India
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The Western or American response to “Rage Boy” was a part of the howl of baffled anger after 9/11, in this case assuming Shakeel Bhat was an example of Salafist extremism. The initial Indian response to him and other Kashmiri men—justice based on delegated torture—came out of indifference; since the quashing of the insurgency in the 1990s, no Delhi government had made a serious attempt to repair the lives of the Kashmiri people. For most Indians it remained a detachable problem, and their usual lack of jingoism was forgotten or abolished in the case of Kashmir.
On the road to Gulmarg, once a fashionable mountain resort and now nearly deserted, I saw a helmet every few hundred metres. Every road and every village in the Kashmir valley had bunkers and razor wire and mine detectors. The troops were so deeply embedded or institutionalized that, rather than military rule, it felt like an extended army manoeuvre in which local members of the public were incidental. The Kashmiri economy, which had once been dependent on tourism, was now oriented around supplying the estimated half a million troops in the valley. Everywhere we drove, men were standing at the roadside: a helmet, a dark face from the south, a khaki cape, hands holding an SLR. I sensed that Peerzada, the reporter who was travelling with me, saw them only as an army of occupation—during a demonstration some years earlier, forty-three people had been killed in his village.
Some men from the CRPF, the Central Reserve Police Force, were standing by maple trees. They were national paramilitaries, stationed alongside the predominantly Muslim local Kashmiri police. When we stopped a little way from them, they became very tense. We approached, walking past an old Kashmiri house with a slim verandah, wooden shutters and matted reeds for its roof. The CRPF men wore camouflage jackets, canvas shoes and 16 kg metal breastplates—the army had not bought lighter ceramic ones for them. They came from several different states, including Madhya Pradesh, Kerala and Haryana. Each day they had to stand at this spot for twelve hours, with a break for lunch, which was delivered by a military truck. They were not allowed to sit at any time; they had to be moving targets. At night they stayed in a house fringed with razor wire. I asked a CRPF man from Kerala what he thought of Kashmir. “I don’t like it,” he said forlornly. “It’s very cold in Kashmir.”
What had made these paramilitary police choose this life? Why were they here? Were they the villains or victims too? Up in Ladakh, I met soldiers who had spent two months sitting in bunkers in the snow waiting to fight to defend the border. At their military museum, they even had the effects of dead Pakistani soldiers on display: their snapshots, ID cards, family letters, Qurans. The rival troops skirmished from time to time on the mountainous border. For the Indian government to impose its will on Kashmir, it needed large numbers of recruits, and if the people on whom the state’s will was imposed spoke a different language, looked different and followed another religion, it made the task of suppression easier. Hemant, a Hindu CRPF officer from the plains of India, told me that he would much rather be in a different job, but Srinigar was where he had landed up. He had been posted to Kashmir twice, in the 1990s and in 2004.
“You catch a terrorist,” he said. “You hand him over to the police and off he goes. A local VIP makes a request, and the terrorist is freed. The Kashmiri police are with you when you patrol. I wanted to be a deputed driver at the high court in Delhi, but that didn’t work out for me. My childhood years were spent in Aligarh, and I ended up working on a taxi stand in Panchsheel Park in Delhi. I joined the force and my first posting was by the side of Dal Lake here, at the headquarters of the CRPF. They think of themselves as Pakistanis in this place.” Yet almost everyone I spoke to in Srinagar had no allegiance to Pakistan; they were Kashmiris who had asked for azadi and now wanted an end to the killing. At the start of the insurgency in the 1990s there had been enthusiasm for Pakistan, but it had soon diminished with the realization that the government in Islamabad was a fickle, self-interested ally.
