Nearly a fortnight ago, India’s Home Minister Amit Shah during his first visit to the newly carved Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir after the abrogation of Articles 370 and Article 35A of the Constitution of India flagged off a direct flight between Srinagar and Sharjah from Srinagar’s Sheikh ul-Alam International Airport, which revived direct air link between Kashmir Valley and the United Arab Emirates after 11 years.
This was widely praised and welcomed by the Kashmiri population, which has deep economic and religious ties with UAE and the wider Arabian Peninsula Muslim nations. However, Pakistan’s blunt and rude refusal to allow the use of its airspace for the flight, which makes an alternate route longer by an hour and the ticket more expensive, has come as a shock to the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley, which is angry at this gesture of Pakistan, a country that claims to be a “well-wisher” of the Kashmiri people.
This has once again raised a pertinent question, which many among Kashmir’s Muslim community refuse to discuss—Is Pakistan a so-called “well-wisher” or an enemy of the Kashmiri Muslim population?
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It is important to add that there is a large diaspora of Kashmiri Muslim community that works in the Gulf countries. They send millions of dollars in annual remittance both to India as well as their families back home in different parts of Kashmir Valley. Furthermore, Saudi Arabia is also the most important religious place for the global Muslim community; thousands of Kashmiri Muslims visit the holy cities of Mecca and Madina for both Haj and Umrah. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is one of the most important transition points for Kashmiri Muslims to take a flight from India to the Arabian Peninsula. Cities like Dubai and Sharjah are also home to a large Kashmiri Muslim diaspora, which works in the UAE.
Pakistan lays its claim over Kashmir largely based on a common religious adherence of Islam by the majority communities in both Pakistan and Kashmir Valley, but can Pakistan really claim to be a friend of Kashmiri Muslims by indulging in these cheap tactics, which cause inconvenience to Kashmiri Muslims?
Pakistan’s Track Record
Pakistan’s track record on being the defender of “Islam” and the “Muslim ummah” is highly questionable and debatable. To begin with, Pakistan, which was conceived as a home to the “entire” Muslim population of British India, was never actually a home to the “entire” Muslim community in South Asia. A large number of Muslims chose to willingly remain and be part of the Republic of India, including Muslims of Kashmir Valley.
Further, the so-called “Pakistan” that was created through a bloody communal and religious partition of British India by Mohammad Ali Jinnah ceased to exist when West Pakistan and East Pakistan were torn apart after the Punjabi Muslim army and civilian government centered in West Pakistan orchestrated one of the bloodiest suppressions of its own people in East Pakistan, who were Bengalis. Before the liberation of Dhaka, which led to the carving out of an independent nation of Bangladesh from former East Pakistan, the West Pakistani Punjabi Muslim army had killed 30 lakh Bengalis and raped 8 lakh Bengali women in East Pakistan.
Most Kashmiri Muslims who glorify Pakistan never dwell on the fact that Pakistan is not a Muslim country but a Punjabi, upper caste, feudal Muslim-dominated nation, which was accidentally created on the soil of Western Punjab in the name of Islam.
It is not only the Bengali Muslims of East Pakistan who suffered the casteist and racist brutality of the Punjabi Muslims of West Pakistan. The leftover nation of West Pakistan, which is now simply called “Pakistan”, has also become a torture chamber for Baloch Muslims, Sindhi Muslims, Pashtun Muslims, Mohajir Muslims (Urdu-speaking Muslims who migrated from UP and Bihar to West Pakistan in 1947) and Muslims of Gilgit and Baltistan, who continue to suffer the colonial and racist policies of Punjabi Muslim establishment that dominates the Pakistani army, its spy agency and the civilian government.
Pakistani Punjabi Muslim is No One’s Friend
The Kashmiri Muslim population knows but still likes to remain in denial—that Pakistan wants revenge for its dismemberment, for which it holds India and Hindus responsible, and it is merely using Kashmiri Muslims to take a shot at India. It is unfortunate that Kashmiri Muslims have been allowing themselves to be sacrificed for the evil designs of the Punjabi Muslims of Pakistan since the last three decades.
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Pakistani Punjabi Muslims are one of the most cruel and heartless communities that torture their own poor, lower caste Punjabi Muslims, especially those living in southern Pakistani Punjab. The rich, upper caste Pakistani Punjabis based mostly in Northern Pakistan Punjab recruit children of the poor and lower caste Punjabi Muslim families living in southern Punjab for religious and political jihad against India, Afghanistan and Iran.
Pakistani Punjabi Muslims who run Pakistan’s army, institutions and government have been exploiting the religious sentiments of the Kashmiri Muslims to exact their revenge on India for the creation of Bangladesh. They first tried to create chaos, death and destruction in Indian Punjab by misguiding Sikhs against the Union of India, and when that failed miserably, they turned towards Kashmiri Muslims and exploited what was essentially a political grievance of the Kashmiris against Delhi, and turned it into a militant, jihadi, terrorist, separatist movement by sending guns into the Kashmir Valley. This eventually destroyed and tore apart the social fabric of Kashmir Valley.
The Pakistani Punjabi Muslim is no one’s friend. They betrayed their own Bengali Muslim brothers and sisters from East Pakistan in 1971 and have been torturing, tormenting and killing Muslims who are non-Punjabis, like the Baloch, Sindhis, Mohajirs and Pashtuns. The Pakistani Punjabi Muslim has never been a friend or a well-wisher of Kashmiri Muslims. They have been using blood and bodies of Kashmiri Muslims only to extract revenge from India for the fall of Dhaka.
It is high time the majority Muslim community of Kashmir accepts this fact and thwarts further attempts of the Pakistani Punjabi Muslims to use the blood of Kashmiri Muslims for their political agenda.
Javed Beigh is general secretary of People’s Democratic Front. He fought DDC elections from Beerwah constituency of Central Kashmir’s Budgam district. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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