Articles + Reports

Anatomy of a Cover-Up: the 1947 Jammu Muslim killings and expulsions - by Sameer Arshad Khatlani

10/23/2021

Tens of thousands of people were expelled and killed in Jammu in 1947. Associated Press

This article is reposted with permission from Sameer Arshad Khatlani's blog

When the violence of genocidal proportions escalated in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K)’s Jammu region in 1947, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru privately and euphemistically downplayed it as ‘fierce communal passion’. Nehru wrote to provincial chief ministers on November 15, 1947, informing them about ‘explosive possibilities’[1] of the violence that worsened in September and October that year. His grudging cognisance turned out to be too little, too late. In her book, Indian Summer Alex Von Tunzelmann writes that ‘more or less the entire Muslim population of Jammu, amounting to half a million, was displaced’ by then. She quotes Calcutta Statesman editor Ian Stephens saying that around 200,000 of those who disappeared completely were presumably ‘butchered, or died from epidemics or exposure’.[2]

The number of fatalities has been disputed but the data from the 1961 census – the first in J&K after 1947 – speaks for itself. As per the 1941 census, the Muslims accounted for 77.1 per cent of the state’s population excluding in areas that came under Pakistan’s control after 1947. Their population had gone down by almost 10 per cent and plummeted to 68.29 per cent in 1961,[3] confirming that tens of thousands of people were either killed or forced to flee to Pakistan.

The trouble started brewing in Jammu city in August 1947 when departing British colonists ham-handedly divided the subcontinent into Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India. The division triggered deadly riots in neighbouring Punjab as the province’s eastern portion was emptied of Muslims and the western part (now Pakistan) of Hindus and Sikhs. The seizure of firearms from the Muslims in Jammu and their distribution among groups hostile to them portended the bloodbath that was to follow in the region. The handful Muslim police and revenue field officers were transferred as Muslim majority J&K’s ruler Maharaja Hari Singh allegedly turned a blind eye to attacks on Muslims and their properties. Hindu refugees, who had suffered violence and were driven out of newly-created Pakistan, carried tales of their sufferings and further ‘inflamed the situation’.[4] According to celebrated journalist Ved Bhasin, the violence started when some Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) men killed two Muslim police officers, Raja Iqbal Khan and Sheikh Imam Din.[5]

Many were lulled into believing that the initial violence in Jammu was another bout of communal rioting and would be contained.[6] Fat hit the fire soon when the harried Muslims found themselves with no escape route. Railway services from Jammu to Sialkot (now in Pakistan) were suspended and a permit system was introduced for traveling. The Muslims were left at the mercy of their attackers. By September end, they were besieged in Jammu city’s Muslim-majority localities of Talab Khatikan and Ustad Mohalla, where they were at the receiving end of intermittent small-arms fire [7] and were even denied water supply and food.[8] The encircled Muslims defended themselves with a handful of revolvers, rifles, swords, lances, daggers, hockey, sticks, and sticks. A retired British Indian Army officer, Captain Nasiruddin, taught the besieged residents defensive tactics and vigilance. A simple community meal was cooked daily. Members of the RSS and other hostile groups surrounded them and fired ceaselessly while refraining from an all-out attack. They were unsure about Muslim defensive capabilities; tactical steps taken thanks to Captain Nasiruddin had misled them. The capabilities were bolstered after some men broke into Major General Sumundar Khan’s house and found rifles with substantial ammunition. The rifles helped discourage a frontal attack.[9]

According to Bhasin, who was a 17-year-old student and peace activist in Jammu in 1947, ‘communal marauders’ brutally killed most of the Muslims outside the Muslim dominated areas. The marauders ‘moved freely in vehicles with arms and ammunition’ even when the city was under curfew’. In 2003, Bhasin, who was among those who managed to carry some food for besieged Muslim friends and others in Ustad Mohalla, recalled the curfew appeared to be meant ‘only to check the movement of Muslims’. Bhasin recalled that the Hindus had taken up positions on their houses before troops from Patiala joined them. In Billawar, stranded Muslims faced near starvation while women were abducted.[10]

British diplomat C B Duke, who visited the area in the third week of October, saw around 20 burnt out villages along the Chenab River and concluded that it was the Muslims ‘who were suffering’.[11] Tunzelmann writes that the Maharaja had ordered ‘ethnic cleansing under the guise of a defensive strategy’. [12] She notes that he meant to create an approximately three-mile wide buffer between his territory and Pakistan. ‘Muslims were either pushed into Pakistan, or killed.’ [13] In his painstakingly researched book Midnight’s Furies, Nisid Hajari writes that a ‘former but well-connected’ British intelligence operative provided the American embassy an ‘indisputably grim’ estimate. 'Sikhs and Hindus undertook a wholesale massacre of the local Muslims [in Jammu] and it is stated that up to 20,000 were killed at the end of October. This matter is … being kept strictly secret,' Hajari quotes the operative as saying.[14]

The estimate turned out to be a tip of the iceberg even as there is no consensus on the exact number of fatalities since the killings were never probed. On August 10, 1948, The Times estimated that 237,000 Muslims had disappeared from the eastern Jammu province. It said that they were ‘systematically exterminated – unless they escaped to Pakistan along the border – by all the forces of the Dogra state, headed by the Maharaja [Hari Singh] in person and aided by Hindus and Sikhs’. The Times concluded this ‘elimination of two-thirds of the Muslims last autumn has entirely changed the present composition of eastern Jammu province’.[15]

The situation worsened upon Hari Singh’s flight to Jammu city as Pakistan-backed fighters threatened to overrun his summer capital, Srinagar, in an attempt to capture J&K in late October 1947. Hari Singh is said to have fired at a roadside Muslim gathering on his way back ‘thus signalling to his Hindu subjects to follow suit’.[16] It marked the culmination of a sustained campaign of ‘harassment, arson, physical violence, and genocide’ against Muslims ‘in at least two areas – Poonch, right on the border with Pakistan, and pockets of southern Jammu’.[17] The Maharaja used brute force to quell an agitation against his direct takeover of Poonch and imposition of taxes. He asked the Muslims to surrender their arms and de-mobilised a large number of Muslim soldiers and police officers. The Muslims were particularly vulnerable in the region’s eastern parts, where they were outnumbered. They accounted for around 60 per cent of Jammu region’s 20 lakh population as per the 1941 census. In Jammu district, the Muslim proportion was around 40 per cent of the population [18], which was down to 7.02 per cent as per the latest census in 2011. [19] The Muslims constituted nearly 32 per cent of the population in Jammu city. [20] They were potential sitting ducks in the regions eastern parts as Hajari writes: ‘In addition to the incoming RSS fighters, thousands of revenge-minded Hindu and Sikh refugees from Pakistan had taken temporary residence in Jammu [city].’

By the last week of November when the damage was done, Nehru was forced to regret ‘heavy casualties' [21] Jammu Muslims had suffered even as he tried to keep the scale of the violence under wraps. He ensured the global attention remained focussed on the tribal fighters as part of his efforts to ensure that the Muslim-majority state acceded to India and not Pakistan. India consequently ‘chose not to publicise’[22] the fresh violence in Jammu region in November 1947. It succeeded and how: Seven decades later, not many even in J&K know about the nature of the violence and its perpetrators. Tunzelmann writes India would deny that ‘any holocaust had taken place, perhaps because it was secretly providing arms to the Dogra [Hari Singh]’s side’.[23] Hajari concludes that Nehru was being ‘cavalier’ and should ‘have known better’[24] the situation in Jammu. His envoy, Dalip Singh, had warned Nehru from Jammu that cadres of RSS, the parent organisation of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), had been infiltrating into the region. Singh, a former high court judge, cautioned Nehru that the infiltration was happening with ‘help of elements in the Indian Army’. ‘Almost every official is secretly in sympathy with them [RSS] and would probably turn a blind eye on their entry,’ Singh wrote to Nehru. Hajari writes that the Hindu extremists were hitching rides on army trucks amid rumours that Hari Singh was using them as ‘shock troops to rid Jammu of its Muslims’.[25] In an October 2012 document titled ‘vision and mission’, the RSS acknowledged the ‘timely collaboration of the entire Sangh (RSS) force then present at Jammu with the Armed Forces of Bharat [India]’ in 1947.[26]

Hari Singh shared close ties with the RSS, which was formed in the 1930s. He gave up on his insistence on remaining independent and agreed to accede to India after Nehru’s Hindu traditionalist deputy, Vallabhbhai Patel, sought RSS chief M S Golwalkar’s help in convincing the Maharaja in October 1947.[27] Hari Singh revered Golwalkar, who headed the RSS in the 1940s and approved of Germany’s ‘purging the country of the Semitic Races — the Jews’ and urged Hindus to replicate a similar ‘Race Spirit’ with Muslims.[28] He ‘bowed his head’ in front of Golwalkar and had a change of heart after his meeting in Srinagar with the RSS chief. Hari Singh had till then ‘remained unmoved by many national leaders’[29], including India’s supreme leader Gandhi and rebuffed their attempts to woo him. He had met Gandhi two months earlier when Hari Singh believed Kashmir could remain independent’.[30]

Golwalkar achieved what his arch-rival, Gandhi, could not. Hari Singh agreed to send the accession proposal to India upon meeting Golwalkar after understanding ‘the importance of protection of his religion’. RSS volunteer M G Chitkara writes Patel knew Hari Singh’s mind as the Maharaja was ‘in a terrible fix’ unable to come to any decision with ‘many apprehensions’ about joining India. He adds Patel gauged Golwalkar was the right person ‘endowed with the necessary skill and commanding the implicit confidence of both Patel and the Maharaja’ to convince him. Hari Singh told Golwalkar that his state was fully dependent on Pakistan with all surface routes passing though Sialkot and Rawalpindi. ‘Lahore is my airport. How can I have relations with India?’ Hari Singh asked. Golwalkar brought up the emotive issue of Hari Singh being ‘a Hindu king’ and explained to him ‘your Hindu people’ would struggle ‘against grave difficulties’ if he acceded to Pakistan. The RSS chief talked him out of his idea of retaining an independent kingdom, saying it was a futile idea as Pakistan ‘would never tolerate it’ and engineer internal Muslim revolt.[31]

Hari Singh

It was perhaps no coincidence that violence in Jammu escalated after the meeting. Hajari writes that Hari Singh’s troops piled an estimated 5,000 men, women and children into buses on the pretext of taking them to Pakistan on November 5 and 6. Instead, they were taken somewhere else where ‘most likely Akali and RSS extremists’ sprayed them with bullets. Hajari writes a ‘couple hundred Muslims escaped into fields’ while the rest were either raped or killed outright’.[32] One of the escapees, former civil servant Tariq Masud, corroborates Hajari’s account. Masud’s family was vacationing in Kashmir’s resort town of Pahalgam when the trouble started in their native Jammu city. They made a potentially fatal decision to return home in mid-September before deciding to send women and children to Gujrat, roughly 100km away in Pakistan, as the situation worsened. But they remained stranded in Jammu with an escalation in the violence. Masud remembers seeing smoke rising from adjoining hills as arson, looting, and killing of Muslims around Jammu increased. His father managed to get a permit for the family to travel by horse cart to Suchetgarh border with Pakistan. Raja Sohbat Ali, a police officer friend, dissuaded him from travelling without an escort citing attacks on Muslim evacuees. He promised to escort them to the border the following day. But Ali could not keep him promise. Masud writes RSS volunteers ‘ruthlessly killed’[33] Ali by pumping bullets point-blank in his chest; his two fingers with gold rings on them were chopped off.

By September end, Masud’s family was forced to join other Muslim survivors in the city’s Muslim-majority area. Masud writes that ‘Hindu elements’ had organised themselves and ‘virtually encircled the Muslim sanctuary’, where his father and another doctor established a first-aid centre after breaking into a closed chemist shop. He adds the brutalities against Muslims ‘increased manifold’ after Hari Singh’s arrival in Jammu as ‘houses were burnt, property plundered, women molested and taken away and men killed or maimed’. Masud writes tensions peaked as the RSS reportedly vowed Muslim men and women would be sacrificed on Eid that year instead of sheep and goats. A week-long lull followed before announcements were made asking Muslims to assemble in Jammu’s Police Lines on November 5, 1947, if they wished to go to Pakistan. Each family was instructed to carry a suitcase and one set of beddings with the promise that their belongings would be transported later.[34]

Masud estimates around 5-6,000 Muslims gathered for their evacuation on the first day but there were ‘too few’ buses ‘to carry even 20 per cent of the assembly’. The harried people were desperate to travel as soon as possible. Masud’s whole clan managed to travel as part of the first convoy, comprising 30-35 small buses with the capacity of over a dozen passengers each. About 25-30 women and children were stuffed inside a bus while 15-16 men sat on the roofs of the buses. Masud recalls drivers and cleaners of the buses wielded swords and were accompanied by Hari Singh’s soldiers. Two army vehicles escorted their convoy of buses packed like sardines. The evacuees were more uncomfortable with their army escorts whom they did not trust. Their worst fears came true when the buses turned east on a dirt road toward Kathua instead of proceeding to Sialkot through a metalled road. Sensing trouble, women and kids started wailing and praying as mobs carrying swords and lances moved freely. One bus broke down near Samba, but the convoy did not stop, leaving the passengers at the mercy of the armed mobs. An hour later, a mob began attacking and looting the evacuees when the convoy halted at Mawa, a village between Samba and Kathua. A soldier in charge of the convoy had allowed an estimated 1,000-1,200 evacuees alight from the buses and sit in a field there as he awaited further orders while armed locals hovered around.

Mawa happened to be just three kilometres from the border. Masud’s uncle, Fazal-e-Haq, a customs department official, happened to be familiar with the area having extensively toured it a few years earlier. He was confident of finding their way as he planned to first slip away along with an elderly family member while Masud’s another uncle had gone missing. An hour later, the mob started attacking and looting the convoy. Masud writes that luckily for them, the attackers’ first priority appeared to be looting and taking away women. Uniformed armed guards joined the loot, giving them precious 15-20 minutes to sprint westwards to save their lives. The caravan split up amid desperate cries for help and rifle shots. Some evacuees fell into pits of nearby brick-kilns and many were mercilessly killed. [35]

Masud’s group of 70-75 people did not know the route to Pakistan but continued trotting westwards. They avoided getting close to villages or speaking loudly. Cries of kids, including Masud’s infant brother, Arif Kamal, prompted angry responses from the caravan leaders who would ask mothers to smother them. Dogs barked at them fanatically at several places forcing them to retreat. Masud writes their total belongings included Kamal’s bag containing a milk bottle, a tin of milk powder and a brush. He had lost his shoes at Mawa and hopped barefooted all the way with paperback books from their library stuffed in his pockets. Other children in the caravan were aged between 13 and one-month-old as it trudged for hours. None of them had eaten since their breakfast on November 5. In the early hours of November 6, 1947, the caravan crossed a small stream and met a man dressed in typical Punjabi attire. He told them what they were dying to hear: ‘You are already about two miles inside Pakistan, this is village Chang and I am Alaf Din’. [36] Masud’s family was lucky to be reunited with their other relatives at a refugee camp in Pakistan. Fazal-e-Haq had easily crossed over thanks to his knowledge of the terrain. The missing uncle had stayed back with a Hindu friend and safely managed to reach Gujrat after remaining in hiding for weeks.

