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| Gurmail Singh admitted, Kashmir University is great | | STARK REALITY | |
RUSTAM
Early Tiems Report
JAMMU, JAN 24: University of Kashmir is a great institution of higher learning. It has admitted Gurmail Singh s/o Harminder Singh to the 4-year B. Tech course vide its Admission Notification No – 01/B.Tech. Gurmail Singh has been granted admission under RBA category. He is one of the 51 candidates who have been given admission. He is the only non-Muslim boy. All others belong to one community. Obviously, they belong to the Muslim community.
Still the University of Kashmir deserves kudos. After all, it has been very kind enough to consider the candidature of one non-Muslim. There would be persons who would naturally criticize the University of Kashmir for admitting candidates belonging to one particular community. They also would surely accuse the university authorities for not treating the non-Muslims fairly and for giving a preferential treatment to the candidate professing a particular faith.
But their criticism would be unfair and misplaced. Their accusation against the University authorities would also be ill founded. For, what should the university authorities do in the prevailing situation? The University of Kashmir is helpless.
Since there are no non-Muslims in the Kashmir Valley, the admission to an equal number of non-Muslim candidates or a fair share to them in prestigious or other courses is just not possible. The critics should understand the difficulty of the Kashmir University authorities, which has become an abode of those who preach and implement Kashmiriat with single-minded devotion to prove that they are true democrats and genuine secularists.
What are difficulties of the University of Kashmir? One of the difficulties of this great institution of learning is that the non-Muslims are conspicuous by their absence in the entire Kashmir Valley. Not that the non-Muslims vacated the Valley on their own. They quit Kashmir years ago because of those who preached and eulogized Kashmiriat. Over three lakh Kashmiri Hindus left the Valley as early as in January 1990 because those who preached and eulogized Kashmiriat were not finding themselves comfortable because of the presence of the followers of another religion. Their Kashmiriat considered them a great obstacle in their way. The number of Kashmiri Hindus, who still live in the Kashmir Valley, is not more than 6,000. How they are living there and surviving only they know. Perhaps, Kashmiriat is taking care of them.
And, those, particularly the Sikhs, who did not quit the Valley wholesale then, also vacated Kashmir in due course of time. The process was slow, but it continued without any break. The reason of their migration from Kashmir was the same: They, like the Kashmiri Hindus, were an unwanted community because it did not share the views of the ardent champions of Kashmiriat. Leave aside those few thousands who could not leave Kashmir for various reasons. Most of the Sikhs who still live in Kashmir are not leading the kind of life the human being are entitled to under the constitution.
The Sikhs had to leave the Valley because they stood for a socio-political and religious philosophy that, according to the champions of Kashmiriat, was inconsistent with their socio-religious and political philosophy. Another reason was that the Sikhs, like the Kashmiri Hindus, stood for India and the liberal Indian political system. With their exodus the number of non-Muslims in Kashmir reduced to almost a paltry few thousand. In other words, with their exodus the Valley became the sole preserve of a particular community.
Not just the Kashmiri Hindus and Sikhs vacated the Valley because they were mortally afraid of the kind of Kashmiriat that reigned supreme, and continues to reign supreme, even now, Thousands of Muslims also had to leave their homes and hearths in Kashmir in order to save themselves from the believers in the concept of Kashmiriat. Most of them are living in Jammu.
So, don’t criticize the University of Kashmir. Leave it the Kashmir’s ruling class, which presents itself to the Indian nation as fully democratic and secular, to take note of the fact that Kashmir has become a place of one particular community. It is for the Kashmir’s political class to create an environment that promotes the ideas of peaceful co-existence and liberalism. But for this they have to reformulate their concept of Kashmiriat in a fashion that makes it all-inclusive. Otherwise, the people across the country would take Kashmiriat to mean a thought that hates the followers of other religions.
In fact, there are people who have already dismissed Kashmiriat as something rigid, something unaccommodating and something not tolerant. And, remember, the term Kashmiriat is not very old. It was coined only after 1975 by certain elements close to the National Conference and they coined it for furthering their personal agenda. This is a stark reality and it can be easily verified.
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