The plot above shows the % Urdu speakers vs. % Muslim in states where Muslims are 4% or more of the population. The data is from Census 2011 (thanks for Vikram of the language data). There are some interesting trends. Assuming that the vast majority of Urdu speakers are Muslim, it seems that in India the core Urdu-identified region is in the Deccan and to the east of its traditional heartland, in Bihar. In South India, 30% of Muslims in Tamil Nadu may be Urdu-speaking. But in Kerala the fraction is almost zero, while in Gujarat and West Bengal less than 10% of the Muslims are Urdu-speaking.
Below the fold is the table.
| State | Hindu | Muslim | Urdu | Ratio |
| Andhra Pradesh | 88% | 10% | 9% | 93% |
| Karnataka | 84% | 13% | 11% | 84% |
| Maharashtra | 80% | 12% | 7% | 58% |
| Bihar | 83% | 17% | 8% | 50% |
| Jharkhand | 68% | 15% | 6% | 41% |
| Delhi | 82% | 13% | 5% | 40% |
| Goa | 66% | 8% | 3% | 34% |
| Uttarakhand | 83% | 14% | 4% | 30% |
| Tamil Nadu | 88% | 6% | 2% | 30% |
| Uttar Pradesh | 80% | 19% | 5% | 28% |
| Haryana | 87% | 7% | 1% | 21% |
| Chandigarh | 81% | 5% | 1% | 21% |
| Madhya Pradesh | 91% | 7% | 1% | 19% |
| Puducherry | 87% | 6% | 1% | 11% |
| Rajasthan | 88% | 9% | 1% | 11% |
| Dadra and Nagar Haveli | 94% | 4% | 0% | 9% |
| Gujarat | 89% | 10% | 1% | 8% |
| West Bengal | 71% | 27% | 2% | 7% |
| Daman and Diu | 91% | 8% | 0% | 5% |
| Andaman and Nicobar Islands | 69% | 9% | 0% | 4% |
| Meghalaya | 12% | 4% | 0% | 2% |
| Jammu and Kashmir | 28% | 68% | 0% | 0% |
| Kerala | 55% | 27% | 0% | 0% |
| Manipur | 41% | 8% | 0% | 0% |
| Tripura | 83% | 9% | 0% | 0% |
| Assam | 61% | 34% | 0% | 0% |
| Lakshadweep | 3% | 97% | 0% | 0% |
the trend line is exponential. a linear function r-square is 0.02. probably should take lakadswheep out.
Both J&K and Lakshadweep seem to be driven by entirely different factors than the bulk of the sample. A single regression line for the whole set doesn’t seem to fit the data very well at all.
J&K is interesting. Given that Urdu is the official language of the state, it seems odd that no one reported speaking Urdu. Are these percentages for Urdu as native language? That could explain it, since the native language of people in the Kashmir Valley is obviously Kashmiri and in Jammu Dogri, Pahari, etc prevail. I have no idea why Urdu is the official language in J&K. Perhaps because it would otherwise be hard to unite such a multilingual region.
i assume. no idea how/why ppl report what they report. i have weak intuition about muslims in india. totally surprised at the high urdu % in karnataka vs. the trivial % in kerala (though i assume in karnataka it’s driven by bangalore).
If it’s self-reported, I don’t know how seriously we are to take it. Perhaps a lot of Urdu-speakers in UP are declaring their language as Hindi out of fear or some other reason. Otherwise, for Urdu to be doing so badly in what was historically its core region is strange.
Telengana is not on your list (maybe the census data comes from before Andhra was divided) but since Hyderabad is where most of the Muslims are, you would expect that area to be more Urdu speaking.
Happy 4th of July by the way.
census 2011. so yeah that’s why it’s not on the list.
thanks.
This data is for mother tongue, or language spoken at home. There is no ‘fear’ involved here.
Second and third language data comes out later, but previous years data indicates that very few speak Urdu as a second or third language outside J&K.. Urdu was made the official language of J&K under the British.
