Syed Inayatullah Andrabi
This is not an obituary or a tribute to the late brother, I can’t do that, I am not coming to terms with what has happened, and find it incredibly difficult to deal with the reality.
I could only imagine Br Tajammul-ul-Islam a living person full of life, energised and energising, ever exuding confidence.
He was to me what nobody else is. He in Islamabad, me in London, we had different spheres of day-to-day practical involvements, but what in the first place—back in early 1980s—formed the foundation and ever since continued to animate our relationship, was our shared vision of the future, sense of the past, particularly the post-prophetic Islamic/Muslim past, and concerns arising from the present, particularly from the post-1989 freedom movement of Kashmir.
We used to put the best of our intellectual energies into imagining the reformative strategies.
As said, I would not write ‘about’ Br Tajammul, but there is a moral compulsion that drives me: Sheikh Tajammul-ul-Islam’s real role in Kashmir’s freedom politics needs to be brought out.
The aim here is not to confer any titles or honours on the late brother, but simply to educate serious seekers of truth, and our coming generations on the freedom history of Kashmir.
This has become ever more necessary as a frame of reference has been created within which everything is assessed, and evaluated.
Here I am referring to post-1989 Freedom Movement (hereafter also referred to as ‘current movement’ or ‘the Movement’).
Who did what, who is how tall a leader and who is not, all this valuation takes place relative to this frame.
Now this poses a problem, both, at intellectual and practical levels, and let us briefly explain how:
First, as a general principle, for any political movement anywhere, one cannot properly understand the facts and realities of that movement unless viewed in its totality, its real time-space frame.
Kashmir movement is no exception, it (as an anti-occupation movement) started in one form or the other right from the day India occupied Kashmir in 1947.
Taking the current movement (post-89) as the frame of reference will amount to truncating the real time span.
That being a universal consideration, there are some important features specific to the current movement, which would further strengthen my argument that this movement should not be taken as the frame of reference to determine who did what with regard to the Kashmir issue.
The distinctive and defining aspect of the current movement is that of armed militancy which in the first place kick-started the movement in 1989.
Given the fact that anti-India politics had always enjoyed mass support, and high moral ground in Kashmir, the militancy directed against Indian occupation enjoyed even higher.
The movement has structurally evolved ever since( please note my intention here is not to describe the current movement as such but only to highlight those aspects which render it incapable of serving as an authentic frame of reference) adding to itself a political umbrella constituted by All Party Hurriyat Conference(APHC) plus other political outfits outside APHC. Let us note some main points about this Movement relevant to our purpose here:
1) With an unprecedented political profile, the Movement claimed all the pro-freedom/anti-India political space making the already existing parties/people therein almost invisible.
The ecosystem thus created made these parties seek shelter in the newly created system—the Movement, and this involved adjusting their individual profiles to the profile of the Movement.
2) Acting as a shelter, the Movement effectively became a leveller. People had to be cut to its size, and the ‘leaders’ within it became teammates.
Thus the late Abdul Ghani Lone — a former Congress minister in India’s puppet regime in Kashmir —- and late Syed Ali Shah Geelani, a leading anti-India Islamic-political figure were placed on the same pedestal by the Movement as ‘Hurriyat Leaders’. Actually, the latter would be heard many a time hailing the former as a valued teammate.
3) Sheltering and levelling point to a yet bigger truth about the Movement, namely, that those pushed in , did not drive it —- simply because they were not its architects —- the Movement drove them, it had its own modus-operandi, and a definite view of its historical purpose, which in turn means the future-visions of individual participants/leaders—if they had any—did not matter nor did their wishes and capability to play a role of their choice—as leaders do—in Kashmir’s political history.
To make this more intelligible, particularly the point about the Movement having its own modus-operandi and sense of historical purpose, let me touch upon some Kashmir-specific facts:
We will raise a simple question: The current movement started in 1989, APHC somewhere in 1993, three decades down the line where is the institutionalized freedom politics in Kashmir? With the first gunshot in 1989, the Kashmir-India power equation started changing.
India’s powerful grip acquired through decades of overt and covert control, continued to loosen by the day as young boys went on confronting India’s military might.
More and more political spaces for the freedom movement became available with the hitherto available spaces becoming further radicalized.
In short, the reality on the ground progressively underwent a process of change in favour of Kashmir and against India.
A new political reality started emerging on the ground overwriting the one that was manufactured in 1947, and nurtured by deceit and force since then.
In terms of institutionalized grass-roots political presence, where and in which concrete form is this new reality now reflected — three decades down the line —- that is the question.
Which party or parties represent it? The question is about mere existence, not practical activism.
Unfortunately the political landscape in terms of institutionalised political presence on the ground has hardly changed since 1947.
The Pro-accession-to-India forces then created political organisation on ground, and essentially that is what continues to exist till date.
What then have the Movement’s politics been all about? Well anything but not those ‘natural’ things like reaping the benefits brought in by the change on the ground, consolidating the gains and make them permanent by institutionalizing them, and thus changing the political landscape. Its historical purpose did not include that.
4) Two conclusions follow from (1)-(3) above.
First, the current movement cannot be a yardstick to measure the political size of leaders because they are there as a result of their original sizes being reduced or enlarged to fit the master frame.
But that regardless, is not hugely important: political stature is more of a value judgment than an objective reality; political role is the real objective reality that can define someone’s worth in historic terms.
Second—and this is more important— we cannot determine the political role and contribution, in historical terms, of individuals linked to Kashmir’s freedom movement by looking at their activism in the Movement alone.
Actually, activism within the Movement is more about performance, less about role—the word understood in a more comprehensive sense.
Political role is driven by a conscious will arising out of beliefs and convictions, and is a matter of independent choice—one chooses to take up the role.
The choice can only be exercised in a political environment where freedom does not mean merely to choose from, but to imagine new options, new visions of the future, and the strategic roadmaps.
In a system like the Movement which had its set goals not designed by those in it , roles get automatically assigned by default, and the relevant question to ask is how best one performs in the given role.
The question about the role itself—- who played which role, constructive or destructive—- does not arise.
What I have said about the Movement so far is precisely meant, not to devalue the services of those inside it—which deserve due appreciation— but only to elucidate my argument that to correctly understand the political role of individuals in the history of Kashmir’s freedom movement, and to determine the worth and historical significance of that role, the Movement is not the right time-frame.
This applies to everyone who had a political role in Kashmir, but right now we are talking about Sheikh Tajammul-ul-Islam, and in doing so, I will not attempt a political biography of his, but will only bring up what I, as a keen observer of freedom movement and not his associate, believe are his core contributions of historic significance to the cause of Kashmir’s freedom, and are singularly his—he basically fathered them.
