As soon as the Pulwama terror attack took place in Kashmir, Indian social media erupted with hate-filled calls to boycott all Kashmiris, as well as to deport all Muslims to Pakistan. Few people realized that in giving way to such calls of divisiveness they were directly strengthening the hand of the Pakistani army and the ISI, whose stated agenda is to break up India.
As General Hamid Gul, the ex-chief of the Pakistani ISI once revealed: “India is too big for Pakistan to handle. Hence the ISI should do everything to break India up.” This stated policy of Hamid Gul and the ISI has been disclosed by another ex-chief of the Pakistani ISI, General Asad Durrani, in his book, The Spy Chronicles.
Now given that the stated aim of the Pakistani Army and the ISI is to break up India, when we in India call for an economic boycott of Kashmir, when we say that all Kashmiris are anti-nationals, when we say that all Muslims should be sent to Pakistan, what we are doing is directly strengthening the ISI’s agenda of “breaking up India”. We may not realize this, but this is exactly what we are doing.
And this is precisely what the Pakistani army and the ISI want – that we start fighting amongst ourselves and break up our unity. If we stop talking to Kashmiris, if we boycott them & isolate them then the calls for independence of the Kashmiri separatists will only grow louder. For we have now handed over to the Pakistani ISI the golden opportunity of telling all Muslims in Kashmir and in India – “See India is for Hindus only. Hindus don’t care about you. They hate you. Then why do you want to stay as a part of India? Separate out and join us.” The Pakistani army thus wants to cut off parts of our nation, and we are happily doing this job for them, through our short-sighted and foolish calls of boycotting all Kashmiris and hating all Muslims.
Furthermore, if Kashmir were to separate out from India, would the Pakistani army and the ISI rest happy? Absolutely not. Having achieved such stunning success with our willing help and support, they would then move their attention to Punjab and resurrect the Khalistan separatist movement there. And if we still continue to remain short-sighted and blinded by emotions, we will at that point again say, “Oh! these Sikhs are very bad, let us cut off all ties with them.” And then Punjab will separate out from India. The whole of India will thus slowly come undone, for the truth is that there are many differences amongst us that hostile forces can exploit.
Therefore one of the key solutions to the Kashmir problem, as well as to the problem of jihadi militancy (supported by the Pakistani army), lies in the fostering of Hindu-Muslim unity within India. A strengthening of Hindu-Muslim unity will have the effect of depriving the Pakistani army of its “India is for Hindus only” rhetoric which it uses to whip up hatred in Pakistan. The army regularly presents before Pakistanis a hijacked version of Islam which it uses to stir up anti-India sentiments. It then uses this hatred to justify the army’s enormous grab of precious Pakistani budget and resources. While the people remain impoverished, the generals of Pakistan enjoy a lavish lifestyle funded by hate politics based upon a clever hijacking of Islam.
A second powerful effect that the deepening of Hindu-Muslim ties within India will have, is to deprive Pakistan of the very rationale upon which it was founded. This rationale being that it was necessary to partition out of India, a separate country for Muslims, where Muslims could prosper. The argument floated by Pakistan’s founders before independence was that Muslims being a minority in India, could never expect to enjoy full rights within India and therefore they needed a separate nation to themselves.
Today given the enormous instability within Pakistan and the deadly fights between Pakistan’s various Islamic sects, it is quite easy to see how fallacious this argument for partition really was. Pakistan today is at war with itself. Many Muslims sects within Pakistan such as the Sufis, the Shias, and the Ahmadis are being ruthlessly butchered. Pakistan cannot even preserve the unity of its own Muslim sects. Pakistan having been founded upon the cancerous ideology of suspicion and hate (hate for India, hate for Hindus) is now in a state of metastasis. The hate for India that Pakistan had previously nurtured, has now turned back upon the host and has grown so large that it is steadily consuming the host.
Hate thus never wins. Only love and empathy do. For this reason, Hindu-Muslim unity is the topmost way to bring peace to Kashmir, as well as to counter the Pakistani army’s agenda of breaking-up India.