Revived Shadows of Partition Fall on Pahalgam

A group of women protested on the banks of the Jhelum river in Srinagar against the killing of tourists in the Baisaran Valley of Pahalgam in the Anantnag district of southern Kashmir. 
| Photo Credit:  IMRAN NISSAR/The Hindu

The brutal murder of twenty-eight tourists at the Baisaran meadow in Pahalgam, Kashmir, in the afternoon of April 22, has shocked the nation, and people are numbed and enraged. As usual, there are political speculations, positions, and posturing around the grave incident. Reading various shades of opinions that have appeared in the media and on social media, I felt we must not lose sight of the truth. In this regard, it is necessary to probe the language of a recent provocation whose consequential effect on this violent episode cannot be exaggerated.

The Pahalgam murders can be read in relation to the provocative speech given by the Pakistan army chief, General Asim Munir, to the Overseas Pakistani Convention in Islamabad. The speech evokes (and justifies) Jinnah’s two-nation theory, reiterating the crude, divisive language of the Muslim League during Partition. The point behind saying, “We are different from the Hindus in every possible aspect of life”, is to rearticulate Jinnah’s imagination of Pakistan as a nation that must be defined and defended in terms of an absolute difference with the religious community it is trying to break itself from. This idea of difference is of course grounded in religion.

The fact that the idea was politically and culturally rejected by the formation of Bangladesh in 1971 did not prevent the Pakistani military and political establishment (often one and the same thing) from abandoning this fantasy. Pakistan is not simply “insufficiently imagined” as Salman Rushdie wrote in Shame, but also a pathological fantasy based on religious antagonism. The Hindu right’s imagination has also been similar and is currently in the process of politically reimagining India outside its secular ethos.

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The establishment of Pakistan in ’47, however, meant an early solidification of what Faisal Devji has called a “Muslim Zion” or a Zionist utopia of a pure religious identity based on one religion (Islam) and one language (Urdu). The problem of all utopias, religious or secular, is that they are always imagined against other people who do not fall—either by identity or belief—into that pure idea of belonging. Pakistan’s problem with India has remained both religious and territorial, and hence its obsession with Kashmir.

Munir in his speech quoted Iqbal’s couplet to highlight Pakistan’s cultural and religious disinclination in the world: “Apni Millat Par Qiyas Aqwam-e-Maghrib Se Na Kar / Khas Hai Tarkeeb Mein Qoum-e-Rusool-e-Hashmi” [Judge not your nation on the criteria of Western nations/Special in composition is the Hashimi Prophet’s nation.] From the mouth of a military leader, the meaning of the couplet is distorted to justify a military-controlled Islamic state that denies democracy to its citizens, even as it—contradictorily—borrows from western models of the modern state. But the central point of Munir’s speech is nevertheless around the idea that Pakistan is to be defined negatively in relation to what it is not, namely, that it is un-Hindu.

Munir changes tracks by challenging “terrorists” who are out to free Baluchistan, and in a language of bravado, lauds its supposed superiority over the Indian army. Munir demonstrated that Pakistani self-pride can beat its chest only by whipping up its obsession with India. Arguing for the necessity to be a “hard state”, Munir exemplified (the crisis of) Pakistan’s libidinal masculinity.

It is in this light that he spoke about Kashmir: “It was our jugular vein, it is our jugular vein.” Since Kashmir is not part of Pakistan, to call it a vein is to mean that blood can nullify political territory and determine an extraterritorial, political association. The nature of that association since 1947 has been imagined only in terms of conquest. Since Pakistan was born out of genocidal conquest, it is fundamental to its imagination. Now that Kashmiri Pandits are no longer politically relevant, having been forced to undergo a violent exodus, a Pakistani army chief can address Kashmir in the name of a single religion. Promising support to their “Kashmiri brethren” for Munir means what the world has known for decades: Pakistan’s sponsorship of cross-border terrorism to masculinise and religionise the Kashmiri people.

The triumphalist rhetoric in Munir’s speech echoes behind the Pahalgam massacre. The nature of the crime, where people were asked to spell out their religion, is clearly aimed at creating religious discordance both within and outside Kashmir. Any outrage or violence in India against Kashmiris and Muslims will suit Pakistan. The people who carried out the murders acted like mercenaries. Al Jazeera’s use of the word “rebels” is a political misrepresentation of the attackers. Rebels can attack state institutions or even political leaders, but they cannot attack tourists. This is a calculated attack on ordinary people in order to create an atmosphere of hate and violence.

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It is an important moment to remember that violent anger is the antithesis of mourning. Genuine grief over the deaths cannot turn into harangues overnight. It is atrocious to imagine and cry for more deaths in the middle of death. If your enemy wants you to lose your mind, it is all the more necessary to preserve it. Pakistan constantly seeks political legitimacy in its own eyes by repeating the fake rhetoric of its illegitimate origins. Munir is repeating Jinnah. Pakistan suffers from a repetition syndrome because it suffers the lack of newness, a fresh imagination. Its military establishment ensures that all those fighting for democracy will be silenced either through murder or by making its compromised judiciary issue prison sentences against them. These are authoritarian tactics against democratic dissent that can happen in any country.

The likes of Munir ensure that Pakistan lives, broods, and yells in the shadow of its past. His petty envy wants India to do the same. Pakistan’s parasitical establishment must be taught a lesson in sobriety. This is the moment to think what we want India to be outside the wicked machinations of Pakistan.

Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee is the author of Nehru and the Spirit of India.