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Independent Versus the Hawk: Indian Commercial Television debates

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The ongoing unrest in Kashmir, where 23 people including policeman have lost their lives after Indian security forces killed Hizbul commander, Burhan Wani, has also ignited a raging debate on whether some channels in Indian media have resorted to playing patriot games over a militant’s death.

And once again, two big names of Indian TV industry have locked horns with no holds barred attack against each other.

It all started with the veteran journalist, Rajdeep Sardesai, taking to his blog questioning the ‘patriotic’/nationalistic credentials of Indian journalists particularly during the coverage of Wani’s killing and the subsequent protests.

In his well articulated blog, Rajdeep recounted the role of the BBC during the Falklands War in 1983 when the British national broadcaster was criticised by the then UK prime minister, Margret Thatcher, for not taking side with the British forces in its coverage.

To which, the then Director General of the BBC, John Birt, was reported to have reminded Thatcher that the journalistic organisation was not an ‘extension of the political authority’; its first commitment was to the truth, not to the nation state.

Many felt that Rajdeep’s anguish was targeted at his former colleague, Arnab Goswami, and his channel Times Now, which has become notorious for whipping up often unnecessary nationalistic fervour, thereby throwing objectivity out of the window.

Hours later, a visibly agitated Arnab launched a blistering attack understandably against Rajdeep to counter the latter’s ‘patriot games’ jibe with his own headline, ‘Don’t Romanticise Terror.’ Arnab resorted to name calling and frequently used terms such as ‘pseudo-liberals’ for his critics while describing their criticism as a shameful act.

Many felt that Arnab’s reply pretty much confirmed what his former boss had highlighted in his blog.

You can read both Rajdeep’s blog and Arnab’s response during his Newshour debate below and decide for yourself who’s right on the issue of media ethics.

Rajdeep Sardesai:

‘BURHAN WANI AND PATRIOT GAMES’

During the 1983 Falklands war, a member of the Margaret Thatcher government angrily described the BBC as the ‘Stateless People’s Broadcasting Corporation’ because it referred to the forces as ‘British’ and ‘Argentinian’ forces instead of ‘our’ and ‘enemy’ forces. When an Argentinian ship was sunk, an incensed Thatcher responded, ‘only the BBC would ask a British prime minister why she took action against an enemy ship that was a danger to our boys’. That is when the BBC director general John Birt is said to have reminded the British prime minister that the journalistic organisation was not an ‘extension of the political authority’; its first commitment was to the truth, not to the nation state.

The Thatcher story is instructive at a time when the ‘patriotic’/nationalistic credentials of Indian journalists and news organisations are under the scanner for their coverage of the violence in the Kashmir valley. The newly minted I and B minister has already warned that he expects ‘responsible’ coverage from the media; army information teams have red flagged any attempt to send out any ‘negative’ news; the social media army of ‘proud Indians’ on Twitter has abusively accused journalists (including this writer) of being ‘terrorist sympathisers’, ‘anti national’ and questioned ones parentage.

Who is to tell my outraged friends in the Twitter world that journalism in its purest form doesn’t wear the tricolour on its sleeve. Yes, I am a very proud Indian, but my journalism demands that I tell the story of Kashmir, not as a soldier in army fatigues but as a mike pusher who reports different realities in a complex situation. Burhan Wani is a terrorist who has been ‘neutralised’ in the eyes of majority of Indians; he is a victim who has been ‘martyred’ for the thousands of Kashmiris who lined up for his funeral. A propagandist would only broadcast the narrative that suits the agenda of one side but a journalist must necessarily explore both stories: that of Wani the Hizbul terrorist who took to the gun and used social media as a weapon AND Wani as the posterboy for a localised militancy which feeds on tales of alleged oppression and injustice. A journalist must speak to the army which is trying to quell the protests on the street, but must also listen to the youth who have chosen to their vent their anger with stones. And he must then dispassionately and accurately report the ground reality without glamourising violence or terrorism but also without becoming a spokesperson for the Indian state.

It is maintaining this delicate balance that defines good journalism. Sadly, there are few takers it appears for this challenging task. Instead, in a polarised, toxic environment, journalists are being asked to take sides, to state their preferences, to place opinion ahead of facts, to show off their macho ‘nationalism’, to be part of a ‘them’ versus ‘us’ battleground in tv studios and beyond. Which is why I wish to highlight the BBC role in the Falklands war. Here is a genuine public service broadcaster that is able to ensure that its commitment is to the British people, not to the government, even in a war between countries. The philosophy is clear: the truth, however inconvenient it might be for the power apparatus, must be told.

In Kashmir too, we need to tell truth to power: the truth of disaffected youth with limited opportunities for growth, of failed, corrupted politics, of an unshaken ‘azaadi’ sentiment, of army excesses, of a neighbouring country which sponsors terror, of a nostalgic notion of Kashmiriyat which was eroded when Pandits were driven out of their homes, of radicalised youth seeking to romanticise violence, of hard working twenty somethings topping the civil service exams, of an unacceptable distinction between terrorists and freedom fighters. As a vibrant democracy, we must be able to look into the mirror with confidence and face these competing ‘truths’. Too many of the stakeholders in Kashmir, Delhi and beyond have lived in denial for too long. Wani’s killing and its aftermath must end this mood of denial even as we in the media must learn to stop playing patriot games.

Post script: Many years ago, while reporting a story on Kashmir, I described those who had targeted a bus as terrorists. That evening, a local colleague in Srinagar suggested that I might be better off calling the perpetrators as ‘militants’. I asked him why. “Sir, they maybe terrorists, but here it is safer to use the word ‘militant’.” When even simple wordplay can get tangled in the minefield of Kashmir’s bloody politics, you realise the complicated nature of the journalistic challenge.

Arnab Goswami on Newshour

“For over 72 hours now since the SUCCESSFUL killing and MUCH WANTED killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani, a section of misguided pseudo liberals have gone on and on about how the Indian State must be more responsible. About how the Indian security forces must be more sensible. Now, some of these highly confused elements, who are in journalism say that they are in a dilemma today about how to report a terrorist’s death. They say they are in a dilemma about how to report the fallout of a terrorist’s death with mobs breaking out of control and attacking a police station.

I feel sorry for these people, because they don’t realise that when it comes to right or wrong, black and white, nationalist and anti-national, for the Indian army, which protects us, and against the Indian army, for the tricolour and against the tricolour, for the sovereignty of the Indian State and against the sovereignty of the Indian State. there can be no prevarication, no grey area, no confusion and certainly no dilemma. Ladies and Gentlemen, this terrorist, Burhan Wani, had declared the Indian army as his biggest enemy. Burhan Wani was an identified and armed threat to the sovereignty of the Indian State. And just because he was KASHMIRI, does not make it ok for the pseudo liberals to build a case against his killing. He was a terrorist.

Today the self-proclaimed pseudo liberals, the same who speak of injustice to Afzal Guru and Yakub Memon have most unfortunately and SHAMELESSLY, come together to shy away from calling a known Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist a terrorist. To use the guise of human rights and peddle it to bestow martyrdom to slain terrorist and today we watch these pseudo intellectual brigade sitting in their high-armchairs refusing to call the killing of Burhan Wani, for what it is a FANTASTIC SUCCESS.

A GLORIOUS success of our brave security personnel. Viewers, let’s come together tonight and let us junk this group and junk their bluff.. Let us not romanticise or confuse terror…And if you agree with me because this rubbish has been going on for three days now, then join me as we together take on the pseudo liberals and the Pakistanis after that in debate number one and debate number 2 of the Newshour.”

This story originally appeared on Janta Ka Reporter.

