Oh Kashmir, My Kashmir

Have you seen a Hieronymus Bosch painting? Or a Dali? Or an Edvard Munch? Or read William Burrough's Naked Lunch?

All pretty surreal stuff. But they all pale, and how, when compared to the surreality of the reports on Kashmir in the Indian media. Take the following rapid-fire series of articles in rediff.com:

(1) Return To Paradise -- in which one Rashmi Bhure tells us in glowing terms how everything, especially tourism, is really looking up in Kashmir because the people there have finally understood how not bloodshed, but peace, will lead to peace. Aaahhh, finally we can all relax.

(2) 14 Dead, 100 Hurt in Pulwama Blast -- in which we are told, rather bluntly, how a huge explosion wiped out innocent lives, including those of two students. You see, the terrorists had, with tender empathy, set up the bomb right outside a school.

(3) Hurriyat backs Musharraf's Kashmir formula -- in which the Hurriyat Conference tells us, in no uncertain terms, that being the f***ing ungrateful weasels that they are, they would very much like for Kashmir to be "autonomous", according to a "formula" that Pakistani President Musharraf has put forward. That, not being simply content with the special status that Kashmir already enjoys, they would further like to distance themselves from the rest of India, presumably in preparation for joining Pakistan. Note to Indian Government: Please send a few more buses to Pakistan, and hurry! We are clearly short a few buses. Or maybe plan on reserving a few more IIT seats for them. How about some free food for them while we're at it? We have plenty. Why, only 60 percent of us are malnourished. We can afford to give away some food, surely.

Leave alone the media. What about us, the thinking, educated Indians? How do we characterize the Kashmir problem? I have heard at least two Indians, among my acquaintances here in the United States, make the nonsensical statement that Kashmir is a political problem and not a religious problem. I am further assuming that unless I move in the wrong circles, my acquaintances are a random sample and thus there are likely many, many more thinking (tongue firmly in cheek), educated Indians who hold similar views.

In my studied opinion, those who say that Kashmir is not a religious but a political problem are functional idiots who likely drool helplessly all over their shoes in the morning. Remember that if Kashmir was simply a Kashmir-versus-the-Central-Government sort of problem, all Kashmiris of every stripe would be involved in the process of a solution. But this is not the case. One of the first things that happened when the knockdown-dragout Kashmir problem started is that the Muslim majority in Kashmir ethnically cleansed Kashmiri Hindu Pandits from the valley. Three quarters of a million of them. Not religious, my behind.

I regret to inform that I have reached a rather sad and disheartening conclusion after spending a few decades on this here earth. Which is as follows.

Hindus have no self-respect. None. And I don't care if Ram or Shyam or Rajesh individually shows spine. The collective dominant impression that Hindus radiate is that of utter, abject, fawning spinelessness in the face of minority posturing and aggression. That is why Kashmir, in spite of egregiously bad behaviour, gets per-capita, ten times the aid from the Central Government that other states receive. That is why a certain, statistically significant number of Hindus, out of a misplaced sense of political correctness and quite possibly grovelling dhimmitude, fail (or refuse) to see the Kashmir problem in proper light.

That is why we Hindus breast-beat and make ten times the noise when 750 Muslims are killed in Godhra and don't bat our secular eyelashes when hundreds of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits live in squalor in refugee camps in their own country, or two thousand Sikhs are butchered mercilessly in Delhi. Children of a lesser god indeed are Hindus and Sikhs.

And some of us complain about how Hinduism is (and Hindus are) negatively portrayed in Western media and textbooks. Why the surprise? Why exactly will other cultures respect us when we don't respect ourselves? What do you expect others to make of a culture that suffers more angst and spends more sleepless nights fretting over Sourav Ganguly's current batting average than the fact that we chipped in and voted to be ruled by a half-literate Italian immigrant?

But this is okay, par for the course. Let's get back to worrying over whether Jinnah was secular or not.