A convoy of trucks Hari Singh’s government had arranged and his troops escorted met the same fate. The convoy carrying around 1,200 evacuees was stopped outside Jammu city as the troops ordered them to disembark. Armed men emerged from behind trees and started hacking, slashing and smashing the civilians. In 2017, Mazhar Malik, 86, who lost his father in the violence, cited the account of a survivor and told The Guardian:

People ran hither and thither, begging for mercy; mothers tried to shield their children;
old people fell silently to their knees; men tried in vain to fight back.
Mercifully, because it was dark by then, about one-third succeeded in escaping.
The border was just a few miles away and the lucky ones managed to straggle across.
Our father was not one of them. [37]

Malik’s father had volunteered to leave in the convoy, but he was asked to stay back and join one departing the next day. Organised killers waylaid the second convoy too and ‘cut down everyone and threw the bodies into a nearby canal’. A handful, who were presumed dead or jumped into the canal survived. But Malik’s father, a civil servant who had stayed back having sent his family to Rawalpindi via Srinagar, was not among the survivors. He had been attacked but survivors were unsure whether he had survived or not. Malik’s mother clung on to hope but her husband never returned. Thirty-two years later, Malik returned to Jammu to see the place where his father, who had hoped to get leave to join his family, had been killed.

Bhasin squarely blamed Hari Singh for the carnage. According to him, instead of trying to prevent killings and ensuring peace, ‘the Maharaja’s administration helped and even armed the communal marauders’. Clearly, for him, it was a ‘planned genocide by the RSS activists who were joined by Sikh refugees from West Pakistan and enjoyed full protection and patronage of the administration’.[38] Bhasin insisted that the administration was involved in changing Jammu’s demographic character. Jammu governor Lala Chet Ram Chopra summoned Bhasin and warned him of consequences for his Students Union’s peace efforts. Chopra told Bhasin that they were imparting arms training to Hindu and Sikh boys in Rehari area and asked him and his colleagues to join it. A colleague of Bhasin found that soldiers were training some RSS youths and others in using 3.3 rifles when he sent him to the training camp the next day. In 2003, Bhasin recalled Hari Singh’s Prime Minister Mehr Chand Mahajan asking a delegation of Hindus to demand parity with the transfer of power from the Maharaja. He pointed to Ramnagar Rakh, where some bodies of Muslims were still lying, and said that the population ratio too can change when asked how they could demand parity amid difference in the population ratio.

According to Bhasin, Ramnagar Rakh was ‘littered with the dead bodies of [Muslim] Gujjar men, women, and children. A colleague of Bhasin rescued a young girl crying near the bodies of her parents in Ramnagar. [39]

Nehru found ‘a great deal of trickery and very probable connivance’ by Hari Singh’s troops in the massacre but did nothing.[40] He lauded ‘remarkable communal unity’ in Kashmir Valley where people demonstrated ‘cohesion of purpose and effort in the face of common danger’.[41] Nehru had around a fortnight earlier visited Kashmir, where he was delighted to see the order Kashmir’s popular leader Sheikh Abdullah’s pro-India National Conference militia had restored. Kashmir presented a contrast to the bloodbath in Delhi, Punjab, and Jammu triggered by the hurried division of India. He lauded a gathering in Srinagar, saying that they had not only saved Kashmir but also restored India’s prestige. For Nehru, the inter-community harmony in Kashmir had brought hope to his disappointed heart. He declared Kashmir had set an example for the whole of India.[42] Gandhi, too, held Hari Singh responsible including for ‘the murders of numberless Muslims and abduction of Muslim girls in Jammu’. [43] He recognised Abdullah’s efforts in protecting non-Muslims in Kashmir and contrasted his commitment to secularism with attacks on Jammu Muslims. Gandhi famously described Kashmir, where Sheikh Abdullah promptly acted to protect Hindus and Sikhs by ordering his volunteers to protect them,[44] as a ‘ray of hope’. [45]

Sameer Arshad Khatlani is an author-journalist based in New Delhi. He has been a Senior Assistant Editor with the Hindustan Times, India’s second-biggest English newspaper with a circulation of 10 million daily. Khatlani worked in a similar capacity with the Indian Express, India's most influential newspaper known for its investigative journalism, until June 2018. Born and raised in Kashmir, he began his career with the now-defunct Bangalore-based Vijay Times in 2005 as its national-affairs correspondent. He joined the Times of India, one of the world's largest selling broadsheets, in 2007. Over the next nine years, he was a part of the paper's national and international newsgathering team as an Assistant Editor.

Khatlani has reported from Iraq and Pakistan and covered elections and national disasters. He received a master’s degree in History from the prestigious Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi. Khatlani is a fellow with Hawaii-based American East-West Center established by the US Congress in 1960 to promote better relations and understanding with Asian, and Pacific countries through cooperative study, research, and dialogue.

Penguin published Khatlani’s first book The Other Side of the Divide: A Journey into the Heart of Pakistan in February 2020. The eminent academic and King’s College professor, Christophe Jaffrelot, has called the book ‘an erudite historical account... [that] offers a comprehensive portrait of Pakistan, including the role of the army and religion—not only Islam’.

[1] Christopher Snedden, Kashmir: The Unwritten History, Noida: HarperCollins Publishers India, 2013, p. 73
[2] Alex Von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer: The Secret History of The End Of An Empire, London: Simon & Schuster, 2007, p. 287
[3] Asghar Ali Engineer, Communal Riots in Post-Independence India, Hyderabad: Sangam Books, 1997, p.157
[4] Tariq Masud, Escape from Paradise, November 13, 2015, The Friday Times, http://www.thefridaytimes.com/tft/escape-from-paradise/ accessed on June 29, 2019
[5] Ved Bhasin, Jammu 1947, November 17, 2015, The Kashmir Life, http://kashmirlife.net/jammu-1947-issue-35-vol-07-89728/ accessed on June 29, 2019
[6] Moni Mohsin,‘The wounds have never healed’: living through the terror of partition, August 2, 2017, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/02/wounds-have-never-healed-living-through-terror-partition-india-pakistan-1947, accessed on June 29, 2019
[7] Tariq Masud, Escape from Paradise, November 13, 2015, The Friday Times, http://www.thefridaytimes.com/tft/escape-from-paradise/ accessed on June 29, 2019
[8] Bhasin, Jammu 1947, November 17, 2015, The Kashmir Life, http://kashmirlife.net/jammu-1947-issue-35-vol-07-89728/ accessed on June 29, 2019
[9] Tariq Masud, Escape from Paradise, November 13, 2015, The Friday Times, http://www.thefridaytimes.com/tft/escape-from-paradise/ accessed on June 29, 2019
[10] Ved Bhasin, Jammu 1947, November 17, 2015, The Kashmir Life, http://kashmirlife.net/jammu-1947-issue-35-vol-07-89728/ accessed on June 29, 2019
[11] Alex Von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer: The Secret History of The End Of An Empire, London: Simon & Schuster, 2007, p. 287
[12] Alex Von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer: The Secret History of The End Of An Empire, London: Simon & Schuster, 2007, p. 287
[13] Alex Von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer: The Secret History of The End Of An Empire, London: Simon & Schuster, 2007, p. 287
[14] Nisid Hajari, Midnight’s Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India’s Partition, Gurgaon: Viking, 2015, p. 209
[15] Christopher Snedden, Kashmir: The Unwritten History, Noida: HarperCollins Publishers India, 2013, p. 55
[16] Tariq Masud, Escape from Paradise, November 13, 2015, The Friday Times, http://www.thefridaytimes.com/tft/escape-from-paradise/ accessed on June 29, 2019
[17] Alex Von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer: The Secret History of The End Of An Empire, London: Simon & Schuster, 2007, p. 286
[18] Ved Bhasin, Jammu 1947, November 17, 2015, The Kashmir Life, http://kashmirlife.net/jammu-1947-issue-35-vol-07-89728/ accessed on June 29, 2019
[19] Zeeshan Shaikh, Share of Muslims and Hindus in J&K population same in 1961, 2011 Censuses, December 30, 2016, The Indian Express,http://indianexpress.com/article/explained/share-of-muslims-and-hindus-in-jk-population-same-in-1961-2011-censuses/ accessed on June 29, 2019
[20] Ved Bhasin, Jammu 1947, November 17, 2015, The Kashmir Life, http://kashmirlife.net/jammu-1947-issue-35-vol-07-89728/ accessed on June 29, 2019
[21] Christopher Snedden, Kashmir: The Unwritten History, Noida: HarperCollins Publishers India, 2013, p. 73
[22] Christopher Snedden, Kashmir: The Unwritten History, Noida: HarperCollins Publishers India, 2013, p. 73
[23] Alex Von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer: The Secret History of The End Of An Empire, London: Simon & Schuster, 2007, p. 287
[24] Nisid Hajari, Midnight’s Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India’s Partition, Gurgaon: Viking, 2015, p. 208
[25] Nisid Hajari, Midnight’s Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India’s Partition, Gurgaon: Viking, 2015, p. 208
[26] Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Vision and Mission, rss.org, October 22, 2012, http://rss.org/Encyc/2012/10/22/rss-vision-and-mission.html, accessed on June 29, 2019
[27] M. G. Chitkara, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh: National Upsurge, New Delhi: A.P.H. Publishing Corporation, 2004, p. 263
[28] Siddhartha Deb, Unmasking Modi, May 3, 2016, The New Republic, https://newrepublic.com/article/133014/new-face-india-anti-gandhi, accessed on June 29, 2019
[29] M. G. Chitkara, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh: National Upsurge, New Delhi: A.P.H. Publishing Corporation, 2004, p. 263
[30] Nisid Hajari, Midnight’s Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India’s Partition, Gurgaon: Viking, 2015, p.180
[31] M. G. Chitkara, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh: National Upsurge, New Delhi: A.P.H. Publishing Corporation, 2004, p. 263
[32] Nisid Hajari, Midnight’s Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India’s Partition, Gurgaon: Viking, 2015, p. 209
[33] Tariq Masud, Escape from Paradise, November 13, 2015, The Friday Times, http://www.thefridaytimes.com/tft/escape-from-paradise/ accessed on June 29, 2019
[34] Tariq Masud, Escape from Paradise, November 13, 2015, The Friday Times, http://www.thefridaytimes.com/tft/escape-from-paradise/ accessed on June 29, 2019
[35] Tariq Masud, Escape from Paradise, November 13, 2015, The Friday Times, http://www.thefridaytimes.com/tft/escape-from-paradise/ accessed on June 29, 2019
[36] Tariq Masud, Escape from Paradise, November 13, 2015, The Friday Times, http://www.thefridaytimes.com/tft/escape-from-paradise/ accessed on June 29, 2019
[37] Moni Mohsin,‘The wounds have never healed’: living through the terror of partition, August 2, 2017, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/02/wounds-have-never-healed-living-through-terror-partition-india-pakistan-1947, accessed on June 29, 2019
[38] Ved Bhasin, Jammu 1947, November 17, 2015, The Kashmir Life, http://kashmirlife.net/jammu-1947-issue-35-vol-07-89728/ accessed on June 29, 2019
[39] Ved Bhasin, Jammu 1947, November 17, 2015, The Kashmir Life, http://kashmirlife.net/jammu-1947-issue-35-vol-07-89728/ accessed on June 29, 2019
[40] Nisid Hajari, Midnight’s Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India’s Partition, Gurgaon: Viking, 2015, p.210
[41] Christopher Snedden, Kashmir: The Unwritten History, Noida: HarperCollins Publishers India, 2013, p. 73
[42] Nisid Hajari, Midnight’s Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India’s Partition, Gurgaon: Viking, 2015, p.10
[43] Christopher Snedden, Kashmir: The Unwritten History, Noida: HarperCollins Publishers India, 2013P 73,
[44] Ajit Bhattacharjea, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah: Tragic Hero of Kashmir, New Delhi: Lotus, p. xxiv, xxvi
[45] Ajit Bhattacharjea, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah: Tragic Hero of Kashmir, New Delhi: Lotus, p. xxiv, xxvi

0 Comments

Grandfather's House - by Faruq Ahmad

1/10/2021

4 Comments

My grandfather's house at 4 Exchange Road, Srinagar

As children, my cousins and I heard stories of Kashmir from our fathers, of going riding in the foothills of the Himalayas, sending the servants ahead to prepare the picnic, of houseboats and the magical Dal Lake. Now spread around the world in the US, UK and Pakistan, we will likely never see this idyllic place so connected to our family.

Before he died my father drew me a handwritten map of the family home in Srinagar, with Dal Lake as reference, in case I was able to visit. I now have a photograph of my grandfather’s erstwhile home at 4 Exchange Road, Srinagar; however, a search on Google Earth is the closest I’ve actually gotten. (If anyone knows more about when the building was knocked down and who lived there after 1947, I’d love to know. I should add that my grandfather was given restitution after Partition, so we have no claim.)

I am slowly piecing together the past from my home far away in California, using the enforced leisure that the COVID virus affords. I know that as a young lawyer my grandfather went to Srinagar in 1903; my cousin says he wanted to escape the British Raj. He was Punjabi but his wife was from Kashmir. Grandfather rose to become Chief Judge of the princely state, and then in 1924, Home Minister of Kashmir, until his retirement in 1929.

If anyone has knowledge or has heard recollections of that period, I’d be most interested.

Khan Bahadur Nazir Ahmad

Sanad announcing Khan Bahadur Nazir Ahmad

In 1923 in Simla, a Sanad promoted him to Khan Bahadur Maulana Nazir Ahmad. My grandfather worked in Srinagar during the reign of Maharaja Pratap Singh till 1924, and then Maharaja Hari Singh from 1924. He continued to live in his beloved Srinagar after retirement until Partition, when he left for Pakistan.

I now realize that Grandfather ardently believed in educating his daughters; he put the family through considerable disruption to convey the girls safely across the mountain passes to boarding school in Punjab. One daughter, my aunt Kaniz Fatimah, qualified as LSMF (the equivalent of MBBS at the time) and practiced as both a medical doctor and as a surgeon in the 1930-1940s in Srinagar. Her husband was Dr Muhammad Abdullah. A Muslim woman practicing as a medical doctor during that period must have been novel. I would like to learn more from those who have records or memories from that period.

Medicine ran for generations in my family of hakims and my father and uncle also became doctors. My father, Said Ahmad, obtained his FRCS from London in 1931. I am told he was the first Muslim to do so from the sub-continent and it was in record time too. He went on to join the army as a doctor but when he left in 1946, the first place he went was Srinagar, where he’d grown up.

As a result of Partition, my father settled in Pakistan, where he helped lay the foundation for the medical system as administrator of the flagship Jinnah Hospital in Karachi and builder of the Department of Surgery at Civil Hospital. He was also a prolific innovator of new techniques and a teacher, and published extensively and globally. After a distinguished career, at age 60 he built Said Clinic, the premier private hospital in Karachi at the time and which my mother ran as Chief Administrator. He practiced into his 80s, and was reportedly one of just two surgeons at the time (the other was in Australia) to have done surgery continuously for over 60 years. He loved what he did.

He also never lost his love for Kashmir. I remember my father persistently trying to recreate the lush forest of his childhood at our home in the desert of urban Karachi, planting trees and flowers. My niece in London, who helped me edit this blog, says even my house in California - with its wooden deck and hilltop view over tall trees looking towards the water - unwittingly recreates grandfather’s Srinagar house. Can we ever leave history behind?

If you can help fill in any gaps, please feel free to contact me at <[email protected]>

Faruq Ahmad left his family home in Karachi aged eighteen and went to the US to study. After obtaining advanced degrees from MIT and Stanford, he made his career in innovation and technology and settled in Silicon Valley, where he currently lives.

