Reading books about Kashmir is never easy for me because it’s impossible to find a book about the politics of the land and its immediate history from 1931 onwards without a mention of my family, particularly my father and grandfather. How they are written about often depends upon the personal politics of the author. It’s hard to find a book about Kashmir that is objectively written. In fact, my own experience has been that the most objective books are the ones written by people who are neither of Indian nor Pakistani origin.
Having finished a book on Kashmir, I often find myself playing the ‘what if’ game. I consider significant events and ask myself how things would have been different if an event had either not taken place, or took place differently. Often, there are no clear answers. Hindsight is such a wonderful thing—I can tell myself that I’d have done things differently or advised otherwise, knowing all the time that what’s done is done. I also find myself questioning the basis of my political beliefs and the positions that my party and I take to see if there is something inherently wrong there.
Perhaps it’s easier for a person of my generation to be more objective about the way the history of Jammu and Kashmir is written about. I wasn’t born at the time of Partition nor when my grandfather was jailed, first by the Maharaja and then by the Government of India. My earliest recollections of events are after the Indira Gandhi-Sheikh Abdullah accord of 1974. So, I don’t find myself questioning the accession of the state to India. Nor the fact that I’m an Indian and a Kashmiri and that the two are not mutually exclusive. That having been said, it’s also true that the militant struggle has been led by men of my generation. Boys I played with when I was a child went across the Line of Control for training and came back as militants. So, perhaps my politics is not about the generation I belong to, but the upbringing that I had. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself here.
The books, while both about Kashmir, take a very different look at the problem. David Devadas starts in 1931 with the Reading Room Party and makes his way to the present, while Andrew Whitehead focuses on events in Kashmir leading up to and beyond accession but within a narrow time-frame of the tribal invasion. Both books are similar in as much as they are both very well researched and very well written. There are some books on Kashmir which I can only read in small doses because they are so stuffed with unnecessary detail that they are almost boring. But these two books have an engaging style that keeps your interest alive.
A Mission In Kashmir
by Andrew Whitehead
Viking/Penguin
Pages: 304; Rs. 450
While the similarities are apparent, the differences are no less obvious. A Mission in Kashmir is Andrew Whitehead’s narration of events spread over a couple of weeks and largely focused around the convent in Baramulla town of North Kashmir. While the book makes occasional forays to more recent times and places, this is largely to put in context characters and events that unfold. The events in Baramulla were to play a critical part in the way events unfolded in Kashmir and here is where I ask my first ‘what if?’. What if the raiders had not wasted time looting and plundering St Joseph’s Mission in Baramulla and had instead moved straight on to Srinagar? The fact is that the only all-weather road to the valley was now with Pakistan and troops were being flown in to Srinagar in DC3 Dakotas, a painfully slow process. But the road journey was significantly worse, taking nine days at that time. How would the history of Kashmir have been different if the tribals had taken control of the airport and the airlift of troops had stopped?
A Mission in Kashmir has first-hand accounts of those who lived through the tribal raid and, amazingly, has accounts from both sides, including Sister Montavani. A nun atSt Joseph’s, she arrived at the mission in 1933 and is still there, having been buried in the grounds of St Joseph’s after she died in 2003. The book also records events from the point of view of one of the tribal raiders or ‘lashkar’.
One of the questions that I have often had to face is: What came first—did the Maharaja accede to India first or did the Indian troops begin to arrive in Kashmir before the Instrument of Accession had been signed? Whitehead bases his answer to this question on a letter from the Maharaja’s deputy prime minister. The letter has so far not really been part of the popular discourse on Kashmir. I’ll leave the reader to arrive at his own conclusions, as I have done.
David Devadas’ book gave me a lot more to ponder over, simply because it covered a wider time-frame. The fact that Devadas has spent a long time in Kashmir and knew a lot of the people he was writing about becomes very clear as the book tries to tackle the more recent history of J&K. This, I believe, is both a good thing as well as bad. While it gives some incredible insights into events like the Rubaiya Sayeed kidnapping and the journeys that the boys had to undertake to get from Srinagar to the training camps across the Line of Control, it also makes it difficult for a writer to be objective in analysing the events and their fallout.
But a little less objectivity is a small price to pay for the wealth of little tid-bits Devadas provides. For instance, I never knew that Yasin Malik’s real name was not Yasin. He changed it to save himself from the teasing that he had to face on account of him forever posing in front of a mirror. Or that Rubaiya Sayeed had the cool-headedness to carry out a schoolbook from the home where she had been kept captive. The notebook had a child’s name and school inscribed on it, leading investigators to the house where she was held. I laughed when I read that my father is supposed to have gone off to Bangalore on a personal trip while on a mission to deliver cherries and a message to then prime minister Indira Gandhi. It was a mission his father had sent him on. So Dad, if you are reading this, you know who to blame if I occasionally forget to complete a task. It’s in the genes! I haven’t asked my father if this incident is true (though I know there are parts of the book he disagrees with). I’m not going to ask the others mentioned in the book either.
Coming back to the what-if questions that keep echoing in my head and without going back too far—what if the Centre had not engineered the fall of the National Conference government in 1984? What if the Rajiv-Farooq accord had not taken place? What if there were no reported electoral malpractices in the 1987 elections? What if militants had not been released in exchange for Rubaiya Sayeed? The list goes on and on. As I said, hindsight is such a wonderful thing.... Knowing what I do now, I can easily say that the accord shouldn’t have been signed. Or that the terrorists shouldn’t have been released. Or that more care should have been taken to address people’s concerns about governance. But no matter how many times I ask myself ‘what if?’ it doesn’t change the fact that what is done is done. We can’t turn back the clock.
Where do we go from here? I believe valuable lessons have been learnt and my job—in fact, the job of every politician connected with j&k—is to ensure that we learn from past mistakes and don’t repeat them again. We keep being given chances to resolve the problem and collect milestones along the way—Tashkent, Simla, Lahore, Agra, Delhi, the list goes on. We either waste them, or circumstances force us to ignore them. Every day we add to the list of those who die in Kashmir. Some wear a uniform and others don’t, but they are all part of the Kashmir story. I only hope that soon the only books about Kashmir are the coffee table books, full of beautiful pictures as was once the case.
(Omar Abdullah is president of the National Conference.)