“Sometimes we talk to the Kashmiris,” said Hemant, “but they only want Muslims to live here. They hide and throw hand grenades at us. When there’s an Indo-Pak cricket match they celebrate right in front of us when India loses, and when India wins it’s like there’s been a death in the family.” I told Hemant I had heard some of his officers were corrupt, selling timber and pursuing other lines of private business. “Our officers? Even the bad ones become good when they are patrolling, because you are all together and your life depends on it. You have to show them respect. There’s so much camaraderie because of our fear of the terrorists. My comrades are from all over, from Bihar, Punjab, Himachal, Assam, Kerala. Even the ones from the south learn to speak Hindi in the force. They pick it up. We’re all like brothers when we’re out patrolling, because that man might save you. The officers can behave very badly. In the 49 battalion in Srinagar there was one senior havildar [sergeant] called Bir Chand. The 2IC, the second-in-command, started abusing him when he was giving a report, saying your mother, your sister and all. Bir Chand went to him afterwards and said, ‘I’ve had thirty years in the force, how can you humiliate me in front of my juniors?’
“The 2IC took up his AK-47 and threatened to shoot him. Bir Chand went back and got his own AK-47 and came in the room and the others all pulled him away. After that, he knew he would go to jail, so he turned the gun and shot himself dead. There was a very bad atmosphere in the camp and the DIG had to come and sort it out. The other officers said to him: ‘We won’t let you see the dead body unless you swear on your life that the 2IC will be dismissed.’ He promised, but it didn’t happen: he reported Bir Chand as mentally ill, and the 2IC only got a transfer. If you’re junior in the CRPF, you get scared by the officers. A jawan like me, the officer can just kick you out of the service. In the CRPF, I get a salary of Rs16,000–17,000 a month, and if you get put in a special unit you get some extra, you can even have Rs22,000 ($475) a month. For me, I was able to get my children admitted to a central school and have two months’ home leave and fifteen days’ casual leave every year. If I retire at the age of sixty, I get 50 percent of my salary as a pension for life. So I will do my service.”21
In 1858, a year after the suppression of the great rebellion, a Royal Proclamation was read out in towns across the Bengal, Bombay and Madras presidencies “amid great rejoicing,” with flag-raising ceremonies, brass bands and firework displays, the whole watched over by hand-picked soldiers. The richer Parsis of Bombay decorated the streets with triumphal arches, and in Calcutta the Auckland Hotel displayed a picture of the imperial monarch Victoria surmounted by a cross “above which, in brilliant jets of gas, were the words ‘Long Live our Noble Queen!’ ”22 To the surprise of the viceroy, there was no open unrest. The proclamation pardoned those who had taken up arms unless they had been directly engaged in “the Murder of British Subjects,” and offered a ceremonial contract between the “Native Princes” and the queen. The tone of the proclamation was heavily self-conscious, projecting an image of benign, liberal and just rule—and the idea that empire was a shared endeavour. This was a common enough practice in the nineteenth century, the British ingratiating themselves with existing rulers in order to take over trade and territory. By making Victoria the queen of India, the East India Company—a front for imperial rule—was replaced by direct power. The British were now politically incorporated into India in a way they had never been previously, and the subcontinent could be envisioned through the imperial crown. This image of coherence would be appropriated and expanded by India’s nationalist leaders after independence.
The most important section of the “Royal Proclamation to the Princes, Chiefs, and People of India” specified that in future no attempt would be made to interfere with religious traditions—the doctrine of multiculturalism. Providing a community did not engage in open revolt, it could continue with whatever obscure social and religious practices it liked. In the half-century leading up to the rebellion, English evangelical Christians had promoted the abolition of practices like sati, the burning of supposedly willing wid
ows who did not wish to live without their husbands. Progressive Indian organizations like the Brahmo Samaj had also made vigorous moves to encourage social reform. Although he had never been to India, the anti-slavery man William Wilberforce thought Hinduism “mean, licentious and cruel” and its deities “absolute monsters of lust, injustice, wickedness and cruelty,” whereas “our religion is sublime, pure and beneficent.”23 Now, on the instruction of Queen Victoria, the natives were free to follow whatever they declared their customs to be. The queen proclaimed:
Firmly relying Ourselves on the truth of Christianity, and acknowledging with gratitude the solace of Religion, We disclaim alike the Right and the Desire to impose our Convictions on any of Our Subjects. We declare it to be Our Royal Will and Pleasure that none be in any wise favored, none molested or disquieted by reason of their Religious Faith or Observances; but that all shall alike enjoy the equal and impartial protection of the Law.24
Although there were some subsequent reforms, such as the abolition of child marriage, most of the religious and social practices in place at the time of independence had not been substantially altered or codified for centuries. Imprisoned in Ahmadnagar Fort in 1944, Jawaharlal Nehru tried to help his sister, Vijayalakshmi Pandit, when she was widowed: her late husband’s family were preventing her from accessing money, saying that under existing Hindu law it was common ancestral property to which she had no rights.25 It was a close reminder of the social injustices and archaic customs the Indian National Congress intended to reform in the new India. Mohandas Gandhi was explicit about the need to abolish social controls on women, calling purdah “a vicious and brutal custom” that “was doing incalculable harm to the country.”26 Indians would soon be in control of their own destiny, and they had to make important reformist decisions.