Investigate Use of Lethal Force in Kashmir: India Told

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India: Investigate Use of Lethal Force in Kashmir

Response to Violent Protests Leaves More Than 30 Dead, Hundreds Injured
 
(New York) – Indian authorities should credibly and impartially investigate police use of force during violent protests in Jammu and Kashmir state that have killed more than 30 people and injured hundreds, Human Rights Watch said today.Since the killing of Burhan Wani and two other Hizb-ul-Mujahedin militants in an armed exchange with government forces on July 8, 2016, demonstrations have occurred in various parts of the state in which protesters have hurled rocks. State security forces have responded by firing pellet guns, teargas, and live ammunition.

“Rock-throwing at demonstrations is serious but does not provide police a free pass to use force against protesters,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The Indian authorities need to send a clear message that lethal force is only an option when a life is at imminent risk, and those misusing force will be held accountable.”

“The Indian authorities need to send a clear message that lethal force is only an option when a life is at imminent risk, and those misusing force will be held accountable. “ Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia Director
While law enforcement officials have a duty to protect lives and property, they should use nonviolent means as far as possible, only use force when unavoidable and in a proportionate manner, and use lethal force only when absolutely necessary to save lives, Human Rights Watch said.

​Wani, 22, had a large following among Muslim Kashmiris who shared his demands for secession and an end to abuses by government security forces. After his death, thousands attended his funeral. The protests started soon after, and the government ordered a curfew and blocked the Internet in some places.

The Indian Express reported that hospitals were packed with injured protesters. One ophthalmology ward said that doctors had performed nearly 100 eye surgeries on people with pellet gun injuries. Indian security forces have been using pellet guns as a nonlethal option for crowd control after nearly 120 people were killed during weeks of protests in 2010. The use of pellet guns since 2010 has reportedly resulted in at least 300 hospitalizations in Srinagar, including 16 cases in which the patient lost their sight completely.

The Indian government should publicly order the security forces to abide by the United Nations Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, Human Rights Watch said. The Basic Principles state that security forces shall “apply non-violent means before resorting to the use of force and firearms,” and that “whenever the lawful use of force and firearms is unavoidable, law enforcement officials shall: (a) Exercise restraint in such use and act in proportion to the seriousness of the offence and the legitimate objective to be achieved; (b) Minimize damage and injury, and respect and preserve human life.” Furthermore, “intentional lethal use of firearms may only be made when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life.”

The Basic Principles further provide that, “[i]n cases of death and serious injury or other grave consequences, a detailed report shall be sent promptly to the competent authorities.” The authorities should not only investigate the use of firearms that resulted in death and injury, but also the use of pellet guns, which can cause serious injury when fired at close range or at an individual’s eyes. The findings of the investigation should be public and result in appropriate disciplinary action or prosecution. Past lack of accountability for serious human rights violations has been a driving force in the protests.

Indian officials have called for restraint and calm by all sides. Security forces have said that they are exercising restraint to disperse protesters. They reported that 110 security personnel have also been injured in the protests and that one police official drowned when protesters pushed his vehicle into a river. Protest organizers should take steps to deter supporters from engaging in violence, including attacks on law enforcement officers, Human Rights Watch said.

“A major grievance of those protesting in Kashmir is the failure of authorities to respect basic human rights,” Ganguly said. “Ensuring that rights are protected and prosecuting those responsible for abuses would be an important first step.”
 
Image Courtesy: 2016@ Reuters
 

Dalits under Attack in Gujarat, a Spate of Crimes Continues without Check

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Fast on the heels of a Dalit cultivator being hacked to death in Porbander Gujarat, in yet another gruesome attack on Dalits at Una in Saurashtra, iron rods were used to assault them mercilessly

Four Dalit youths who skin dead animals for a living were thrashed with iron rods, chained to a car and dragged to a police station, their ordeal captured on video by their assaulters who accused them of slaughtering a cow. The victims were targeted assaulters from the Darbar caste that accused them of killing a cow for the purpose of selling beef when all that the Dalit youths had done was skin a cow that was already dead.  Dalits from Una town in Saurashtra owned a Bone Mill and had been skinning animals for that purpose. While slaughtering cows and selling or consuming beef is banned in the state, skinning of dead animals is not illegal.

This incident comes fast on the heels of another gruesome attack on Dalits about a week ago: Rama Singrakhiya, a Dalit, was allegedly hacked to death by a dominant caste mob in Sodhana village of Porbandar district. Leading Dalit campaigner and senior advocate Valjibhai Patel told Sabrangindia that there had been a series of such attacks in past months and yet no words of sharp condemnation from the state’s political leadership.

In the latest attack on July 12, reportedly, a vigilante group pounced on the four, beat them up with iron rods and sticks and chained them to their car before leaving them at Una police station. The car had the nameplate of a Shiv Sena member. The accused also filmed the assault. The video taken by the assaulters themselves has since gone viral on social media. Though a large crowd had gathered at the place, no one seemed to forward to rescue the Dalits. A video is said to have gone viral on the social media.
 
ईन्सानियत नाम की चीज नही है और बडे गौ भक्त बने फिरते है।
गुजरात में संघीओ का आतंक। मरी गाय का चमडा उतारते दलितो को बूरी तरह पीटा।
वीडियो जीतना हो सके शेयर करे।
जयभीम। जय मूलनिवासी।

The group which intercepted the youth claimed to be working for the cause of cow protection, with one of them belonging to the regional Shiv Sena outfit. The Dalits were beaten up for over half an hour, the sources said, before being dragged by chain to a police station, situated about a kilometre away.

While the onlookers didn't react to the gruesome incident, on hearing about the incident, the Dalit community people of Una town gathered at the police station, demanding action.

Meanwhile, the police registered FIR against those who beat up the Dalits under Sections 307 (attempt to murder) and 395 (loot), and the anti-atrocities Act. The accused are absconding, say sources. While two of victims were got treatment in a local hospital, the other two, who were injured in the head, were shifted to the Junagarh Civil Hospital.

Apart from Una town, Amreli district was the centre of such assaults where he said there had been six incidents in two months. These six vile attacks against Dalits in Amreli district, included one rape of a young woman by sections of the Darbar caste. Even after being arrested by the local plice the assaulters had threatened the father and uncle of the raped woman, Valjibhai Patel said.  Valjibhai has been in touch with the top echelons of the Gujarat police on even the recent incident at Una.

Singrakhiya was reportedly assaulted by a mob when he went to the village to sow caster seeds on a plot of land which, he claimed, he had been cultivating for the last 15 years. According to an FIR registered against the assaulters, Singrakhiya, 42, was beaten up using clubs and axes. He died in hospital. The village is located just 30 km away from Porbandar, Gandhiji's birthplace.
 
The victims, belonging to the Dalit community at Mota Samadiyara village of Una taluka, had registered an FIR that detailed how they were skinning an already dead cow, but the six accused said the animal was killed before being skinned, police said.“We have arrested three persons in this connection while three others are absconding. We have also called a team of forensic science laboratory experts and veterinary doctors to ascertain if the cow was already dead before being skinned or was killed for skin,” Gir Somnath district’s deputy superintendent of police KM Joshi had told the media.

According to the FIR, the six accused — identified as Ramesh Giri, Balwant Simer, Ramesh Bhagwan, Rakesh Joshi, Rasikbhai and Nagjibhai Vaniya — came in a car and began abusing the villagers on finding that they were skinning a cow.
They then allegedly took out iron rods from their car and started beating them up. Two people sustained severe head injuries and were referred to Junagadh civil hospital for treatment, Joshi said. According to the complainant, Vasrambhai Sarvaiya, the accused also took away their mobile phones.