4 Comments

'The Women’s Self Defence Corps, Srinagar 1947-48: A Conversation with Kanta Wazir' - by Rekha Wazir

12/14/2019

17 Comments

Kanta Wazir, Devipora in Anantnag District, J&K, 1949 - Photo, Rekha Wazir

Kanta Wazir (née Zutshi) was born in Srinagar in March 1930. She married Man Mohan Wazir (1926-2018), an IPS officer of the Jammu & Kashmir cadre, in July 1949. They lived in Srinagar till early 1990, after which they moved to Delhi.

On 25th May 2019, towards the end of my stay in India, my mother, Kanta Wazir, mentioned out of the blue that she had been a member of the Women’s Self Defence Corps (WSDC) when she was a student in Sri Pratap Singh College in Srinagar in 1947-48, and had learnt how to fire a rifle. She said she was good at it too and had received a prize from Ghulam Mohammad Sadiq - many years later the Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir - because three of the five shots she fired, when he came to inspect, hit the target! She said all this very casually, at the end of a long conversation I had had with her about growing up in Kashmir. I was most surprised to hear this as she had never mentioned it before, and I made a mental note to ask her more about it on my next visit. She is almost 90 and was getting a bit tired of my questions so I had to stop at that point.

Fast forward a few months to 4th September. During my daily phone call, my mother mentioned that her cousin Jai Kishori Bhan (née Vaishnavi), whom we called Jaya Masi, had passed away a few months earlier, and so we talked about her for a bit. My mother has a tendency to give me bad news with a lag! Just a few hours later, while doing a google search for something else, I came across Andrew Whitehead’s fascinating blogs and saw his informative and intriguing piece, with vintage photographs and other hitherto forgotten, and fresh, materials on the WSDC. I was taken aback to see Jaya Masi, about whom I had been talking just a short while earlier, in one of the photographs of the militia. She was standing right in front, with a rifle on her shoulders, leading the march! I recognized a few other names and faces as well. Andrew had included the information and insights of Krishna Misri, also a member of the WSDC, who had been able to identify some of the women. Of course, I called my mother immediately and told her about the photographs of the WSDC on the blog, which set her off on a chain of reminiscences.

Here is the free-flowing conversation that I recorded with my mother on Friday, 15th November 2019 about her participation in the WSDC. My questions were in Hindi and English and her responses were mainly in Hindi with some English and Kashmiri thrown in. She added some more thoughts in subsequent phone calls and conversations, and these have been incorporated in what follows:

Kanta Wazir and Rekha Wazir, New Delhi, February 2019 - Photo, Rekha Wazir

RW: You told me on my last visit that you had received rifle training when you were a student in S.P. College. Are you familiar with the name Women’s Self Defence Corps?

KW: Yes, of course.

RW: Can you tell me why you joined the militia. Who told you about it? How old were you?

KW: I was in college, in second year FA (Fellow of Arts, a two-year degree after Class 10) , that means I must have been 17 or 18 years old. I got married in 1949 at the age of 19 and that was after completing FA. I knew about the militia; there was talk about it in every street and lane (gali gali mein baat thi), but I went through my college (SP College). We were told about it by our professors and were encouraged to join if we wanted to. They said it was very good work, that we should be prepared for the sake of our country (mulk, meaning Kashmir). A group of us college students used to go for the training.

RW: What was being said in every street and lane – gali gali mein?

KW: That started when the ‘Kabailis’ were sent by Pakistan. They wreaked havoc up to Baramulla – the women who had been raped/molested were arriving in Srinagar and we were given the job of looking after them in the Government Hospital. We were taught first aid and sent in batches to the hospital. Only the girls who wanted to go. The women were in a very bad state – we would go in groups of five to seven – Girija Dhar was there, I was there, and there were a few others from our neighbourhood and we used to go together. We would ask the women what they had gone through, offer them support. We were encouraged to learn how to counsel these women.

[The incursion of tribal invaders from the North West Frontier Province, now part of Pakistan, in October 1947 is known popularly as the Kabaili raid - RW]

RW: Were the women affected by the Kabailis Muslim or Hindu?

KW: They were from all communities, but the majority were Hindu and Sikh.

RW: Was it a mixed group of Hindu and Muslim girls that used to go to the hospital?

KW: Yes.

It all started during this period. We first started going to the hospital to counsel the women. They were very young – there were some older women as well, but the majority were very young – they had been raped, beaten – the Sikh girls were worse off than the Hindus. The rallying cry of the Kabailis was “Sardaron ka sar, Hinduon ka zar” – meaning “take heads of/off Sikhs and wealth of/off Hindus”.

This was during the Kabaili raid, the same time that the British nun was raped in St. Joseph’s Convent in Baramulla. She had two gold teeth – they pulled those out as well. At that time the entire community – Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs – was outraged by what the Kabailis had done. I don’t recall hearing anyone – among my personal contacts, in my college group, or in my mohalla - supporting them or even keeping quiet about them. Everyone was together in solidarity in face of the rape and pillage that took place. They would see the young girls and women who had been affected. Nobody was happy or supportive of what had happened. Kashmir was in a mess at that time.

RW: How did this lead to the militia?

KW: We were told in college by the principal and our professors that they had arranged for the girls to get trained in firing a 303 rifle. Any girl who wanted to join could do so. There was an examination of sorts at the end. Sadiq Sahib was there for that. I was the only girl who hit the target three times out of five and I received a prize for it from him. Another girl got the overall first prize and I got the second. But we didn’t care about prizes at that time.

RW: Did boys go for training as well?

KW: No. The training was only for girls.

RW: Did boys have a separate group?

KW: I don’t know about that. I don’t know if they were trained in anything. This training was just for girls so that they could at least protect and save themselves. Sadiq sahib used to come. Mehmooda used to be there. I’m sure she played a part in setting up this group.

[Mehmooda Ali Shah, popularly known as Miss Mehmooda, was a leading educationist, social activist and advocate for women’s education and empowerment - RW]

RW: Mehmooda couldn’t have been in college at that time.

KW: She was not in college, but she was very actively involved in such work. A group of girls used to go for training from college and then go back to their respective homes when it was over. I may not have got permission from my family had it meant going alone from home.

Before that, when the Kabailis came up to Baramulla and word reached Srinagar about it, there used to be groups of citizens shouting slogans all night even in our mohalla (Safakadal) which was mainly Muslim – there was no other Hindu house apart from ours and the Dhars’ who were a bit further away from us. We were the only two Hindu families in Safakadal – our house was on the riverbank and they were further in, near Idgah, where the Id namaz used to take place. The whole night, groups of people would patrol the streets and lanes proclaiming “Hamlawaro khabardar, ham Kashmiri hain taiyyar” (Aggressors beware, we Kashmiris are ready). We would hear the slogans till midnight, which means they were patrolling the interior of the city as well, not just the main roads. We were two lanes in from the main road. Your father was also part of a patrol at that time – I don’t remember if it was as part of the regular police patrol or the citizen’s patrol – but he would shout out extra loud outside my house, just to let me know that he was there!

RW: Was it a mixed group of Hindus and Muslims that went for rifle training from the college?

KW: There were more Hindu girls for the simple reason that there were fewer Muslim girls in college at that time – they were only a handful. The Muslim girls who attended college would come up to the gate wearing their burqa and would remove it as soon as they entered. It was a co-educational college, and this could have been another reason why there were fewer Muslim girls. Hindu girls were over-represented, given their percentage in the population.

RW: How many girls went for the training from college?

KW: Must have been 10-15 girls. There were other non-college going girls as well – probably those that had joined from their mohallas (neighbourhoods). But I think that hardly any non-college going Muslim girls would have been able to join the militia. In college they were supported by the fact that we went as a group and they must have been spurred on by each other.

RW: So, what did you do in the WSDC?

KW: We were taught about counselling the women victims of the Kabaili raid in the hospital, keep track of what the doctors were telling them; learn about rehabilitation – would they go back/live in tents/would the government give them places to stay? If normalcy returned to towns of Uri and Baramulla, would they want to go back? Some of the women were traumatized – they didn’t want to go back. At that time, it was just a question of helping them with their mental trauma.

We were taught first aid. Counselling victims was voluntary – you could opt out if your parents didn’t allow you to go to the hospital. But we were encouraged to go because most of the victims were in the same age group as us and we would be able to communicate with them. So, a lot of girls would go.

RW: Are you proud of the training that you received?

KW: Yes, of course. When you hold a rifle you feel good about yourself. We used to talk about it all the time, that we knew how to fire a rifle even though we didn’t have a license. If I had applied for a license at that time, I would have got it. There is no doubt that there was excitement about this. You feel that you are also important, that you are also capable of doing something. You can protect yourself. You can help the women who are in the hospital, show them solidarity. I think women played a very important role at that time.

The carnage wreaked by the Kabailis came within reach of our homes in Srinagar. For example, my house was just 45 minutes away by tonga – there were hardly any cars at that time – from the spot where they had reached. People were hiding their daughters.

RW: Wasn’t this a novel thing for girls to be doing in those times?

KW: Not for the girls who were already in college. Our parents had already taken the step to send us to a co-educational college. There were very few girls in the college at that time – it was mostly boys.

“The black and white photograph is of members of the Women's Self Defence Corps, a women's militia set up largely by Communist supporters of the National Conference in October-November 1947, when Srinagar was in danger of being overrun by an army of Pakistani tribesmen. Altogether, a very remarkable image - and one which made me think more deeply about the political and social alignments in the Valley as the Kashmir conflict first erupted…. The women's militia drilled and was trained in how to fire a rifle and throw a grenade. Its main intention was to allow young women to protect themselves and their households should Srinagar be overrun. The tribal army got to the outskirts of the city but not further. The women's militia did not see active service, though many of its members were involved in relief work for the refugees resulting from the invasion.” - Andrew Whitehead

RW: Who was behind it? Was it a political move? Was it the National Conference?

KW: National Conference was the main party at that time. Sadiq was a Communist, so was Mehmooda. The situation was such that all parties joined together so you can’t say that it was more National Conference or Communists who were behind this move. The whole population was united. I remember an incident from those days. My older sister, who lived in Kanyakadal, a predominantly Hindu neighbourhood, asked my father to send me to stay with her. She was afraid I wouldn’t be safe in Safakadal in the event of an attack on Srinagar. My father didn’t think it was necessary, but my sister insisted. As I was getting ready to leave the house, the women, all Muslim, of our neighbourhood came to our door - they must have heard that I was leaving – they beat their chests and pulled their hair – they said “how can a girl from your house leave the locality? Are we dead? Let her stay here, she is safe here. Even if the Kabailis come to Srinagar, she is safer with us. Nobody can touch her while we are here.” They didn’t let me go.

RW: What was your reason for joining the militia? Was it political? Was it because your supported the National Conference?

KW: No. Women had suffered so much, you had to do something. It was more from a spirit of compassion and solidarity and also to learn self-protection. It had nothing to do with politics.

RW: Do you know who organized the WSDC?

KW: I don’t know who the main organizer might have been. What I do know is that Mehmooda was very prominent. She was there every day, organizing the different groups, telling them what they had to do. And we saw Sadiq there a lot.

RW: Who trained you?

KW: There was a group of junior doctors who taught us first aid. The organizers had obviously made an arrangement with the hospital to send these doctors to train us. And as far as I can recall, rifle training was given by police staff. Who else would have known how to fire a rifle? They gave us proper rifle training.

RW: Was there a lot of fear and apprehension at that time?

KW: Yes. People were very afraid in Srinagar. The memory of what had happened in Baramulla was very fresh and raw; families affected by the violence were still trickling in. Nobody harmed anyone in Srinagar, but the real fear was that the Kabailis could come again and this time reach Srinagar.

Things were not the same in Jammu, where there was a lot of violence between the communities. My grandfather owned a house in Mastgarh, which was a predominantly Muslim area and my father used to live in that house for the six winter months when the government moved to Jammu. My father had retired by this time but when he went to Jammu next, there was hardly any Muslim family left in that neighbourhood. He couldn’t find any of his acquaintances or the families he knew. Some may have fled the bloodshed; you can only imagine what must have happened to the rest.

A lot of Hindus and Sikhs were killed in the Poonch/Rajouri area on the Jammu side. Your father’s first posting after we got married in 1949 was to Poonch. We were invited to a Hindu wedding function in Rajouri once and I was completely shocked to see that more than 50% of the young women attending were dressed in white, they were widows. None of this happened in Kashmir. There was no violence between the communities in Kashmir.

RW: Were you keen to get trained to protect yourself?

KW: I was very keen to go with all the girls. I was also curious to see what it was all about. They trained us very well. It wasn’t a long course – 15-20 days, and there was provision for having an additional class in the afternoon should the group become unwieldy. It’s easy to fire a pistol to protect yourself, but firing a rifle is more difficult. I discussed this with your father later and he agreed. If you don’t press the trigger properly, or press it suddenly, you can get a jolt and fall with the impact.

RW: How long did the WSDC last?

KW: We were trained over the course of a month. I think there were two groups of college girls – I was in the first group. I don’t know how long the WSDC lasted. Once our training was complete, we were considered ready, and we resumed our normal college activities.

I’ve just remembered – Dr. R.K. Bhan was the Principal of S.P. College at that time.

[Dr. Bhan was Kanta Wazir’s uncle, married to her mother’s sister. Jai Kishori Vaishnavi née Bhan was his daughter; and Leela Bhan née Dhar, both in the photograph on Andrew Whitehead’s blog, was his daughter-in-law - RW]

RW: Wasn’t Leela Bhan née Dhar already married at that time? She is older than you so she couldn’t have been a college student.How come she is in the militia?

KW: She got married long before I did, and she is older than me. I know she wasn’t in college at the same time as me so she must have been one of the women from outside college to get the training. She could have been encouraged by her father-in-law, or by her brother D.P. Dhar [a prominent politician- RW].

RW: Do you remember any stories of camaraderie? Was there a special spirit at that time?

KW: Yes. We were very moved and motivated by what had happened to the women. We wanted to do something for them. They had horrendous stories to tell. Only a heartless person would have remained unmoved. Many of us would go home and cry after talking to them. Their situation was very bad – daughters had been raped in front of their mothers, wives in front of their husbands, mothers in front of their sons. Even old women were not spared. It was like the Kabailis were exacting revenge.

RW: What were the avenues open to women in those days, apart from teaching?

KW: Not many. Kashmir was very backward. There was hardly any education available. Women were mostly confined to the home.

RW: What about your generation? What about public life?

KW: There were not many avenues. Very few women came out of the house. Even attending college was a huge issue. You were asked a million questions by the extended family. When your aunt (Shanta Bhargava née Wazir) went to study medicine in Delhi [in 1945 - RW], there was a huge furore in the family over the prospect of her having to live alone in a far-off city. This despite the fact that your grandfather was so well educated and did so much work for women’s education.

RW: How come you have never talked about your time with the WSDC? Why haven’t you ever told me about your rifle training?

KW: I didn’t think it was anything remarkable or worth talking about. I had no idea there would be photographs of the women’s militia or that anyone had written anything about it till you showed me Andrew Whitehead’s piece on this on his blog. What we were doing seemed normal in the mood of the times. If nothing, you could at least protect yourself. It was exciting, something new, we were standing shoulder to shoulder with men. It gave us a buzz at that age. We would tell any boy who bothered us in college – and they used to do that a lot – to beware, because we could now use a rifle!

Your father knew about it, of course. I would sometimes tell him that he was not the only one who knew how to fire a rifle, I did too.

