This is in response to article “Truth about the martyrs of Kashmir’s July 13 carnage” by Sushil Pandit published by “Daily O” on 14-07-2015.According to Mr.Pandit “The state’s non-Muslim population suffers the humiliation of ‘commemorating’ their own tormentors as heroes every year on this day” (https://www.dailyo.in/politics/july-13-jammu-and-kashmir-kashmiri-pandits-martyrs-day/story/1/4963.html via @dailyo_). In other words Sushil Pandita is suggesting that ,those Kashmiri Muslims who are being celebrated as heroes were actually tormentors ,well a proud Hindustani Muslim from Kashmir like me take strong exception to this allegation .
I find it my obligation to refute this allegation which traces its root to the sustained 29 year old sustained propaganda .We kashmiris like our other Indian countrymen dalits are not victims of secular Indian (like Mahatma Gandhi , Tagore, Ambedkar,Bhagat Singh ,Periyar , Yachury,Devigoda, K.Chandershekhar , Dr. Karan Singh etc.), who stand by justice, rather we are victim of corporate fidayeen media led by Supremacist miniscule cult which has institutionalized the propaganda against Kashmiri muslims. In order to critically analyse the historically distorted and islamophobe narrative of Sushil Pandita ,I will put forth the late and immediate causes of this event .Subsequently we will understand why the day became to be observed “Youm-e Shuhada-e-Kashmir –Matyrs day” in Kashmir and off-course people like Sushil Pandita will get an idea about three issues
- a) Who were tormentors?
- b) Who were collaborators and beneficiaries of these tormentors?
- c) Who were victims?
Although the history of resistance by Kashmiris against foreign occupation dates back to 16th century when Mughal barbarian occupied our Kashmir but according to some Indian historian this event gave morale support and became precipitating factor for Kashmiris to evolve as nation and fight subjugation politically.
On July 13, 1931 thousands of Kashmiris had flocked to Central Jail, Srinagar to witness the trial of Abdul Qadeer Khan. As the time for obligatory prayer approached one Kashmiri stood up to deliver adhan ( a call for muslim prayers ). The Dogra Governor Raizada Tartilok Chand ordered his soldiers to open fire on him. When he was killed another Kashmiri stood up to continue the Adhan from the verse where the Adhan had been broken. He too was killed. A total of 22 Kashmiris were killed trying to complete delivering the Adhan.
Background: It is very necessary to know the context of the then prevailing situation then only we can understand the event .Let me put forth late and immediate causes which led to the this carnage by foreign dogra rulers and I am sure after going through the causes not only Mr. Sushil Pandita but whole world will come to know who were tormenters , their beneficiaries and how Kashmiri Muslims were oppressed under Dogra rule and were subjected to slave labour, heavy taxes and state terror.
Before going to immediate and late causes of events it may be worthwhile to quote the observations of a contemporary historian about Dogra Rule ,
1) Pandit politician-historian Prem Nath Bazaz on this Hindu Dharm- Raj, which he has frankly expressed in his celebrated work Inside Kashmir based on his personal knowledge of the times in his book ,P. N. Bazaz, Inside Kashmir, p. 250 ,
“Speaking generally and from the bourgeois point of view, the Dogra rule has been a Hindu Raj. Muslims have not been treated fairly by which I mean as fairly as the Hindus. Firstly, because contrary to all professions of treating all classes equally, it must be candidly admitted that Muslims were dealt with harshly in certain respects only because they were Muslims.”
2) Pandits dominating every department: “The Hindu officials were not only oppressing the Muslim majority of Kashmir, but in order to perpetuate their monopoly over the State offices, they devised every position” (See Glancy Commission Report vide Dastawaizat, pp. 141-42.)
3)Power of pandits : Sir Walter Lawrence writes:
…. [Sic]….. Kashmiri Pandits had a power and authority, and Muslims….. were forced to work to keep the idle Brahmans in comfort. (Lawrence ,Sir Walter Roper,The india we served ,londom1928, ,pp.126-127 ; Also see Educational Policy and the Mission School: Case studies from Brahmin empire edited by Brain HOLMES.)
4)NO jobs for muslims : According to Also see Educational Policy and the Mission School: Case studies from Brahmin empire edited by Brain HOLMES , State government jobs were barred to the Muslim they lacked powerful incentive from government .The cumulative effect of these factors was that for a long time the school of Kashmir were almost entirely monopolized by the Pandit minority.