Cow protection vigilante groups have been active in various parts of the country against slaughter of cows and consumption of beef. Several state governments too have tightened laws on both. In one of the most brutal attacks over cow protection, 52-year-old Mohammad Akhlaq was lynched in Bisada village near Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, by a Hindu mob for allegedly killing a calf for meat.

Food Inflation and Falling Industrial Growth Fail to Make Newshour Debates

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A spate of tweets by Sitaram Yechury, general secretary of the CPI-M on spiralling and unprecedented high, food inflation in 2016 have created a social media storm while escaping completely the ‘attention’ of commercial media channels. Private television channels run by large corporations have shown little heed to how much vegetables, cooking oil, pulses, potatoes, and sugar cost now compared to what they did a few years ago.

A table attached (see image below) shows that vegetable inflation rate this year is at a staggering 14.74 per cent (rural and urban) with rural being at 12.72 per cent and urban at 18.40 per cent respectively. Pulses and potatoes are even more shocking at 26.86 per cent with the rural count be at 24.28 per cent and urban at 24.51 per cent respectively. Sugar and confectionary is up by 16.79 per cent: rural 12.98 per cent and urban at 24.72 per cent.
 

Yechury’s tweets said:
 
JumlanomicsEffect Food inflation in June at 7.79%. Pulses dearer by 26.86%, Vegetables rise 14.74%. #AchheDin
 
 
The curious case is that of media attention and priorities, however. Whereas under the earlier UPA I and II governments the smallest rise in prices figured and hogged hours of media time –as they should—now, under the Modi Regime, it seems that Toor Dal selling at Rs 175-180 per kilogram and vegetables over Rs 100 per kilo are of marginal interest to English television viewers.
 
Yechury also tweets figures of the declining and deadened industrial growth in past months:
 
Whither Industrial 'growth'? IIP from April-May 2016 has shrunk by -0.1%. #NailTheSpin #Jumlanomics


 
 

Why Burhan Wani’s Killing Inspired Close to a Revolution in Kashmir

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Kashmir is on the boil again. Thirty dead, 28 civilian and two policemen, and hundreds of others injured, many of them with life impairing injuries. And, the count is still on as there is no let up in the repressive brutality with which security forces and police are dealing with angry mobs who are on the rampage, showering stones and tearing down bunkers and setting on fire police installations.

The casualties will eventually become one more scorecard, a footnote in Kashmir’s beleaguered history. All the complexities and nuances will fade and the July 2016 eruptions will be remembered under just one blanket banner, one name Burhan Wani.

Burhan has, somehow, become a symbol of both this youthful defiance on streets and the oppression of the Indian security forces. The 22 year-old Hizb-ul-Mujahideen commander, Burhan Muzaffar Wani, was shot dead by security forces in an encounter in an obscure village of Kokernag, south Kashmir. The encounter itself remains mired in mystery and key questions, in Jammu and Kashmir at least, are being asked as to whether this killing was a part of the ‘catch and kill’ policy of intelligence agencies and security forces.

(Note: Sources reveal that Burhan was being carefully trailed by Indian security agencies for over 18 months so the time of the shooting is inexplicable and sinister, coming as it did when the Amarnath Yatra was on, a fallout on the Yatris whch could have led to an even more violent fallout, but did not. The name of a ‘target’ of encounter, this time Burhan Wani was also quite glibly given out to the media, something that police and intelligence are not only normally loth to do but in fact, often seek to conceal)

However, that alone is not the reason for Burhan Wani’s death having inspired Kashmiri youth to so fearlessly pour out on the streets in open defiance of the curfew, other restrictions, defying the brutality simply to oppose the Indian state. They are out on the streets, consumed by a ‘do or die’ spirit.

Why was Burhan Wani so important that his death seems to have inspired close to a revolution? He is considered a youth icon in Kashmir, not because he picked up the gun to fight the Indian state six years but because of the sentiment his short life represented. His personal narrative was shaped by events that are important markers in Kashmir’s history and in the collective memory of the people.

In turn his own personal narrative, a symbolic representation of the collective, is now charting a new course for Kashmir. Burhan’s story began on a summer evening in 2010 (during the summer agitation when 130 civilians were gunned down by Indian security personnel), when he, his brother Khalid and a friend were riding a motorbike in Tral and were stopped by so called the security forces, ordered to get cigarettes for them, and in return beaten and humiliated for no reason at all.
In 2015, Khalid was killed for being the brother of a militant. The loss further strengthened Burhan’s resolve to fight the Indian state and entice Kashmiri youth through the social networking media. Burhan did not embark on a lonely journey. Many teenagers and youth in the Valley have been victims of similar oppression or are influenced by the excessive daily humiliations of tyranny and excessive militarization. Some among them picked up the gun, forced by the stifling and oppressive atmosphere and inspired by political aspirations of ‘azaadi’ (freedom) which remain unaddressed, politically. Burhan Wani is a symbol of the oppression and, in a virtually leaderless Kashmir, also symbolic of the defiance against it.

This angry generation has reached where it is today due to a culmination of several factors and complex nuances within the Kashmir conflict.

The genesis of the anger begins from a political ideology and a history of violation of democratic norms by the Indian government that culminated in the insurgency that began in1989, which enjoyed a wide mass appeal in initial years.

However, later tired of the vicious cycle of violence caught between the gun of the militant and the security forces, the monstrous graph and scale of human rights abuse by security forces, and the many faults of the militancy grid with its many groups, splinter groups and cases of extortion and harassment, the Valley’s people were disenchanted with the gun and instead reposed faith in the peace process which eventually never came about even as India and Pakistan engaged with each other in a meaningful and purposeful dialogue –on other issues –post 2002 for a couple of years.

In turn his own personal narrative, a symbolic representation of the collective, is now charting a new course for Kashmir. Burhan’s story began on a summer evening in 2010 (during the summer agitation when 130 civilians were gunned down by Indian security personnel), when he, his brother Khalid and a friend were riding a motorbike in Tral and were stopped by so called the security forces, ordered to get cigarettes for them, and in return beaten and humiliated for no reason at all.

Oscillating between enmity and friendly overtures, India and Pakistan pursued this peace process with an utter lack of consistency and guided by a deficiency of sincerity.

The peace process moved from wars to the Lahore bus route opening up, from skirmishes to the famed (Vajpayee) Agra summit, from jingoistic rhetoric to Sharmel Sheikh and finally got completely snapped in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attacks.

But with respect to Kashmir, and the Kashmir conflict, between India and Pakistan, barring some marginal movement, mostly gestural, there was no meaningful and serious process of engagement.

Two former prime ministers Atal Behari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh met select separatists during their tenures but there was no follow-up. Barring Line of Control related Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) like ceasefire and opening of trade and bus routes, though not insignificant, there were no CBMs on the crucial issue of political dialogue on the more alienated population of Jammu and Kashmir: to provide them a relief from the tyrannical impact of militarization.

Yet, consistently and vocally, there were dominant voices that raised this issue, demanding that the political solution to the Kashmir conflict be included within the India-Pakistan peace process which remained ignored.

The round table conferences famously organized by Manmohan Singh ended with reports that recommended among other things addressing the human rights situation(s), the demand for the repealment of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA)and excessive militarization but no heed was paid to these simmering demands and indicators. The patience of the people began to wear off.

In 2008, when Kashmiris poured out on the streets to oppose the Amarnath land deal, it was a peaceful expression of that impatience. The protestors were allowed to march on the streets for some days with no interference from security forces or police. Peaceful protests turned into stone pelting only after security forces began to stop these consistent and continuing protests with the use of brute force, jackboots and bullets. Seventy people were shot dead that summer in the Valley despite by and large peaceful protests in comparison to only two persons killed in Jammu where the counter protests were far more violent.