Bengaluru doesnt have an especially high concentration of Muslims, they are present in larger numbers in coastal Karnataka. But the important thing is that Kannada Muslims are reporting Urdu as their mother tongue. Wonder what girmit thinks of this.
Scroll.in has a whole piece on this
https://scroll.in/article/884754/surging-hindi-shrinking-south-indian-languages-nine-charts-that-explain-the-2011-language-census
“There is no fear involved here”– And you would know this for sure how exactly? Have you gone and asked UP Muslims how afraid they are living in Yogi’s UP? But this data is from before the Hindutva takeover, so some other factors must be in play.
Anyway, Scroll has a different explanation for why Urdu-wallahs have suddenly turned into Hindi-wallahs:
“Since Urdu in modern India is associated only with Muslims, this fall is unusual given that the Muslim population in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar has grown between 2001 and 2011. What this might, therefore, mean is that a new generation of Muslims is turning to Hindi since Urdu education has nearly ceased to exist in much of North India.”
The death of Urdu in Lucknow and Agra is tragic and one of the worst byproducts of Partition. Just because Pakistan made Urdu its “qaumi zaban” does not mean that Urdu had to die in India. To kill a language in its core area is unforgivable, in my opinion.
In Karnataka, there are a number of demographic concentration of muslims. The northern core deccan region of Gulbarga-Bidar is one of them, and another is the the southern stretch of the coast, Mangalore up to the town of Bhatkal. The core deccan region has a very old tradition of Persian Islamicate political and cultural influence. The vernacular Kannada spoken there is saturated with Persian words, not to the extent of Hindustani, but unlike what one would expect in south India. This is the region of the Bahamani sultanate, Adil shahis, and Barid shahi dynasties and the sufi saint Bande Nawaz. In contrast, the coastal region is remarkably distinct ethnographically, irrespective of religious identity. Unlike the deccan plateau, Urdu was completely alien to this region until recently. Near Mangalore, many Muslims speak a language called Beary which is influenced by Malayalam, Tulu and Arabic. In Bhatkal it is a language called Navayati, which uses the Nastaliq script and is a creole of sorts between Konkani and Arabic. Certain Navayatis I know have told me they are the descendants of Yemeni/Iraqi merchants and the local Jains.
I’d imagine that the coastal Muslims are those who account for the bulk of the 16% non-urdu identified population in the study, although unlike their forebears, they are rapidly adopting Urdu as a second language as they integrate culturally with pan-Indian Islam. If the vast majority of deccan plateau muslims of Karnataka are identifying with Urdu, that is not a recent phenomena, in as much as the Dakhni language has been a thing for centuries, in urban centers at least, so it is probably an outcome of elite emulation that the poorer muslims are adopting the language for prestige issues. Btw, Bangalore muslims do not all originate from Karnataka, in the core of the city most seem to have family origins in the former Madras presidency, neighbouring parts of Tamil Nadu and Andhra, and they speak the peculiar Urdu thats even more divergent to the standard register than Hyderabadi is. But there are many who are migrants from Kerala, southern Tamil Nadu, and now quite a few from Bengal and Assam.
My guess on why so many in Karnataka identify with Urdu compared to UP is that in the latter region the language only refers to the refined highly Persianized register. If an uneducated UP muslim claims to speak Urdu they will likely be mocked, whereas in Karnataka and AP, if a common man speaks some very demotic variant of dakhni, he calls it Urdu. So its a common thing for north Indians (hindus included) to cringe and comment that “what these people speak cannot be called Urdu”.
Very interesting. I have read about the Adil Shahis and all, but I didn’t know that their influence still persists today.
Yes, the people of Lucknow and Agra don’t think Dakhni is real Urdu.
One should also read Ibn Bhatuta’s Travels (Rila) . He describes how he had a supernatural or super-sensory experience in an island off Mangalore coast and that was foretold by a Muslim saint in Egypt years before that. He describes the Muslim communities along the southwest coast of India.
