NEW DELHI: President Pervez Musharraf’s newly advertised belief that his chemistry with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh offers the best chance for a solution to the Kashmir issue actually marks a tectonic shift from Pakistan’s erstwhile blinkered view that it could do serious business only with rightwing Hindu hardliners. That Dr Singh is neither a Hindu revivalist nor a dyed in the wool Pakistan-baiter, which the BJP and its various leaders had quite evidently proved to be, should be an eye-opener for those, including most notably Pakistani liberals, who had cultivated a perverse preference for the Hindutva leadership out of a kind of spite, as it were, for the Congress. It is a fact though that the Congress has not been entirely clean on many of the concerns voiced by liberals in both countries, nor does it smell of roses on the communal question. Over a period of time, and certainly since the mid-eighties, it has promoted a narrow nationalism as well as Hindu communalism whose DNA is not very different from the BJP’s.

Moreover, the Congress has traditionally had an extra weapon in its quiver – that of fanning Muslim communalism and obscurantism to fit apolitical, electoral need. The roots go back to the years before Independence when Mahatma Gandhi sought to get Indian Muslims tethered to the Khilafat Movement as an anti-British tool. For all practical purposes the Khilafat Movement ended up as an attempt to stave off the rout of a system of religious leadership of Muslims that was no longer going to be tenable in thecontemporary world.

Today, juxtaposed to President Musharraf’s stated objective to lead his country towards an Ataturk-inspired modern, liberal nation state, the Khilafat Movement of Gandhiji appears even more medieval than was originally visualized. There may be many pitfalls in the Ataturk model of governance, not the least being a tendency for authoritarianism, but few can question its thrust for a badly required enlightenment visa vis religious zealotry rampant in both countries. Last week, the Indian state — which is essentially a hotchpotch amalgam of the Congress and the BJP’s worldview – took yet another step to stoke the fires of Hindu-Muslim communal passions. It did so with a clearly delineated electoral purpose. In its new ill-considered move the government gave Aligarh MuslimUniversity, which is a federally funded institution mind you, a kind of a minority status by granting 50 per cent reservations for Muslim students. The Indian constitution does not allow for such reservation on religious grounds. That is the hallmark of a secular state. In any case the university has more than 50 per cent Muslim students at any point of time. So what’s the big deal? No prizes for guessing then that the BJP lunged at the issue and why not? If and when elections are held in Uttar Pradesh or anywhere else in the north, even Assam for that matter, the BJP would raise the bogey of appeasement of Muslims by the Congress, a time-tested political plank. The BJP would get more Hindu votes and the Congress would probably get a few more Muslim votes.

Bal Thackeray, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and All India MuslimPersonal Law Board, which has been effectively given the contract to brainwash young Muslim minds in the madrasas, were patronized by the Indian state under Congress rule. In fact they were set up to foil the secular liberal politics because liberal politics would logically lead to egalitarian demands, which the Indian state is not ready to entertain. This approach persists even more vehemently today. The problem with this kind of polarization is that it not only fuels Hindu and Muslim extremists, but it also takes away the focus from the issues that need to be targeted. For the Congress the latest Aligarh move is a clever attempt to create the illusion of helping Muslims without actually doing anything for them, except bringing more harm. What do Indians need most, and let us assume that Muslims are also among them? They need jobs. They need security. They need to be treated with respect. The state doesn’t have to try very hard to deliver all these if it can be only a little more transparent, merit-oriented, caring, and ruthlessly protective about everyone’s individual and collective rights to equality and justice enshrined in the constitution.

As Aligarh’s most eminent academician and acclaimed historian Irfan Habib said the move to reserve college seats, when Muslims don’t need that quota, could only harm them. So while the BJP has attacked the reservation issue to whip up communalism, the Left has taken up cudgels against it to bridge the growing gap between India’s Muslims and the Indian state.

Addressing the hardcore issues of secular governance is thus necessary for it impacts on the evolving India-Pakistan relations. Moving away from the Khilafat Movement and Ataturk models, what is it that ideally the two countries would want to see in Kashmir as they head to resolve this seemingly intractable issue? What kind of political and religious milieu would be agreeable? What would happen to both countries if Kashmir elects a religiously fundamentalist government, bereft of its all-embracing Kashmiriyat, if it were to ever hold free and fair elections? What are the ways to prevent such a slide from happening? Going by the diametrically opposite approaches to the kind of Muslim society they want to build, President Musharraf would win the liberal corner hands down. The question really becomes more urgent when it gets to Prime Minister Singh and his Congress Party. In its attempt to placate Hindus and Muslims as electorally useful religious categories — tinkering with the Ayodhya mosque here and a Muslim divorcee’s case there – the Congress was forced into political oblivion for four general elections. And if it hasn’t learnt any lessons from history, then it would be leaving Pakistan with no choice but to continue to engage with the BJPas the only feasible interlocutor. For who knows when the Congress is going to hand the Hindutva hordes the ideal come back vehicle of communalism. Dr. Singh’s liberal credentials notwithstanding.”