That is when the metamorphosis took place. The stone pelting mobs of Kashmir evolved from mild occasional stone pelting groups to protesters raining stones, during and after the 2010 summer agitation. It was only after 2010 and Afzal Guru hanging in February 2013 that the gun found its place back as a glorified mantle-piece within youngsters and the Kashmir conflict. 

While the numbers of youth picking up the gun are very few, they command a wide appeal among the masses, especially the younger generation of this turmoil as they have become expressions of their collective anger, dismay and humiliation. This is why Burhan Wani’s death has sparked a huge outburst, which is the overflow of a long pent up anger that is now becoming uncontrollable. It is further exacerbated by the use of disproportionate force against the protesting mobs.

The argument that non-lethal methods of controlling mobs are no match for the deadly storm of stone pelting that forces have to face on the streets may be a huge exaggeration and a half-truth, if not entirely a lie. The normal policing methods of controlling mobs have never been tried, even in the days when protests were peaceful (2008) or mildly violent (beginning of 2010), not even when the protests are completely non-political in nature (in Kashmir) limited to demands on issues of water supply, electricity, roads and jobs. The only known so-called non-lethal weapons in use since 2010 are rubber pellets and chilli sprays; for use of which the security forces simply have not been adequately trained. Thus use of these result in heavy casualties. Other than that young protesting boys have been killed at point blank range, shot at, mostly above the waist.


Image: Indian Express

The brutality of the security agencies and police, coupled with a silence of the (elected) government or its well-packaged lies make Kashmir, today, potentially a recipe for disaster.

Burhan Wani was only one trigger. Instead of blaming everybody else for the mess in Kashmir, including Pakistan and militant groups operating from there, who certainly would be having a Kashmir specific agenda to perpetuate violence and crisis, New Delhi should look inwards and introspect to realize that the crisis today is a making of its own multiple failures, primarily its inability to politically deal with the issue of Kashmir and its tacit perpetuation of human rights abuses there.
Treating Kashmir militarily when it requires a political solution, an intervention of which can be made during periods of uneasy calm, is like prescribing a wrong medicine for the disease. When symptoms are a silent and defiant resentment, the misplaced celebration of a non-existent  ‘normalcy’ amounts to injecting doses of slow poison into the polity. 

The Centre is completely off the track by continuing to not only criminalise the protests in Kashmir but by also blaming Pakistan or Hafiz Sayeed for the present outrage. Belated statements from the prime minister calling for peace and calm cannot be substitutes for the kind of healing that Kashmir urgently needs.

First of all, the truth that is out in the open must be grappled with, howsoever harsh and bitter. The protests are spontaneous and are a continuing reflection of the deepening anger and alienation of the public against Indian rule and its repressive policies in Kashmir; the residue of pent up anger cannot be negated, they must be seen for what there are. Underlying this pent up resentment is a wider, and potentially dangerous reflection, of public’s endorsement of not just the sentiment but also the gun that Burhan Wani represented.

Secondly, New Delhi needs to come out of its denial mode and acknowledge Kashmir as a political dispute.

Third, it must have the courage to acknowledge its multiple failures and flaws in handling the Kashmir situation in the past and also apologise for the gross violation of human rights.

Fourth, as a long term measure, it must begin a process of providing relief through phased de-militarisation and subsequently engage with the people of Jammu and Kashmir to resolve the dispute. Whether an immediate acknowledgement of such a kind will help calm the tempers immediately cannot be said with certainty but is certainly worth a try.

But if New Delhi continues being obstinate and obdurate as ever, from wherever we look, the Burhan Wani moment could become a defining marker in Kashmir’s politics. It is difficult to predict with exact precision what impact this would have. But there is every likelihood of a rise in militancy. With youth continuing to occupy centre-stage in this mass mobilization, with violent street battles turning more vitriolic and metamorphosing into a kind of permanent civil war between the civilians and the men in uniform, who are the visible symbols of the State.

The argument that non-lethal methods of controlling mobs are no match for the deadly storm of stone pelting that forces have to face on the streets may be a huge exaggeration and a half-truth, if not entirely a lie. The normal policing methods of controlling mobs have never been tried, even in the days when protests were peaceful (2008) or mildly violent (beginning of 2010), not even when the protests are completely non-political in nature (in Kashmir) limited to demands on issues of water supply, electricity, roads and jobs.

This also has the grissly potential of then pitting people against people, creating divides of pro-azaadi Kashmiris and those who are popularly called collaborators. It will also lead to marginalization of mainstream parties and also push senior Hurriyat leaders into oblivion. The chasm between Kashmiris and New Delhi would be grow both wide and deep enough to become virtually unbridgeable.

It is then that the situation could certainly take an even more critical and dangerous turn, the ramifications of which will impact not just Kashmir but also rest of India. At the minimum, more and more Kashmiri youth will be criminalized and thereafter, brutalized through repressive measures. Consequently, this will dehumanize society further aggravating prevailing sentiments of anger, hatred, cynicism and despair.

Kashmir has bled for years. It will continue to do so but this time, it will also bleed India, and badly.

For the Indian government, its grip over Kashmir would be further lost if it continues to hold on only through military might – leading to a colossal waste of money and human resources. What will be lost is not just money and manpower but also the spirit and idea of India through an abject and brazen betrayal of India’s very core principles of democracy; more brutally put, the murder of the ethos of liberty and values of humanity and just governance– a process that has been in the making for years now.

If I ever wondered whether the word ‘occupation’ was far too strong to describe the presence of the Indian state in the Valley, and India’s excesses here which are reflective of its overall flawed policies in Kashmir, today post Burhan Wani, I stand corrected.

(Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal is Executive Editor Kashmir Times and a peace activist)
 

What ‘Black Lives Matter’ means beyond policing reform

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Riots in Harlem, 1964. Wikimedia Commons

After the killing of five police officers in Dallas last week by a lone gunman, where does the Black Lives Matter movement go?

Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza answered this question, saying she anticipated that the Dallas shooting would “create the conditions for increased security, surveillance and monitoring of protesters … an expansion of the police state, rather than reduction of one.”

As Garza points out, the failure of the dash cam and body cameras to document what happened in the killing of Alton Sterling in Louisiana highlights the limitations of technology as the centerpiece of reform. It had even been the focal point of Al Sharpton’s 2014 National March Against Police Violence.

As Garza argued, “There has to be something bigger than that.”

As a scholar of 20th-century African-American history and social movements, I have focused my research on community activism in the 1950s and 1960s against police brutality in major cities such as Los Angeles and New York. Police violence often opened a space for organizing people of color from across the religious and political spectrum around core issues facing their communities. But these coalitions were often tenuous. And the idea of police reform being the most important issue within the larger black freedom struggle has always been contentious.

The challenge facing us now is twofold. First, how can we think about addressing the problem of racialized police violence beyond professional and mechanical reforms?

And second, how can the national spotlight on police brutality be used as an opportunity to make broader changes that answer the fundamental question posed by Black Lives Matter: What does it look like to value black life?

The challenge of black unity

This tension was at play more than a half-century ago in a brief coalition formed in Harlem called the Emergency Committee for Unity on Economic and Social Problems. The organization was founded in the summer of 1961 by civil rights and labor organizer A. Philip Randolph.


Philip Randolph. Library of Congress/Gordon Parks

The group was originally formed to protest housing discrimination and the rise of unpoliced drug use in Harlem. The committee represented a wide swath of the Harlem activist community, including national civil rights figures like Bayard Rustin and black nationalists such as Lewis Michaux, “Pork Chop” Davis and Malcolm X.

