Geelani, Abdullah and Bakshi- Right To Dissent

Has Dissent Place in Kashmir

Z. G. MUHAMMAD

Long before. Almost a century back our forefathers had started struggle for right to dissent and free speech. The then feudal rulers who had purchased the land and people   as merchandise from the British for making a booty  and sharing the same with their lords  had denied all freedom to the people of the land. Most disadvantageously placed was the overwhelming Muslim population. ‘There was no touch between the government and the people, no suitable opportunity for representing the grievances..The rulers had no sympathy for people’s wants and grievances. There was no space for public opinion and press was non-existent’.
This dismal situation had not only caused our elders to rise in revolt but also even made an important Christen Minister of Maharaja Albion Bannerji to resign and raise his voice against denying space to the people and stifling voices of the dissent.  Shocked, on seeing people treated ‘worst than cattle.’ He had sent a word across the world, by stating publicly that ‘Jammu and Kashmir State was laboring under many disadvantages with a large Muslim population absolutely illiterate laboring under poverty and very low economic conditions in the village and practically governed like dumb driven cattle.”
Through their heroic struggle and immense sacrifices, our fathers had made the feudal rulers to bow and submit before the people’s power, end policies of stifling the dissent and yield space to the   peoples’ leadership. Nevertheless, after the end of the feudal rule it was unfortunate that our tryst with much cherished what we called as “Taqeer-u-Tahreer Ki Azadi” (freedom of speech and expression) was short lived.  Not only the Muslim Conference even the Kisan Mazdoor Sabha, a socialist party was denied any space. From Prem Nath Bazaz to Rashid Taseer all contemporary historian   giving details  about denial of space and right to speech to those who did not subscribe to the ideology of the ruling party have in strongly denounced the hegemonic policies of Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah.
Should, I call it irony of fate, barely some years later none other than the architect of the hegemonic politics in the post 1947 period  suffered his own stifling –dissent-politics. None but his second-in-command ostracized him, denied him any political space. Making him realize that he was put in  ‘power by the power centers with a limited to suppress dissenting voices in Kashmir.’ As Bazaz puts, “It now dawned on him that he was becoming an unwanted figure because he had trodden over the aspirations and emotions of the people he had pledged to serve.”
I remember, many top Plebiscite Front leaders were highly remorseful about the role they had played as vanguards of the National Conference in stifling the voice of dissent from after 1947 to their arrest in 1953.  A  top  Front leader who had been one of the District Administrator during the 1947 Emergency Administration (he was grandfather of a friend of mine) one  day told me that he was highly repentant for his role as administrator  for harshly suppressing  voices of dissent and opposition. He saw his frequent imprisonments as an atonement for the sins he had committed by slamming warrants of arrests against his adversaries.
Should one call it as retribution or nemesis. Bakshi Ghulam Muhammad suffered the same hegemonic policies of suppressing the dissent at the hands of masters on whose behest he had acted on August 1953 and deposed his leader and party colleagues. Created a terror force ‘Special Staff” for muzzling voices of dissent and humiliating political opponents. In 1964, he enjoyed majority support in the state legislature but at the behest Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru the legislators were made to elect G.M. Sadiq as their leader. Bakshi wanted to stage a comeback and wanted to move a no confidence motion against Sadiq. Instead of allowing their one time loyalist to test his strength on the floor of House New Delhi asked Sadiq to arrest him and try him for charges of corruption.  Most ironic part of the whole drama is New Delhi slapping same label on him as it has been doing with all voices of dissent.  He was labeled as “Anti-National”. Syed Mir Qasim, in his autobiography has recapitulated in detail the scene at Karan Mahal (Raj Bhavan). ‘Shankar Prasad, Secretary Kashmir Affairs, Sushital Banerjee, CS and Joint Director I.B. summoned Sadiq (CM), Mir Qasim and ordered them to arrest Bakshi   “National Interest”. No argument was allowed. (Page 104). The cupboards of contemporary history have many such skeletons in them.
In 1947, when tallest Kashmir leader jailed and pushed across his onetime comrades,   denied space and stifled the voices of once his compatriots. When Bakshi brutally treated his party colleagues at the behest of power centers in the capital and believed he was Czar of the land- the two in the wildest of their dreams would not have imagined that one day they would meet the same treatment and suffer the hegemonic and fascists policies they had authored.
I was reminded of these historical realties when I read statement by scion of the Abdullah family on the opening of the offices in Srinagar that Syed Ali Geelani’s freedom was threat ‘to peace in the state and there is pattern in his speeches that brings people on street.’ True, Syed Ali Geelani professes a different ideology than those   in the corridors of power- but stifling voices of dissent is no answer- it has not been in the past. There is need to understand that “the totalitarian system of thought control is far less effective than the democratic one” as very rightly said, by Noam Chomsky in a very long interview to David Barsamian, “the state can’t control behavior by force. It can to some extent, but it’s much more limited in its capacity to control by force. Therefore, it has to control what you think.”
Ideologies cannot be fought by shrinking space of their protagonists  or stifling the voices of dissent. That is what forefathers believed when they started their struggle for right to dissent and free speech.

Published in Greater Kashmir on 13-May 13