RW: Are you aware of Sheikh Abdullah’s Naya Kashmir manifesto? Did you know that it covered land reform, women’s rights, etc.

KS: Yes. I’m aware of it but I don’t know everything that the document contained. Land reform was the first thing that Sheikh Abdullah implemented when he came to power. My family held lands, and lost considerably, but my personal view is that the land reform was a very good thing. The tenants who had been long exploited finally got something. You would have to be very selfish to say it wasn’t a progressive move. I don’t know what else was in the manifesto.

RW: Were you aware of Freda Bedi and her husband? She was a British woman who wore Indian dress. Do you know of her role in setting up the WSDC? Do you remember seeing her during your training sessions?

KW: She may have played a role. It’s not impossible that she did, but I have no recollection of seeing any non-Kashmiri person during our training sessions. Maybe she was higher up. I am only aware of the people who were involved with the group that went from my college but there were other girls who received the training as well. In our group Mehmooda was the most important and prominent person. She was the leader as far as I was concerned. She was quite a woman – well educated, intelligent, beautiful, very self-aware and elegantly turned out – always in a saree.

RW: Do you remember Prem Nath Bazaz?

KW: Yes. He was a communist. His daughter Gauri studied medicine with your aunt Shanta.

RW: Tell me the slogans that people used to shout those days.

KW: One was: “Sher-e-Kashmir ka kya irshad, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh itihad” (‘What is Sher-e-Kashmir’s order?’ In response the crowd would say: ‘Hindu, Muslim, Sikh are united!’) There used to be huge processions in those days with large crowds of people shouting this slogan. The second slogan I’ve told you already: “Hamlawaro khabardar, hum Kashmiri hain taiyyar”.

RW: Were there any slogans in Kashmiri?

KW: The slogans were mostly in Urdu, so that everyone else could understand what we Kashmiris were saying.

RW: What were your own personal politics? National Conference or Congress?

KW: What did we have to do with the Congress in Kashmir, I was with our own National Conference. It was a good party at that time. The problems started later.

It was during this period that Mahatma Gandhi came to Kashmir. I went with my father to hear him. I don’t remember what year it was, but you can find that out easily from the internet. It was his first and only visit to Kashmir. It was after the bloodshed of Partition that took place in North India and Bengal. He came to Kashmir on his way back from visiting these places to see what was happening here. My father had managed with great difficulty to get three passes for the public meeting - for himself, my brother and me. God knows how we reached the ground where the meeting was being held – there wasn’t an inch of space anywhere in Srinagar – I can’t tell you how many people were milling around the streets. I have never in my life seen such large crowds in Srinagar. It felt as though all of Kashmir was there – not just Hindus – everyone – people wanted to hear what he had to say. I’ll never forget what he said. He spoke in Hindi and he started by saying that for the first time he could see a beacon of light in India. He could see a ray of hope in Kashmir.This was because Kashmir was one of the few places where there was peace and there had been no bloodshed. He received a grand welcome in Kashmir. People felt jubilant to have seen him. The two girls who always accompanied him were with him.

RW: Were there any special slogans to welcome Gandhi?

KW: No. Just the usual Mahatma Gandhi Zindabad. The slogan that was specially coined after the Kabaili raid was “Hamlawaro khabardar ….” Every time an aeroplane flew overhead in those days – even if was one of our own – people would start shouting this slogan!

[Mahatma Gandhi made his first and only visit to Kashmir in the first week of August 1947 - RW]

Photo from People's War, December 1947

17 Comments

"Once a Biscoe boy, Always a Biscoe boy" by Rekha Wazir

10/1/2019

30 Comments

Tara Chand Wazir

Let me start with a story of adventure, so nearly of misadventure.

Late in the summer of 1921, my grandfather, Tara Chand Wazir (henceforth TCW), then a young man of 28 and working in the Sericulture Department in Jammu & Kashmir State, was on his way back from a tour of Europe where he had been sent on deputation to study different aspects of the silk industry. He took the steamship Paul Lecat from Marseille, and after a few days of rough sailing during which the passengers were confined to their cabins, they stopped at Djibouti for a few hours to refuel and deliver mail. The ship anchored a few miles from the shore because the sea near the coast was shallow. The passengers on board made up a motley lot - two Indians, including TCW, a Frenchman, a Greek, and a Swiss. Most of them had been pretty seasick on the journey and were eager to stand on solid ground for a short while. They took the opportunity provided by this stop and engaged a local boat to take them ashore. Two local men paddled the boat, front and back, and it was lit by a hurricane lamp as it had begun to get quite dark. A most intriguing incident followed, best told in the words of TCW [1]:

“When we were halfway between the ship and the shore, we suddenly saw a motorboat coming in exactly in transverse line - a few seconds and it would take our low African boat under it. Biscoeism in my blood asserted itself and used to boating as I had been in school days, I thought of saving the boat from the tragedy which was imminent. So, I stood up, tried to catch the external gunmetal bar running alongside the motor launch and with the manoeuvring of the feet put our boat in a position parallel to the launch so that the tragedy of drowning could be averted. The bar was polished and greased and I was heavy with my long boots, khaki drill suit with closed collar, Jodhpur-type breaches and evening cap. The watch I had purchased at Marseilles with mother of pearl casing was on my wrist. The momentum of the launch carried me off my boat after it had become parallel with the launch through the manoeuvring of the feet. I thus hung by the bar. The weight of my body and the clothes etc. could not long sustain me in that hanging position, when the grease on the bar did the trick and I fell down. I went vertically down into the sea, and while going down I felt all along that this was the end of my life, that now what would happen would be that the tragedy would be reported in papers. It would cause consternation in my family and all my hopes and aspirations would die with me. Above all, I thought about my old parents, my wife and my elder brother. By this time my feet touched the bottom of the sea and there was a rebound sort of thing and I came to the surface when I cried for help. I was trying to swim when something like a thick rope was thrown towards me by my fellow passengers... I caught hold of it and the friends in the boat picked me up. All that I remember is that I was put in a position where the sea water which I had taken in in plenty was drained out of my body, that my wet clothes were taken off, the Swiss gentleman gave me his own coat to put on and I fell unconscious.”

“Next day I woke up in my cabin in the ship, with the surgeon on board feeling my pulse and prescribing some medicine. My clothes were being dried on the deck. They then told me what had happened. When I stood up in the boat to save it, the French gentleman fancied that I was trying to save myself without caring for the safety of others in the boat, quite the reverse of my intention, and took out his revolver from his pant pocket to shoot me down. His neighbour the Swiss gentleman, understood my intention better, held the Frenchman’s hand and prevented him from shooting. In the meanwhile, I had fallen into the sea…The Greek gentleman had received some slight injuries on the nose, and the African boatman was missing presumably on the impact of launch on the front portion of the boat he had fallen into the sea and they told me that when the accident was reported to the boat commissioner, no trace of the African boatman had been found till then … Instead of going to the shore, the boat returned to the steamer, and I was placed in charge of the surgeon in the steamer, who left me to sleep for the night and saw me next morning when I woke to hear the story of this nasty incident. Afterwards when I met the French gentleman, I confirmed the Swiss friend’s interpretation of my movements and intention, and he had the fairness to apologize for the impulsive action he had proposed to take which might easily have proved fatal. This made the visit to Djibouti most memorable for me for it gave me a chance to say that not only had I seen the ‘fair fields and pastures new’ in Europe, but I had also had a glimpse of the bottom of the sea.”

What, then, is this ‘Biscoeism’ that TCW refers to? The reader may well wonder! To explain what he meant by it and what it might mean to scores of Kashmiri men, then and now, requires delving, howsoever briefly, into the history of modern education in Kashmir.

Kashmir’s fabled beauty had forever been spectacularly visible to travellers, adventurers and merchants – over time increasingly European – who came to escape the heat and dust of the plains, buy shawls, go hunting and trekking, write books, take photographs and paint exquisite scenes. Their sentiments about Kashmir would chime with the Mughal emperor Jahangir’s famous and oft-repeated exclamation, “if there is paradise on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here”. But for the ordinary inhabitants of the Valley, and some sensitive souls who came and stayed, this beauty gently receded into the backdrop, while the foreground that inexorably entered the eye and assaulted the mind was the poverty and wretched conditions in which the majority lived and survived.

The Dogra Rajah of Jammu, Gulab Singh, had supported the British in their battles, and subsequent victory, against the Sikhs who then ruled large parts of North India, including Kashmir. As a reward for this favour the colonial regime presented him with the Kashmir Valley in 1846 for the paltry sum of seventy-five lakh Rupees – a fact that still haunts the psyche of most Kashmiris – thus allowing the Rajah to create the State of Jammu & Kashmir as we know it now, and graduate in status from Rajah to Maharajah. The Dogra rulers showed little interest in investing in health, education, infrastructure, indeed in anything that would improve the welfare of their Kashmiri subjects; they concentrated on extracting maximum revenue from agriculture and handicrafts and peasants were drafted in to provide begar or forced labour for which they were not recompensed to carry heavy loads to remote areas like Gilgit and to build roads - to the point of leaving the populace in conditions of poverty and oftentimes near starvation. In this, unfortunately, they were no different from the previous Mughal, Afghan and Sikh regimes. Moorcroft describes the city as he saw it when he came to Kashmir in 1822 towards the end of Sikh rule:

“The general condition of the city of Srinagar is that of a confused mass of ill favoured buildings, forming a complicated labyrinth of narrow and dirty lanes, scarcely broad enough for a single cart to pass, badly paved, and having a small gutter in the centre full of filth, banked up on each side by a border of mire …. and the whole presents a striking picture of wretchedness and decay.” Quoted in Khan (1978) p. 16-17.

Sir Richard Temple, who visited Srinagar in July 1859, commented on the indifference of the Dogra Maharajah towards his Kashmiri subjects:

“I asked (the Maharaja) whether Srinagar city should not be drained and cleaned, and to this he answered, that the people did not appreciate conservancy, and that they would much prefer to be dirty than to be at the trouble of cleaning the place.” quoted in Khan 1978:18.

When Cecil Tyndale-Biscoe arrived in the city in 1891, nearly half a century later, to take over as the principal of the Christian Mission School (CMS), not much had changed, and he was shocked by the scene that confronted him:

“The day after my arrival, Knowles and I walked through the city … a walk not to be forgotten. I recall what attracted my attention most. The stench, the utter filth of the streets, notwithstanding the thousands of pariah dogs, starving donkeys and cows trying to get a living from this foulness. Most of the houses had thatched roofs. I was astonished to see not a single chimney, and only one house, that of the Governor, had glass windows.” (CT-B 1951, p.21).

Fatehkadal, 3rd Bridge, photograph by James Ricalton, 1903, Rekha Wazir's Personal Collection

Not surprisingly, malnutrition, infectious diseases and pestilence were rife, cholera epidemics were endemic, and floods and fires were a recurrent feature of life, destroying people’s flimsy homes and taking lives. The streets were too narrow for fire services, such as existed, to reach these houses, and the wooden structures would burn down very quickly, leaving families homeless. And yet the Dogra state saw no reason to set up hospitals or dispensaries nor invest in sewage, drinking water, drainage or fire services. Being Hindu rulers, they employed the Kashmiri Pandits, who were literate in Persian, in the lower rungs of the state bureaucracy. Biscoe reasoned, providing precise calculations, that their salaries were so low that they were forced to resort to extortion, what he called “loot”, in order to run a household, making corruption a necessary fact of life and survival.[2] Senior government bureaucrats were imported wholesale from Punjab and elsewhere in British India. There was a rising demand from the Kashmiri population for more educational institutions that would impart the qualifications necessary for locals to fill these positions, but these fell largely on deaf ears.

This was the Kashmir that TCW was born into in 1893. The family had seen better days but were thoroughly impoverished at the time of his birth. His father had recently lost his job, and the great fire of 1892 had destroyed their house along with all its contents. As he recalled, “…when I began to see the light of day, my eyes met with the sight of nothing but remnants of debris in the compound or courtyard of our double-storeyed improvised house with no more than a plank roof to cover it which in inclement weather leaked terribly to our great discomfort.”

Opportunities for modern education were all but non-existent, at a time when the rest of British India was much ahead. Traditionally, Pandit boys were taught Sanskrit in pathshalas run by Brahmins, whereas Muslim boys were taught Arabic in maktabs that were linked to mosques. In addition, some Pandits taught Persian to both Hindu and Muslim boys in their homes, in return for a fee. With Persian becoming the court language, this, and some arithmetic, were added to the teaching. By 1872, the state had responded to repeated requests from the community and opened a few schools in Srinagar, but these mirrored the pathshalas and the maktabs.

This situation changed dramatically with the arrival of the Christian Mission Society in 1864, in the first instance to set up the first hospital in the city, followed by a school in 1880, both in the face of enormous opposition from the Dogra state. The first Christian Mission School was set up in the premises of the hospital, which had its own building by then, and started with about five students, but within a few years they were allowed to rent their own space and later to construct their own school. The principal of the school for the first ten years was Reverend J.H. Knowles, but it was only with the arrival of Reverend C.E. Tyndale-Biscoe in 1891 that the school took on its distinctive character.

Biscoe was appalled by what he saw when he entered the school for the first time. [3] The boys, nearly all 250 of them Pandits at that time, came to school dressed in their pherans – the long, loose garment worn by Kashmiris, many of them holding a kangri (fire pot) under it. They ranged in age, with many of them 20 years or older; and most of them were married and were already fathers. Discipline was lax, there was no uniform, school was supposed to start at 11 a.m. but the students would saunter in till midday; absenteeism was rife, and all manner of religious functions were seen as a ready excuse for skipping school. The boys refused to take part in sports - being Brahmins they would not touch a person of another caste or religion, nor touch a football or an oar for fear of being contaminated by leather, they abhorred any form of physical exercise as it would make them muscular and make them look like lower caste men. Biscoe found the Kashmiris sickly, cowardly, dirty, superstitious, arrogant and lacking in moral fibre; they had no qualms about lying, cheating at examinations, or accepting bribes. The only redeeming feature of the Kashmiris, as he saw it, was their great sense of humour, and their acting skills.

A school-going father from the early days, from E.D. Tyndale-Biscoe (1930), page 3 - by kind permission of Hugh Tyndale-Biscoe.

This, then, was the raw material that Biscoe was confronted with – he variously called the boys “bundles” or “jelly fish” in his writings – and he sought to convert them into “real men”, which in his language meant men who would strive after “perfect manliness – strength of body, strength of intellect, strength of soul - and … show that strength by practical sympathy for the weak.” (C.E. Tyndale-Biscoe 1920:13). This proved to be a long and arduous journey, but it did not deter Biscoe and he remained steadfast in his goals and implemented changes in the school in his own systematic, direct and inimitable manner, not devoid of a certain British sense of humour. School timings became strict and teachers and students had to adhere to them; the pheran was replaced by a uniform of native trousers and coat; boys who arrived in an unkempt state were given a good scrub in open view, and fined if they repeated the offence.

Biscoe, never a particularly good student himself, was wary of the narrow limits of such learning as was available in books alone. What the boys needed, according to him, was a change of hearts and that could only be achieved through action and inculcating a spirit of service by practical example. For him education was only one part of the school curriculum, equally important were the development of physical strength and social service towards weaker members of society. Sports, including boxing, football, cricket, swimming and rowing were made a regular part of school activities, with inter-school competitions between the six CMS schools that opened in quick succession, and later with other schools, all of which also introduced sports as part of their regular activities. The annual regatta organised by the Biscoe school became an institution, and huge crowds started turning out on the riverbanks to watch the rowing and swimming events. For Biscoe, sporting activities were an important means for instilling fair play and team spirit in the boys. In addition, it built their physical strength and they learnt important skills such as rowing and self-defence which could be used for social service to help weaker members of society.