The Emergency Committee for Unity on Economic and Social Problems was built on the premise of black unity around three action programs: unemployment, housing, and law and order enforcement. The Pittsburgh Courier immediately hailed it as a “beacon of light for other communities.”

But just months after its founding in August 1961, the subcommittee on law enforcement resolved to disband if the Emergency Committee for Unity on Economic and Social Problems would not focus on the issue of police brutality. Among the subcommittee’s recommendations were a civilian review board that would include representation from the community, a greater representation of African-Americans and Puerto Ricans within the police department and intensive human relations training on race within the police department.

By the following year, these and other political divisions led to a fracturing of the committee. Randolph turned his focus to organizing the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom at which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. However, the march only loosely touched upon calls for police reform and marginalized both women and black nationalists from its program. Instead, it focused on ending school segregation and job discrimination, establishing a nationwide minimum wage and public job training, and enforcing the 14th Amendment to protect the voting rights of southern blacks.

Meanwhile, Malcolm X had moved to Los Angeles following a case of police violence which left one Muslim man dead and another paralyzed after an attack on the Nation of Islam’s mosque. No officers were indicted, and 14 men were charged with assault and resisting arrest, nine of whom were eventually convicted.

Police reform

Los Angeles was rife with discrimination and accounts of police brutality in communities of color. In 1962, the NAACP published a 12-page report documenting 10 major cases of brutality in the city. Roy Wilkins had even compared the police in Los Angeles “next to those in Birmingham, Alabama.”

Yet, the Los Angeles Police Department maintained a national reputation as one of the modern exemplars of policing during the 1950s. Meanwhile, the ACLU and NAACP had been fighting for police reform in Los Angeles for over a decade, including repeated calls for a civilian review board.

In part, Police Chief William Parker’s vision for a modernized police department appeared to reflect those called for by community activists, then and now. This included human relations training and a more diverse police force serving in these communities.
But Parker’s understanding of “diversity” was that everyone could be a “minority group member… any of which can be, and often has been discriminated against.” Training bulletins even illustrated this concept to police officers by showing them how it would feel to be called by derogatory phrases such as “fuzz” and “cop.”

Professionalization meant training police officers to eradicate racist ideas through practice. As Parker proudly told a police chief conference in 1955:

“Intolerance has become a victim of enforced order – habit has won out over belief.”

Modernization meant using empirical data to justify racist outcomes. The heavy use of police in communities of color, he explained, was simply “statistical – it is a fact that certain racial groups, at the present time, commit a disproportionate share of the total crime.”

Beyond police reform

Policing in Los Angeles became even more emblematic of the modern police state after the violent arrest of a young black man led to the Watts uprising in 1965. The sheriff’s department demonstrated the use of helicopters during the rebellion, and in turn earned the largest Office of Law Enforcement Assistance grant ever (US$200,000) for an air surveillance program. As historian Elizabeth Hinton writes, “A new era in American law enforcement had begun.”

Today, the left-leaning Bernie Sanders has called for police to “demilitarize” from this buildup of tanks, riot gear and advanced weaponry which began after Watts. Yet, his suggestion to make police departments look like the communities they serve also mirrors Parker’s language of professionalization and modernization from 50 years ago. Calls for citizen review boards, still seen as radical by many police departments, are simply attempts at accountability and lawfulness for those charged with enforcing the law.

The relationship between police reform and other broader black freedom struggles that were so pronounced in the Emergency Committee for Unity on Economic and Social Problems and the March on Washington continue today. The March on Washington’s call for a national minimum wage in 1963 is still a central point of contention for the Democratic Party in our current presidential primary. The Voting Rights Act, which was one of the chief victories of the civil rights movement, has been significantly rolled back.

So how can Black Lives Matter take us beyond basic questions of police reform?


Black Lives Matters protesters in Louisiana. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

Attorney Johnnie Cochran, famous for his role as defense attorney for O.J. Simpson, worked as an assistant on the 1963 trial in Los Angeles involving the Nation of Islam. He later recalled that although such cases were difficult to win, “the issue of police abuse really galvanized the minority community. It taught me that these cases could really get attention.”

The issue at stake, then, is how to take this opening and not only begin to secure justice for the lives lost to police violence, but also to expand on questions about what it means to value black life. This can be done, I believe, by continuing to center trans and queer people of color, by remaining unapologetically black and by joining in solidarity with labor struggles.

In the aftermath of Dallas, when the media will recycle old tropes to make “Black Power” synonymous with violence, Black Lives Matter must continue to think bigger and broader. As Michelle Alexander pointed out several days ago, this is not about fixing police, this is about fixing our democracy.

(Garrett Felber is Ph.D. Candidate in American Culture, University of Michigan).

This article was first published on The Conversation.

State of siege

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First published on: August 1, 2010


 
It is now or never in Kashmir

“Kashmir may be conquered by the force of spiritual merit but not by the force of soldiers.” – Kalhana Pandit

So total has been the loss of hegemony of Kashmir’s elected representatives, in government and in the legislature, over the last two months, and so desperately brutal the recourse to coercive subjugation of fearless young anger on the streets of the valley, that if ever there was a time to say resistance to authority (sic) deserves to be rewarded with what it seeks, it is now. If the prospect, that is, of the secession of the valley – since other parts of the state of Jammu and Kashmir desire, contrarily, not secession but more complete integration with the union of India – were not fraught with incalculable negative consequences not just for India and Pakistan but for the inhabitants of the valley itself. 

To that I shall return. 

Just the other day the home minister of India made two significant averments in Parliament. One, that the union recognises that the accession of the state of Jammu and Kashmir was a “unique one”; and two, that apart from all else, the republic and its successive governments had failed to keep promises made to the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

 Since the time for pussyfooting about Kashmir is conclusively at an end, it would help to flesh out these two averments beyond the minister’s en passant mention.

 A unique accession

It will be recalled that the two conditions agreed upon as the signposts for India’s pre-independence princely states, as determinants of whether they would accede to India or to Pakistan were the religion of the majority within the states and the contiguity of the states to either dominion. 

In this context, the three states of Hyderabad, Junagadh and Jammu and Kashmir offered interesting paradigms. Where the first two had Muslim rulers but majority Hindu populations, Jammu and Kashmir had a Dogra-Hindu ruler but a majority Muslim population. Of the three, Jammu and Kashmir, being also contiguous to Pakistan, had the clearest case for accession to Pakistan. 

But the ruler of Kashmir, Maharaja Hari Singh, desired accession to neither of the two new countries and wished to remain independent. Having succeeded in signing what was called a “Standstill Agreement” with Pakistan, it was his hope to do the same with India. Except that the fates intervened in the shape of a precipitate invasion of the state he ruled by tribal warriors from the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, with that state’s active support and involvement, in late October 1947.

With next to no means of his own to meet, let alone defeat the invasion, he found himself constrained to appeal to India for military help and thus sought accession to the Indian dominion. In a letter dated October 26, 1947 addressed to the then governor general of India, Lord Mountbatten of Burma, the maharaja wrote:

“The mass infiltration of tribesmen drawn from distant areas of the North-West Frontier… cannot possibly be done without the knowledge of the provincial government of the North-West Frontier Province and the government of Pakistan. In spite of repeated requests made by my government, no attempt has been made to check these raiders or stop them from coming into my state… I have no option but to ask for help from the Indian dominion. Naturally they cannot send the help asked for by me without my state acceding to the dominion of India. I have accordingly decided to do so and I attach the Instrument of Accession for acceptance by your government.”  

