Change of demography; A Myth or Reality?

Kashmir is turning away from its centuries–old diversity to preserve the Muslim majority at all costs and to rebuff the “designs of the Hindutva forces” to render the community into a minority.
This time around a petition challenging Article 35A that grants exclusive rights and privileges to permanent residents of the state has been reduced to Kashmiri Muslims’ identity versus Hindus of the country to make it a religio-political issue.
Right from the posh locality of Hyderpora where separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani lives to the VVIP Gupkar Road residences of the Abdullah dynasty, a chorus of Kashmiri Muslims are echoing from street corners to work places.
Geelani sees a “sinister design” by the RSS to adversely impact the Kashmir solution by invading the land with anti-Muslim elements. He has linked it to the “right to self-determination” granted under the United Nations resolutions. Omar Abdullah has charged the RSS with “designs to change the Muslim majority character that may affect the ultimate outcome of the unresolved Kashmir issue.”
The anticipated fear is that hordes of Hindus would settle in Jammu and Kashmir from the rest of the country once Article 35A goes. The Hindus would tilt the balance in favour of India and negate the majority view, which they claim is anti-India. These leaders are using Muslims as pawns to further their politics of juxtaposing Kashmiri Muslims versus Hindu India.
Kashmiri Muslims’ fear is also related to the unseemly events in some parts of the mainland India where their co-religionists have suffered the horror of lynching. Some of the Muslim thinkers and writers have started circulating the premonition that the country is heading toward yet another partition.
“Muslims are feeling insecure in the country,” the parting remarks of Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari before his 10-year-tenure in two phases came to an end early this month and the way he was trolled by the high and mighty in the BJP have been played time and again to justify the threat that Muslims face in the BJP-ruled India.
Kashmiri Muslims love their special status under Articles 370 and 35A which keeps them unchallenged by the outsiders in almost every respect. They were born and brought up amid chanting in streets: “Our dignity is linked to Article 370.” This is the view of the National Conference also that thought the distinct identity needed to be preserved at all costs.
Its rival PDP too thinks the same way. “We stand together,” declared PDP chief and Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti during her Independence Day speech under the fluttering Tricolour. She symbolised this with her clenched fist to claim that “all of us are united to preserve our special status.”
According to separatists, more than one lakh Kashmiri youth have lost their lives in the past 27 years. This is an alarming figure. The question arises who inflicted death on them. Kashmir refuses to ponder this aspect because it shows that all those who are talking of the Muslims being rendered into a minority are responsible for it. The demography question requires a wider debate but the emotions have clouded that fact making things very difficult in the state.
(To be continued)