The dastardly targeted killings of Hindu tourists in Pahalgam in pursuance of the “two-nation theory” as recently recalled by the Pakistan army chief Asim Munir, must be read as a misbegotten attempt to defame Kashmiris in the name of Islam.
Munir had better acknowledge to his bigoted heart that the brand of Islam which informs his fulminations and his modus operandi was roundly rejected by Kashmiris at the time of the partition of the country, and continues to be rejected by Kashmiri Muslims to this day, notwithstanding the fifth columnists that the theocratic state of Pakistan has been able to activate and let loose from time to time.
Munir and the sectarian forces he speaks for would do well not to misinterpret the democratic grievances and struggles of Kashmiris as a vote for defection to Pakistan.
Just as the Modi-led Indian state must equally learn the very same lesson too.
It is a tribute to Indian Muslims, Kashmiri Muslims included, that the whole gamut of exclusionary and discriminatory predilections of the current right-wing government has not dented their allegiance to the tricolour.
And the Indian citizen at large must understand and explain to herself that if a Bihari or Andhraite demand for special status is not tantamount to sedition, neither is that of the Kashmiris.
The Modi-led government must also recognise that the more Indian Muslims seem like outcasts from political and religious equality, the more leeway it gives to the Munir-propelled Pakistani state to propagate its unashamedly sectarian programme in Kashmir.
Not a single tourist visiting Kashmir has now or ever complained that non-Muslims have ever been made to feel alien in the Valley.
On the contrary, even as the latest perfidy has occurred in the name of a Munir-sponsored Islam, tourists who are obliged to leave the valley still sing praises of the hospitality and warmth with which the ordinary to extraordinary Kashmiri Muslim has treated them, not unoften without the greed of any recompense.
The Indian right-wing would do well to rein in satraps from unleashing wholly misplaced calumnies against the Muslims of India, and on Kashmiri Muslims in particular.
And the Munir-led deep state in Pakistan had better realise once and for all that even the most extreme Kashmiri Muslims will never throw their lot with Pakistan.
Badri Raina is a well-known commentator on politics, culture and society. His columns on the Znet have a global following. Raina taught English literature at the University of Delhi for over four decades and is the author of the much acclaimed Dickens and the Dialectic of Growth. He has several collections of poems and translations. His writings have appeared in nearly all major English dailies and journals in India.
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