Rughonath Vaishnavi
Rughonath Vaishnavi (? -22 November 1996) was a Kashmiri Pandit politician. A vocal advocate of Kashmir's right to self-determination, he co-founded the Jammu and Kashmir Political Conference along with Ghulam Mohiuddin Karra. He expressed life-long solidarity with Kashmiri Muslims. Early life and Education. In 1928, Vaishnavi—then, barely out of high school—had his first brush with politics as a supporter of India's movement to independence. Disillusioned with socio-religious institutions, he collaborated with Kashyap Bandhu and Jiya Lal Kilam to reform regressive Hindu customs concerning dowry and widow-remarriage. In 1931, Vaishnavi embarked  for Lahore and graduated with a dual degree in Psychology and Political Science. He went on to pursue his L.LB from University of Allahabad. He married Arandati and had two children. Politics. Vaishnavi returned to Kashmir in 1938. In 1941, he joined the National Conference (NC) and got nominated to the Working Committee. As part of the committee, he had framed the fourteen-point agenda which included a radical redistribution of land resources and guarantee of equal rights. However, he seldom saw eye-to-eye with an increasingly autocratic Sheikh Abdullah, and left the National Conference in 1943. Vaishnavi had  journaled about how emboldened NC workers, in the wake of the state's controversial accession to India, targeted anybody who dared to dissent — willing to accede to Pakistan or be independent became seditious thoughtcrimes. In 1952, his Urdu weekly "Jamhoor" "[Democracy]" was banned by the Abdullah administration after running for about a year. Eventually, Vaishnavi resigned from NC and co-founded (alongside Ghulam Mohiuddin Karra) the Political Conference (PC): it was the only political party in Kashmir of '50s to protest against the accession and give open calls about holding a plebiscite even if it meant an accession to Pakistan . To Vaishnavi, the plebiscite was not a concession but a pledged fundamental right. In their first public procession on 19 June 1953, people stoned Indian Army vehicles and sloganeered for Pakistan. The entire top rung of PC including Vaishnavi was arrested and incarcerated at Udhampur Jail; that the Fundamental Rights governing India were yet to be deployed to the state hampered his chances at a release. His wife and children were allowed to meet him only in December '53. In the next decade, Vaishnavi would be imprisoned for seven times amounting to about five years and repetitively ordered to desist  from all political activity — he was subject to solitary confinement in 1958 and tortured. By the 1960s, Political Conference had lost out to All Jammu and Kashmir Plebiscite Front. Vaishnavi was a prolific writer though much of his works remains unpublished. He viewed the Hazratbal episode as an epitome of communal harmony—"when Muslims shouted "Hindu Dharam ki Jai" and Hindus shouted "Allah-u-Akbar" and "Islam Zindabad""—but lamented its rapid dissolution in the upcoming days and how Pandits continued to remain deaf to Kashmiri Muslim's right to self-determination, believing the Kashmir Dispute was all but settled. He went  on to draft multiple letters to UNO as well as Indian and Pakistani politicians urging for the restoration of independence to Kashmir; Vaishnavi felt that Kashmir was relegated to being a slave of India, after over a millennia of independence and India's prolonged denial of self-determination was a "colossal failure of [humanity] and statesmanship". Even months before the Pandit exodus, he had pleaded with his fellow Kashmiri Pandits to implore reason and affirm solidarity with the just struggle of fellow Muslims. Many openly derided him as a "Pakistani Pandit"; his own relatives grew hesitant to even pay a  visit and even Kilam deemed him to be a "persona non grata." Death and Legacy. Vaishnavi did not leave Kashmir in the 90s; he died on 22 November 1996 at his daughter's home in Udhampur. The Pandit Rughonath Vaishnavi Annual Talk is organized by the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JK-CCS), a human rights body. Mona Bhan—a cultural anthropologist at DePauw University—is her granddaughter and views India to be an occupational regime in Kashmir. She used to live with Vaishnavi and was a part of the Azaadi-marches in her school days during the Pandit  Exodus. Bhan urges using Vaishnavi's experience to reformulate commonly held notions about Kashmiri struggle for Azaadi being an exclusively Muslim agenda, as portrayed by India under the pretext of combating Islamic radicalism.