On a recent visit to Srinagar we had lunch with a college professor, Mohammed Shafi. The venue was the Ardou’s, a prominent popular restaurant in the city. I was impressed by his awareness about current and historical political affairs. His contention was that there would have been no major problem in the
Kashmir Valley but for the Hindu Muslim divide created by Mahatma Gandhi. When he saw surprise on my face, he went on to ask: Why on earth did the Mahatma have to lead the Khilafat movement when the institution of Caliph had been, in effect, dead for centuries? Did he not realize that Khilafat had lost its sanctity the day it passed from Mecca to Damascus, in all probability, in exchange of cash or kind? Thereafter, it similarly went to Baghdad, later to Cairo and eventually settled in Istanbul. What did the institution have to do with Indians for them to make sacrifices in order to keep the defeated Sultan of Turkey on his throne? Yet Gandhi did it. To make matters worse, he promised Muslims that saving the Caliphate and winning Indian independence were synonymous. Since then, most Muslims in India have been politically confused. Mr Shafi attributed the mistake of Partition to this confusion. Otherwise, he asked why should have UP, Bombay (now Mumbai) or Bihar Muslims been enthusiastic about Pakistan? What was there for them in the centre of Islamic power in the sub-continent shifting to Karachi, the capital of the new dominion? When I stated to Mr Shafi that all this was past, and asked what did he and his fellow Valley citizens want now, his answer was, “Autonomy. Yes, that is what the majority of Kashmiris want”. But then, what happens to the enormous subsidy that J&K enjoys, first through the Finance Commission and then by the Planning Commission? For once, he conceded that the fault lay with Srinagar. In September 2006, J&K copied New Delhi and raised all State salaries to the same levels. Imagine, Mr Shafi said, for a population of one crore, J&K has five lakh Government employees and very little other organised employment. There are, of course, businesses related to tourism and handicrafts, but few industrial jobs. H o w c a n t h e n t h e J & K Government function without a subsidy or a largesse from the Union Government? Since he could appreciate the contradiction between autonomy and subsidy, I pressed as to why do not the devotees of Kashmiriat raise their own funds and decline the subsidies? After all, h o w e v e r f e u d a l i s t i c w a s t h e Maharajah’s rule, J&K was selfreliant and took no subsidy. And then, tell New Delhi: Unlike the other States we do not take your money; we are financially independent and therefore have every right to be politically autonomous.
Kashmiris would then have made a telling argument. Mr Shafi was fairminded and did concede that there was a contradiction between the demand of autonomy and the supply of subsidy. So, then I asked Shafi Saheb how he would resolve this paradox, assuming that New Delhi would be all — out to placate the Kashmiris?
After all, he who pays the piper calls the tune The reasonable professor said, “In our obsession for autonomy almost everybody in Kashmir, including students of economics, have forgotten to draw our economic road map.” Quite frankly, he confessed, he had been confronted with this paradox for the first time. Then he went on to concede that “Kashmiris do not even have a clear political road map. We only know what we do not want and that is the Government of India’s rule”. If the future of your State is so confused, what about your own future? Would you not like to settle in another part of India? “Anyway, there also I would remain a Muslim. I would still miss a sense of belonging. The fault is not mine. It is the accident of my birth, that I was born a Muslim.” If it was so simple, I asked, why did you oppress the Kashmiri Pandits? He said, “Yes, that was the work instigated by Pakistani agents in the Valley. Yet on Tuesdays, the Hanuman Day, even now all kasai or butcher shops of the Valley remain closed as a tribute to the Pandit sentiments. Quite frankly, our treatment of Pandits has given us a bad name.” In the light of these paradoxes and contradictions what then would be his own plan since he is such a thinking and far-sighted person? He asserted that he loves Kashmir, he belongs to the Valley and ideally would never like to leave. But the question which often gnaws him is, he said, “Should I not settle abroad where I would not feel alien merely because I am a Muslim.” To which my question was: Which country would that be? Most Western countries, if not their Governments, certainly their people, have begun looking away from Muslims since 9/11 and other such events. And the truly Islamic countries do not seem to grant citizenship to whom they perceive as foreigners; Muslim or otherwise. Even Dubai does not consider a long-time resident as a qualification for citizenship.We decided to drop this subject when he wound up saying, “I told you the fault is the mischief of my birth. 
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