Fitnah

It is a political novel written and published in 1994 in the backdrop of Pakistan sponsored secessionist insurgency in Kashmir, state of India. The so-called Kashmir problem, the legacy of the partition of India, is a well-known protracted conflict between India and Pakistan in which none of the two recognises Kashmiris as a third party to the dispute. The insurgency in the Valley was taken by some Kashmiris as an attempt to assert their ethno-nationalist identity and to establish themselves as a third party to this dispute. It is tragic that thousands of Kashmiris lost their lives and none of Kashmiri leaders takes moral responsibility for their failure of their political mission.

The insurgency raised its head soon after the demise of former Soviet empire and subsequent globalisation. The military rulers of Pakistan expected India with its protected economy to disintegrate under the influence of globalisation in unipolar world that emerged after the end of the cold war in which India lost her most reliable friend Soviet Russia. Pakistan launched a proxy war against India to facilitate her disintegration, and to grab Kashmir Valley in the process. However, after two decades, India emerged stronger at international scene and Pakistan is under deep identity crisis and in confrontation with its own reliable partner, USA.

I wrote this novel as my intervention in Kashmir situation. Now the insurgency has been defeated, and its sponsors are biting the dust. However, after 18 years, the novel is still relevant for Kashmiris and for all those who are interested in Kashmir situation.

The novel was written after I renounced Islam and under the influence of what Maslow calls peak intellectual experience, and is biographical in character. The story of the novel is inspired by author’s transformation from a Kashmiri Taliban into an atheist humanist with cosmopolitan vision.