember the horrors of Partition in 1947. The last thing we need is another massacre with the body count running into the millions. India needs to float the idea of a coming "velvet divorce" gently and years in advance. It will allow people to make their plans and execute them without panic. There's also the messy issue of compensation for hundreds of thousands of Indians who have been forced out of Kashmir by the threat of violence. That's actually a tractable problem. Displaced Kashmiris within India can be generously compensated with a fraction of India's budget for Kashmir for a single year.

I know I'm advocating that India should let Kashmir go, but my guess is that most Kashmiris, faced with a stark choice, will vote with their feet and wind up in India anyway. India is the biggest engine for economic growth this side of the Himalayas. The Kashmiris' options are unfortunately quite limited, and uniformly unsatisfactory. They can either create an independent landlocked state for themselves with no resources and no industry and be an instant basket case, or be absorbed into a troubled Pakistan with its sputtering economy, perilous law-and-order situation (which puts it on a collision course with the US over terrorism) and very uncertain prospects overall. As an independent country, they will probably be humiliatingly dependent on India anyway, and the terms they receive will be far less generous. They're probably best off where they are (a much-pampered province within India), but I (just like an increasingly large number of Indians) am now skeptical whether the status quo is in the best interests of India.

If the Kashmiris finally get what they have been agitating for, it could turn out to be their worst nightmare, and India's lasting relief.