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'''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.<ref name="Bhan Outlook">{{Cite news|last=Bhan|first=Mona |title=The Pandit Across The Lidder|url=https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/the-pandit-across-the-lidder/300352 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180706093142/https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/the-pandit-across-the-lidder/300352 |archive-date=6 July 2018 |newspaper=Outlook |date=16 July 2018}}</ref> Disillusioned with socio-religious institutions, he collaborated with Kashyap Bandhu and Jiya Lal Kilam to reform regressive Hindu customs concerning dowry and widow-remarriage.<ref name="Bhan Outlook" /> In 1931, Vaishnavi embarked for Lahore and graduated with a dual degree in Psychology and Political Science.<ref name="Bhan Outlook" /><ref name="Bhan RAIOT">{{Cite web|last=Bhan|first=Mona|date=2016-07-28|title=A 'Pakistani' Pandit?|url=https://raiot.in/a-pakistani-pandit/|url-status=live|website=RAIOT|language=en-US}}</ref> He went on to pursue his L.LB from [[University of Allahabad]].<ref name="Bhan RAIOT" />

He married Arandati and had two children.<ref name="Bhan desolation">{{Cite book|last=Bhan|first=Mona|title=A Desolation Called Peace: Voices from Kashmir|publisher=[[HarperCollins]]|year=2019|isbn=9789353570057|editor-last=Ather|editor-first=Zia|location=Bombay|language=en|chapter=Of Rooms and Resistance: Prisons, Protests, and Politics in Kashmir|editor-last2=Bhat|editor-first2=Javaid Iqbal}}</ref>

== Politics ==

=== National Conference ===
Vaishnavi returned to Kashmir in 1938. In 1941, he joined the [[Jammu & Kashmir National Conference|National Conference]] (NC) and got nominated to the Working Committee.<ref name="Bhan RAIOT" /> 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.<ref name="Bhan RAIOT" /> However, he seldom saw eye-to-eye with an increasingly autocratic [[Sheikh Abdullah]], and left the National Conference in 1943.<ref name="Bhan Outlook" />

Vaishnavi journaled about how NC workers, emboldened in the wake of the state's controversial accession to India, targeted anybody who dared to dissent. Anybody willing for Kashmir to accede to Pakistan or striving for independence was hold to be engaging in sedition.<ref name="Bhan Outlook" /><ref name="Bhan RAIOT" /> In 1952, his Urdu weekly ''Jamhoor'' ''[Democracy]'' was banned by the Abdullah administration after running for about a year.<ref name="Bhan RAIOT" />

=== Political Conference ===
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 gave open calls about holding a plebiscite even if it meant an accession to Pakistan.<ref name="Bhan Outlook" /><ref name="Bhan RAIOT" />{{Efn|Both Abdullah and Indian Intelligence operatives hold that Pakistan funded the party to destabilize Kashmir.<ref name="Hafsa Kanjwal" /> Karra had left NC after being rebuffed for a cabinet ministry.}} To Vaishnavi, the plebiscite was not a concession but a fundamental right that was pledged by India to all Kashmiris during the accession; he would later find India's prolonged denial of self-determination to be a "colossal failure of [humanity] and statesmanship".<ref name="Bhan Outlook" />

In their first public procession on 19 June 1953, people stoned Indian Army vehicles and sloganeered for Pakistan.<ref name="Hafsa Kanjwal">{{Cite thesis|last=Kanjwal|first=Hafsa|title=Building a New Kashmir: Bakshi Ghulam Muhammad and the Politics of State-Formation in a Disputed Territory (1953-1963)|date=2017|publisher=University of Michigan|url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/1990248814|pages=224-228}}</ref>{{efn|Shahla Hussain notes the concurrent Hindu-right led Praja Parishad agitation demanding greater integration with India to be a catalyzing factor.<ref name="Shahla Hussain">{{Citation|title=The Idea of Plebiscite: Discontent and Regional Dissidence|date=2021|url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/kashmir-in-the-aftermath-of-partition/idea-of-plebiscite-discontent-and-regional-dissidence/C848022634E0E26F304F22B0546DAD27|work=Kashmir in the Aftermath of Partition|pages=184–237|editor-last=Hussain|editor-first=Shahla|place=Cambridge|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-108-49046-7|access-date=2022-01-08}}</ref>}} The entire top rung of PC including Vaishnavi was incarcerated at Udhampur Jail; with the Fundamental Rights governing India not yet being deployed to Kashmir, it would be long before he secured release.<ref name="Bhan RAIOT" /><ref name="Bhan desolation">{{Cite book|last=Bhan|first=Mona|title=A Desolation Called Peace: Voices from Kashmir|publisher=[[HarperCollins]]|year=2019|isbn=9789353570057|editor-last=Ather|editor-first=Zia|location=Bombay|language=en|chapter=Of Rooms and Resistance: Prisons, Protests, and Politics in Kashmir|editor-last2=Bhat|editor-first2=Javaid Iqbal}}</ref><ref name="Shahla Hussain" /> His wife and children were allowed to meet him for the first time in December '53.<ref name="Bhan desolation">{{Cite book|last=Bhan|first=Mona|title=A Desolation Called Peace: Voices from Kashmir|publisher=[[HarperCollins]]|year=2019|isbn=9789353570057|editor-last=Ather|editor-first=Zia|location=Bombay|language=en|chapter=Of Rooms and Resistance: Prisons, Protests, and Politics in Kashmir|editor-last2=Bhat|editor-first2=Javaid Iqbal}}</ref> In the next decade, Vaishnavi would be imprisoned for seven times amounting to a total of five years, and repetitively ordered to desist from all political activity — he was subject to solitary confinement in 1958 and tortured.<ref name="Bhan Outlook" /><ref name="Bhan RAIOT" /><ref name="Bhan desolation" />