5) Pandits subversion of Shali – subsidies grant to Muslim : Thus the Kashmiri Pandits gained ample economic stability , political power and social status which, subsequently , so enhanced their influence that they could easily subvert any attempt aimed at reducing their subsidies
and concessions or granting the same rights to Muslims. According to Political department 123 l 1921, Jammu state Achieves : –
“The Kashmiri pandits are bent on turning this situation to their advantage to the utter exclusion of their fellow needy brethren, the Kashmiri muslim .The new scheme for the shali distribution can only work if the workers are free of sectarian prejudice .Pandit enumerators exclude the names of Musalmaan who deserve the Rasad (ration),enumerating only their fellow pandits chakdaars ,money lenders, and high state officials who don’t need it”
6) Right to food for Pandit only not for muslim : According to Walter Lawrence , The Valley of Kashmir , Gulshan Publishers , Srinagar ,p .272 “The Pandits had a right to be well fed whether there[was] famine or not at two chilki rupees a Kharwaar” but the same time Muslim cultivators had no right ,” ..[sic ]…The cultivator [was] considered to have rights neither to his land nor to his crops”
7) Walter Lawrence, who had very intimate knowledge of the official class of Kashmir, by virtue of being the Land Settlement Commissioner of the valley providing him also a unique opportunity to travel every nook and comer of Kashmir and to meet general masses, makes following observations of the Kashmiri Pandits in his book , Valley o f Kashmir, p. 282
“They (Pandits) are very true to one another, and owing to their unity and to the fact that they have monopolised all State offices, their power has been enormous… In character, disposition and ability they are, as private individuals, infinitely superior to the Mussalmans of Kashmir, but… they have proved as officials, rapacious, short-sighted and cruel.”
“The Pandits are loyal to one another, and the village Patwari knows that when awkward questions are asked he has friends at the Tehsil, at the headquarters of the Wazir-i-Wazarat, and in the Daftar-i-Diwani. It was a powerful ring of iron, inside which the village tax payer lay fascinated. In recent times there were few Pandits who were not in receipt of pay from the State, and the number of offices was legion. But though this generosity in the matter of official establishments was an enormous boon to the Pandit class, it was a curse and misfortune to the Mussalmans of Kashmir; for Pandit does not value a post for its pay, but rather for its perquisites, and every post in the valley was quickly made a source of perquisites (Valley o f Kashmir, p. 401. While substantiating Lawrence, E. F. Knight writes, “Low salaried as these officials were, they enjoyed a luxurious life on the income they earned by all fraud means. It was not therefore, surprising to see a Tehsildar with a small pay of thirty rupees a month spending three hundred to five hundred rupees a month…” See Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, p.29.
8) Rasum by Pandit officials:- According to Pandit historian , officials not only satisfied themselves with the salaries from revenue department but resorted to illegal exaction from poor Muslim peasants, Apart from the opportunities offered by the prevailing revenue system, the officials made illegal exactions known as rasum. It consisted of requisitions for village produce and was a form of purveyance on behalf of officials. Under this system officials would obtain wood, grass, milk poultry, grain, blankets, and an occasional pony, cows and sheep free of cost .( Lawrence, Valley of Kashmir, pp. 414-415; See also Census o f India, Kashmir Part -1931, p. 40; Bazaz, The History o f Struggle for Freedom in Kashmir, p.144: M. Y. Saraf, Op. Cit, p. 279.)
It is not only the revenue officials who have caused havoc among the hapless Muslim masses, but each member of the officialdom was acting as an incubus to suck the life blood of the masses. Let me quote Prem Nath Bazaz, P. N. Bazaz, The History of Struggle for Freedom on Kashmir, p. 144.
“Almost the whole brunt of official corruption had been borne by the Muslim masses.
The Police, the Revenue Department, the Forest officials and even the employees of the Co-operative Societies, had their palms oiled by exaction of the usual rasum nobody felt any sympathy with this distressing picture of poverty. The channels of human kindness and mercy had run dry. To loot the peasants was no sin; society did not disapprove of it.”
9)Forced labour for Muslim only : According to Tyndale Biscoe and Walter Lawrence in their books, Valley o f Kashmir, pp. 412-413, Tyndale Biscoe, Kashmirin Sunlight and Shade, p. 236. ,Pandits officials of revenue department used to force Muslim for forced labour ,”How the officials abused their powers, it is worth to quote Lawrence in the context of black mailing of beggar ( forced labour ) by them”. It may not be beside the point to mention here, that the whole burden of begar fell exclusively upon the common Muslim peasantry as the Hindus, Syeds.