“Boxing at CMS High School”, postcard, Rekha Wazir's personal collection.

Tara Chand Wazir (1893-1979) was born in an impoverished family in Srinagar, but by dint of personal merit and the support of his older brother and mentors in school and college, rose to become the first Kashmiri Chief Director of the Sericulture Department (1942), and later the Director of Industries (1948) for J & K State. He was made a Rai Bahadur in 1944, in recognition for his services to the industrial development of the State, but he returned the award in 1948, as he believed that a title received from the colonial British government had no place in independent India. Post retirement, he was actively involved in the Women’s Welfare Trust set up by Dr. Annie Besant in 1928 for the welfare of Kashmiri women.

"One of the Boat Crews", postcard, Rekha Wazir's personal collection

Consequently, social service was made a regular part of school activities. In the event of a fire, flood or epidemic, all recurrent events in the city, the entire school - staff and students – with Biscoe at the head, would turn out to help those in need, dousing fires and rescuing stranded people. His insistence on teaching the boys how to row – he was after all a Cambridge blue – was extremely handy during such events, and the school would offer for free the services for which boatmen would extort exorbitant sums in times of distress. During cholera epidemics, they would get involved in cleaning drains and courtyards, advise the residents on the need for hygiene and cleanliness, tend to the sick, take patients by boat to the Mission hospital and escort them in, or simply take the chronically ill for boat rides on the lake so they could get some fresh air, without making any distinctions of religion, caste or social standing. Saving animals from mistreatment by their masters – a regular sight in a city where horses and donkeys were used for transporting people and goods - was considered equally important and was encouraged. This was a remarkable achievement in a society that was riven by religious, caste and class hierarchies, and would be unthinkable in some parts of India even now.

Biscoe did not shy away from tackling deeply entrenched social practices that would normally be considered outside the remit of a school. Boys who got married before the age of eighteen were charged double tuition fees, in an attempt to put an end to this custom. The school even took up thorny issues such as paedophile rings preying on schoolboys, pornography being peddled in the school and the city, and widow remarriage, going to the extent of organising marriages for widows and finding priests who would officiate at them. In fact the first remarriage of two young widows took place in May 1928 through the efforts of the school – the Brahmin priests who had agreed to perform the ceremony dropped out at the last minute, but the headmaster of the school, himself a Brahmin priest, stepped in and married them. This event was followed by relentless campaigning with the Maharajah to end this practice till he finally enacted a State Law permitting widows to remarry in 1933.

Biscoe’s approach was innovative, pathbreaking and dramatic for the Srinagar of those times; he stamped his distinct identity on the Christian Mission School to the extent that it began to be referred to, and still is, as the ‘Biscoe’ school. Initially he faced a lot of opposition, from the Dogra state, from the parents, and also from the boys. The Pandits, of course, saw their caste status being defiled, and the Brahmin priests threatened excommunication for the ‘unholy work’ that the boys were undertaking. Both Hindu and Muslim parents were united in their dissatisfaction with the emphasis given to sports and social service. After all, they were sending their boys to school to get a certificate that would give them access to jobs in the government bureaucracy, and any distraction was a waste of their children’s precious time. Protests were organised, petitions were sent to the Maharajah, letters were written to the press complaining about the school and about the methods employed by Biscoe, and even anonymous letters were sent to the Resident threatening to kill Biscoe if he was not immediately expelled from the State. A petition, dated 1 April 1908, from the Hindus and Muslims of the city to “Members of the Mission Society” ends with the following, somewhat amusing, complaint: “Therefore, please, Sir, transfer Mr. Biscoe, for he is exceedingly a bad man, illiterate, deceitful, ill-mannered, uncultured, cunning, and man too much fond of cricket.” (C.E. Tyndale-Biscoe 1920:33).

Opposition came from within the British and missionary community as well. In fact Biscoe was very nearly recalled from Srinagar on more than one occasion because “instead of preaching in the bazaar, I was filling my days out of school hours with all sorts of ‘goings-on’, calling out my boys in the night as well as in the day, to fight fires and above all teaching the school staff and boys to use their fists…” (C.E. Tyndale-Biscoe 1951:67). But he was always saved by a friend or a well-wisher who had visited the school and seen its impact on the students. In time, protests and opposition from all quarters came to an end; the school came to be recognised as a space free of caste and religious distinctions. Muslim boys started enrolling. The school’s activities were wholeheartedly supported and accepted, and henceforth sports, though not social service, became part of the mainstream curriculum followed by the few high schools and the undergraduate college that were subsequently set up by the Dogra state in response to the work of the missionaries and to the clamour among the population for more educational facilities.

Growing up, I had of course heard about the school from my grandfather who would often talk about his student days, and he was prone to exclaim “I am a Biscoe boy” from time to time, as and when the situation demanded. I didn’t know much else about the school, apart from the fact that it still existed and had the reputation of being a ‘good’ boy’s school. By then, several other schools, including another missionary school for boys and a convent school for girls had opened in Srinagar, providing competition to the Biscoe school. It was only when I arrived in Cambridge in the 1970’s and chanced upon a book by Biscoe while browsing in an antiquarian shop that I began to understand the wider significance and influence of the school. Over the years I was able to add to this collection of old books and photographs about the school, and Kashmir in general.

Biscoe appears to have been a man of contradictions. He was, of course, a missionary whose primary purpose in being in Kashmir was to convert the locals to the ways of Jesus. He believed fervently in this mission; in fact, he went to the extent of prophesying “…that Kashmir will one day be won for Christ” (T-B 1920:2). But he had a somewhat broader definition of Christianity. In his way of thinking it meant being a man who combined in himself the qualities of hard work, strength, kindness and service. He was a man of his times, a firm believer in Empire and the superiority of Western civilization, to the extent that he was a member of the India Defence League (Studdert-Kennedy 2004:857-858) but when asked by his European contemporaries if it was wise to train Kashmiri youth, lest they use their power against them, he would say: “My experience of life is that brave men respect brave men, to whatever country they may belong. It is of cowards that we must beware…If these Kashmir boys become true men, strong as well as kind, what have we to fear, if we too are men? We will grasp their hands as brothers.” (T-B 1920:21).

At the same time, he had an abhorrence, developed at a young age, for the slave trade in Africa. In his autobiography, he writes:

“When I was about six mother took my brother Ted and me to see our grandmother Tyndale at Oxford. On the table was a missionary box with a nigger boy on the top, standing with a broad-brimmed hat at his feet with a slit in it. Mother said that if we dropped a coin into the hat, the nigger boy would nod his head. So we dropped in a penny, and the little boy did as mother said. On our drive home we asked our mother about this little boy and she told us of the African slave trade. When Ted and I were in bed together that night, we promised each other that when we grew up we would go to Africa and set the niggers free. Ted did eventually join the navy, and when a midshipman, found himself off Zanzibar with the East Indian Fleet catching the slave dhows and setting the “niggers” free” (T-B 1951, p.21).

The desire to fight the slave trade never left him and as a young student in Cambridge he would arrange meetings in his rooms to attract more crusaders to this cause. He offered his services to work in Africa when he joined the Christian Mission Society, but that was not to be. Because of his poor health he was sent to Kashmir instead, where he continued to preach against what he saw as the most evil of practices, but this time to the boys in the school. TCW was one of the young boys on whom these teachings made an impression.

TCW’s own educational journey closely mirrors the unfolding of modern education in Kashmir. He commenced schooling, as did scores of other Pandit boys, in a pathshala run by a devout Brahmin. This must have been around 1897, I don’t know the exact date but have calculated it backwards from the date of his Matriculation in 1909. He spent only a short time in the pathshala and all he could remember of his days there was the absence of books, paper, ink, pens and other items of stationery. They were taught writing on a takhti (wooden tablet) on which letters were written with fingers or with thin reeds. Instruction was given in Sanskrit, of which he professed to remember not a single word. Within a very short period, a branch of the Biscoe school catering to primary school age boys opened near his house and he moved there. This happened by pure chance, on the recommendation of Asad Mir, whose family owned the building in which the school was accommodated, and who happened to be a friend of TCW’s older brother.

TCW joined the Biscoe school in the lowest class, a sort of kindergarten, and in his passage from one class to the next, he came across some “stalwarts among the teachers of the school”, but the most impressive of them all, according to him, was the Principal Tyndale-Biscoe. TCW writes that he was mischievous throughout his school days:

“Once I had failed to learn a lesson or perform a home task in Persian and the teacher Hari Kak prescribed the most cruel punishment, cruel by any standard as prevailing then or now, namely, a lashing with Suya (stinging nettle) all over the body. In fact I was made to lie for some minutes in an encasing of Suya plant till the whole of my skin was red with pimples and then in that month of mid-winter I was taken to the river nearby where I was given few dips in freezing water to mollify the pimples. Whether the pimples were mollified or not I cannot tell, but I am sure that I escaped death by a narrow margin and this through nothing short of a miracle. My people at home when they heard of this cruelty were greatly upset. They thought of protesting to the principal; they even thought of withdrawing me from the school. But neither the one nor the other proposal matured … I am sure if Biscoe had been apprised of the fact, he would have given the sack to the Persian teacher which he richly deserved.” [4]

How different these brutal methods of disciplining children were from the one’s Biscoe used!

“Biscoe himself once caught me in his Bible class when I reached the highest rung of the ladder in the school, i.e. fifth primary. A strict disciplinarian that he was, though equally regardful and affectionate towards his pupils, he found me laughing while he was haranguing us on some serious subject. But then he was Biscoe and nothing if not original in everything. The punishment he prescribed was of a novel kind, at least it struck me as such at that time. He brought a sheet of paper and wrote the words ‘LAUGHING MONKEY’ on it and tied it on the back of my coat and had me taken round all the classes. This punishment was more telling than a dozen lashing of a suya plant and dips in freezing waters of Jhelum could possibly be. But even this failed to deter me for shortly after I was promoted to first middle class and was shifted to the central high school at Fateh Kadal. I repeated the offence in Biscoe’s class and he was justifiably upset about the repetition of the offence and this time had me taken up with the same board of ‘laughing monkey’ on my back to the topmost ladder in the gymnastic compound and was left there in the full gaze of the school students who pointed the finger of scorn towards me. Now, at this distance of time, I find it difficult to explain why I got those laughing fits in season and out of season which earned for me the punishment I richly deserved … One thing however is certain that this was the end of the delinquency on my part.”

There were several aspects of the education that TCW received in Biscoe School that left an everlasting mark on him, and none of them had anything to do with the academic side of learning.

“One of the most unforgettable experiences I had in my high school days related to the annual day functions of the school and the way they were celebrated under personal instructions of Tyndale-Biscoe. The programme he chalked out for such occasions, all emanating from his fertile brain, unmistakably stamped him out as an educationist in the real sense of the term. True to the motto of this school ‘In All Things Be Men’, he first of all wished the students to be physically strong. For this he arranged … PT games of all kinds such as, horizontal and parallel bars, ladders and jhulas (swings), high and long jumps, drills with bars and clubs. This is to say nothing of aquatic sports, jumps in different positions from the roof of the school building into the river, swimming and boating competitions, which formed a source of attraction for most of the people in the city who came out and watched the scene, so unusual and unlike what they were accustomed to seeing. Other schools followed the lead of Biscoe School later on.”

“One Way of Leaving School”, photograph by R.E. Shorter, Rekha Wazir's personal collection

The ability to swim and row, so necessary, but sadly lacking, in a city built around a river, where the main means of transport around the city and to other parts of the State was by boat, and where floods were a regular part of life causing deaths and damage, was taken very seriously by Tyndale-Biscoe. All boys had to pass the swimming examination or risk paying double tuition fees, as TCW was forced to do:

“To avoid this penalty we had to learn swimming and pass a test held under the auspices of the school…From Gagribal point to the end of a nullah towards Rainawari we had to swim independently, if the enterprise were successful we were given a certificate, production of which would exempt us from the payment of the double fee. I had learnt swimming indifferently, so when I came in for the test, I collapsed halfway, but then the rescue arrangements consisting of boats and expert swimmers accompanying the examinees on trial were ideal and the experts at once picked me up. I had to wait for a year to renew the test and on the second attempt I was successful. I do not know if one of the main reasons for my good health did not lie in the physical training which I received in Biscoe’s school.”

One school event that TCW often talked about with great excitement was Biscoe’s brilliant idea of giving visiting dignitaries a ‘human’ welcome, as he used to call it. I didn’t quite believe this, maybe because I couldn’t visualise how it was done, until I chanced across a photograph of one such welcome in a book by Biscoe (1951:153). My excitement at finding photographic ‘evidence’ of what I had always thought of as a fanciful story was tempered by the fact that my grandfather had passed away a few years before and I could not share my find with him, nor could I ask him if he had been part of the welcome. I know now that he couldn't have been, as this 'living welcome' was staged only twice, both times after TCW had left school. Biscoe (1951) gives an account of organizing the first such welcome for the visit of the Viceroy of India, Lord Hardinge, and his wife to Kashmir in 1912:

“P.W.D. officers very kindly lent me a wire hawser…We anchored one end in the school compound and brought it over the roof of the school building, then across the river and fixed it to a tall tree on the opposite bank. On this hawser we hung the letters WELCOME, made of bamboos on which sixteen boys were to take their place, the boys being dressed in the colours of the Union Jack. This ‘living welcome’ was to hang thirty feet above the water …. Lord Hardinge told me afterwards that when he first saw the ‘welcome’ he thought that the letters were made of bunting, but just before the state barge reached it, I blew a whistle and immediately the ‘letters’ plunged into the river and swam ashore. Lord Hardinge doffed his cocked hat and cheered the boys.” (T-B 1951, p 151).

A Living Welcome, from C.E. Tyndale-Biscoe (1951), p. 153. Reproduced by kind permission of Hugh Tyndale-Biscoe.

That the school provided a well-rounded education to the youth of Kashmir is obvious from TCW’s description of the awards handed out during the Annual Day functions.:

“The annual day function was almost invariably presided over by the Resident in Kashmir or some high dignitaries from British India, whose honoured wife, if present, gave away the prizes, medals, trophies and other decorations to winning individuals and teams. Academic distinctions i.e. proficiency in studies, though they had their rightful place in such awards, what was noteworthy was the large number of the prizes awarded for proficiency in games, ground as well as aquatic, and for social service such as cleanliness, saving lives in fire and drowning etc., helping the weak and the indigent and so on.”

"The Annual Day was held generally in the central school, but sometimes also outside. One of the most noteworthy of such functions outside was the one held in my school days at Gagribal point in Dal lake, where a most interesting demonstration was given of the slave trade which flourished in those days in African colonies and did not fail to contaminate the source of Colonialism and to bring about a revulsion of feelings against it in the public’s mind. Biscoe’s show was a most telling condemnation of the social evil as it prevailed in those days. I am not sure if Biscoe’s voice against the evil as demonstrated in the show was not as strong as that of any other individual here in this tiny state or elsewhere in the world. For myself it was a lesson which I could not forget in life, i.e., the bane of degrading life by enslaving it.”

