"This is not Azad Kashmir.
For us, it is azab Kashmir," a refugee from India-occupied Kashmir now
living in one of the 30 camps in Pakistani Kashmir said to me once.
He was mocking the area's name,
which should emphasise its freedom. Living in makeshift camps, sometimes for
decades, with often very limited access to basic infrastructure and employment
opportunities, I was always confused with how refugees from an area Pakistan
has officially always wanted to claim are left hanging. But then, there is
nothing easy to understand about Kashmir, an area politically and historically
laden with feigned interest and biased opinions.
News about Kashmir in the
Pakistani media most often focuses on the Indian side of the border. Most
people are not only unaware of the present situation in the region, they are also
unfamiliar with the historical burden that may be necessary to understand its
present state. With such a lack of advocacy itself in Pakistan and abroad -
often with Kashmir being seen as synonymous with India-occupied Kashmir - the
fate of the refugees in Azad Kashmir appears doubly neglected.
When combing remote villages of
Poonch during the reconstruction projects we were carrying out in the area, we
stumbled on a small commemorative monument which my friend, without being able
to read, identified as a tribute to the local Muslims killed by the Mahraja's
forces. I was doubtful, aware of the general history of Pakhtun marauders who
bolted east after Partition to try to secure more land for the Pakistani state.
But my friend was right. The monument was older than Partition and conflicts
between local Poonchis and the Maharaja's government have a long history.
Christopher Snedden, in The
Untold Story of the People of Azad Kashmir, has not shied away from this
sensitive topic. To find an unbiased answer to this problem, he sifted through
countless sources and conducted many interviews, especially in Azad Kashmir.
Knowledge of the area (from its historical roots and their political ramifications
today) enables him to look at it from a perspective other than differentiating
between the two sides, the India-occupied and Azad Kashmir, as is generally
done in the popular narratives. Snedden says that "a reason why little has
been written about the major events in Jammu Province in 1947 is Indian and
Pakistani neglect. Both governments have been engrossed in their war of words
over J&K rather than factually determining what - or who - instigated the
Kashmir dispute."
Half of the book is made up of
invaluable additional sources, tables on elections, administration and human
resources otherwise very difficult to get hold of. In one of appendices,
Snedden takes a look back at the beginning of the 19th century and at the Rajas
of Poonch, the descendants of Dhyan Singh, and their cousins, the Maharajas of
Jammu and Kashmir, descendants of Dhyan's older brother, Gulab. He finds
rivalries between the areas emanating from this point, as the Rajas of Poonch
missed out on controlling their part of the dynastic heritage. And it is in
Poonch in 1947, largely on the side of what is today Azad Kashmir, in Sudhnuti
and Bagh districts, that an uprising against the Maharaja took place.
Snedden sees this as the major
reason for the split of Kashmir. While India blames Pakistan's attempt to exert
control on the area by sending Pakhtun raiders into the Kashmir Valley, Snedden
argues that the Muslim population of Poonch revolted on its own and opted for
accession to Pakistan. His sources show that Nehru was privately aware that
most of the 'tribesmen' causing trouble were in fact Poonchi ex-servicemen from
British regiments. It was only later that the prevalent story of a predominant
Pakhtun force was shaped, especially after a gruesome incident in Baramulla
where Pakhtuns did indeed massacre a large part of the local population while
looting.
"Unable to fend off India's
accusations, Pakistan acquiesced in India's tactic of defining all
troublemakers in J&K as raiders and blaming all of J&K's internal
problems on them." According to Snedden, Pakistan did so by "failing
to do three things." Among them was not publicising the Muslim uprising in
Poonch and the anti-Muslim violence in occupied Kashmir. Chiefly, however,
"Pakistan failed to grant de jure recognition to the Azad Kashmir
government. As it lacked legitimacy in Pakistani eyes, the new government's
ability to promote itself as the only true representative of the people of
J&K was severely hindered. […] J&K was part of the strategic game
Pakistan was playing with India in 1947-48 to obtain the three contested
princely states of J&K, Junagadh and Hyderabad. Karachi did not want to
jeopardise its position on J&K by supporting an unelected government in a
part, while conversely seeking a plebiscite for all of J&K [and having
already] rejected the unelected pro-Indian Provisional Government [in
Junagadh]."
It was from this initial
political impotence that Azad Kashmir developed and remains to this date in an
extraordinary position, being de facto part of the Pakistani state, but
officially a 'state' - that is, azad - in its own right, with its own
government.
Although real power over Azad
Kashmir, its administration, resources and at times also its political
structure shifted from Muzaffarabad in 1952 to the Ministry of Kashmir Affairs
in Islamabad, the province's affairs circled largely around a few influential
men from the area, and at times outsiders, put in place to make sure Pakistan's
interests remained paramount.
Two of these men stand out. Their
influence came from their role in Partition. They had large followings in
different areas of the region and from Partition until the beginning of the
21st century they were always part of the "presidential
merry-go-round," as Snedden calls the local political situation. Sardar
Muhammad Ibrahim Khan, the leader of the popular Azad Kashmir Movement in 1947
(later joining PPP-AK), was the first president in October 1947 and ended his
last presidency in August 2001. Sardar Muhammad Abdul Qayyum Khan became
president the first time in September 1956 and ended his last presidency in
July 1991 and was then prime minister until 1996. Both lived through times of
waxing and waning influence of Karachi and later Islamabad, and experienced the
changes that started in 1970.
At
that time, Azad Kashmir got a presidential system of government and parties
from mainland Pakistan started to push into the then largely uncontested
dominance of Muslim Conference successors. Ibrahim and Abdul Qayyum were also
leaders of their respective biradaris, a concept not specific to Kashmir, but,
as Snedden argues, especially important there. South Kashmir, influenced by
Punjab, is significantly different from the North where "people use half a
dozen different languages, with Urdu used for inter-group communications […]
Tribalism plays an important role in the affairs of the community of the people
both of Azad Kashmir and of Jammu - unlike the Kashmir Valley which is fairly
homogeneous ethnically."
By 2006, the military 'biradari' had
become "the most unified, potent, and willful" in Kashmir. However,
what Snedden calls "biradari angst," the collective fear of being
left out as a tribal group, could still be felt often in the reconstruction
phase after the earthquake. Often this happened on a very local scale, changing
from one valley to the next. The failure to appreciate this did affect many
humanitarian projects, whether carried out by Pakistani or international
organisations. On the contrary, Islamabad's understanding of the situation
enabled it to exploit this factionalism and remain largely in charge without
noteworthy troubles.
Snedden explains these networks in
vivid detail. However, this also makes the one inexcusable deficiency of the
book more stark - the lack of maps. Even for a reader familiar with the smaller
settlements and tehsils of Azad Kashmir, a glance at the geographical
perspective would be very helpful, apart from the fact that good maps of Azad
Kashmir are hard to come by.
The book largely circumvents the
issues of militancy (like the presence of Lashkar-i-Taiba and its possible
strength to date) and illegal opposition forces (it does explain the history
and standing of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front briefly but makes no mention
of the Jammu Kashmir National Students Federation, for example). This raises
the quality of the publication. It focuses on the basics that need to be
understood first, before the more popular topics normally associated with
Kashmir can be tackled. Even in Pakistan, it is little understood how Azad
Kashmir came into its present being, how it works and, most importantly, what
Azad Kashmiris want.
To change this, a study like Snedden's
that manages to explain lucidly the historical, political and societal basics,
is of great importance. It is an exemplary analysis of one of the regions of
the subcontinent that are of such importance in the wider geopolitics but have
so little advocacy.
The Untold Story of the People of Azad
Kashmir
No comments:
Post a Comment