By the 1960s, Political Conference had lost out to [[All Jammu and Kashmir Plebiscite Front]] and disintegrated.<ref name="Hafsa Kanjwal" />

== Views ==
{{Quote box
| quote = Militancy in Kashmir is a wrathful expression of frustration, breach of faith, despair caused by the jungle-rule of political goons, denial of rule of law, massive rigging at the hustings, [and] obstructing expression of the ardent wish of the Kashmiris to be freed from the strangle-hold of political subjugation.
| source = — The first line of ''Kashmir Problem: How to End Militancy'', R.Vaishnavi, The Radical Humanist, Volume 56, July 1992.
| align = right
| width = 50%
| bgcolor = #FFE0BB
}}

Vaishnavi was a prolific writer though much of his works remains unpublished.<ref name="Bhan RAIOT" /> He had drafted 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.<ref name="Bhan Outlook" /><ref name="Bhan RAIOT" />

A pragmatic secularist, Vaishnavi 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.<ref name="Bhan Outlook" /> 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.<ref name="Bhan RAIOT" />

== Death and Legacy ==
Vaishnavi did not leave Kashmir in the 90s; he died on 22 November 1996 at his daughter's home in [[Udhampur]].<ref name="Bhan Outlook" /><ref name="Bhan RAIOT" /><ref name="Bhan desolation" /> Many openly derided him as a ''Pakistani Pandit'' in his lifetime; even his own relatives had grown hesitant to pay a visit and Kilam branded him to be a "persona non grata."<ref name="Bhan RAIOT" /><ref name="Bhan desolation" />

The Pandit Rughonath Vaishnavi Annual Talk is organized by the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JK-CCS), a human rights body.<ref>{{Cite web|date=2014-07-09|title=Author Mridu Rai’s lecture stopped in Srinagar, police invoke Section 144|url=https://www.hindustantimes.com/india/author-mridu-rai-s-lecture-stopped-in-srinagar-police-invoke-section-144/story-cZR3bLG9RWC5nf6a9gy3xO.html|access-date=2022-01-08|website=Hindustan Times|language=en}}</ref> [[Mona Bhan]]—a cultural anthropologist at DePauw University—is her granddaughter and views India to be an occupational regime in Kashmir.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Ali|first=Nosheen|last2=Bhan|first2=Mona|last3=Ghosh|first3=Sahana|last4=Kanjwal|first4=Hafsa|last5=Komal|first5=Zunaira|last6=Misri|first6=Deepti|last7=Mukherjee|first7=Shruti|last8=Upadhyay|first8=Nishant|last9=Varma|first9=Saiba|last10=Zia|first10=Ather|date=2019|title=Geographies of Occupation in South Asia|url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/829460/summary|journal=Feminist Studies|volume=45|issue=2|pages=574–580|issn=2153-3873|jstor=10.15767/feministstudies.45.2-3.0574}}</ref> She used to live with Vaishnavi and was a part of the Azaadi-marches in her school days during the [[Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus|Pandit Exodus]].<ref name="Bhan desolation" /> 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.<ref name="Bhan Outlook" /><ref name="Bhan RAIOT" />

== Notes ==
{{Notelist}}

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vaishnavi, Rughonath}}
[[Category:Kashmiri Pandits]]
[[Category:Writers about the Kashmir conflict]]
[[Category:Kashmiri writers]]
[[Category:Jammu and Kashmir politicians]]

Rughonath Vaishnavi - Revision history

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