An amusing and telling vignette that TCW paints is about the importance of passing examinations, illustrating Biscoe’s own sentiments when he says, “Before I came to this country I thought examinations most uninteresting, but here I find them full of interest and humour” (T-B, 1920:32). He was, of course, referring to the wide-scale cheating that was endemic, but also to the huge amount of fuss around the event. TCW recalls:

“The last recollection of school days relates to our Matriculation examination 1909. There was only one examination centre and that was the Sri Pratap College hall ... One should have seen the furore that there was in the college compound when the examinees came out for the intervals between the two meetings, morning and afternoon. Friends, relatives, Susralwalas, and all had come with sweets, baked mutton, cooked koftas, rogni roti and all that to regale their heroes with, for they were regarded in those days nothing short of heroes, little Caesers and Napoleons, though the countries they conquered were only some little books of indifferent merit which were prescribed as the course for the Matriculation by Punjab University to which the educational institutions in the state were affiliated. One should have also witnessed the tension which existed in our minds when the result was about to be announced. We were asked to collect it at the vice principal Mr Lucey’s residence in Sheikh Bag, made to stand in a row and then the result was announced one by one. When the time came for my name, so tense was the excitement that I thought that my heart would cease beating. Once the magic word “pass” came out of Lucey’s mouth, I jumped with joy and ran to announce this heart-elevating news to my kith and kin who were gathered in large numbers outside the premises. Jubilations and felicitations continued at home for several days which almost made us feel that we were made of some other clay than which goes in the composition of common mortals.”

TCW didn’t distinguish himself in school – he was an average student and an average athlete.

“For myself, I never had a distinction of ever winning a prize or distinction in school days. The nearest I came to it was when I succeeded in getting the much prized remark “Fair” on my English composition from Mr. Lucey, the vice principal who, himself a great scholar, somewhat of a taciturn temperament was very chary of giving any high complimentary remarks such as, “Good” or “Very good”, to say nothing of “Excellent” to any student on his home or class work, at least in my class.”

Academic achievement and plaudits came later when he stood first in J & K State in B.A History honours, and passed the M.A. History examination with a Distinction, earning him a place in the Roll of Honour in Government College, Lahore.

Photograph of senior school from school log for 1910. TCW is possibly the boy in the front row seventh from left. Reproduced by the kind permission of the Master, Fellows and Scholars of Jesus College, Cambridge.

But Biscoe must have recognised some talents and qualities in TCW because he became a well-wisher, friend and mentor for life and helped him later on in all manner of ways, such as in assisting him to secure an exemption from the payment of tuition fees once he passed out of school and joined the local college. “The exemption was secured by denoting my father’s salary in the police department as a very small amount “plus loot” in his own inimitable style of describing the truth. The plea did the trick all right. On my part I recompensed him for his affectionate regard by taking pride in calling myself a ‘Biscoe boy’ and trying to deserve the name as it was a synonym for the brave and straightforward alumni of C.M.S School.”

Much later, in 1944, Biscoe wrote him a personal letter of encouragement and appreciation when he resigned from government service over a matter of principle. On his return from his near-drowning adventure in Djibouti, Biscoe invited him to a function at his house to meet the staff and senior students of the school to tell them of his experiences on the continent, as he was the first among the Biscoe boys to go overseas and return. “It was altogether a pleasant evening I spent with my friends of CMS and when I related the story about my drowning off the African coast they felt proud of the alma mater which taught us the art of swimming, paddling and social service in emergencies when danger to life was all too imminent”

Biscoe dedicated a life-time of service to the cause of education in Kashmir, spending the best part of 60 years in Srinagar. He uprooted himself reluctantly from the State in 1947, soon after India became independent, but only because he was advised that his presence might cause difficulties for the new Principal. He moved to Rhodesia, where he passed away eighteen months later at the age of 86. During his brief stay there, he worked on his autobiography and remained in touch with his trusted staff, offering them advice and encouragement. Each of his letters ended with the words, “My body is in Africa but my soul is in Kashmir” (H T-B: 2019:292). At the time of his departure, there were six CMS schools for boys and the first school for girls, the Mallinson School, which was started in 1912. [5] After 1947, at least four Chief Ministers and several government ministers and senior bureaucrats were alumni of the Biscoe school. The six schools underwent several upheavals and reversals of fortune in the decades that followed; at the present moment there is a functioning Biscoe School for boys and a Mallinson’s School for girls in Srinagar. It was my intention to visit the Biscoe School and see if it still adheres to, or has appropriately reinvented, some of the features that made it unique, but this visit will now have to wait for better times.

Reverend Tyndale-Biscoe’s record of converting Kashmiris to Christianity, as well his bosses at the Christian Mission Society might have wished, was not impressive, but he did succeed in mass conversions in the hearts and minds of the boys in his charge, by moulding them into well-rounded, strong and honest citizens, with a desire to help the weak, poor and oppressed – men and women, humans as well as animals - in effect converting them to his version of Christianity. TCW was one of these ‘Biscoe’ boys and this is the story of the school through his eyes. There must be countless others who were similarly influenced.

TCW never lost his boundless enthusiasm and affection for his alma mater and credited the school with shaping his character, instilling a long-lasting love of sports, and indeed making him the person that he was – upright, honest, imbued with a spirit of service and respect for all men and religions. His honesty was legendary, and it was said about him that he would not even accept a bouquet of flowers as a gift in his professional capacity. He believed in the power of education and was proud of his association with the Vasanta and Kashyapa High Schools for Girls that were run by the Women’s Welfare Trust in Srinagar. Given his impoverished family background, it would be no exaggeration to say that that had it not been for the education that he received in the school, and the support he received from Biscoe later, he might not have been in a position to pursue a university education, leading to an illustrious career in the civil service, where he rose to be the first Kashmiri head of a government department and was made Rai Bahadur for his services, a title that he returned to the State after India became independent. Tara Chand Wazir was his own man. His profound appreciation for Biscoe and his love for his alma mater did not prevent him from being anti-colonial in his intellectual and political stance. He was also deeply troubled by the proselytizing mission, though he did acknowledge that he had benefited from Biscoe’s sermons on the life of Christ, just as he did from his exposure to and study of other religions. He was a diehard supporter of Gandhi and Nehru, an admirer of Annie Besant and a member of the Theosophical Society.

Let me return to the beginning: TCW’s pithy remark about the ‘Biscoeism’ in his blood asserting itself off the coast of Djibouti,12 years after he had passed out of school, says it all. “Once a Biscoe boy, always a Biscoe boy” was a mantra that he repeated throughout his life.

Cecil Tyndale-Biscoe with the staff of CMS School. Rekha Wazir's personal collection

[1] I have extracted my grandfather’s account of the incident, as well as of his years at the Biscoe School and the impact it had on him, from his unpublished memoirs (Wazir 1970).

[2] To illustrate his point, Biscoe (1920:75-6) provides the example of the father of one his students, who earns twenty rupees per month as a clerk in a government office. His office is 32 miles away, so he has to maintain two establishments, his own (costing nearly twenty rupees), and that of his family in Srinagar (also costing about the same). In addition, he employs two clerks to help him do his work at a salary of 7-8 rupees. These two clerks can also not survive on their pay alone, and so on.

[3] Fortunately, Biscoe wrote extensively about his experiences in Kashmir, leaving us with a rich source of background information, anecdotes, and insights into his unique methods as an educationist. His son Eric Tyndale-Biscoe, who worked at the school in various capacities, including as the Principal, has also written the story of the school. Most recently his grandson, Hugh Tyndale-Biscoe (2019), himself a student at the school, has added to this resource by bringing the narrative up to date, adding invaluable information from archival sources and providing a more nuanced, complex and personal perspective on the school that takes his grandfather’s name.

[4] Dunking children in the ice-cold waters of the Jhelum in mid-winter is probably a step too far but caning with stinging nettle was a standard punishment in certain institutions, even in the fifties and sixties when I was in school in Srinagar, though thankfully not in mine, and is perhaps still practiced.

[5] No doubt there is a story to be told about Muriel Mallinson and role of the Mallinson School for Girls in educating a generation of Kashmiri women who then went on to occupy prominent positions in Kashmir, but that is for someone else to narrate.

References

Khan, Mohammad Ishaq, (1978), History of Srinagar 1847-1947: A Study in Socio-Cultural Change, Srinagar, Aamir Publications.

Moorcroft, William & George Trebeck, Travels in the Himalayan Provinces of Hindustan and the Punjab, in Ladakh and Kashmir, 2 vols, London 1841.

Studdert-Kennedy, Gerald, 'Cecil Earle Tyndale-Biscoe' in H.C.G. Mathew and Brian Harrison ed. (2004), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press, Vol. 5.

Temple, Richard (1887), Journals kept in Hyderabad, Kashmir, Sikkim and Nepal, vol. II., London: W.H. Allan & Co., edited by his son Richard Carnac Temple.

Tyndale-Biscoe, C.E., (1920), Character Building in Kashmir, London: Church Missionary Society.

Tyndale-Biscoe, C.E. (1925), Kashmir in Sunlight and Shade, London: Seeley, Service & Co. Limited.

Tyndale-Biscoe, C.E., (1951), Tyndale-Biscoe of Kashmir: An Autobiography, London: Seeley, Service & Co. Limited.

Tyndale-Biscoe, E.D. (1930), 50 Years Against the Stream: The Story of a School in Kashmir 1880-1930, Mysore, Wesleyan Mission Press.

Tyndale-Biscoe, Hugh (2019), The Missionary and the Maharajas: Cecil Tyndale-Biscoe and the Making of Modern Kashmir, London, I.B. Tauris.

Wazir,T.C, (1970), 'My Life Story, the Lessons it has Taught me – 77 Years in Retrospect', Unpublished.

Rekha Wazir is the Co-Founder, Co-Director (1994-2007)
and currently Senior Associate of
International Child Development Initiatives,
Leiden, The Netherlands.
She is the granddaughter of Tara Chand Wazir.

30 Comments

Kashmir under lockdown: 'a prison sentence without the pronouncement'

8/21/2019

2 Comments

A Kashmiri academic who wishes to remain anonymous has sent KashmirConnected this account of the lockdown in the Kashmir Valley and thoughts on the scrapping of Kashmir's special status in the Indian constitution.

Srinagar's Lal Chowk during the lockdown - photo: Economic Times

“So how are you feeling about all this?”, asked a friend about the abrogation of Article 370 and the unprecedented security lockdown in Kashmir by the Indian government on August 5, 2019. I could not come up with a coherent answer. I had spent two days in an ATM queue in order to get enough cash to buy air tickets to fly out of Kashmir with my kids (debit and cards don’t work because of the network has been shut down) followed by half a day of waiting at the airport because of flight delays (no phones work so you can’t call the airport to check your flight status). And this was a relatively good day - the previous five days we weren’t allowed to move out of our house by armed Indian paramilitary men. I couldn’t get medicine for my four-year old who had a chest infection, supplies were running out and from day 3 on, we had no electricity. Most of my friends and neighbours - activists, trade union leaders and mainstream politicians - had been arrested and since the jails in Kashmir were all full, more than seventy had been sent to a prison in Agra, India. No contact with the outside world - it was basically a prison sentence without the pronouncement.

How does one describe such a catastrophic chain of events adequately and objectively, especially if one is caught up in it? All I could say at the time was that it was a Holocaust by other means - a State-led attempt at the erasure of an identity, a body of rights and citizenship; the attempted erasure of a community’s place in the world.

People who don’t know much about Kashmir wonder what warranted this sudden and unilateral revocation of a Constitutional provision that has allowed the people of Jammu and Kashmir to have their own Constitution, flag and the right to define its own citizenship with rights and privileges for nearly 70 years? The answer is the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (India's ruling party led by Narendra Modi) majoritarian agenda of homogenizing India after the pattern of an idealized Hindu past. Coming to power with a huge majority in the national elections in May 2019 has meant for the BJP the overt execution of its covert ‘Hindutva’ (anti-minority) agenda. The Indian Muslim who had hitherto been ‘othered’ and lynched with chilling regularity by Hindu extremists across the northern states, is now facing a State-led assault on her rights and citizenship. The abrogation of Article 370 in Kashmir and the National Register of Citizens that is externing hundreds of Assamese Muslims as ‘illegal immigrants’ are two sides of the same coin.

Police in Kashmir confronting protesters, December 2018 - photo: Wikimedia Commons

But because Kashmir is a potential nuclear flashpoint, it gets the international attention that Assam does not. Which is why, after having their rights taken away, the citizens of Jammu and Kashmir were cut off from the rest of the world by the longest, most comprehensive communications blackout by a democratic regime in the history of the modern world. The Indian government basically enforced a brutal invisibilisation of Kashmiri expression after it dismembered the Kashmiris’ legal right to exist by their own definition. It was insult and injury heaped on too close together to be distinguishable.

What rankled most was that the beaming Indian Prime Minister told the Kashmiris in a televised broadcast, that the mutilation of their state and identity was, ‘for them to progress at the same rate as the rest of India’. It was the White Man’s burden- repackaged as the Brown Man’s. Except it wasn’t.

As figures from an Indian statistical survey show the erstwhile state is ahead of the national average in most Human Development Indicators:-

Even in terms of education, where the Princely state of Kashmir started far behind the rest of the country, it does better than the national average in literacy figures for both men (89 %) and women (69 %) against the national figures (85.7% and 68.4% respectively).

When comparing indicators across states the most striking fact is that Jammu and Kashmir has one of the lowest levels of poverty in India -10.3 per cent when the corresponding figure for India is 21.9 per cent [1]. It also has the highest percentage of people who have their own houses (96.7%) after Bihar (96.8%) [2]. Life expectancy at birth in Jammu and Kashmir (72.6 years) is again higher than the national average (68.8 years), even after the conflict that prevails.

This narrative of ‘accelerated development’ being pushed by the Indian government is not supported by facts at all. Instead it has been constructed to deflect international outrage over the government’s legal and security moves that have exacerbated a three decades old conflict and destabilised a region that is a potential nuclear flashpoint.

But this narrative is failing to find enough support outside India simply because of the enormity of the detentions and the draconian security measures the government has executed in the Kashmir valley. A population of 8 million people are restricted to their houses by 0.5 million troops, 4,000 political leaders (both mainstream and separatist) trade union leaders and activists are under arrest and all phone lines, mobiles and internet services for the entire region have been disabled.

The government has tried to defend these actions saying they are all in the interest of security but as Amartya Sen argues “That is the classic colonial excuse. That’s how the British ran …(this) country for 200 years.’’ The BBC, Al Jazeera and Reuters have been covering the blackout and the effect it has had on people’s lives, especially access to food and medicines. Even academic publication like the Lancet have written about the effect the restrictions have had on medical and emergency services, and the resultant effect on mental health.

With street protests continuing in the valley and Kargil, it is unlikely that the curbs on public liberty will be lifted anytime soon. But, until then, as Martin Luther King said “in the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends”.

[1] Press Note on Poverty Estimates in India based on the 68th Round of NSS (2011-12) data on
Household Consumer Expenditure Survey, March 19, 2012, Planning Commission, Government
of India, p.7

[2] Census of India 2011

2 Comments

How Indian is Kashmir? - Andrew Whitehead

8/19/2019

1 Comment

Earlier this month, the Indian government removed the special constitutional status of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. At the same time, the government announced that that the state was to be cut in two and that both parts would be turned to Union Territories, largely governed from Delhi. Jammu and Kashmir is India’s only state where Muslims are in a majority. It has been fought over between India and Pakistan ever since independence in 1947, and for the past thirty years has endured a separatist insurgency which has claimed, according to the conservative estimate given by the Indian government, at least 42,000 lives. This was the biggest change in its constitutional status since the 1950s.

