I have always been an outsider. I spent a fair bit of my early days in Lajpat Nagar, a colony of Hindu and Sikh refugees from Lahore and Peshawar. Our family, with my Mufti father, was the lone Muslim family wherever one saw or heard in the area. Many years earlier, my father, against all advice, had opted to leave a safe job in Lahore and shift back to his ‘desh’ Hindustan, his ‘watan’ Rampur with not much more than his education to recommend him. This at a time when train loads of Hindus and Sikhs were coming to India, leaving the newly formed State of Pakistan behind, and lakhs of Muslims were taking the train to Pakistan from Delhi. All this merely to find myself in a society of exclusion and unstated apartheid. The leaders of Congress, Jan Sangh and other denominations would hold sabhas in Lajpat Nagar, Paharganj, Karol Bagh, etc and assure the refugees that their ‘dharm’, ‘sabhyata, their ‘samman’ and ‘sanskriti’ were safe in Hindustan. Almost nobody ever thought that amidst the audience, amidst the families uprooted could be a Muslim family too, a family that too needed its ‘dharm’, ‘sabhyata’ and ‘samman’ to be safeguarded. I could long neither for Lahore or Rampur nor celebrate the Independence of our nation.
This was largely because it was unthinkable for many at that time that a Mufti could leave Pakistan for secular Hindustan. The sense of displacement and dejection went much deeper. As a little boy, I played cricket with boys my age from the neighbourhood, and often spent afternoons in their home playing carom in summer vacations. We were all friends, or so I thought; and happily ate and drank with them. Without my innocent mind realising it, I was all along treated as the ‘other’, an ‘outsider’. Thus a friend’s mother would serve food in a steel ki thali to him but reserve a plastic tray with some floral print or cartoons on it for me. Initially I thought I was given special treatment, it was only a little later that I realised that all other boys from the neighbourhood who would come to my friend’s place would eat from the same steel ki thali, no special plastic trays for them! It took me only a bit longer to realise that most of the time I would be at my friend’s place, not many came to mine. And those who did, hardly ever stuck around at the time of lunch or dinner. For them all, I was an ‘outsider’.
Many years later as a young adult in Noida I made friends with a guy whose father was in the defence forces. We often exchanged books and notes in our college days. Again, the pattern would repeat: my friend would come to my house, study for a while with me, refuse to have any food on some flimsy excuse and go home. Experience had made me wiser. I had a frank chat with him, and drew a line. It did not help that soon Babri Masjid-Ram Janambhoomi protests hit the streets, and every other evening, Vishwa Hindu Parishad workers would hold a ‘peaceful’ march for the construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya with slogans like ‘Musalman ke do hi sthaan, Pakistan ya kabrastan’. It was the same in 1947 and 1992. Generations had come and gone, my father too had passed away. For the world around me, I was the ‘other’, an ‘outsider’ who opted to live in ‘cosmopolitan’ part of Delhi and Noida; yet an ‘outsider’. Thus when perchance I got to know of a book on Facebook, I could not resist asking for a copy of it. Penned by Zafar Choudhary, it is called “Kashmir Conflict and Muslims of Jammu”. The title grabbed me; for years I had heard of the plight of Kashmiri Pandits, for years, I was told of triangular politics of Jammu and Kashmir with a Muslim Valley, Buddhist Ladakh and Hindu Jammu. The simplistic division often rankled me but I found little in the media or literature that went beyond the stereotype until I saw Choudhary’s book. A few pages into the book, I realised my enthusiasm for it was not misplaced.
In the foreword itself, Wajahat Habibullah reiterates what I had felt for long: that Muslims of Jammu have not been given the attention they deserved. Highlighting the fact that they were distinct from the Muslims of the Valley, he writes, “Choudhary’s is an important work which will, I hope, help in addressing the impressions of Muslims of Jammu division that they are taken for granted, that the government of India, and the world, seeking to bring to final resolution the conflicts that have plagued the state of J&K over the last century, seek primarily to determine simply the views of different sections of the community residents in Kashmir.”
A little later, Habibullah admits he too was guilty of the same once. “In my own book, My Kashmir: The Dying of the Light, I have dealt with the policies of the Government of J&K, often glossing over the aspirations of Jammu’s Muslims in favour of those of Kashmir.” Choudhary himself concedes that the story of Jammu Muslims is probably more painful than of others. “What makes the story of Jammu more painful is that …the loss and pain of Jammu makes just a passing reference to the political discourse on Kashmir conflict.”
For him too, Jammu Muslims were like the ‘other’; often glossed over at the time of debate and dialogue. Just like those politicians of the 50s and 60s in Delhi. Indeed the Muslims of Jammu, not exactly at peace with the Muslims of the valley, not trusted much by the Hindus of Jammu, are often in a no-win situation. As Choudhary writes, “In a particular democratic set-up the Muslims of Jammu feel isolated on both counts – first, within Jammu as being Muslims who the majority community of the region sees as essential part of a Muslim hegemony biased against them, and second, as residents of Jammu province who are seen by the valley as people outside the definition of ‘Kashmiri Nationalism’.”
I do not agree with a lot of what Choudhary writes, but his writing does depict his pain, the pulse of Jammu Muslims, the perpetual ‘others’ in any dialogue on the State. And in many ways, he strikes a chord.
