That law eventually came back to bite them in their backside. In 1935 it was the Hindus who persuaded the Maharaja to exclude all non-Kashmiris from owning land in Kashmir. In Kashmir the Hindus held most of the land and the accompanying political power, while the Muslims were the peasants and powerless. Few people acknowledge it but at its core the Tamil Nadu problem between the Brahmins and the rest was one of power. What Tamil Nadu and Kashmir have in common is that in both places the minority was disproportionately powerful. It would have been primary identity Indian, secondary identity Kashmiri. Had Kashmir been given a similar opportunity - instead of Article 370 - we would not have had the primary-secondary identity problem now. It consisted of a peaceful acquisition of power by the majority. It took half a century there - from 1918, when the Dravidian Justice Party was formed, to 1967, when its successor, the DMK, came to power - for it to be resolved. The experience of Tamil Nadu offers some hints. This is the problem that needs resolving. There is the added complication: The Kashmiri Hindu identity was always quite distinct from the Kashmiri Muslim one. Separateness and identity got fused because of Article 370, on which Jawaharlal Nehru had insisted.īut the answer to the second question is unclear because of a very simple thing: While Nehru's solution was to a political problem, the identity issue is a sociological one. The answer to the first question is clear. What has been the Kashmiri contribution to India after 1947? One, why has this belief persisted and strengthened over 70 years when almost all other non-tribal regional identities have receded and two, should these self-important notions be ignored just as the rest of regional identities were, or be pandered to? That is their right and it should not cause offence.īut what I cannot understand is why they think their identity is somehow more important than any other Indian identity, or superior. They are very happy, but have also been stressing the need to preserve the Kashmiri identity, whatever it is. I have a lot of Kashmiri Hindu friends and my brother's wife is a Kashmiri Hindu. They had been left to fend for themselves by successive central governments, which thought this was nasty but quite ok.
What is not, however, is the response of the Kashmiri Hindus, who were so mercilessly kicked out of the Valley in 1990. All this is in accordance with the script.
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