Support for the move extended well beyond the ranks of India’s governing Hindu nationalist BJP – and what opposition there was focussed on the manner in which the changes were introduced more than the measures themselves. In the state itself, Hindu-majority Jammu and largely Buddhist Ladakh – both of which are content being part of India and resent the association with rebellious Kashmir – broadly endorsed the changes. But in the Kashmir Valley, overwhelmingly Muslim and the heartland of the Kashmiri language and culture, the move was greeted by a sullen fury and despair.

Map of the former princely state of Jammu + Kashmir - areas under Indian control in lilac, under Pakistan's control in green and under China's control in yellow. The thick red line delineates the Kashmir Valley. Creative Commons - University of Texas

The autonomy promised in Article 370 of the Indian constitution has been greatly diluted over the decades but Kashmiris valued it as a symbol of their identity. The message from Delhi to the seven million people of the Kashmir Valley now seems to be: you are Indians, whether you like it or not! And most Kashmiris don’t like it.

Ahead of the announcement, the Indian authorities imposed an extraordinary range of security measuresacross the Kashmir Valley to pre-empt protests and unrest: tens of thousands of additional troops were sent there; tourists and Hindu pilgrims were told to leave; schools and colleges were ordered to close; public gatherings were banned; freedom of movement was curtailed; the internet and both mobile and landline phone connections were switched off; and hundreds of people were arrested, including the leaders of constitutional political parties who have at times allied with the BJP. Kashmir was locked up and sealed off.

KASHMIR’S ACCESSION TO INDIA

The Kashmir crisis arose from a botched independence settlement when Britain pulled out of India in 1947. Jammu and Kashmir was a vast area stretching from plains north of Punjab deep into the Himalayas, and with no common thread beyond being part of the same princely state. It was up to princely rulers to decide whether to accede to independent India or to the explicitly Muslim nation of Pakistan. Three-quarters of Jammu and Kashmir’s citizens were Muslims; the ruling family were Hindus. The maharaja dithered but – his hand forced by an invasion of Pakistani tribal fighters – he eventually signed up with India and an airlift of Indian troops successfully defended the Kashmiri capital from the invaders.

The decision to accede to India was also supported – at the time – by the maharaja’s most vociferous opponent, Sheikh Abdullah, a radical Kashmiri nationalist. The accession crisis was accompanied by a popular political mobilisation in Kashmir from which Sheikh Abdullah emerged as the key figure. At the same time, India and Pakistan went to war over Kashmir. That resulted in an informal partition of the state – though the larger part came under Indian control, including all the Kashmir Valley.India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, promised that Indian troops would withdraw from Kashmir once the invasion threat was banished and that there would then be a plebiscite about the region’s future. Neither promise was kept. But India did refer the Kashmir dispute to the United Nations – and to this day there are UN military observers in both sides of Kashmir, though to no practical purpose.

What became Article 370 of India’s constitution – giving Jammu and Kashmir special status and, on paper at least, considerable autonomy – was endorsed by India’s Constituent Assembly in October 1949 with little debate and no opposition. It was part of a political accommodation intended to make Kashmir comfortable within India – a goal which was never fully achieved. The unilateral tearing up of this special status is seen by many Kashmiris as the end of any aspiration in Delhi to rule Kashmir by consent. For Hindu nationalists, who resent a special status based in part on Kashmir’s Muslim identity, the goal has been to integrate Jammu and Kashmir fully into India – though it’s difficult to see how the revocation of Article 370 will in itself promote development or end terrorism, as the Indian government has claimed.

Sheikh Abdullah, after a few years in power in Srinagar, started talking up the prospect of an independent Kashmir – and that led in 1953 to his dismissal on Delhi’s orders and imprisonment. Ever since then, Delhi has repeatedly interfered in the governance of the state. The rigging of state elections in 1987 was a trigger for the separatist insurgency which erupted two years later – which was also armed, financed and encouraged by Pakistan.

In 2006, Pakistan’s military ruler, General Musharraf, came up with a four-point peace plan for Kashmir, which proposed that both India and Pakistan settle for control of the regions they currently hold and allow a measure of self-governance. The Indian government was keen to take this further – but Musharraf lost power before any substantial progress was made.

For Kashmiris, many of whom hanker for independence, Pakistan’s initiative raised concerns that again the future of their homeland was being decided without their active involvement. And that’s also why there’s such anger in the Kashmir Valley about the scrapping of Article 370. Once more Kashmiris have been denied any agency in how their region is governed. What we don’t yet know is how – once the curfew and other restrictions are eased – that anger will be expressed.

This article was first posted on History Workshop Online and is reposted here with their kind permission.

1 Comment

Yet another assault on Kashmir - Chitralekha Zutshi

8/14/2019

7 Comments

The Jamia Masjid in Srinagar, overlooked by Hari Parbat fort

The newly re-elected Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in India has finally taken the step of removing the special status of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), which it has enjoyed since 1949 through Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. Also noteworthy is that Jammu and Kashmir has been stripped of its status as a state and partitioned into two union territories – Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh – ruled directly by the central government. While the former has been promised a legislature in the future, the latter will remain without one.

These measures have been enacted with great speed and without even a semblance of consultation with the J&K leadership or debate in the parliament. And their gravity is evident in the fact that the Kashmir Valley has been under military lockdown since just before the announcement was made.

Article 370 was enshrined into the Indian Constitution as a means to guarantee the autonomy of J&K within the Indian Union. Like all princely states – as it was at the time of Indian independence in 1947 – J&K acceded to India only in the three subjects of Defence, External Affairs and Communications.

Most of the other princely states were integrated beyond those subjects over the next few years, but in part because J&K was disputed territory, and in part because its leadership negotiated for autonomy during the constitutional talks, Article 370 allowed it special privileges. One such privilege was the establishment of its own constituent assembly, which had the power to frame the state’s constitution as well as to make the decision about whether J&K wanted to accede to India in any further subjects.

That the BJP would decide to eliminate Article 370 in all but name is not surprising, since it had led a movement against the state’s special status in the 1950s during the party’s earlier incarnation as the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, and it has been consistently against the Article ever since. This movement had far-reaching consequences and eventually led to the downfall of J&K’s first government – the one that had negotiated its special status – in 1953. Subsequent state governments were willing to join hands with the central government to erode the Article over the following years, which has nonetheless remained a powerful symbol of the pact between India and one of its constituent units.

The presidential order that extends all provisions of the Indian Constitution to Jammu and Kashmir, thereby negating Article 370, has also rendered unconstitutional Article 35A of the constitution. This article had been introduced into the constitution through a 1954 presidential order, made possible under Article 370, which gave the J&K state legislature the right to define permanent residents of the state, as well as to delineate their rights and privileges. In effect, this article prevented outsiders from settling in and buying property in the state.

The BJP’s explanation for its move is that the special status has prevented the state’s economic development and thus encouraged disgruntlement among the local population. By this logic, the BJP is acting no differently to earlier governments at the centre, which have thrown economic aid at J&K in the hope that its population will be pacified.

But this has not solved the underlying political grievances of the Kashmiri Muslim population, which has felt increasingly disenfranchised in and alienated from India, precisely because of the centre’s high-handedness. The insurgency against the Indian state, which began more than thirty years ago, continues to rage and is likely to strengthen as a result of this latest incursion by the centre. It confirms what Kashmiris have known for decades – that for India, Kashmir is no more than a colony; a territory devoid of people.

So it is difficult to understand how the BJP expects development – if that is even possible under such conditions – to resolve India’s Kashmir problem. Perhaps its gambit is what Kashmiri Muslims have been fearing for a long time; namely, to circumscribe the Kashmiri Muslim population itself.

This has now become a possibility with the abrogation of Article 35A and the ability of non-residents to buy property and settle in the union territory. This will ultimately alter its demographic composition from being a Muslim-majority to a Hindu-majority region. It is the major reason that Pakistan has registered protest against this move, because its claim on the region will cease to be valid if Jammu and Kashmir no longer has a Muslim majority.

Ultimately, the assault on J&K’s special status and statehood is an assault on the idea of India as a secular, plural and federal polity itself. It reveals the much larger project of the BJP, which is to turn India into a unitary, Hindu nation-state.

India claimed Kashmir in 1947 as a Muslim-majority state precisely to prove its secularism. And its special relationship with J&K was one of the many ways in which India constitutionally integrated different regions and their peculiar demands into its federal structure. That consensus is now relegated to the past and has been replaced by the muscular, militaristic idea of India as a centralised Hindu nation. Regardless of the legal challenges to these particular measures against J&K, that idea is here to stay.

This article was first posted on Asia Dialogue - it is reposted with their permission and that of Dr Zutshi

Chitralekha Zutshi is a Professor in the Department of History at the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia.

7 Comments

Why India Owes Kashmir Independence by Zareer Masani

8/10/2019

3 Comments

Jawaharlal Nehru with Minoo Masani, 1945

My memories of Kashmir go back to the 1950s and my childhood, when my father, Minoo, and his close friend, Jayaprakash Narayan, led a small but highly vocal campaign to remind their former colleague, Jawaharlal Nehru, of his promise of a plebiscite in Kashmir and to demand the release of its most popular leader, Sheikh Abdullah. Although Abdullah, dubbed Sher-e-Kashmir by Nehru himself, had been his friend and ally against the erstwhile Maharaja Hari Singh, Nehru had allowed his own sentimental attachment to Kashmir, the home of his ancestors, to overcome his political scruples. The result had been the imprisonment of Abdullah for eleven long years, from 1953 to 1964, while Kashmir was governed by a combination of corrupt stooges, rigged elections and military occupation.

I remember learning from Father that a plebiscite, initially promised by India, meant a free vote, under UN supervision, in which the people of Kashmir could choose among India, Pakistan and independence. Father explained that the same majoritarian principle on which we had annexed the Muslim-ruled princely states of Hyderabad and Junagadh meant that we should allow the Muslim majority population of Kashmir, not its Hindu Maharaja, to decide its fate. The Congress had decreed that sauce for the Muslim goose wasn’t sauce for the Hindu gander, sending in a military force in its so-called police action against the Nizam of Hyderabad, while doing much the same in Kashmir, supposedly to ward off Pakistani infiltrators.

The unofficial justification that emerged in supposedly secular Congress circles was that Kashmir, as India’s only Muslim-majority state, was a symbol of our secularism, as opposed to Pakistan. By a curious logic, the same secularists, led by Congress Muslims, explained that Indian Muslims would be massacred by Hindus if we surrendered Kashmir. What had previously been admitted as a disputed territory, whose people deserved self-determination, had suddenly become an inseparable part of our Indian Union.

My first visit to Kashmir was with both my parents way back in the summer of 1961, when we stayed at the beautiful Lake Palace Hotel and were wined and dined by its Oberoi family owners. Mother ordered carpets, made to exquisite Persian designs, from Srinagar’s foremost carpet workshop, while I bought myself smart jade cufflinks, made by local craftsmen. Kashmir still had ample tourism and flourishing handicrafts, and the countryside with its wonderful lakes, mountains, flowers and Chinar trees was safe enough for us to picnic wherever we chose.

I was a teenage fly on the wall as Father, then leader of the recently formed Swatantra Party, had friendly talks with Kashmiri luminaries like the Mirwaiz Farooq and leaders of the imprisoned Sheikh Abdullah’s Plebiscite Front. Their desire for independence from both India and Pakistan was loud and clear, and the corruption and unpopularity of the Indian-imposed quisling regime of Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed were unmistakable wherever we went. Kashmiri self-determination was even then far too unpopular in India for Father to get it officially adopted by his Swatantra Party, so he made it clear publicly that this was his personal view, not the party’s.

I remember well the euphoria in our home in 1964 when Nehru, weakened by his disastrous China War, gave in to persuasion and protest by Father and JP, released Sheikh Abdullah and sent him off to Islamabad to negotiate a settlement with Pakistan’s President, Marshal Ayub Khan. Ayub had demonstrated his good intentions by keeping Pakistan out of India’s China War, so we didn’t have to fight on two fronts, and Nehru was suitably grateful.

It looked like the fifteen-year-long Kashmir dispute, the main bone of Indo-Pak contention, was about to be resolved and Ayub was about to visit Nehru. Father had himself already met Ayub and been impressed by his friendly feelings towards India, and so was my maternal uncle, Rajeshwar Dayal, then Indian High Commissioner in Pakistan.

I remember Sheikh Sahib coming to dinner at our Bombay home, accompanied by his faithful lady friend, Mridula Sarabhai, and my prurient, teenage fascination with their relationship. Seeing masculine Mridula in her Pathan clothes, I needed little convincing that their friendship was platonic. And then came a sudden thunderbolt from the blue. Nehru, apparently indestructible, suddenly suffered his second, fatal stroke and died. Abdullah was genuinely grief-stricken at the loss of his old friend and opponent. The tripartite talks with Ayub stalled, and India and Pakistan drifted towards their 1965 war.

As Bombay observed wartime blackouts, with very sporadic Pakistani bombing, I tried to argue the case for Kashmiri self-determination with jingoistic fellow students at Elphinstone College. I was told to go and live in Pakistan. The specious Indian response about our broken plebiscite promise was that it was conditional on Pakistan withdrawing from Azad Kashmir. Pakistan naturally responded that India should simultaneously withdraw from the Valley, but India refused any such solution, even under UN supervision.

Kashmir meanwhile resumed some semblance of normality after the Indira-Sheikh Accord of 1974, with a state government led by Sheikh Abdullah, who had been overwhelmingly voted in by the first free elections in two decades. It looked as though there would at least be some provincial autonomy, under our Constitution, which guaranteed Kashmir special status, and most important of all, prohibited buying of property by non-Kashmiris. This was an important safeguard, since we imperialistic Indians had already swamped Goa, reducing their indigenous populations to minorities in the territories we swallowed up.

My next visit to Kashmir was in 1987, as a BBC producer with my distinguished colleague Mark Tully, to cover the state election, generally regarded as a turning point in radicalising Kashmiri Muslims. Abdullah had passed on, but his son Farooq and Farooq's mother, Begum Abdullah, were leading the main regional party, the erstwhile Plebiscite Front, renamed the National Conference. It was an open question whether their commitment to secular regional autonomy would satisfy the more militant Hurriyat leaders and the Mirwaiz on the one hand, or the Centre on the other. The prospect of a settlement with Pakistan, revived at Indira and Bhutto’s Simla Summit, had again evaporated, thanks to resurgent chauvinism on both sides.

Mark and I stayed at the Lake Palace Hotel, which, to our dismay, had declined into crumbling elegance, no longer a showpiece and playground for the Oberois. We were also struck by the general decline in the surrounding Srinagar economy. Tourism, traditionally Kashmir’s staple, had fallen off drastically, discouraged by chronic Indo-Pak border skirmishes, which had also spilled over into the beginnings of Islamist terrorism among Kashmiris themselves. Their desperation had been increasingly fuelled by the bullying and violence of India’s Border Security Force and occupying Army, made up mostly of Punjabi Sikhs and Hindus, who were openly contemptuous of Kashmiris and insensitive to their feelings.

The decline was evident in the poor quality of the handicrafts now on offer, the loss of traditional weaving skills and the evaporation of valuable cash crops like saffron, apricots and walnuts. Most tragic of all was the disappearance of what used to be called ‘Kashmiriyat’, a unique culture of pluralistic, non-sectarian tolerance and assimilation. This was undoubtedly India’s greatest crime against the Kashmiri people, and its victims were inevitably Hindu Pandits, who had co-existed happily with their Muslim neighbours for a millennium. They were now attacked and mostly expelled from their homes in the Valley, much as the Muslim minority had been ethnically cleansed from Jammu.

