Praveen Swami laments the “increasing marginalization” of Jammu & Kashmir’s syncretic traditions. The last time I read syncretic in print was in school. History lessons painted vivid pictures of an extended period Hindu-Muslim syncretism that spawned the Indian geography. Thankfully, Praveen Swami restricts said syncretism to Jammu & Kashmir. That it is a blatant lie is simply incidental because his syncretic thesis follows the Style Guide at the Hindu.

Syncretism is the latest synonymn for secularism.

Swami’s analysis proceeds as I said, according to the style guide. He has to “balance” the Islamic terrorists with “Hindutva.” Since the two are not comparable, he has to invent symmetry, take liberties with facts and generally lose balance. When he quotes a fanatical whatshisname,

Ahl-e-Hadith ideologues, such as the clerics Siddiq Hasan Khan and Nazir Husain, also rejected the accommodation Islam in India had made with its environment.

you see how he arm-twists the truth. The “accommodation” of Islam as history tells us, was a temporary measure to buy peace till time was mature for an all-out Islamic conquest. That time never came. Also, this has nothing to do with Islam’s accommodation. The inherent nature of Hinduism tamed much of Islam’s inherent intolerance, a fact Swami carefully conceals.

After thus disposing with the minor irritant of rising Islamic militarism (sic) in J&K, Swami digs into the meat.

Hindutva helped the Islamist project along. Decades of pogroms — most recently, the large-scale slaughter in Gujarat — gave credence to claims that the Muslims were not safe in India. Kashmiri Muslim students and businessmen often encountered discrimination, which made them acutely conscious of the variance between the promise and practice of India’s secularism.

Of course. The root of all Islamic terrorism is Hindutva. Wasn’t the same cry raised by the Muslim League to justify its opposition to join the freedom movement? Today, the likes of Praveen Swami are doing the same job by proxy. In passing, read Yossarin’s angry post on the use of words like pogrom. But Praveen Swami records a new low: decades of pogroms. Rich. Between 1947 and now, count the number of (Hindutva-sponsored, using Swami’s premise) “pogroms” in India. And further

On a visit to New Delhi soon after Independence, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah candidly underlined the relationship between politics in Kashmir and Indian communalism. “There isn’t a single Muslim in Kapurthala, Alwar or Bharatpur”, Abdullah said, noting that “some of these had been Muslim-majority states”. Kashmiri Muslims, he concluded, “are afraid that the same fate lies ahead for them as well”

This is very interesting. But why stop at Independence? Going back a few hundred years, we find numerous instances of entire states that were once Hindu. Much of Northern Kerala is Muslim-dominated, with the roots as recent as about 300 years, courtesy Tipu Sultan’s violent orgy of conversion. In Sheikh Abdullah’s time, “communalism” meant only Muslim Communalism, which had roots in the communal electorates, a euphemism for separate electorates for Muslims. Surely, Praveen Swami knows this much history. However, he’s on a different trip.

Like a badly-done striptease, Praveen Swami slowly reveals that he is scared of the Hindu response to the recent Amarnath controversy. Which brings us back to the same issue. Hindus should suffer abuse and bullying like good children. When they let out even a whimper of protest, the entire pack of secular wolves surround them in no time.

Even after being systematically cleansed, and hounded out of J&K, Praveen “proxy” Swami and his ilk aren’t content. In the name of some fictitious, angel-like creature called syncretism, they peddle the Islamist viewpoint. All opposing views are, as usual, communal.