The whole of Kashmir was wrapped in a thick layer of snow and ice when, on the morning of December 27, 1963, a news spread like wildfire across the region.
The door of the ‘Hujra Khas’ of the ‘Atar-e-Sharif Hazrat Bal’, a shrine located on the banks of Srinagar’s world-famous Dal Lake, was found broken and someone had stolen the hair (holy hair) attributed to the Prophet of Islam.
This was no ordinary theft. This holy hair had reached Srinagar from Medina in 1700 via the Middle East and India through a Kashmiri trader and the then Mughal governor Sadiq Khan had dedicated a Mughal building in ‘Bagh-e-Sadiq Khan’ near Dal Lake to this ‘holy hair’ and it remained in Srinagar for the next 263 years, i.e. until the day of the theft.
Despite the extreme cold and freezing conditions, protests and sit-ins broke out across Kashmir after the news of the theft broke. Protesters spent entire cold nights on the streets, mourning, and the situation became so tense that the then Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru even said that ‘Kashmir is slipping out of our hands.’
The Indian government sent the then Intelligence Agency (IB) chief BN Malik to Srinagar with a team of IB officers to control the situation, and within a week, the Indian government claimed that the sacred head had been recovered. But the interesting thing is that even after 61 years, the ‘thief’ who carried out this act has not been identified, despite the fact that dozens of people were kept in jail for years for interrogation and thousands of alleged suspects were tortured in police stations.
The incident was described by Muslims as ‘insulting religion’ and the protests against it led to the demand for a plebiscite in Kashmir, during which there was a full-scale war between India and Pakistan in 1965.
This question has remained a mystery for 61 years. In the midst of strikes and protests, the recovery of the holy relic was announced on Radio Kashmir Srinagar on the afternoon of January 4, 1964. The protests turned into celebrations and people were seen bursting firecrackers and celebrating on the streets.
Referring to Jawaharlal Nehru’s right-hand man and then-Intelligence Chief BN Malik, author Khalid Bashir writes that ‘it was a secret operation, the details of which will probably never come to light.’ And so it happened, even though dozens of people were imprisoned and tortured on this charge. The book also refers to the questions raised by the Pakistani media on the authenticity of the recovered holy head.
In January 1964, the then President of Pakistan Ayub Khan said in his radio address that ‘God forbid that the recovered holy head be genuine.’ After such statements, a long series of protests and rumors started in Kashmir.
Author Khalid Bashir has written, referring to Sampat Prakash, an active trade union leader at the time, that Jawaharlal Nehru wanted to get rid of the ruler of Kashmir, Bakshi Ghulam Muhammad, and that is why the holy head was stolen.
Author Khalid Bashir has quoted Sampat Prakash in his book in which he claims that after the theft of the holy hair, ‘Jawaharlal Nehru sought help from Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser to improve the situation in Kashmir, so ‘Nasser sent another holy hair from a shrine in Egypt, which was kept in Hazratbal and claimed to be the recovery of the stolen relic.’ Meanwhile, another rumor was that the Sheikh’s associates used this crisis to force India to release Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah.
Khalid Bashir writes at the end of his book that after Sheikh Abdullah’s release from long imprisonment, when he regained power on February 24, 1975, by reaching an agreement with Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, his colleague described the movement demanding the identification of the accused in the theft of the holy relics and a referendum as a ‘22-year wandering’. And thus this secret remained a secret forever.
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