While the Constitution was being framed after independence, the law minister Dr. Ambedkar (who himself had plenty of experience of the unkindness done in the name of religion) sought to introduce a new Hindu civil code which would also apply to Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists. It would abolish polygamy and restrictions on inter-caste marriage, legalize divorce and maintenance, give women full legal control over their own property and divide the assets of a man who died intestate equally between his male and female children. Conservative Hindus, some of whom were senior Congress leaders, opposed this strongly, believing it would undermine the customs on which their religion was based. Traditionally, a daughter was no longer part of the household once she was married off, and she became the property of her husband’s family. Any changes would impinge on structures of male power dating back into antiquity. Religious activists objected openly to an untouchable—Ambedkar, someone who would traditionally not be permitted even to read the scriptures—trying to change the codes of Hinduism. The dharma was the preserve of the Brahmin. A speaker at a meeting called by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in Ram Lila Ground called the proposed reforms “an atom bomb on Hindu society.”27
Nehru found to his discomfort that many of his colleagues had turned out to be less revolutionary in office than they had been in opposition, and that they agreed with the protestors. Rajendra Prasad asked, why not leave time-honoured customs alone, at least until after the first general election? This was hardly the time, another senior Congress politician told Nehru, “to multiply or accentuate differences.”28
The prime minister was also assailed from left and right by those who believed he was being too cautious. Surely a new civil code was meaningless unless it applied to all Indian citizens, regardless of their religion? Originally, the intention had been to reform “Anglo-Mohammedan law” as well, which was a mish-mash of sharia and legal precedent, as determined by judgements made in courts under British rule. Often, Muslim personal law was mysterious even to those who were dispensing it. Nehru’s patronizing and practical view was that partition had left the Muslims a broken community, and that while a common civil code was desirable, this was not the time to make it happen. Vocal parliamentarians were opposed to any changes to family and inheritance laws, and paradoxically the more progressive and reformist voices in Muslim society, the intellectual descendants of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, had in most cases left for Pakistan. In the 1930s, in Lucknow, Tazeen Faridi had been the first Muslim girl in India to become president of a students’ union, and she went on to head the All Pakistan Women’s Association. In her view, women’s rights were inseparable from the freedom struggle: “We wanted laws to be standardized in their treatment of men and women. In Islam there is a tradition of powerful matriarchy—although often these women end up controlling other women—and I had no hesitation in speaking out about the need for changes in our society.”29
When Nehru’s attempts to pass a new Hindu civil code into law were rebuffed, he decided to implement the legislation piecemeal, over time. Ambedkar believed the prime minister was capitulating to reactionary upper-caste Hindu forces in Parliament, and he resigned as law minister in 1951. He was underestimating Nehru’s determination, the subtlety of his strategy and how important he believed these changes to be. By the late 1950s most of the original civil code bill had been pushed through Parliament, and Hindu traditionalists were dragged, kicking and struggling, to social reform. These changes, in combination, transformed the nature of Hindu society. It would take many years for orthodox injustices to alter, and in some parts of the country they would barely change at all, but at least the law was now on the side of a progressive interpretation of individual human rights.
