“‘The last interview with Maulvi Shaukat Ahmad Shah: ‘Violence hurts our struggle’’
The atmosphere of early spring, with all its promises and expectations, was shattered when on Friday April 8 Maulvi Shaukat Ahmad Shah was killed in a bomb explosion in Srinagar. I met the maulvi three weeks before violence ended his life to abruptly. He appeared to me as a perfect blend of a religiously and morally conservative maulvi with a progressive and non-violent political leader. That is probably exact why he had to die. But it is also why the world should continue listening te him, even when he is silenced. An interview as a tribute.
Tea, obviously. And biscuits. And at the end of our conversation, an invitation for a more elaborate evening dinner. Anyone who visited maulvi Shaukat Ahmad Shah found himself to be a guest in the most profound and rich meaning of that word, in line with islamic and Kashmiri traditions. I came to ask him about the –seamingly relaxed– situation in Kashmir and about possible connections between the struggle in Kashmir and other conflicts in the region. His two armed guards made a far to friendly impression to upset me. Three weeks later it is clear that both the maulvi and I were undeservedly carefree.
Maulvi Shaukat’s long beard immediately classified him in the range of pious men for muslims. For those outside the realm of the Ummah, his appearance provoked just as simultaneously suspicions about fundamentalism, extremism and terrorism. The maulvi knew that, and he could still muster a smile about it. At the same time, he found it hard to stomach that Delhi kept rejecting his proposals to start a university in Srinagar. ‘What we want to do’, he stressed, ‘is to upgrade the level of knowledge in the Valley about agriculture, horticulture, architecture, medicine and theology. What is the problem with that?’
Maulvi Shaukat Ahmad knew what was the problem. He was aware that people in Delhi felt that a university run by the Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadith, a salafi sect of sunni islam, would contribute to what some call the Talibanisation of the Valley. The maulvi shrugged. ‘When the armed revolt started in Kashmir in the early nineties, the Ahl-e-Hadith called a shura to decide upon our position vis-a-vis the use of guns in the struggle for azaadi. Of the 323 leaders present, 321 voted against the use of guns. The two pro votes were from people who joined the militancy afterwards.’
‘When in 2008, guns were replaced by mass demonstrations and stonepelting, I came out publicly against stonepelting and called it un-Islamic. Delhi applauded, but it did not earn me a huge popularity in Kashmir. My life has been threathened twice already: once by a grenade, the other day by bullets. Since then, I am always accompanied by two armed guards. But when I want to start a university, then all of a sudden I return to being a potential terrorist, a bearded fundamentalist who has to be stopped.’
The third attempt to kill maulvi Shaukat Ahmad Shah succeeded. Friday morning April 8 he did not survive an attack on a mosque he was visiting. In the hours after the attack, nobody claimed responsibility, but is clear that those who planned the attack were aiming at the heart of religious tolerance in the Valley.
‘Violence is not a reliable path to follow if one wants to arrive at a solution for conflicts’, said maulvi Shaukat during the early morning interview I had with him on Friday March 18. We were talking in his small office, while at the same time, the first floor of the centre he was so proud of, bustled with people coming and going to get medical care. ‘The problem for non-violence is that the Indian governement fails to respond positively to the rejection of violence. When Yasin Malik and his JKLF renounced the armed struggle in 1994, the repression against them continued unabated. Every political or religious leader in Kashmir who has ventured into the realm of dialogue with Delhi, has been dumped afterwards, and left vulnerable for attacks of being a sell-out or worse. The consequence of that approach has been that extremists are strengthened and moderate voices get discredited. It is Delhi that made Geelani the leader he is today by destroying those who searched for solutions based on common ground.’
An unconvenient truth for the maulvi is the fact that the Lashkar-e-Taiba, one of the remaining jihadi outfits that is still involved in armed militancy in the Valley, belongs to the same Ahl-e-Hadith sect he represents. He does not deny that fact, nor does he hide his displeasure with the tactics of the LeT. ‘Once I proposed to travel to Pakistan to talk with the LeT’, he said, ‘but Delhi denied me the permission to travel. I think I had the necessary moral authority to explain to the LeT that their guns were hurting our interests instead of supporting them. If Delhi would have had a serious policy of granting meaningful autonomy to Kashmir, then I am sure I could have convinced them to leave us alone. The problem is: Delhi has never had any such policy.’
Maulvi Shaukat Ahmad Shah was booked as a separatist religious leader. In fact, when you say that of someone in Kashmir, it is a double tautology. To start with, it is hard to fnd any Kashmiri who is happy with the current status of the Valley or the state within the Indian Union. Further, no religious leader seems to be willing to repeat what Sheikh Abdullah did in 1974, when the Sher-e-Kashmir signed a deal with Indiara Gandhi, hoping for maximum autonomy for Kashmir. ‘We have been deceived and disappointed by Delhi time and again’, sighed the maulvi. ‘We are realists who aim for progress for our people, but we need to show real change happening. When guns are replaced by non-violent demonstrations, we expect India to reciprocate by removing their troops from the streets and retreating to their barracks, at least. In reality, more than 700.000 Indian soldiers remain in the Valley and in our streets. They continue to control and irritate all of us constantly. The boys who come to the streets are shot or arrested and locked up under the draconic laws that India put in place. It is extremey difficult to reamin committed to non-violence under those circumstances.’
According to maulvi Shaukat Ahmad Shah, the enduring conflict of Jammu&Kashmir is at the core a battle between India and Pakistan. The two countries continue to claim the whole princely state, unaware of the fact that both claims have long been rejected by the Kashmiri’s. ‘After the decades of occupation by Indian troops, nobody would argue to stay with India. And with Pakistan crumbling before our eyes, threatening to be swallowed into the black whole of religious extremism, very few are left that choose to go with Pakistan. The struggle of both India and Pakistan is useless, but Kashmiri’s continue to be victims of it.’
Those who would think Kashmiri’s are the only victims, stand to be corrected by the maulvi. Firstly, he mentioned the hundreds of millions of Indians and Pakistanis suffering every day from a lack of education, health care and employment, as a consequence of the wrong priorities of their governements –understand: as long as Delhi and Islamabad continue to pump money into armies and military confrontations, the poor will never get what is their due right. But the maulvi went beyond that obvious argument. ‘If the international community fails to act to solve the Kashmir dispute, I fear that violent fundamentalism will continue to grow and fester. Ultimately, the religio-political violence will destroy the whole subcontinent and disturb the whole world.’
To alter dynamics in Kashmir and the rest of South Asia, including Afghanistan, two factors are crucial: the international community and the Indian civil society organisations. The maulvi was convinced of the enormous power of these two factors combined.
On April 8th, he exchanged his small office for a grave on the graveyard of martyrs in Srinagar. In other words, he will be surrounded for eternity by the victims of the violence he alwayst fought against. ‘I oppose violence, not because I give up on our struggle’, he said, ‘but because it harms our struggle.’ One can only wish that his presence among the many militants and protesters, among the innocent victims and the slain mujaheddeen, will introduce a new discourse and debate amongst the Kashmiri spirits. And hopefully, the local and national authorities will listen to the ensuing debate, instead of staying focussed solely on the reports written by army and intellingence officers.
By Gie Goris, editor-in-cjhief of MO*magazine. See www.mo/ne/en. His forthcoming book on Kashmir, Pakistan and Afghanistan is supported by Flemish monthly magazine MO* and the Fonds Pascal Decroos voor Bijzondere Journalistiek. Brecht Goris receives the support of deBuren, the Beursschouwburg and the Warande (Turnhout) for his exhibiton about the three regions in conflict.