Only in the light of the present can past be betterunderstood. The prevailing grim political situation in Kashmir is very much theresult of follies committed in the past and in order to understand and findanswer to the questions of why and how Kashmir reached this deadly dead-end onehas to either master the past or rely on someone who is capable enough to getmuch out of the corpse of historical facts because history. After all, in thewords of the British historian E.H. Carr, is “a continuous process ofintegration between the historian and his facts, an unending dialogue betweenthe present and the past.”
The recently published book The Making of Modern Kashmir:Sheikh Abdullah and the Politics of the state authored by a young Kashmirihistorian, Altaf Hussain Para, is a better option that one can rely on tounderstand what went wrong in the past. This book is a serious contribution, ina lucid and free flowing prose sketches the history of modern Kashmir bythoroughly focusing on a person who was “at once the product as well as thecreator of history” and dominated the political landscape for almost 50 years.
Unlike other authors, who Para believes have written historyeither in “watertight compartments” or produced “sympathetic narration ofpolitical events and personalities” this book is a dispassionate attempt toplace the historical facts in perspective without serving any particularideology or agenda. The best thing about the book is that its findings are notmerely based on fetishized official documents rather he deftly draws from vastand rich resource base of Kashmiri, Urdu and English languages like privatediaries, letters, unpublished manuscripts of poetry and memoirs to analyze theimportant episodes of Kashmir history. Author’s ‘imaginative understanding’with the subject is more subtle due to his ability to reach out to the peoplefor more insights who have either worked closely with Sheikh Abdullah or havewitnessed his ups and downs in and outside the power.
The book comprehensively documents the conditions of peoplepost “sale deed” and explains how lack of democratic rights under the Dograrule ultimately led to the emergence of political consciousness giving rise toa politically ambitious class who would later challenge the Dogra rule andfight for the dignity of the people of the state. Sheikh Abdullah was one ofthose astute and politically ambitious Kashmiris who set out to fight againstthe feudal autocracy and to establish a government that ensures dignity ofcommon people. It was during the tumultuous decades of 1930s and 1940s when Sheikh Abdullah and his close associatesmobilized people by collecting the cultural fragments of past and constructedan ‘imagined community’ completely free of outside control which, surprisingly,Sheikh Abdullah declared “impractical” in one of his historic speeches.
Sheikh Abdullah remains a controversial figure or in thewords of the author he was a “complex political leader” before and after hisdeath. Although Para attributes the controversial and confusing character ofSheikh Abdullah to the lack of independent research on him but the fact is thatAbdullah himself created confusion among masses due to his double speak andsplit personality.
Ask people about Sheikh Abdullah and they would say Kashmirinationalist, staunchly secular, deeply religious, authoritarian, Indian etc.All these descriptions are true about him in different phases of his life. He,no doubt, was a Kashmiri nationalist who raised the national consciousnessamong Kashmiri masses and introduced a Naya Kashmir document that treatedKashmir as a sovereign nation but ended up acceding to India without botheringabout the nationalistic sensibilities of his people. He was someone who heavilyused Islamic imagery and symbols and weaved the Islamic concepts of justsociety to mobilize common masses against Dogra regime but then fiercelycriticized Pakistan for its “Koranic outlook”. For around two decades he foughtagainst Dogra’s populism and autocracy to carve out a dignified space forKashmiri people but once he himself got the power he maneuvered to sidelinecompetition and alienated his own close associates by his imperious conduct. Heis the one who patronized the longest political battle for right toself-determination after 1953 but accepted the status quo by happily approvingthe accession. Moving a step ahead he dubbed the 22 year long struggle as”Siyasi Awaragardi” and preferred to become head of the government with thesupport of the party against which he himself had launched Tarki Mawalat.
The book comprehensively sheds light on Sheikh Abdullah’slife and highlights not only his political commitments and achievements butquite successfully brings to fore his failures and betrayals as well. Oneinteresting theme that runs throughout the book is Sheikh Abdullah’s tendency tocentralize power to become undisputed leader within party and state whichJawaharlal Nehru and even Mohammad Ali Jinnah perceptively realized afterobserving his politics. In the process, however, Sheikh Abdullah sacrificed histrusted colleagues and compatriots. Underlining Sheikh Abdullah predicamentwith his own self and its consequences, the author contends that, “(i)n orderto assert his independence and neutralize the criticism against his movement,he hastily pushed himself to the Congress fold without achieving much in termsof widening social base of his movement.”
Quite interestingly, the author firmly believes that thedecision to abandon the platform of Muslim Conference and establishing closecontacts with Nehru and Congress (despite his promise to aggrieved members oferstwhile Muslim Conference members of maintaining equal distance from bothMuslim League and Congress party) was not “motivated by any ideologicaluniformity but rather by mutual interests.” The transformation of MuslimConference into National Conference and his propinquity with Nehru helped him toget rid of the influence of Punjabi Muslims and subdue and mollify the Panditswithin state. Nehru on the other side got the much needed counterargument toJinnah’s two-nation theory.
All along Sheikh Abdullah wasn’t shrewd enough to detectNehru’s dishonesty. The promise of autonomy that attracted Abdullah towardsIndian remains unfulfilled and because Nehru like Abdullah himself spoke onelanguage in public discourse and another in private. The “innocence of a child”that Abdullah saw in Nehru’s demeanor in the very first meeting provedillusory. Nehru considered Kashmir vital for India’s security because of itsgeostrategic location and for this reason he considered Abdullah as an ‘asset’and meticulously gained Abdulla’s trust. It was because of prior understandingwith Nehru on Kashmir that Abdullah forthrightly and categorically rejectedJinnah’s offer that Para believes was “both magnanimous and pragmatic”. Jinnahreached out to Sheikh Abdullah by sending a delegation to Srinagar with anoffer better than that of Congress. The offer was “autonomy with right tosecession if Kashmir acceded to Pakistan, or the least the Kashmiri leaderscould do was not to push for the accession with India, which means independencefrom both of the countries.”
Para, as a serious scholar, has diligently tried to processthe historical facts to comprehensively shed light on Abdullah’s life, whichwas interspersed with compromises, to tell his readers why Kashmir is inturmoil today. In doing so Para, unlike the author of “Kashmir: Behind theVale” neither considers the subject bigger than his mistakes, nor has he endedup producing another sympathetic biography.
Manzoor Ahmad is Doctoral candidate in Academy ofInternational Studies Jamia Millia Islamia