{"id":1436,"date":"2013-05-15T11:45:08","date_gmt":"2013-05-15T06:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/?p=1436"},"modified":"2013-05-15T11:48:35","modified_gmt":"2013-05-15T06:18:35","slug":"geelani-abdullah-and-bakshi-right-to-dissent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/editors-take\/geelani-abdullah-and-bakshi-right-to-dissent\/","title":{"rendered":"Geelani, Abdullah and Bakshi- Right To Dissent"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/fb:like>

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 <\/p>\n

Has Dissent Place in Kashmir<\/p>\n

Z. G. MUHAMMAD<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\u00a0\u00a0 as merchandise from the British for making a booty\u00a0 and sharing the same with their lords\u00a0 had denied all freedom to the people of the land. Most disadvantageously placed was the overwhelming Muslim population. \u2018There was no touch between the government and the people, no suitable opportunity for representing the grievances..The rulers had no sympathy for people\u2019s wants and grievances. There was no space for public opinion and press was non-existent\u2019.\"Sheikh<\/a>
\nThis 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.\u00a0 Shocked, on seeing people treated \u2018worst than cattle.\u2019 He had sent a word across the world, by stating publicly that \u2018Jammu 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.\u201d
\nThrough their heroic struggle and immense sacrifices, our fathers had made the feudal rulers to bow and submit before the people\u2019s power, end policies of stifling the dissent and yield space to the\u00a0\u00a0 peoples\u2019 leadership. Nevertheless, after the end of the feudal rule it was unfortunate that our tryst with much cherished what we called as \u201cTaqeer-u-Tahreer Ki Azadi\u201d (freedom of speech and expression) was short lived.\u00a0 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\u00a0\u00a0 giving details\u00a0 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.\"Bakshi<\/a>
\nShould, I call it irony of fate, barely some years later none other than the architect of the hegemonic politics in the post 1947 period\u00a0 suffered his own stifling \u2013dissent-politics. None but his second-in-command ostracized him, denied him any political space. Making him realize that he was put in\u00a0 \u2018power by the power centers with a limited to suppress dissenting voices in Kashmir.\u2019 As Bazaz puts, \u201cIt 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.\u201d
\nI 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.\u00a0 A\u00a0 top\u00a0 Front leader who had been one of the District Administrator during the 1947 Emergency Administration (he was grandfather of a friend of mine) one\u00a0 day told me that he was highly repentant for his role as administrator\u00a0 for harshly suppressing\u00a0 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.
\nShould 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 \u2018Special Staff\u201d 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 He was labeled as \u201cAnti-National\u201d. Syed Mir Qasim, in his autobiography has recapitulated in detail the scene at Karan Mahal (Raj Bhavan). \u2018Shankar Prasad, Secretary Kashmir Affairs, Sushital Banerjee, CS and Joint Director I.B. summoned Sadiq (CM), Mir Qasim and ordered them to arrest Bakshi\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cNational Interest\u201d. No argument was allowed. (Page 104). The cupboards of contemporary history have many such skeletons in them.\"SAS<\/a>
\nIn 1947, when tallest Kashmir leader jailed and pushed across his onetime comrades,\u00a0\u00a0 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.
\nI 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\u2019s freedom was threat \u2018to peace in the state and there is pattern in his speeches that brings people on street.\u2019 True, Syed Ali Geelani professes a different ideology than those\u00a0\u00a0 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\u201d as very rightly said, by Noam Chomsky in a very long interview to David Barsamian, \u201cthe 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.\u201d
\nIdeologies cannot be fought by shrinking space of their protagonists\u00a0 or stifling the voices of dissent. That is what forefathers believed when they started their struggle for right to dissent and free speech.<\/p>\n

Published in Greater Kashmir on 13-May 13<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/fb:like><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

 
\n 
\nHas Dissent Place in Kashmir
\nZ. G. MUHAMMAD
\n 
\nLong 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\u00a0\u00a0 as merchandise from the British for making a booty\u00a0 and sharing the same with their lords\u00a0 had denied all freedom to the people of the land. Most disadvantageously placed was the overwhelming Muslim population. \u2018There was no touch between the government and the people, no suitable opportunity for representing the grievances..The rulers had no sympathy for people\u2019s wants and grievances. There was no space for public opinion and press was non-existent\u2019.
\nThis 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.\u00a0 Shocked, on …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[153,154,75,152,34],"class_list":["post-1436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editors-take","category-kashmir-talk","tag-freedom-of-speech-in-kashmir","tag-nehru-and-kashmir","tag-sheikh-abdullah","tag-sted-ali-geelani","tag-z-g-muhmmad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1436"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1439,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions\/1439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}