Decoding “Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s Reflections on Kashmir”

The Kashmir crisis has recently taken a new turn with terrorism inducting an ever increasing number of youth from the Valley within its vortex and with a greater number of counter measures being simultaneously adopted by the state to curb the menace. In the present climate of fierce debate between nationalism and anti-nationalism, the Kashmir issue is fast getting reduced to the state vs. anti-state and Muslim vs. non-Muslim binary contest and the pluralist, purely political character of the Kashmir issue is thus gradually taking a backseat. In this context Nyla Ali Khan’s “Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s Reflections on Kashmir”(Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), is an important intervention that refers to the speeches of Sheikh Abdullah and puts the focus back on the early character of Kashmir politics which is being gradually pushed to the oblivion. And the work becomes especially significant due to its reference to Sheikh Abdullah’s political thoughts on Kashmir. Indeed the all-inclusive pluralist character of Sheikh Abdullah has become even more valuable amidst today’s polarizing politics in Kashmir. As the author herself acknowledges, “Pouring over the speeches of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah….has enabled me to realize that instead of allowing polarizing elements to disturb the nation building we need to cull advanced and reformist ideologies in order to build common ground”(p.xiv). Kashmir is normally seen as an Indo-Pak bilateral issue overlooking the exclusive Kashmiri angle to it. Khan thus refers to the political thinking of Sheikh Abdullah who shaped Kashmiri nationalism to counter this discourse. She claims to highlight this nationalism the relegation of which, she feels, is a “serious omission in the histories of independent India and Pakistan” (p.2). This book thus seems to focus almost exclusively on the evolution of Kashmiri nationalism since 1931 under the guidance of Sheikh Abdullah, independent of the Indo-Pak statist perspective.

Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah gave a political platform to Kashmiri nationalism which was never divisive but inclusive– a rarity in today’s context. His inclusive political character comes through in his 1938 speech delivered at the Muslim Conference’s annual session where, calling for the establishment of a Responsible Government to counter the autocracy of the King, he emphasized: “The first condition to achieve Responsible Government is the participation of all those people…they are not Muslims alone nor the Hindus and the Sikhs alone, nor the untouchables or Buddhists alone but all those who live in this State…” (p.38). Drawing attention to these articulations the author accurately points to the secular and inclusive credentials of Sheikh Abdullah’s Kashmiri nationalist politics which negates the general perception of it being communal and divisive.

This non-communal secular politics of Sheikh Abdullah however faced challenge from the Partition of the subcontinent and the creation of Pakistan (following dastardly fratricidal riots which surprisingly did not affect Kashmir) as the meta discourse was increasingly becoming anti-secular. Henceforth the struggle of the Kashmiri people for self-determination was viewed overwhelmingly from the perspective of the Indo-Pak duel which Sheikh himself admits in his letter to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in 1953. At that time his effort to represent the Kashmiri right to self-determination was interpreted as an act of sedition and he was jailed by the Nehru government. Incidentally Sheikh Abdullah was then the Prime Minister of the Kashmir State. Khan mentions this incident to critically question the democratic credentials of the Indian State that suppressed a non-violent struggle of a leader through prison internment. During the Partition Sheikh Abdullah had not agreed with Pakistan’s contention that Kashmir should join it on the grounds of it being a Muslim majority state. In this context, his speech delivered much later to a group of Kashmiri traders in 1968 is worth mentioning where he pronounced his core belief that “Kashmir is inhabited by respectable human beings, all of whom have equal rights. We do not discriminate between Hindus and Muslims…” (p.44).

Though Sheikh Abdullah could well realize that the ultimate peace between India and Pakistan rested on the peaceful settlement of the Kashmiri problem, he felt there was no taker of his advice in India. He was aware that the Kashmiri people thought on similar lines which he even sought to mention in his speech of 1953 but was incarcerated before that. Sheikh realized the importance of the railroad of Rawalpindi and the Karachi port as links to the outside world for the traders of landlocked Kashmir and thus was insistent on maintaining good relations with both India and Pakistan in the interests of the people of Kashmir.