Pretty much the opposite of what you would expect if you adopted the plausible null hypothesis that Urdu speakers in India were mostly former Hindi speakers who made that modest language shift in conjunction with their religious conversion, with both cultural transitions happening largely in situ.
This data seems to imply instead that a more likely narrative is that Urdu speakers in India are mostly descended from migrants from what is now Pakistan, whose ancestors spoke Urdu before migrating, and that language shift from Hindi to Urdu only happened where the Muslim population’s share of the total was large enough to reach a tipping point (i.e. in most of what became Pakistan, but not in what remained India). This tipping point could have a lot to do with who ruled the territory as language shift (and change in religious affiliation) often follows elite trends.
no, the migration is mostly from UP and other parts of india to pakistan.
urdu has a stronghold in the south around hyderabad, which was ruled by muslims with connections ot the north.
i don’t have a good explanation of some of the patterns.
Urdu speakers are not descended from Pakistanis. It is a historically accepted fact that what we now call “Urdu” and what used to be known as “Hindavi” or “Rekhta” evolved from Khari Boli in Delhi (It was called “Zaban-e-Urdu-e-Maulla”–the language of the exalted camp) and in Lucknow and Agra. The language went from India to Pakistan and not the other way around.
If people would look up basic facts before commenting, we wouldn’t have to go over and over the same information.
In contrast to what Vikram believes (see the other thread on Persian instead of Urdu as Pakistan’s national language), the linguistic consensus is that Standard Hindi and Standard Urdu are two registers of one language, which used to be called “Hindustani”, but now due to nationalism and communalism has been divided into Hindi for Hindus and Urdu for Muslims.
Thank you. I stand corrected and am happy to learn. I’m not sure that I could have figured that out from sources easily available to me.
Sorry, I wasn’t trying to be mean.
Though the Wikipedia article on “Urdu” or “Hindustani” basically tells you that Urdu evolved from Khari Boli. It’s not a hidden fact.
Very well put.
Just to nitpick, however, the word is mu’alla (not maulla). The mu- prefix (as in muhammad, mujrim etc) connotes endowment (with a certain quality) in Arabic. So mu’aala literally means endowed with height (i.e. exalted) in Arabic.
Urdu was the official language of the princely state of Hyderabad from 1868 to 1947. State patronage created a strong Urdu speaking identity among Muslim government functionaries.
(It was the only important Muslim state that used Urdu — Persian was the official language of Awadh, Mughal Delhi, pre conquest Bengal, etc).
The territories of princely Hyderabad territories now belong to several different southern states, mostly Andhra, Karnataka, and Maharashtra. That explains the chart above.
For example, in Karnataka, the former princely-hyderbadi districts of bijapur, Gulbarga, etc have a higher proportion of Muslims than the rest of the state (about 20% vs 12 state wide), and they retain their Urdu identity.
As an Urdu speaker, I find the Hyderabadi (Dakhni) accent adorable. Just the way they say “yes” makes me smile.
Osmania University used to teach everything, even “hard sciences”, in Urdu. It was one of the Nizam’s great successes.
I think the ahl-e-Zaban of Agra and Lucknow were not super impressed with Daccani though. But then the people of Lucknow were not even impressed with people from Delhi 🙂
@Ikram: “It (Hyderabad) was the only important Muslim state that used Urdu.”
Whatever public education was there in Nizam area was in Urdu medium. To give it a face, P.V. Narasimha Rao, the Brahmin PM from south is from that state. He had all his primary and higher education in Urdu medium. I have to guess he learnt to read and write Telugu and Devanagari scripts much later in life. [a bit of historical trivia]
There are lies, damn lies, and statistics. These numbers are waste. There is no meaning to them.
For most Indian Muslims Urdu is simply an identity marker. They claim to be Urdu speaker just to stress their Muslim identity and nothing else. The language they might speak at home has no bearing on what they report in census or surveys.
