Comparing the Jama’at-e-Islami to RSS might be instructive — both had room to grow organically and amidst popular support in pre-Independene and pre-partition India, but only one captured political power. The Jama’at’s Amir is analogous to the Sarsanghchalak of the RSS. Both stress the difference between a member, supporter and sympathizer — it helps them wriggle out of tight spots. Both started off as avowed opponents of the Constitution and the ‘betrayal’ by the Congress, but one decided to work within the confines of the democratic Republic and the other was left ‘targeting’ Hindus even after the Hindu Dogra King of Jammu & Kashmir was long gone. One shifted their aim to political gain and one continuously found new enemies to target, because mastering electoral politics was beyond them. Electoral success doesn’t come to the expedient.

The Jama’at-e-Islami rejected, outright, even the most radical land reforms that Sheik Abdullah ushered in, in the 1950s — which disenfranchised landowners (with no compensation), a move which disproportionately benefited the Muslim peasantry at the expense of large Hindu landowners. These were the most far-reaching land reforms in the country at the time, more so than the Communist redistribution in Telangana.

The Jama’at’s aims, you see, are different. They weren’t born with a devotion to secular republicanism — they espoused a theo-democracy with the eventual aim being implementation of Sharia law. Whereas they originally envisioned being able to do so, born as they were under the aegis of the Muslim ruler of Hyderabad (never warming up to the secular pretensions of the founders of Pakistan either), they were decidedly at sea in a messy, secular, democracy.

The same experts who, rightly, condemn the RSS or the BJP for shielding or tacitly condoning the actions of the extreme elements within their groups fail to condemn similar actions by the Jama’at-e-Islami. The stench of bigotry!

Muhammad Ahsan Dar, the founder and former head of the Hizbul Mujahideen, called the terrorist group the “sword arm of Jama’at” in the late 1980’s. Yet the Jama’at-e-Islami failed to condemn their actions and never distanced themselves from their activities. Why? Because they could feel the political sands shifting right underneath their feet. Whereas once the Jama’at-e-Islami held popular support in the valley, especially among the youth, for its decidedly anti-governmental stance — in the late 1980’s that space was occupied by the Hizbul and other militant groups freshly trained in the Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa camps built to train Jihadis against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The fragrance of freshly decommissioned ‘Jihadis’ from Afghanistan captivated the valley. The Jama’at couldn’t be seen to condemn their actions lest they be labelled as ‘sell-outs’ like the National Conference or People’s Democratic Party (although the PDP had the Jama’at’s tacit support in 2008 to keep the National Conference from power).

Despite the occasional political forays, the nature of their struggle isn’t democratic. One only needs to look over to their brothers in Jama’at-e-Islami Pakistan to see the nature of their end goal. In 1979, in a decidedly Westernised Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, in a country, within a subcontinent, which shies away from the puritanical Arab influenced following of Islam — they unleashed a reign of fundamental Islamic terror. Their goal — a transformation of Pakistani society through the application of Islamic law. On 21 November 1979, they lay a Tehran-style siege to the American embassy but the individual rioters lacked their Iranian counterpart’s tenacity — and couldn’t be bothered to continue the siege past sun down. But not before causing damage worth $20m and taking 4 lives.

General Zia-ul-Haq used the Pakistani Jama’at for ideological warfare in both Afghanistan, and later Kashmir. This is the group that the nation is supposed to accept within its secular framework? Rightly pan the RSS, but also put out the embers of solidarity you feel for the Jama’at.

One of the many Telangana statehood agitation marches — The Million March. (Own no image rights)

The Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), which supported setting up of a secular state based on democratic principle lost out to the hardliners in the state, can very well present their case to the people of the state and the nation — and we can debate its merits and demerits. If it can convince a parliamentary majority of supporting whatever form their aspiration take — it is only fair that we implement them. But to stand on the side-lines and throw stones at a complex, democratic, federal state is sheer bigotry.

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Case in Point — Abdul Ghaffār Khān

Abdul Ghaffār Khān with Mahatma Gandhi

564 Princely States acceded to Union of India in 1947/48, many of them against their ruler’s wishes of being ‘independent’. Some were easy to integrate and some harder. Some prevaricated and some didn’t. Almost every major princely state wanted to maintain some form of independence — Kashmir is nothing special in this regard. Even provinces in what is now Pakistan — like the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), now renamed Khyber-Pakthunkwa, wanted independence or an undivided India. Nothing in Kashmir’s history makes them special or different in this regard. If anything, they have far closer cultural ties to the ‘heart’ of the country than the far South or far East. Take the case of the erstwhile NWFP, from where their towering leader, Bacha Khan — known to Indians as ‘Frontier Gandhi’ hailed. Not only were they denied a chance to join India or Afghanistan — they didn’t even have the province named after their ethnicity till 2010; unlike the Sindhis, Balochis and Punjabis. Even in 2010, Pakistan felt it prudent to add ‘Khyber’ to quell any talk of a Pashtunistan. Khan was a hero of all of undivided India, but when he passed away in 1988 at the age of 98 — he had been a political prisoner in Pakistan for 40 years.

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