Sheikh Abdullah’s only concern was empowering his Kashmiri people by giving legitimacy to their voice in deciding their own political future. He blamed the Indian State for suppressing this voice by ousting his government in the 1953 coup and going back on its promise to hold plebiscite in the Valley. This is corroborated by his letter to the UNSC from jail in 1953 where he expressed his fear that Kashmir might even cease to exist if a devastating war takes place between India and Pakistan on the Kashmir question. (p.27) His plea to the international organization to step in to de-escalate the tension was in the interest of the Kashmiri people and their future. Sheikh understood how the Kashmir question got intertwined with the India-Pakistan relations which in his opinion had stymied the socio-economic and political advancement of Kashmir on both sides. He even blamed both India and Pakistan for misery of his Kashmiri people since the widening gulf between the two were forcing the Kashmiris to be “crushed in every conceivable manner.”(p.30) Sheikh saw the possibility of a stable and prospering Kashmir in cordial relations between India and Pakistan and thus arranged a meeting between Pakistan President Ayub Khan and Indian Prime Minister Nehru which unfortunately did not mature due to the sudden demise of Nehru.

The letters and the speeches in the book are major primary sources depicting the Kashmir situation and the response of the Indian Governments in Delhi during Sheikh Abdullah’s time and by referring to those, Khan attempts to draw attention to Sheikh’s sincerity in stabilizing Kashmir and how he was frequently disappointed by the attitude of the Indian governments since Nehru’s time. Interestingly, in one letter written to Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, Sheikh Abdullah even refers to an opinion of some members of the Congress Government about a possibility of eroding “…the content and spirit of Article 370”(p33). In the present national political context with a similar demand resurfacing, this letter assumes greater significance and shows how it is not a recent development.

Going through the letters and speeches of Sheikh Abdullah, the reader would certainly be able to appreciate the secular character of this ‘Muslim’ leader’s politics. The secular credentials of Sheikh Abdullah’s politics were evident from his speech at Idgah on 2^nd January, 1968 after being released from prison where he pronounced: “I remember vividly what Mahatma Gandhi did for Hindu-Muslim unity. I shall continue my efforts in this direction.”(p.42). In that speech he even appealed to the ‘six crore Muslims of India’ to live in communal harmony. However, Sheikh’s speech to the Muslims of Deoband (UP) in the same month and year is noteworthy and the author deserves due credit for not glossing over this in an effort to portray the secular characteristics of Sheikh. Sheikh Abdullah’s speech in Darool Ulum Deoband Islamic University (founded in late nineteenth century to spread Islamic studies in Deoband, a town in Uttar Pradesh), emphasized on how the Muslims should rectify their conduct and follow the path shown by the Prophet which, he believed, the Muslims of India were deviating from. Here he sounds more like a ‘conservative’, ‘illiberal’ Muslim cleric echoing a sentiment much common these days. But the shrewd political discourse behind this apparent ‘illiberal’ rhetoric of the Sheikh becomes apparent when he differentiates between the Kashmiri Muslims and the other Indian Muslims and seeks the latter’s support for the former’s right to self-determination. That he was not in favour of merging the socio-political grievances of the Muslims of India as a Minority community with the political fight of their Kashmiri brethren was evident from his speech at Deoband.

Sheikh even appealed to the press to take an impartial and independent view of Kashmir, bereft of prejudices—an outlook he believed would help solving the problem. This appeal is equally relevant in the present national context. In fact a primary reason behind the significance of this particular book is the deep contemporary relevance of the opinions of Sheikh. However, the reader might be disappointed with inadequate references to the Sheikh’s correspondence with Pakistan and his viewpoint regarding the policy of the Pakistani government. It almost appears that Sheikh Abdullah’s fight was unidirectional, against India with practically very little dialogue with Pakistan. Nevertheless, the book undoubtedly is a valuable primary source regarding the viewpoints of the legendary national leader of Kashmir that remain critically relevant in today’s uncertain times.

Subhadeep Bhattacharya

Adjunct Researcher

Asia in Global Affairs

23rd June 2019