I have had Tamil Muslim friends who claimed their mother tongue was Urdu. In reality it is simply a badly mangled pidgin of Tamil, Telugu and some Deccani Urdu. When I heard it being spoken, I had to really strain my ears to get even the gist of the conversation. If anyone taking pride in the greatness of “Zabaan-e-Urdu-e-Maula” happens to hear it, it can assuredly turn them suicidal.
The claim that UP Muslims are falsely claiming to be non-Urdu speakers is simply ridiculous. If someone can identify as Muslim to a census worker, what fear they might have by additionally reporting their mother tongue as Urdu? In any case the data is from 2011 census, when Center and UP were being ruled by Manmohan Singh and Mayawati respectively, and both government were not generally seen as hostile to Muslims. So I must call bullshit on this claim.
Another reason for UP numbers is that Urdu was perceived to be too sophisticated or polished or different from their mother tongue. Hence being realistic, they reported Hindi. In other words, Urdu set the bar too high and priced itself out of the social market.
There is nothing surprising about J&K in these data. Urdu (or, as Kashmiris call it, wordu or even panjöyb, i.e. punjabi) is a second/third language of the people of the state – primarily a means of communicating with those who don’t share our mother-tongue.
So, if I am in Jammu or Kishtvar or Poonch, I’d speak to the locals in Urdu. Same in Ladakh. If I am in Srin, I’ll switch to Köshur. Dogras/Ladakhis would return the favour. Though I suspect many of them may say they are speaking Hindi.
So Urdu is basically the lingua franca of J&K. Vikram claims it was the British who made it the official language of the state. But the Dogra kings had plenty of time to change it if they didn’t like it. As did the Government of India after 1947.
If Kashmir (the Valley) was independent do you think that they would make Kashmiri the official language or does Urdu have some larger pan-Islamic associations for them? Also, do they write Kashmiri in the Nastaliq script?
As I understand it, the people of Azad Kashmir are not Kashmiri speakers and AJK was part of Jammu province before 1947. Their language is Pahari which is like the language spoken in the Potohar region of Punjab. I think Kashmiri is spoken in the Neelum Valley and Muzaffarabad?
I don’t want to open up a can of worms but do the people of AJK actually feel connected to people in the Valley (and vice versa) or is this all Pakistani state propaganda?
Us Kashmiri-Punjabis are a whole different kettle of fish because we basically speak Punjabi and Urdu. My great-grandfather probably spoke Kashmiri but now nobody can.
Yes, technically correct. The official language of the Sikh Empire (which absorbed Kashmir after removing the Durrani/Barakzai Afghans out) was Persian. However, local business between Sikhs (or Dogras) and Kashmiris was carried out in zoban-e Urdu. That’s the reason why many rural Kashmiris still refer to Urdu/Hindi as Punjabi – as they didn’t distinguish between the languages of the Indo-Gangetic plains.
Persian’s official use effectively ended with the Raj, but I suspect it was well out of the door even before that.
No specific love of Urdu within Kashmir. In fact, most Kashmiri Urdu poets (like Chakbast, Bezar etc) have actually been Pandits settled in Lahore, Lucknow, Dilli etc. See this:
https://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/books/urdu-poet-gulzar-dehlvi-how-to-love-a-language-4772996/
Kashmiris have had a strong nativist streak, which predates Islam in the region. So, I’m willing to punt they would make Kashmiri language official in a politically independent Kashmir.
~~
People of what you call “AJK” do not really know the dynamics of the Kashmir Valley. Their view of India is generally through the prism of the Dogra Rule, which was quite brutal for them (and the Hindus of Mozaffarabad were “repaid” in kind in ’47-48. I personally know of Hindu families of Mozaffarabad, where the head of the family murdered his wife and two young girls before Muslim mobs could get to them during the Partition riots. They fled to Srinagar and were helped by my grand dad.
I knew and have spoken to many “Kashmiris” from Pakistani-administered J&K in Cambridge and was even offered to become the president of Cambridge Kashmir Soc (now defunct, I think). They are well-meaning but mistaken. I’m not sure how much of it is active propaganda by the Govt of Pakistan or how much is genuine lack of information and understanding of Kashmiri culture across the LoC.