KARACHI: The people of Zehri Mohallah in Hub, Balochistan, are now paying the price of having a residence in the neighbourhood of the ‘White House’ that happened to be the hideout of Rehman Dakait, the ringleader of his notorious gang. The area people did know and so did the area police that Rehman had been living there for about three to four years. But no action was ever taken to arrest him. On the question of his free movement over this long period, the Hub police are presenting lame excuses, maintaining that they had been making efforts to arrest him but he always dodged them.

Residents of the locality around the White House say they had never seen Rehman Dakait or noticed his movement. Police and Rangers conducted a joint operation on May 17 and raided the White House. The battle left one police officer and three civilians dead, and another 12 policemen, three Rangers personnel and six civilians wounded.

At least 20 people were rounded up in the ensuing swoop in the area for interrogation. None of them, however, turned out to be guilty and the police had to let off all of them. Although, the Dakait managed to make his escape good, the law-enforcement agencies turned hard on the local people, suspecting that the entire population of the locality was supporting Rehman Dakait and his gangsters. “It seems as if we are citizens of a country conquered by some hostile forces,” some of the local people lamented while commenting on the treatment being meted out to them by the police and rangers since the failed operation.

So far, none of the gang members could have been arrested despite the bloodshed. Panic prevailed in the entire locality.

A visit to the area showed that the streets of Zehri Mohallah were deserted and people were scared of getting out of their houses. They were even not ready to speak about the incident. Nazim of Khuzdar Tehsil Yunus Aziz Zehri, however, collected courage to narrate his ordeal. This encouraged many other people to speak out.

A 60-year-old woman, Hajiani Mah Bibi, said: “We woke up in the morning on Tuesday with the deafening sound of gunfire. Suddenly someone knocked the door and some other people in uniform broke into our house by scaling the outer walls. The intruders started beating up us. My two sons were hauled up to the veranda from their room. They were also beaten up. I kept praying them for mercy with the Holy Quran in my hands but the uniformed people did not care. They hit me on my face with the butt of their rifles.”

The woman lamented that they did not spare even an eight-year-old girl who was beaten up. She burst into tears and went on to say: “We have never heard Rehman Dakait or his gangsters having scaled someone’s house or harmed anyone. We haven’t seen Rehman Dakait but he must have been better than these uniformed people.”

She claimed: “The uniformed people ransacked the house and took away Rs20,000 that I had saved for some rainy day or my final rites. I begged them not to take away the money, but in vain.”

Relatives of Lutfullah, 20, one of the three civilians killed during the operation, contested the claim by police and Rangers that the civilians were caught in crossfire. They said that the law enforcers had dragged him out of his house and at a distance of about 50 yards, they shot him dead.

Lutfullah’s cousin Mohammad Malook Bangalzai said: “We were all asleep when some people knocked at the door facing the street. They also peeped into the room through a window. Lutfullah was sleeping in the room. As he saw some uniformed people, he got frightened and ran inside the house. He also alerted other sleeping family members. As we opened the door, the uniformed people entered the house and whisked away Lutfullah, arguing that why did he run. They severely beat him up and a little later, we heard sound of gunshots. We were stunned to see Lutfullah lying in a pool of blood.”

Bangalzai said that the uniformed men beat up all occupants of the house.

The house of Yunus Aziz Zehri, the Nazim of Khuzdar Tehsil, is located some 100-150 yards from the house of Rehman Dakait. During the course of the battle, the law enforces took refuge in the adjoining houses to take position. Some of them had taken refuge in Zehri’s house for the same purpose. Mr Zehri said: “Although we did not resist, but they resorted to holding my two brothers hostage instead of acknowledging the cooperation.”

Identifying his brothers as Aurangzeb and Zulfiqar, he said they were asleep in the house before the sound of heavy shooting awoke us. Aurangzeb said that some police and Rangers personnel scaled the wall to enter the house. They sought our help in combating the criminals by taking position on the rooftop of two-storey house. We did not resist as they had already entered the house. However, they blind-folded me and my younger brother Zulfiqar and forced us to keep sitting in the room. They also beat up both of us and threatened us with their guns.

Mr Zehri led this reporter to his house where everything appeared upside down as all the house was badly ransacked and household items were seen littered on the floor. Yunus Zehri claimed that the law enforces took away Rs48,000 from the house, besides a refrigerator, a TV set, a licensed shotgun, a rifle, three mouser guns, four mobile phone sets and some other valuables. He said that he, along with his family, lived here for about a decade. “I knew that Rehman Dakait was residing in the White House but we have never seen him.” He said that the law enforces had meted out the same treatment to all the residents of this locality.

Saadullah, another resident of the locality, said that he was going for some work when stopped by the law enforcers near his house. “They deprived me of Rs900 I was keeping in my pocket, he complained.

Some people said that law enforcers did not spare even the pesh imam of Madni Masjid, Nawab Sasoli, who was dragged out of the mosque and severely beaten up.

Yet another local resident, Anwar Zehri, said that he had been intercepted by law enforcers and robbed of Rs200. He also stated that his guest, Zahid, who had come to see him, was also robbed of Rs550 by law enforcers.