Thakurs, Rajputs and Sikhs were exempted from it (Glancy Commission Report vide Dastawaizat, p. 142)
10) Mutabir, feeding relatives of Pandit Revenue official: The Muslim peasantry had not only to feed the revenue officials, worst; they had to provide for the needs of their relatives and friends, known as mutabir. Some officials like Tehsildars had always their mutabirs with them in the Tehsil (Lawrence, Valley of Kashmir, p. 420; E. F. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, p. 29.)
The Muslims of Kashmir somehow gathered courage to complain against the Pandit revenue officers, in their memorandum of 1931 to the Maharaja Hari Singh pleaded that ‘all unauthorized exactions should be stopped. And in response to this general complaint of Kashmir Muslims Glancy Commission (1931-32) also recommended that ‘wherever a government official would be found involved in corruption, he should be severely punished. Moreover, the chowkidars and patwaris should be appointed from localities, they have been operating, so that it would help in stemming out corruption’(Glancy Commission Report vide, Dastawaizat, p. 141.) .
11)Torture of muslim by Pandit revenue officers:- The officials were not only corrupt, but in order to please their masters, they also resorted to extreme kinds of inhuman torturous methods to exact as much as they could from the famish peasantry. To quote E. F. Knight, Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, p.29, “At the time of collecting the land revenue, the use of nettle scourge in summer and of plunging recurrent tax payer into cold water in winter was popular methods of torture carried out against the peasants. Through these corrupt practices and oppressive methods of the revenue department, the Muslim cultivators suffered unspeakable injustice and oppression.”
12) Pandits officials creating difficulties for job seeking muslim :- “Following in the footsteps of the Punjabis and Dogras, the Pandits by hook or crook made it difficult for the Muslims to get even subordinate Jobs”(Bazaz,The History of Struggle for Freedom in Kashmir, pp. 147-148.)
13) Monopolization of Pandit Jagirdar:- According to Census o f India, 1931, pp. 73-74,the most critical feature of landlordism of our period was that the dominating majority of landlords belonged to Hindu Community who constituted only 20% of the total population of Jammu and Kashmir State and not more than 10% of Kashmir Valley.
14) According to “ JKA, File No. 7 o f 1890; Census of 1891, pp. 5-7, JKA, File No. 117 of 1896,
- R. Of Mian Jagir by H. L. Revett; A. R. of Mian Jagirs; Lawrence, Op. Cit;pp. 238-39, “we have some statistical information about the land held as jagir by 30 jagirdars in 1890-91, out of the total 326 villages valuing rupees 2,85,358 as revenue, held as jagir by these 30 jagirdars,258 villages valuing rupees 22,341 were held by Hindu jagirdars whose number was 17, whereas the remainder 13 Muslim jagirdars held 86 villages whose annual value was only rupee 1.”
15) Deprivation of Muslim Jagirdhar:- According to Inqilab, Lahore, November 29, 1931, p. 2. , “Right from the coronation of Maharaja Hari Singh upto November 29, 1931 ,about 20 Kashmiri Muslims were deprived of their jagirs which valued from 5,000 to 10,000 each”.
16)No Proprietary right for Kashmiri muslim only :- According to Glancy Commission Report vide Dastaw’aizat, p. 121.it was only the Kashmiri peasant whose proprietary rights in land were confiscated. The new law did not apply to Jammu peasant. He continued to enjoy the proprietary rights in land obviously because the majority of the peasantry of Jammu belonged to Hindu community. For the pervasive recommendations made by A. Wingate that the peasants should be given proprietary rights and Walter Lawrence’s that they should be given only occupancy rights, See Wingate, Report, p. 61; Lawrence, Valley of Kashmir, pp. 432-433.It may also be important to mention here, that this was also one of the main issues of Muslim Conference till they succeeded in achieving it in 1933.
There were no proprietary rights for Muslim. Glancy Commission Report vide Dastawaizat, pp. 122-124. The confiscation of proprietary rights also took the hearts of the 7 peasantry out of cultivation besides, the confiscation of proprietary rights in land was used as a weapon by the State to legitimize its policy of rack renting.
17) Pandit Capitalists Raj Kak Dhar :- The Dagh-shawl department which regulated the shawl-trade was exclusively manned by Kashmiri Pandits ( led by Pandit Raj Kak) . Whereas the Muslim shawl-weaver lived in a very chronic poverty, so much so, that he could hardly manage two square meals, the Hindu official associated with the collection of taxes from the shawl-weavers were living a pompous life. The following casual references given by Lawrence bring out clearly the marked contrast between the Pandit official and the Muslim shawl-weaver(Lawrence, Valley o f Kashmir, p. 35.)