There is a minuscule number of Kashmiri speakers in Neelum Valley but not sure what their current language attitude is like. Generally the language has no real functional speech community with Pakistan’s borders.
Thanks. I understand that if you define Kashmiri as those who speak the Kashmiri language then the people of Azad Kashmir are not Kashmiri (The people of Gilgit-Baltistan are really not Kashmiri and they actually resent that their status in Pakistan is provisional pending the final resolution of the Kashmir issue).
What I was really asking is that do people in the Valley feel connected to those on the other side of the LOC (and vice versa). My uncle (by marriage) has relatives living in Muzaffarabad but they originally came from Srinagar. We also occasionally read stories about people waving at each other across the (Neelum?) river in places where it forms the LOC. I have a sense that when people on the Pakistani side hear about atrocities on the Indian side, it upsets them. It can’t just be state propaganda. Would Kashmiri nationalists be willing to forget about AJK and confine their struggle to the Valley? Would the people of AJK be willing to live with the LOC and forget the Valley? Is there really a dream to unite the entire princely state (which one can argue was an artificial creation). I would actually be quite sympathetic to Jammu and Ladakh being administratively separated from the Valley and the Valley perhaps joining Muzaffarabad as some kind of autonomous area. G-B would become just another Pakistani province.
Culturally no. Basharat Peer, for example, goes on about how people across the LoC are culturally different from the Valley. However, religion (Islam) is common (excl Pandits), so it will trump cultural difference for some – depending on how religious the person is. But then it isn’t Kashmiri solidarity, but Islamic solidarity at work.
However, the hilly regions to the west of the Valley are populated by Pahari-speakers (in Poonch, Rajouri, Uri etc) who have relatives across the LoC. So, for them the LoC is a terrible daily reality.
Pure Kashmiri nationalism is almost doomed because it is virtually impossible (and pointless) to just liberate the landlocked Valley. Secondly, Islam (esp Sunni version) plays a major role in the identity of people who are the most vociferous supporters of some sort of political independence. The role of religious leaders (who can mobilize the faithful) in politics has grown over the last century to the point that secular Kashmiri nationalists are almost extinct.
So, I would say that the primary reason (and fuel) for solidarity between the people on the Pakistani side and the azadi-seeking Muslims of the Valley is not Kashmiri ethnic/linguistic self-determination at all (as with the Kurds, for example) but Islamic self-determination. That is the reason for ethnic cleaning of Pandits, and zero support for any such political independence from Ladakh and Jammu divisions.
There are further sub-divisions in the Muslims of the Valley – Gujjars (nomadic population) and Shias (of North Kashmir) join the Indian Army in large numbers, whereas Sunni Muslims (of Central / South Kashmir) tend to be more against it.
~~
The trifurcation of the state may be a good idea, but the Islamic self-determination sort actually hate it. Besides, J&K legislative assembly has to pass this as law which isn’t easy.
Generally speaking, Indian borders are set for the foreseeable future. Kashmir valley is part of the Union (to many by coercion, but c’est la vie). May be 2-3 centuries down the line there’ll be an actual Independence Referendum (like Scotland got its IndyRef 270 years after the Jacobite Uprising and military occupation of Scotland by the English Army) but not in our lifetimes.
Thanks, very informative comment. I’ve met Basharat Peer. He signed a copy of “Curfewed Night” for me. I think it’s interesting that he would emphasize the cultural differences between the Valley and AJK.
I feel like people in AJK care about those on the other side of the LOC (whether this is Islamic solidarity or Kashmiriyat is a different thing) and therefore for strategic reasons the Indian Army’s heavy-handedness is not a good way to get Pakistan to calm down. Pakistanis proper don’t really care, beyond the State propaganda and the feeling that we have to help our “Muslim brothers and sisters”. Also the sense of entitlement that we were owed Kashmir because of the TNT. I care obviously because my family has roots in Kashmir.