Maulana Mahmood Madani was in his early forties, an MP in the Rajya Sabha. In 2009 he berated the retired General Musharraf at a public forum in Delhi, telling him Indian Muslims did not want him coming there to play politics, and did not need help from Pakistan in solving their problems. “You say terrorism is happening on both sides,” he told Musharraf in Urdu, “but whether or not it’s happening on both sides, at least now it’s confirmed it’s happening on your side. More than 70 percent of Indian civil society would support us and stand with India’s Muslims for our rights.”30 An embarrassed Musharraf told the maulana he was glad he was happy—if the situation was as he said it was. The audience of Delhi intellectuals and socialites lapped up this exchange, which seemed to confirm their feeling that the Nehruvian vision of communal harmony still resonated. The knowledge, unexpressed, was that Muslims who embraced the idea of India came from the same raw material—the pre-1947 community—that had under different political pressures spawned Pakistan’s jihadi movement. Madani’s approach was like that of the superstar actor Shah Rukh Khan, who said during a concert at India Gate in the same year: “No one can have two viewpoints about terrorism. There is no religion of terrorism. I am often asked my viewpoint on this, maybe because I am a Muslim and I am very proud to be a Muslim. But I have read the Quran, listened to the Gita, acted in Ram Leela … Indian civilization does not distinguish in terms of religion. We are an impossible achievement in the world, and I’m very proud to be an Indian.”31
Although they have a much lower international profile than the citizens of Pakistan, there are nearly as many Indian Muslims as there are Pakistanis. Osama bin Laden’s attempts to rebrand Islam have not caught fire in India. Occasional acts of violence—bomb blasts in crowded markets by organizations like Indian Mujahideen—can often feel closer to the attacks between rival political groupings in India than to global jihadism. Loyalty to the Constitution is imbued in children across communities from an early age: it is a kind of brainwashing, but has been remarkably effective, and underpins India’s common identity. The nation has thrown up almost no international Islamist terrorists, unlike other countries with large Muslim populations. The exceptions are the Bangalore-born Kafeel Ahmed (who burned himself to death in a failed car bomb attack at Glasgow airport) and the al-Qaeda linkman Dhiren Barot (a convert from a Hindu family and now in prison), both of whom were radicalized in Britain. Despite communal feeling, rioting and suspicion at times of trouble, most Muslims show exceptional loyalty to the idea of India.
Maulana Madani lived in a spacious compound in New Delhi, in a house reserved for an MP. A guard sat in a low watchtower outside the gate, but he was there more for show than for protection, and displayed no interest when I entered the house by a side door. Like many Indian politicians, Madani sported a white kurta pyjama, and in his case the outfit was offset by a pinstriped waistcoat and pale socks with a CK logo at the ankle. His beard was substantial and his turban tied carefully, with a little tail hanging down at the back. Madani came from a long line of Islamic scholars and had a calm, relaxed manner. His servant brought dates and glasses of lemongrass tea.
“Muslims are the most backward community in India—economically, educationally, socially,” he said in English. “The backwardness is not only because of government policies. In 1947 the Muslim intellectuals and civil servants went to Pakistan. Look at who was left behind. Mainly it was the poor, the illiterate and labourers who were left, and they had trouble participating in society. Our next generation are changing. They see education as a weapon. I see people in their twenties who want employment and economic advancement, and I think that the younger generation has some hopes, alhamdulillah [praise god]. They aren’t interested in radicalizing like in other countries. In India, there are different forms of thought in Islam, but in this Indian environment most people are basically peaceful and peace-loving.” Increasingly, in his opinion, Indian Muslims were seeking a modern and secular education for their children.
As well as the political role he played (he had switched parties twice and was presently with the Rashtriya Lok Dal), Madani was a leader of the Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind. This was an organization started after the First World War which had gone on to oppose the creation of Pakistan in 1947. He saw his present role in the context of this history.