This much from a Hindu ruler who was reluctant to join even a Hindu-majority India but for the fact that circumstances had forced such a decision upon him. And yet, even on acceding, the Instrument of Accession that he signed stated that the accession in no way bound him to “acceptance of any future Constitution of India” (Clause 7) and that “Nothing in this instrument affects the continuance of my sovereignty in and over this state” (Clause 8). Stipulations that to this day continue to colour the fraught history of tensions between the union and the state.

As a result, Article 306A was adopted in the Draft Constitution and in course of time became the much-talked-about Article 370 in the final Constitution of India. Most significantly, the “special status” thus accorded to the state of Jammu and Kashmir, backed by the then home minister of India, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (who said to the Constituent Assembly that “in view of the special problems with which the government of Jammu and Kashmir is faced, we have made a special provision for the constitutional relationship of the state with the union”), was accepted without demur also by Syama Prasad Mookerjee, a member of Jawaharlal Nehru’s cabinet who was later to become the most vociferous and disruptive voice of the Hindu right wing. We will come back to this later. 

But the best part of the “uniqueness” lay elsewhere, namely in the heroically principled declaration of allegiance to a prospectively secular and democratic Hindu-majority India by a Muslim Kashmiri leader of a Muslim-majority state, Sheikh Abdullah. 

Internally, within the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, a popular movement for the overthrow of the maharaja’s rule had been underway for two decades before 1947, precipitated by the events of July 1931 when some 21 popular resisters were gunned down by the maharaja’s police force in front of a courthouse. The incident marked a watershed in the state’s political affairs and led to the formation of the “Muslim Conference” which came to be led by Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, a postgraduate from the Aligarh Muslim University who was denied a teaching post in the state by the maharaja’s regime at a time when the number of educated Kashmiri Muslims could be counted on one’s fingertips. 

Within mainland India, although the Muslim League had come a cropper in the 1936 elections to the provincial assemblies (held under the Government of India Act of 1935), between that loss and 1946 the party under Mohammad Ali Jinnah made huge strides among Muslims in the states of Punjab and Bengal. It was during this time that Jinnah was to make fervent arguments to Abdullah urging that the Kashmir Muslim Conference join forces with Jinnah’s League and support the Pakistan resolution which the League had passed in 1940. 

By then Sheikh Abdullah was undisputedly the tallest leader of the valley and indeed the entire state. Remarkably however, despite the Kashmiri maharaja’s decidedly anti-Muslim regime, and though Abdullah had himself forged the “Muslim Conference”, and despite the fact that Jammu and Kashmir was a Muslim-majority state, he came to reject the two-nation communal thesis of the Muslim League and instead declared his preference for the secular-democratic struggle that the Indian National Congress under Gandhi and Nehru had been waging against colonial rule as he converted the “Muslim Conference” into the “National Conference” in 1938. This was done some nine years before the partition of India and the tribal invasion of Kashmir. 

‘What the Muslim intelligentsia in Kashmir is trying to look for is a definite and concrete stake in India’ – Sheikh Abdullah

In these years Abdullah repeatedly gave voice to his convictions. Arguing that the matter of accession could not be left to the whims and fancies of rulers but must reflect the voice of the people, he gave public expression to the popular Kashmiri view in a speech at a historic rally (some three weeks before the tribal invasion) on October 4, 1947:

 “We shall not believe in the two-nation theory which has spread so much poison [referring to the communal killings that had been underway in the Punjab and in Bengal]. Kashmir showed the light at this juncture [Gandhi was famously to say that the only light he saw amidst the darkness of communal killings was in Kashmir where not a single incident took place]. When brother kills brother in the whole of Hindustan, Kashmir raised its voice for Hindu-Muslim unity. I can assure the Hindu and Sikh minorities that as long as I am alive, their life and honour will be quite safe.”

Following the maharaja’s proclamation of March 5, 1948 announcing the formation of a popular interim government, Sheikh Abdullah took over as prime minister of the state. The very next day he told a press conference:

“We have decided to work with and die for India… We made our decision not in October last but in 1944 when we resisted the advances of Mr Jinnah. Our refusal was categorical. Ever since, the National Conference has attempted to keep the state clear of the pernicious two-nation theory while fighting the world’s worst autocracy” (The Statesman, March 7, 1948).

On December 3, he spoke at a function held by the Gandhi Memorial College in Jammu: “Kashmiris would rather die following the footsteps of Gandhiji than accept the two-nation theory. We want to link the destiny of Kashmir with India because we feel that the ideal before India and Kashmir is one and the same.” 

These ideals – secularism, democracy, an end to feudal land lordship – were the basis for the adoption of the “provisional accession of the state to India” by the National Conference in the month of October 1948. 

The betrayal

Although the accession and Article 370 of the Indian Constitution which conferred a “special status” on Jammu and Kashmir had, as stated above, received approval from both Patel and Syama Prasad Mookerjee, a new situation was to develop as the Abdullah government launched its ‘New Kashmir’ manifesto which was founded – among other extraordinarily progressive pronouncements, equal status of women in education and employment being but one – on the promise of giving land to those who tilled it. 

Thus disregarding Clause 6 of the Instrument of Accession (“Nothing in this instrument shall empower the dominion legislature to make any law for this state authorising the compulsory acquisition of land for any purpose” and should land be thus needed, “I will at their request acquire the land”), Abdullah declared a maximum land ceiling of 22.75 acres, set up a land reform committee and set about distributing surplus land thus acquired to those who were the actual tillers of the soil. Abdullah was to rub home the point that such land reforms would never have been possible in a feudal Pakistan. 

This was trouble royal. 

Most of the land was then in the possession of Hindu Dogras and most of the tillers were Muslim Kashmiris. 

Thus it came to be that the material loss of land holdings was sought to be converted into a communal question through the opposition now to Article 370 by a newly organised forum called the Praja Parishad which came to be led by the very Mookerjee who had been a willing party to the adoption of the article as a member of the union cabinet.

 According to the provisions granting “special status” to Jammu and Kashmir, the state was to have its own Constitution for which it would form its own Constituent Assembly. When elections to the Constituent Assembly took place in 1951, candidates picked by Abdullah’s National Conference won all 75 seats. The assembly met on October 31, 1951. In his address to the assembly on November 5, Abdullah outlined the major items on its agenda: 

  • To frame a Constitution for the governance of Jammu and Kashmir; 
  • To decide on the fate of the royal dynasty; 
  • To decide whether any compensation should be paid to those who had lost their land through the Big Landed Estates Abolition Act; 
  • To “declare its reasoned conclusion regarding accession”. 

Abdullah noted: “The real character of a state is revealed in its Constitution. The Indian Constitution has set before the country the goal of a secular democracy based upon justice, freedom and equality for all without distinction. This is the bedrock of modern democracy. This should meet the argument that the Muslims of Kashmir cannot have security in India where the large majority of the population are Hindus. Any unnatural cleavage between religious groups is the legacy of imperialism… The Indian Constitution has amply and finally repudiated the concept of a religious state which is a throwback to medievalism… The national movement in our state naturally gravitates towards these principles of secular democracy.”


Security forces in Kashmir: Bloodthirst unquenched

And, of Pakistan, he said:

“The most powerful argument which can be advanced in her favour is that Pakistan is a Muslim state and, a big majority of our people being Muslims, the state must accede to Pakistan. This claim of being a Muslim state is, of course, only a camouflage. It is a screen to dupe the common man so that he may not see clearly that Pakistan is a feudal state in which a clique is trying by these methods to maintain itself in power… Right-thinking men would point out that Pakistan is not an organic unity of all the Muslims in this subcontinent. It has, on the contrary, caused the dispersion of the Indian Muslims for whose benefit it was claimed to have been created [a prescient observation that is said to have been earlier voiced by Maulana Azad in an interview given to the Urdu magazine Chattan in 1946, a year before partition].” 