I agree that it is reality that India’s (and Pakistan’s) borders are set. The most realistic way to solve the situation is devo max or some kind of autonomy for the Valley and AJK. I have the feeling (from reading) that people in Jammu and Ladakh don’t really like Kashmiris much. I know that people in G-B hate being lumped in with the “Kashmir issue” and they will always point out that they fought Hari Singh’s troops in order to accede to Pakistan.
I believe that making Jammu a state and Ladakh a UT is always part of the BJP’s election plank. One could look at this as a way of confining the problem to the Kashmir Valley and making it easier to deal with. But the Chenab Valley is Muslim-majority and doesn’t relate particularly well to the rest of Jammu, so maybe this just opens up a Pandora’s Box of problems. On the Pakistani side, the people of G-B are constantly asking to be made a province. I think AJK is happy with their current arrangement. There would be no “Prime Minister” etc if AJK was a province.
Kabir
The whole Manmohan-Mushraff thing is dead , at least on the Indian side. There were circumstances which led to the whole thing. Vajpayee had done a lot of ground work and coupled with Advani suddenly going soft , the right had no face to criticize Manmohan, till Mumbai attacks, since they were the one who initiated all this. Any govt succeeding Modi govt will have no leg room to do anything on the Kashmir thing.
Saurav,
The ultimate solution is the Musharraf-Manmohan plan. Either that or full Azaadi for the Kashmir Valley and the Muslim parts of Jammu. You decide.
The current status quo is not sustainable. You talk to Kashmiri Muslims on Facebook or read articles in The Wire etc and you get a sense of the visceral hatred Kashmiri Muslims feel for India and Indians (mainstream Indians also viscerally hate Kashmiri Muslims as can be seen on your talk shows every evening). There is only so long that military force can be tried as a solution. It doesn’t really work . Unless you want to join Israel as a country which is committing atrocities against an Occupied people. That’s your call.
I obviously prefer full Azaadi but if you don’t want to change India’s borders, then devo max is your best bet. Get out of Srinagar’s way and let them run their own place. You’re not going to ever get a better deal from Pakistan than what General Musharraf was willing to give.
I was just giving some context to the whole thing, to illustrate the situation leading to the formula will probably not happen again.
[ Either that or full Azaadi for the Kashmir Valley and the Muslim parts of Jammu. You decide.]
So it’s not just the Valley, but also Muslim parts of Jammu that should be azaad? How about Muslim districts (or sub districts) in Himachal and Haryana? While we are at it we might as well carve out the Muslim part of Kachhch in Gujarat, and Barmer in Rajasthan.
Indian peaceniks, if you needed another reminder of why this whole Kashmir autonomy thing is a slippery slope here it is.
Like someone else said, it is not about revenge for 1971 or even Partition, this is a civilization tussle, and India has no choice but to hold firm.
Kashmir to bas Jhaanki hai, Hindustan abhi baaki hai (with apologies to mandir walas)
Hans ke liya Pakistan, lad ke lenge Hindustan 🙂
Satya,
You must be very naive or else you would have known that the Chenab Valley (which is in Jammu) has historically sided with the Kashmir Valley on azaadi.
No one has designs on any part of India proper. Kashmir is internationally accepted as Disputed Territory. Plus Kashmiri Muslims do not like you. As far as I know, Muslims in Himachal or wherever are quite OK with being Indian.
“I think the ahl-e-Zaban of Agra and Lucknow were not super impressed with Daccani though. But then the people of Lucknow were not even impressed with people from Delhi ?
”
And I believe Delhi folks didn’t rate Lakhnawi Urdu much higher either. There is a famous quote from Ghalib saying that authenticate Urdu is spoken only on the steps of Jama Masjid of Delhi. 🙂
The Delhi-Lucknow rivalry is legendary 🙂
@उद्ररुहैन्वीय: “So, I would say that the primary reason (and fuel) for solidarity between the people on the Pakistani side and the azadi-seeking Muslims of the Valley is not Kashmiri ethnic/linguistic self-determination at all (as with the Kurds, for example) but Islamic self-determination.”
