What TV doesn't, print can't; we deliver.
What TV doesn't, print can't; we deliver.
September 2014 proved how much the Valley depends on aid for recurring natural and man-made environmental disasters and how much it needs to see where its future lies
While trying to understand the period that affected us the most and paved the way for our future choices and decisions, who better to turn to than the words of the man at the centre of the turmoil himself or as he called it ‘My Frozen Turbulence’.
Jagmohan Malhotra was appointed governor a second time when the Valley imploded. Before that, during his tenure of April 1984-June 1989, I recall getting a brief glimpse of him at Kashmir House, Chanakya Puri where Baba was the Manager.
The short, sharp orders at the staff showed me where Baba got his inspiration for discipline, accountability, transparency in accounts, and zero tolerance for slacking. Be it the pantry attached to the Governor’s suite or the stock register or the reception for delegates arriving without notice – the skills and resourcefulness Baba had acquired in Hotel Management and his service in the Hospitality and Protocol Department were being tested.
Jagmohan Malhotra was using the word disinformation in the 1990s, long before the word attained in-depth meaning for the anti-India war being waged by intellectuals, academia, media, think tanks and deep states at loggerheads with our Indic Civilisation.
It is fascinating how much aware he was of the smear campaign against him, realising time was not on his side in winning this kind of warfare while prevailing over the cross-border terrorism that had engulfed the Valley and almost completed the ‘unfinished business of Partition’ for Pakistan using the Azadi rhetoric.
He was sure of victory over the Ak-47s, killing not just Kashmiri Pandits and Sikhs but also secular Kashmiri Muslims across districts but the introduction shows his eventual decision to clear his position amidst all the canards spread about him.
Having witnessed the ethnic cleansing of Pandits throughout the 1990s, a few metres away from the thug Yasin Malik’s home, I knew the Jagmohan-did-it canard was just a ruse to throw the blame on a convenient target, to hide the complicity of even those who had helplessly stayed silent while prominent Kashmiri Pandits were pulled out from homes and gunned down on the streets.
Winter always brings up memories of that fatal 1989-90 cold autumn and freezing winter when the bomb blasts started and general unrest took hold of the atmosphere. In hindsight, certain sections of the law enforcement departments knew something was afoot, while the political class slept. But what makes one angry is that the inputs from the intelligence agencies were not heeded in New Delhi.
Manoj Joshi’s ‘The Lost Rebellion’ and David Devdas’ ‘In Search of a Future: The Story of Kashmir’ mention this. ‘My frozen Turbulence’ is also about this apathy of the centre to not heed the ones on the ground and a general arrogance of taking Kashmir for granted.
Chapter II- Survey of History has a brilliant summarisation of Kashmir’s history from the legends of the Nilmat Purana to the court intrigues of the Rajtarangini and the eventual Muslim rule of the Valley. Jagmohan’s objectivity while appraising Lalitaditya, Avantivarman, Queen Didda and Kota Rani read like a kaleidoscope of valour, fortitude, vision, bravado, follies and bad or good administrative decisions. He is equally benevolent in depicting Zain-ul-Abidin, Kashmir’s Boud Shah (great king) who reversed the zealotry of his grandfather Sultan Sikander (Butshikan, idol breaker) matching Aurangzeb’s fanaticism.
But what struck out was Kashmir’s eternal dependence on outside factors for sustainability in disastrous times when calamities stuck in the form of crop failures, famines, diseases, floods and of course religious zealots and greedy governors and administrators. The Kashmiri population would be at the mercy of the benevolence of an able king or administrator who knew imposing taxes or alleviating the burden led to loyalty or rebellion, hence the fortunes or misfortunes of Kashmir’s populace, irrespective of which religion the rulers hailed from, waxed and waned.
In 1589, Kashmir became a province of the Mughal Empire. It was ruled by a Subedar who had to deal with the menace of recurring floods and famines, which under the able administration of the Mughal rule prevailed over the calamities. Where earlier huge numbers of people used to die in famines and floods, now food grains would immediately be imported through the two roads over the Pir Panjal and the Jhelum valley passes, built by the Mughals.
Jagmohan cites the apathy of the Kashmiri king Ali Shah Chak when half the population of the Valley died or migrated in the famine of 1576-78 as compared to the orders of Shah Jahan for huge quantities of food grains to be brought in from Punjab in the wake of the 1638 unprecedented floods. This historical fact and geopolitical reality were not kept in mind when the Pak-sponsored insurgency for an independent Kashmir imploded in Kashmir and exploded with a ripple effect into the South Asian region almost to a nuclear flashpoint.
The Valley is prone to natural disasters and man-made humanitarian crises such as cross-border terrorism. There is no way that it can function on its own with just two passes going in and three out of the bowl-shaped Valley surrounded by mountain ranges. The same natural beauty turns beastly when landslides occur in the monsoon season and flash floods breach the flood channels in the districts, as happened in September 2014. A few days of snowfall cut off the Valley from mainland India despite the prompt action of the BRO and the administration.
Who in their right mind would think of delinking from the subcontinent and handing themselves over to an Army running an Islamist country when they didn’t even help their own people during the recent floods and the now-economic collapse as Pakistani citizens fight for bags of flour?
This historical geopolitical reality was never considered when two generations of Kashmiri youth were radicalized and became cannon fodder in the proxy war by Pakistan against India which is now three decades old.
September 2014 showed and proved how much the Valley depends on aid for recurring natural and man-made environmental disasters and how much it needs to see where its future lies. As I read more from the pen of the man who presided over a war that took away our childhood and youth and threatened to bury a third-generation six feet under, the faint memory of him standing in the foyer of JK House, Chanakya Puri, holding a standing meeting as the govt-owned Ambassador car waited to take him to the airport, grows stronger and stronger.
Arshia Malik is a Delhi-based writer, blogger and social commentator
Disclaimer: Views expressed above are the author’s own