Abdullah considered the third option of independence (Kashmir as an “Eastern Switzerland”) and concluded as follows: 

“I would like to remind you that from August 15 (the day of Indian independence) to October 22, 1947 (when the tribal invasion began) our state was independent and the result was that our weakness was exploited by the neighbour with invasion. What is the guarantee that in future too we may not be victims of a singular aggression?” 

All this notwithstanding, the Hindu right-wing assault also began to gather force as it launched the Jan Sangh (precursor of today’s Bharatiya Janata Party, the BJP) in 1951 – the year that the Jammu and Kashmir Constituent Assembly was established. The newly formed Jan Sangh was headed by none other than Syama Prasad Mookerjee with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh lending its leaders Atal Bihari Vajpayee and LK Advani in support. 

As stated earlier, stung by the redistribution of land holdings, the Hindu right wing sought to make the terms of the accession the issue and, defying the democratic-federal principles enshrined both in the Constitution of India and in their reflection in the trust reposed therein by Abdullah, it announced a programme ostensibly aimed at strengthening national unity. At its first session the Jan Sangh called for: 

  • An education system based on “Bharatiya culture” (read Hinduism); 
  • The use of Hindi in schools (in the knowledge that other than Kashmiri, Urdu was the language predominantly used by educated Kashmiri Muslims. Indeed from about the first decade of the 20th century, the wholly artificial cleavage between Hindi and Urdu had begun to be deployed by communalists on either side to press their claims to “true” national allegiance);
  • The denial of any special privileges to minorities;
  • Full integration of Jammu and Kashmir into the Indian union.

On the other side, in letters exchanged over a period of time between Abdullah and Nehru, an agreement between the state and the union was taking shape. This contract, which came to be called the Delhi Agreement 1952, stated: 

  • Commitment to Article 370; 
  • That the state legislature would be empowered to confer special rights on “state subjects” (a right that had been won through the anti-maharaja struggles of 1927 and 1932 – a form of privilege restricted to permanent residents of the state in property ownership and jobs); 
  • That Kashmir would have its own flag although subordinate to the union tricolour; 
  • That the sadar-e-riyasat (later, the governor of the state) would be elected by the state assembly but would take office with the concurrence of the president of India; 
  • That the Supreme Court of India would “for the time being” only have appellate jurisdiction in Jammu and Kashmir; 
  • That an internal emergency could only be applied with the concurrence of the state legislature. 

The Hindu right wing’s riposte to this took the form of a slogan around which the Jan Sangh sought to mount its attack on the terms of accession later that year:

“Ek desh mein do vidhan,

Ek desh mein do nishan,

Ek desh mein do pradhan,

Nahin chalengein, nahin chalengein”

(We will not accept two Constitutions, two flags, two prime ministers in one and the same country).

This communalist right-wing putsch against the principles on which the state had agreed to accede to India began to find resonance within sections of the Congress party as well. Much to Nehru’s chagrin, his candidate for the first president of India, C. Rajagopalachari, was rejected in favour of Rajendra Prasad (who was soon to lock horns with Nehru on the Hindu Code Bill and go to the Somnath temple, once ravaged by Ghaznavi and other chieftains of old, to effect renovations at state expense – a move wholly in conflict with the secular foundations of the republic). 

When the Indian home minister speaks of keeping promises to the Kashmiris, these promises have a much wider ambit than the question merely of amending the vile Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act which allows even the lowest-ranking army man to shoot to kill without accountability

Other collateral tendencies also began to surface, such as bespoke scant regard on the part of the union of India for the federative principles. In his despondent letter to Maulana Azad dated July 16, 1953, Abdullah complained about the usurpations underway in contravention of the terms that had been agreed upon: 

“We the people of Kashmir regard the promises and assurances of the representatives of the government of India, such as Lord Mountbatten and Sardar Patel, as surety for the assistance rendered by us in securing the signatures of the maharaja of Kashmir on the Instrument of Accession which made it clear that the internal autonomy and sovereignty of the acceding states shall be maintained except in regard to three subjects which will be under the central government [namely Defence, Communications and External affairs].” 

And: “When the Constituent Assembly of India proceeded to frame the union Constitution, there arose before it the question of the state. Our representatives took part in the last sessions of the assembly and presented their point of view in the light of the basic principles on which the National Conference had supported the state’s accession to India. Our viewpoint drew appreciation and Article 370 of the Constitution came into being, determining our position under the new Constitution.” 

Abdullah pointed out that although it had been agreed that the “accession involves no financial obligations on the states”, such demands were being made and that “the changes effected on several occasions in the relationship between India and Kashmir greatly agitated the public opinion”. 

And on the other source of perceived menace: “A big party in India [the Jan Sangh] still forcefully demands merger of the state with India. In the state itself, the Praja Parishad is threatening to resort to direct action if the demand for the states’ complete merger with India is not conceded.” 

Abdullah’s anguish at what appeared to be gathering storms on two fronts – the subversion by the union of the terms of accession and a Hindu communalist putsch to undo Article 370 – found poignant expression in a speech he was meant to deliver to an Id gathering on August 21, 1953 (12 days after his government was dismissed and Abdullah was arrested and incarcerated). In it, he wrote: 

“[T]here is the suggestion that the accession should be finalised by a vote of the Constituent Assembly… It is the Muslims who have to decide accession with India and not the non-Muslims… The question is: must I not carry the support of the majority community with me? If I must then it becomes necessary that I should satisfy them to the same extent that a non-Muslim is satisfied that his future hopes and aspirations are safe in India. Unfortunately, apart from the disastrous effects which the pro-merger agitation in Jammu produced in Kashmir [the valley]… the Muslim middle class in Kashmir has been greatly perturbed to see that while the present relationship of the state with India has opened new opportunities for their Hindu and Sikh brothers to ameliorate their lot, they have been assigned the position of a frog in the well… What the Muslim intelligentsia in Kashmir is trying to look for is a definite and concrete stake in India” (emphasis added). 

As I mentioned earlier, the die had been cast and his great friend Nehru had him arrested on suspicion that he had been hobnobbing with the Americans to garner support for Jammu and Kashmir’s secession from the union and its declaration of independence. And though there may have been grounds for such a suspicion, no evidence has so far been forthcoming. 

But read Abdullah’s lament quoted above and hear it exactly echoed in Kashmir today, there is in it nothing more or different than what informs the frustrated Kashmiri youth who are at this minute agitating in the valley, willing to confront police bullets for their cause. 

It is another matter that long years later, in 1974, Abdullah signed an accord with Indira Gandhi, the then prime minister of India, which stipulated among other things that: “Parliament will continue to have power to make laws relating to the prevention of activities directed towards disclaiming, questioning or disrupting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India or bringing about secession of a part of the territory of India from the union…” 

Thus when the Indian home minister speaks of keeping promises to the Kashmiris, these promises have a much wider ambit than the question merely of amending the vile Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act which allows even the lowest-ranking army man to shoot to kill without accountability. 

Throughout these turbulent years of conflict never once has any government of India sought to formulate schemes whereby talented Kashmiri Muslims, products of an educational explosion – all thanks to Abdullah’s New Kashmir programme – could be made to feel not just safe in the heartland but like valued assets in the ongoing narrative of national “development”. Not to mention the communal lens through which Kashmiri Muslims continue to be viewed by Indian society at large, an old malaise made dangerously trenchant in the era of “terrorism”. 

