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BOOKS
An Idea Ransacked
The story of how bin Ladenism has reached the valley
of Kashmir
By Amitabh Mattoo
The Kashmir story
has been written and rewritten countless times by scholars of almost every
ideological preference and persuasion. In the marketplace of ideas, you
can take your pick. Propagandists for Pakistan, ideologues from India,
nationalists from the valley, do-gooders from the West-they are all there,
stocked even in the obscurest bookstore, forcing Kashmir and its unhappiness
into a crudely constructed straitjacket of preconceived ideas and personal
dogmas. The real tragedy of Kashmir is not just that people die, are harassed,
remain divided and are pushed into exile, but that the story sells. It
rarely matters who writes the account or who publishes it or even if the
narrative is as forced and narrow as the Jawahar Tunnel.
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KASHMIR
AND NEIGHBOURS: TALE, TERROR TRUCE
By Turkkaya Atov
Ashgate:
Aldershot
Price:
Rs 2,500
Pages: 244 |
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There is today, however, a new Kashmir story.
After September 11, Kashmir is not just the exotic locale for a South
Asian war that excites the world. It has been catapulted into being one
of the epicentres of the global battle between competing Manichaean philosophies.
As fidayeen squads in Srinagar blast themselves into imagined glory in
perhaps a more stable paradise, and atavism acquires a new meaning with
Kashmiri women forced into the kind of purdah that even their remote ancestors
did not practice, the valley stops being unique. Its miseries forgotten,
its unhappy people rendered faceless, Kashmir is now one more battlefield
in the clash between bin Ladenism and the brave new world.
 Turkkaya
Atov's Kashmir and Neighbours could not have been published at a more
appropriate time. While documenting fluently, if not particularly originally,
the history of Kashmir from the earliest times to the present day, the
book's strength lies elsewhere. As a Turkish professor of International
Relations, Atov is perhaps more equipped than most to explore the tensions
between radical Islam and secular democracies in contemporary times. Belonging
to a land that abolished the Caliphate, Atov can and does analyse the
revisionist attempts to construct a new global Islamic order from within
the caves of Kandahar with greater sensitivity than most "outsiders".
Two of the book's chapters are, for instance,
devoted to scrutinising the role played by the Al Qaida and the Taliban
in Kashmir, and the links of terrorist groups in the state with the narcotics
chain of the "golden crescent". Atov demonstrates through a
range of sources and credible evidence the manner in which the "innocent"
Kashmiri insurgency was hijacked by soldiers of fortune from outside.
And the challenge is immense, considering the scale of Osama bin Laden's
network. It includes the Egyptian Jamaat-ul-Jehad, Algerians representing
the Islamic Salvation Front, supporters of the Ittehad-e-Islami of Somalia,
the Philippines' Abu Sayyaf group, groups in the Chittagong Hill Tract
that identify themselves as the Bangladeshi Taliban, the Jaish-e-Mohammad
and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen active in Kashmir, and a range of other groups
active across the world. Can the brave new world really confront this
hydra-headed monster?
Atov's own answer, at least partially, seems
to lie in his belief in the promise of uncompromising liberalism. In these
convoluted times, when the values once associated with the enlightenment
and the French Revolution have got buried under the juggernaut of postmodernism
and cultural relativism, Atov stands up for secularism, greater autonomy,
grassroots democracy, an expanded notion of human rights and participatory
economic development. This, he seems to suggest, can be the only basis
for nation building in plural societies and the key to resolving conflicts.
In many ways, Atov may be right. After all,
there was a time when Kashmir was the perfect embodiment of the idea of
India-Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians living together in relative
harmony. Growing up in Kashmir was to at once celebrate diversity and
take pride in the common, syncretic identity of Kashmiriyat. The Lord's
Prayer at Burn Hall School, the azaan at Syed Sahib's dargah and the bells
of Shankaracharya temple, all signified a unity of purpose beyond the
superficial differences. Perhaps, then, it was the failure of the influential
and the powerful to stand up for the ideals which inspired Indian nationhood
that made Kashmir fall to bin Ladenism.
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