I think that is very true and would add that a foreign power has a vested interest and track record in keeping the Islamic pot boiling . Kashmir valley is just an excuse and their ambitions don’t stop there.
Vijay,
I agree with you. The revenge for loss of East Bengal is not fulfilled yet due to the failed Khalistan insurgency. The antagonist red in face has been continuing on Kashmir and then the saga continues.
This would be an OK theory except that Pakistan has been wanting the Valley since 1947 and the Ceasefire Line (now called the LOC) has been there since 1949. This was long before anyone even imagined that East Pakistan would one day become Bangladesh.
Hoipolloi
It is much more than the revenge.
My understanding of Bengal / Bangladesh literature is that (besides Persian) the earlier, Hindu aristocracy had created a written standard for Bengali. The place already had two fine literary traditions. Plus they had to juggle Sanskrit, Arabic and (later) English. Why would they want yet another one?
Kabir says
“The ultimate solution is the Musharraf-Manmohan plan”
You talk as if all this has been happened without Pakistan doing its thing to scuttle any attempts at peace in Kashmir.
Vajpayee wanted a resolution & so did Manmohan. All their work was derailed by the perfidy of Pakistan army which crossed the LOC into Kargil in 1999, then got its minions to attack the Indian parliament in 2001 and finally attack India’s financial capital Mumbai in 2008.
Thanks to these great achievements of the Pakistan army now there is almost no constituency for close/good relations with Pakistan across the political spectrum. The furthest even the peaceniks would go now is to advocate for a state of truce to exist between India & Pakistan.
It’s not about India and Pakistan, it’s about Kashmir. If you don’t address the political issue then people will continue to attack your Army, pelt stones, attend the funerals of “militants”. They will become even more radicalized. You must understand that this is not a “law and order” problem but a freedom struggle. You may not want to believe this but that is how the people of the Valley see it.
Pakistan was not behind India’s crackdown after Burhan’s murder. His second death anniversary is on Sunday. Since then the Valley has been in an uproar.
You seem to live in your own world without any reference to actual events.
Every time India has moved ahead with a rapprochement with the Kashmiri Muslims without including Pakistan, Pakistani sponsored terrorists have killed the Kashmiri leaders who were talking to India.
Read about the assassination of Abdul Ghani Lone & more recently the Kashmiri editor Shujat Bukhari.
Pakistan army has left no opportunity to derail any conclusion for the Kashmiri problem which leads me to think they do not want it resolved. It serves as the rai·son d’ê·tre for their capture of state resources in Pakistan.
I’m not the one living in a world of his own. I am in constant touch with the situation on the ground through Facebook and through reading the Indian and Kashmiri press.
You cannot solve the problem without talking to Pakistan. We are a stakeholder and part of the former Princely State is in our hands.
Pakistan did not murder Shujaat. And neither did Pakistan murder Burhan. This is your problem. Does Pakistan fish in troubled waters? Of course we do. India is our ideological enemy. You fished in troubled waters in East Pakistan.
In any case, Kashmir has been disputed since 1947. It’s long past time to solve this problem, in the interests of Indians, Pakistanis and Kashmiris.
that is how *some* people of the Valley see it. Le bon dieu est dans le détail.
That is how most people in the Valley see it. Gowhar Geelani in a panel discussion moderated by Barkha Dutt and held under the auspices of Outlook India stated that probably today 97% of people in the Valley want a solution outside of the Indian Constitution. I trust Gowhar. Not only is he a bona fide Kashmiri Muslim but he is also a very well-respected journalist.
Even the collaborator class (Muftis and Abdullahs) talks about “self rule” and “autonomy”. They are in a very difficult place and one can only pity them-too secessionist for mainstream India and too collaborationist for the vast majority of Kashmiri Muslims.
The bottom line reality is that Kashmiri Muslims (or at least most of them) hate India. They will continue to hate India even if Pakistan today says “We really don’t care. India can keep the damn place”.