The state now veered for the next three decades between rigged elections, corrupt and unstable governments, Islamist terrorism and Governor’s rule. This was much the situation inherited by the BJP and its Hindutva brigades from the ostensibly secular, but almost equally chauvinistic, Congress.

Arguably, if anyone could have negotiated a settlement with Pakistan of the Kashmir dispute, it was a Modi Government with impeccable Hindu credentials and a politically unassailable position. It might not have been difficult to make a case that Kashmir is in no way either strategically or economically necessary to our sprawling Indian Union. On the contrary, we have poured public funds into bankrolling a corrupt, client political class in Kashmir, and then protecting them from their own constituents with our military and police forces. Militarily, it remains a huge defence burden on us to defend, with its narrow land border with India cut off for several winter months. An independent Kashmir, with its neutrality guaranteed by the UN, might, on the other hand, have been a valuable buffer state between us and Pakistan, much as Nepal and Bhutan are between us and China. Culturally, even the most casual visitor to Kashmir would realise how alien India is to its language, culture and national identity, especially in our current Hindutva incarnation.

Instead, our BJP masters have chosen to declare all-out war on Kashmiriyat, stamping out its constitutional status by presidential decree and hoping to suppress opposition by blanketing the state with our military. This is an option that would have been unthinkable under either Nehru or Indira Gandhi despite their chauvinism on Kashmir, and closely mirrors China’s swallowing of Tibet. What is even more astonishing is the absence of the kind of defence of Kashmiri rights that my father and JP mounted in the 1950s and 1960s. With a couple of honourable exceptions, the self-appointed, liberal guardians of Indian secularism have remained conspicuously silent on Kashmir.

As a historian, I can only advise our current Hindutva masters that Kashmir will be too bitter a pill for even them to swallow. Kashmiri identity, dating back a millennium, has been forged into irreversible nationhood by our Indian chauvinism, a process which autocratic constitutional changes cannot reverse. Instead, what we have achieved is to turn the world’s most tolerant Muslim country into a hotbed of Islamist terrorism, which will continue to torment our military and any settlers we try to import for generations to come.

It’s a terrorism which could easily develop cross-border links with the Afghan Taliban in neighbouring Pakistan and with disgruntled Muslims elsewhere in the subcontinent. While our BJP masters have undoubtedly held the high moral ground in their championship of Muslim women’s rights, and especially the abolition of triple talaq, their assault on basic Kashmiri human rights is a war they will never win and one we could have done without, given the major economic challenges ahead of us.

Zareer Masani is a historian and broadcaster. This article was first posted on the website of the magazine Open and is reposted here with the kind permission of Zareer Masani and Open.

3 Comments

Jammu & Kashmir and Trifurcation: why it matters - by Amina Mahmood Mir

9/30/2018

5 Comments

Amid reports that India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, is considering dividing in three the disputed state of Jammu & Kashmir, Amina Mahmood Mir looks at what's at stake:

The Kashmir conflict started at the time of the partition of British India in 1947. It is a struggle for the right to self-determination. It is also a geopolitical crisis, as both India and Pakistan continue to claim the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. With the passage of time, the conflict has become more complicated. The three visible political layers of the Kashmir conflict are international (between India and Pakistan), inter-regional (between the regions administered by India and by Pakistan) and sub-regional (within the regions administered by India and Pakistan, for instance, between Jammu and Srinagar on the Indian side and between Muzaffarabad and Gilgit Baltistan in the Pakistani side of Kashmir). There's an overlap between inter-regional and sub-regional politics.

The former princely state of Jammu & Kashmir

The concept of trifurcation - dividing into three constituent parts - relates to Indian-administered Kashmir. It would divide the state of Jammu and Kashmir into three separate Union Territories so ending the unified governance of the state. Since 1948, Indian-administered Kashmir has consisted of three regions: Jammu, Kashmir (that is, the Kashmir Valley) and Ladakh. All these regions have a distinct cultural, ethnic and religious identity and different historical backgrounds. It is not an easy task to administer these diverse regions in a unified system of governance and the increasingly evident sense of resentment at the form of administration can be traced back before partition.

The root cause of this resentment is straightforward: Jammu and Kashmir is an artificial construct. The erstwhile state was constructed from five very different regions through the Treaty of Amritsar. In 1846 the Dogra ruler, Gulab Singh, bought the Kashmir Valley from the British Empire for 7.5 million Rupees. He was already in possession of Jammu and Ladakh. The Dogra rulers later extended their regime to Gilgit Baltistan. It is debatable whether Dogra rule was legitimate and if so, what the basis was for any legitimate claim to the territory the Dogra rulers governed.

This is important - because the contemporary politics of Indian-administered Kashmir is the legacy of that rule. The present resentment is not because of differences between Jammu, Ladakh and Kashmir but because of the creation of an illegitimate state by combining all these regions without public consent. Therefore, it is not appropriate to blame these regions for demanding the greater autonomy and division because as mentioned earlier, their demands have a historical context.

Graphic courtesy of The Tribune: https://www.tribuneindia.com/2002/20020713/windows/main1.htm

The reason for the illegality of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir is the absence of public consent. The governments of India and Pakistan - as well as previous rulers, especially the Dogra dynasty - lacked such consent. The buying of Kashmir and extending of their rule to the other regions through power politics is a convincing demonstration that Dogra rule lacked legitimacy and that the creation of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir was not based on public consent. The same is true of India and Pakistan and their rule over parts of the former princely state - unless they acquire legitimacy by conducting a plebiscite.

The idea of trifurcation has, ever since 1948, being among options being discussed for the future of the state, because of the very different sentiments of the various constituent regions. A. G. Noorani has written about an intelligence report sent to the then prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, about the growing agitation in Jammu province for a "zonal plebiscite". It is important to differentiate, however, between past events the contemporary political situation. Political dissent in the past was in the context of partition and the politics of the demand for a plebiscite, and later it was followed by the alleged discriminatory policies of the state government and the alienation of Jammu and Ladakh. The division of British India on communal lines has also shaped the politics of Jammu and Kashmir. And the discriminatory colonial policies of Dogra rule against Muslims in Kashmir and reflecting Jammu as homeland has been considered as the point when the regionalization of the state started.

The reason why trifurcation has come to the fore is evident in the term by which the dispute over the region is described. The conflict between India and Pakistan is popularly known as the Kashmir conflict - even though Kashmir is just one of the regions under dispute. It is as if Jammu and Ladakh disappear from the frame. The counter-argument for this descriptive term is that the Kashmir Valley has suffered the most because of the gross human rights violations and that other regions are comparatively peaceful. However, these other regions have suffered in other ways from the long-lasting conflict. The demands for trifurcation come from Jammu and Ladakh because of the impact the conflict has had on their development and constitutional rights. The sufferings of the Kashmir Valley should not be used to justify discriminatory policies against Jammu and Ladakh. The call for trifurcation of the state validates the argument that the various regions of the state interpret self-determination differently because of their particular historical and political experiences.

"The Indian Government will create three union territories of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh…... PM Modi is ‘very serious' about Kashmir. He wants to resolve the "Kashmir Issue" before the general elections 2019". This striking headline appeared in a Jammu-based newspaper Early Times in September 2018 and once again generated a debate around trifurcation. The RSS has in the past passed a resolution to divide the state into three along what are communal lines: the Sunni Muslim majority Kashmir Valley, Buddhist majority (with a significant Shia Muslim minority Ladakh) and Hindu majority Jammu. However, Jammu and Ladakh support trifurcation because they want more autonomy and a greater emphasis on development.

In recent years, politics in Jammu and Ladakh has become focused on the possible division of the state. Several political parties and groups have gained popularity at the expense of the Kashmir Valley-centered National Conference and Indian National Congress by successfully building the narrative of autonomy and regionalism. The Jammu Mukti Morcha was formed with the main purpose of advocating the division of the state. A similar-minded group, the Praja Parishad - which is alleged to have received support and money at one time from the Maharaja - initiated the regional agitation in Jammu in 1952. They have demanded the extension of the Indian constitution and the nullification of article 370 on which the special status of the state of Jammu and Kashmir is based. Their agitation changed the political understanding of the Jammu region while also highlighting the importance of other regions of the state which were otherwise at a disadvantage because of the focus on the politics of the Kashmir Valley. The Parja Parishad later joined Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). While some support the continuing unity of the state, the prevailing sentiment in Jammu is that the region is culturally different from Kashmir and Ladakh. There is strong resentment of the Kashmir Valley because of a perception of the political dominance in the state of Kashmiris, and because of a belief that the Kashmiri demand to uphold article 370 is the cause of economic immiserating across the state.

The situation is not much different in Ladakh. Ladakhis also have this perception of Kashmiri dominance in state politics and of a disrespectful Kashmiri attitude towards them. Ladakh politics has long been about the achievement of self-rule or an autonomous structure of governance. The first such demand was presented in 1949 in the form of a memorandum to the prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, from the president of Ladakh Buddhist Association. This memorandum stated:

"We are a separate nation by all tests - race, religion, culture - determining nationality, the only link connecting us with other people of the state being the bond of common ruler……. Sheikh Abdullah and the people of Kashmir can manage the affairs of their whole country as they wish. However, they do not have the power to appropriate against their will, a people, a separate nation, whom a separate territory... In case the result of the plebiscite is favourable to India, we go a step further than other people of the state in seeking a closer union with that great country and in case it is otherwise, our verdict stands clear and unchallengeable….".

In 1967 an organized struggle was launched in Ladakh to challenge Kashmiri dominance. Campaigners alleged that Ladakh had been treated as a colony by the state government. Similar demands led to the creation of an Autonomous Hill Development Council in 1995. However, many Ladakhis are continuing to press for greater constitutional rights including Union Territory status.

It is concerning to see the grievances these regions express against each other. A significant number of people in the Kashmir Valley believe that Jammu and Ladakh have been collaborating with a colonial-style Indian state and that Kashmiris are the only one to have suffered while struggling for the right to self-determination.

Regionalism is the reality of Kashmir conflict, and it has also shaped the self-determination struggle. For Jammu, self-determination is seen as the achievement of fundamental constitutional, economic and development rights. Ladakh also interprets self-determination as gaining more internal autonomy (within the Indian federation) and greater development. For the Kashmir Valley, it is about getting justice in the face of human rights violations, and - in the eyes of many Kashmiris - setting up a separate, independent state as a remedy.

The question of the hour, however, is whether trifurcation is possible? Is it feasible to divide the disputed territory along communal lines without all the stakeholders being on board?

It is likely to be very challenging to split the state in three. The disputed nature of the state and involvement of the United Nations makes the conflict an international issue. A division into three will also produce more anomalies - for example, Muslim majority areas of Jammu may wish to join the Kashmir Valley. And there's a further complicating factor - the involvement of China makes it very hard for India to give Ladakh a Union Territory status (though China does not have any valid reason to oppose trifurcation because it supported Pakistan's move to change the status of Gilgit-Baltistan, which is also disputed territory, to facilitate the CPEC initiative).

Trifurcation seems a very attractive means of addressing the grievances of Ladakh and Jammu while dealing separately with the political problems of Kashmir. However, it is not as easy as it looks. Such a division will add another layer of political complexity to the already complex conflict. And it may not help the Indian government in dealing with Kashmir separately, because it could make it easier to pursue Kashmir's case for secession in the International Court of Justice and the United Nations. The timing of the renewed speculation about trifurcation - as India prepares for a general election - also could be seen as suspicious, and it will be interesting to see what happens next.

Amina Mahmood Mir is a doctoral researcher at the University of Westminster in London. She is currently analyzing how politics works at various levels among the self-determination groups across all the regions involved in the Kashmir conflict. She has been trying to understand the Kashmir conflict for the last ten years. Her ancestral roots lie in the Kashmir Valley but she has travelled, lived and engaged with young people and scholars in both Indian- and Pakistan-administered Jammu & Kashmir. She also advocates for awareness initiatives addressing gender equality and domestic violence in Kashmir.

References

Behera, N. C., 2016. The Kashmir Conflict: Multiple Fault Lines. Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs, 3(1), pp. 41-63.

Lamb, A. (2003). Kashmir: a disputed legacy, 1846-1990. Karachi, Oxford University Press.

Mamta Sharma, N. M., 2014. The Story of Neglect of Jammu Region: An Analysis. International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, 4(10).

Noorani, A.G., 2001. In Pursuit of Trifurcation. Frontline, 18(8), pp. 14-27.

Noorani, A.G., 2016. The Sheikh versus the Pandit: the roots of the Kashmir dispute. [Online]

Om, H., 2010. Ladakhis demand freedom from Kashmir, trifurcation the only way out. [Online]

Puri, B., 2001. Sovereignty, Territorial Integrity and Right to Self-Determination. Economic and Political Weekly, 36(4).

Showkat Ahmad, M. A., 2017. Politics of Intra-Regional Identity and Regional Autonomy Models in Jammu and Kashmir. IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 22(9), pp. 78-90.

Snedden, C. (2015). Understanding Kashmir and Kashmiris. London, Hurst.

Wani, A. A., 2013. Ethnic Identities and the dynamics of regional and subregional assertions in Jammu and Kashmir. Asian Ethnicity, 14(3), pp. 309-341.

Zutshi, C., 2014. Divided Presents and Pasts. Economic & Political Weekly, 49(36).

5 Comments

Rajani Palme Dutt in Kashmir: a documentary note

1/17/2018

2 Comments

This letter from Sheikh Abdullah has come to light in the archives of the Communist Party of Great Britain, held at the People's History Museum in Manchester. It was written to Rajani Palme Dutt, the eminence gris of the British CP (born in Cambridge, his father was a Bengali doctor and his mother was Swedish) who was then making his first trip to India.

Palme Dutt spent four months in India, arriving in late March 1946. During that time, he met not simply the leaders of the CPI but most of the movers and shakers in Indian political life, including Gandhi, Nehru and Patel. Sheikh Abdullah's letter suggests that he was expecting Palme Dutt in Srinagar, and was disappointed that he changed his plans. Abdullah was writing just as the Quit Kashmir campaign - the biggest mass mobilisation that the National Conference ever attempted - was getting going. The 'Bedi' he mentions is the Punjabi Communist B.P.L. Bedi, husband of Freda Bedi, who had been the principal architect of the 'New Kashmir' manifesto two years earlier.

Three days after Sheikh Abdullah wrote this letter, he was arrested - and was only released from the maharaja's jails in September 1947. Palme Dutt did get to Kashmir, but only in July 1946 at the very end of his time in India. He met Bedi in Lahore before travelling to Srinagar, where he talked to Freda Bedi and other key figures in Kashmir - and had the chance to attend part of Sheikh Abdullah's trial in Srinagar and indeed talk to the defendant.

Palme Dutt was nominally travelling around India as a correspondent for the London-based Daily Worker. From Srinagar, he wrote for the paper about Sheikh Abdullah's court hearings.

Palme Dutt's fullest account of his time in the Kashmir Valley was published in the journal he edited, Labour Monthly. The issue for October 1946 reported that Sheikh Abdullah had, the previous month, been sentenced to three years in jail for sedition. It published part of Abdullah's speech from the dock. The same issue included the final section of Palme Dutt's India travel notes - the portions relating to Kashmir, which he described as 'the political storm centre of the Indian fight for freedom', are posted below.

Andrew Whitehead