Raj Kak Dhar used to pay peanut salaries to Muslim shawl peasants ,but if they refuse to work for his handlooms ,they allegedly used cut their thumbs so that they will be handicapped to work for kharkhandars to save themselves from tyrannies of their karkhandars (employers of handlooms) , let me quote Pandit P N K Bamzai,pp..673, “The weavers might or might not work but he had to pay (taxes).not wonder , 22 shawl weavers are said to have cut off their thumbs in order to be disabled to persue the profession of shawl weaving’’ .
Although in 1865 , shawl worth 25,4000 British pounds were exported from 1100 handlooms but the salary of muslim shawl weaver was just 6 annas per day and even he used to tax 2 annas out of that as well , my article on Pandit Raj Kak is worth reading in this regard ,International Labour Day & Revisiting Massacre of ‘’First Labour Union of the world’’ http://www.kashmirpen.com/international-labour-day-revisiting-massacre-of-first-labour-union-of-the-world/
The houses (in Srinagar) vary in size from the large and rapacious burnt-brick palaces of the Pandit aristocrat and his 500 retainers, warmed in the winter by hammams, to the doll house of three stories and their rooms of wood and sun-dried bricks, where the poor shawl-weaver lives his squalid cramped life and shivers in the frosty weather.
The deplorable condition of shawl-bafs has also been highlighted by Madusuden Ganju,pp.220. The standard of living of the workers engaged in the woolen industry as a whole is very low. Their food is poor, clothing tattered, and the houses in the most dilapidated condition. They cannot afford to drink milk and eat mutton say even once a week.
Their staple food in Kashmir province is rice which they eat with an ordinary kind of cooked vegetable leaves, called hakh. Some of them cannot afford even that much.
Silk factory:- According to Young husband, Kashmir, p. 213. “Silk industry was probably the only industry which maintained its flourishing condition throughout the period. It was a government undertaking which provided livelihood to thousands of people. The Srinagar silk factory alone employed 5,000 workers ,Census of India, 1931. . All these workers, it is to be noted, were Muslims and almost all the officials of the silk industry belonged to non-Muslim community.
In 1924, the labours were paid daily wage of 4 annas per head which was obviously too inadequate, especially in view of the rising cost of living and the huge profit it earned. The corruption was so rampant, that even a part of the wages were shamelessly pocketed by the Kashmiri Pandit officials ,M.Y. Saraf, p.333.
18)Corrupt Pandit officials in Revenue departments. Even during the Afghans, who have been portrayed as fanatics by later Hindu writers, the Kashmiri Pandits monopolised the Revenue Department, the main wing of the State administration ,Parimu. History o f Muslim Rule in Kashmir, pp. 380-381.
19) Discouragement of muslim education by Pandit teachers :The Muslims were not only suffering for want of adequate number of educational institutions for even elementary instruction, but more so they were discouraged by the Hindu teachers, who like other branches of the administration had monopolized the department of education too (Riots Enquiry Committee Report, p. 65; Malik Fazel Hussain, pp. 113-114; Bazaz, Inside Kashmir, p. 205.)
Glancy Commission, while inquiring about the poor representation of Muslims in S. P. College of Srinagar,was told that the Hindu teachers discouraged the Muslims from taking science subjects.( Glancy Commission Report, vide Dastawaizat, p. 100.)
For political reasons, the Government also for a long time did not show any interest in disseminating modern education among the Muslims as to quote P.M. Bazaz: 247
The awareness that they (Dogras) were Hindus and the over- whelming majority of the Kashmiris professed Islam, constantly made them apprehensive. They disliked the idea of making their subjects politically conscious and thought that imparting of education was only an effective way of awakening the people to their political and human rights.( Prem Nath Bazaz., Daughters of Vitasta, p. 215.)
According to Tyndale Biscoe, Kashmir in sunlight,pp.265, “At first near all 250 boys receiving instruction from CMS school were Kashmiri Pandits. They were sons or grandsons of the officials who bullied and squeezed the Mohammedan peasants for years past, and their large houses in the city, with all the wealth, were a standing witness to their looting power, for the salary they received from state was quite insignificant.”
To be continued…………
Dr. Eshraf Zainulabideen can be reached at zainlala69@gmail.com