And paradoxically, the more that strong-arm methods and vicious prejudices fail to deliver the desired results, the more the state means to persist with them. And now that a glimmer of recognition appears to have dawned within policy establishments, the present-day incarnation of the old Praja Parishad and Jan Sangh are back to the same old perfidy, robbing the secular democratic sections within the Congress chiefly of any will or courage to disregard Hindu right-wing communalism and do right by Kashmir.

Azadi – Cry for freedom

Over the last two months some 51 teenage Kashmiris screaming for secession have been killed by police bullets in the valley. 

Let us for the moment ignore the legalities of the question (in respect of the Sheikh Abdullah/Indira Gandhi accord, for instance) and the hard reality that such secession will never be approved by any political establishment in India or any government of the day or be accepted by Indians at large. Let us assume for the moment that the parts of Jammu and Kashmir that do not want secession can be persuaded that the valley of Kashmir be granted independence and sovereignty and let us consider the possible consequences of such secession: 

  • Following such a declaration, demands for azadi could gain legitimacy in other states, Manipur, Nagaland and Assam, to name a few, and would be hard to deny once a precedent has been set;
  • A Hindu communalist backlash could possibly engulf India, rendering the lives of Indian Muslims vulnerable and leading to demands that India be declared a Hindu state, since the secession of the valley would have proved that the two-nation theory was correct after all; 
  • Within Pakistan, first the Baloch and then the Sindhis might take heart and set themselves the objective of freedom from Punjabi ethnic dominance through secession; 
  • Within the valley, a Bangladesh-like situation might well emerge, namely a struggle among those who will wish to retain a secular democratic state and those who might argue for an Islamic state. It is well to remember that of Bangladesh’s 40-odd years of independent nationhood, brought about under the leadership of the Awami League on secular principles, some 30 years were to see the communalists in power. It is only recently that the Supreme Court of Bangladesh has struck down the controversial fifth amendment to the Constitution and thereby reverted to disallowing any religion-based party formations. But this welcome move comes after much blood has been spilt. 

I have often been accused of exaggerating the Sufi-secular orientation of Kashmiri Muslims and of sentimentally misreading acts of personal and individual camaraderie and brotherhood displayed by Kashmir Muslims towards visiting Pandits as representative of the totality. I have once been kindly described as a “jihadi lapdog” (see Google). But all this notwithstanding, it remains a fact that at the time of the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits from the valley in 1990, a strident campaign was in evidence as loudspeakers in mosques blared calls that the “Nizam-e-Mustafa” (Islamic statehood) was at hand, that the Pandits must hasten their exodus from the valley but take care to leave their women behind. You will also hear people speculate that one of the reasons why elements within the valley do not at bottom wish the Pandits to return home en masse is that they do not wish an Indian “fifth column” to be reinstated there; with them gone, the idea of an Islamic state is more closely approximated. Much as the Jews in Israel, for instance, who fear the return of Palestinian refugees into what was once their homeland. 

I must confess to having another sort of experience during recent visits to the valley, namely the chagrin with which any mention of “Kashmiriyat” (denoting the good old syncretic ways of Kashmiris) now tends to be received there. Indeed I recall being at a seminar at the university in Srinagar where a senior academic read a short “paper” titled ‘Kashmiriyat’ only to rubbish the concept – albeit without much substance. “Kashmiriyat” is now seen as something of a trick used to deny the fact that Kashmir is in essence Islamic, a notion that finds increasing expression in textbooks on history and culture as the pre-Islamic period (roughly up to the 14th century AD) is sought to be erased. 

Other disturbing trends appear to be surfacing as evidenced by an incident in Pulwama not so long ago when a Sikh Kashmiri was surrounded and asked to recite the Islamic Kalima, failing which some of his hair was cut off. It must be said however that the incident, uncharacteristic in the extreme, drew condemnation from all sections of the Kashmiri leadership. 

Thus while some residual Kashmiri Pandits who have never left the valley continue to be protected by their Muslim neighbours, and their weddings and funerals are organised with customary syncretic brotherhood, and although periodic visits by Pandits living in camps outside the valley to age-old Hindu shrines in the valley are greeted with warmth, after the near total evacuation of the Pandits, it would be wrong to aver that the impulse to forge a sovereign and independent valley into a theocratic state was no more than a baseless surmise. 

Be that as it may, what would the security logistics of the new state be, bordering as it does Russia, China, Pakistan, Afghanistan and, following its proposed secession, India as well? To return to what Sheikh Abdullah had said with regard to this option (of Kashmir as an “Eastern Switzerland”), how would the new state tackle these vulnerabilities? 

And can it be said that the imperialist from you-know-where, already stationed in countries nearby, would not then presume that at long last the valley was his for the taking, with all the Afghanistan-like consequences that could follow, both in terms of turmoil and cultural defilement?

Not to mention the kind souls from Pakistan’s wild western provinces, many in fact now resident in the country’s main city centres? How might the Kashmiris resist their call to a jihadist embrace, in disregard of the time-honoured ethnic Kashmiri prizing of exclusivity and identity? And if they were to become more insistent even after a polite “no”, who would come to the aid of the Kashmiris? 

Kashmiris grow more insistent every day as the current imbroglio continues that jobs, development, opportunities, are not the real issues. Yet in time these might indeed become issues of great magnitude for a prospectively landlocked valley lacking both monetary and infrastructural resources. These resources may then have to come from other places with all the attendant implications, whether the donors are the Saudis, the Yankees or the Chinese. Altogether, a pickle in the making.

The road ahead

If these be not unfounded considerations, what is to be done?

It is time that the question was addressed with some candid concern. 

A good beginning would, I think, be made if all the contending parties recognised that Kashmir is a problem that may never be resolved to the satisfaction of all parties. And it would be wrong to think that this avowal is merely a pre-emptive ploy. I doubt that time will prove me wrong. 

Let me say at once that the two options which seem closest to the heart of the contending parties – the union and the agitators – I see as non-starters. On the one hand there is the Indian state’s wish that things will drag on as before until exhaustion seals a fait accompli and on the other hand there is the desire, however fervent, of the young agitators for a country of their own in the valley. 

The first is bad not only because such a fait accompli is unlikely in the extreme but also because it belies the founding pretensions of the republic of India – chiefly its claim of “unity in diversity”. And it reinforces a sentiment widely felt even beyond the valley, that the Indian state, especially after the beginning of the neo-liberal era in the 1990s, has become increasingly impatient of both secularism and democracy and wholly inimical to the rights of the majority of Indians who to this day feel they have, in Abdullah’s words, no “definite and concrete stake in India”. This applies to the lives of India’s tribal populations, to Dalits and to minorities of varying description on a differentiated scale of neglect. In this context, if the Indian state believes that sooner or later the Kashmiris will tire and turn around, it is only fooling itself. 

And the second is a bad option because, as suggested earlier, secession of the valley would be fraught with negative consequences for all parties in the dispute and for the subcontinent as a whole. 

These recognitions return us willy-nilly to salutary reflections on the possibility of recuperating and refurbishing the covenant of the federative promise and principle – something on which the state’s accession to the union had been based in the first place, setting a uniquely outstanding example both in terms of plurality of citizenship and of political partnership in opposition to totalitarian impulses in both areas. 

This Kashmiri still thinks that the aforementioned Delhi Agreement of 1952 still offers the most workable and fair point of engagement. With the caveat – which with the advantage of hindsight any cool Kashmiri would recognise – that extending the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of India and the Election Commission of India to Jammu and Kashmir, far from impinging on the state’s autonomy, would in fact be credible guarantee of protection from excesses and denials. 

As for the majoritarian nationalists, they are as much a menace to the rest of India as they are to any attempt at a fair solution in Kashmir. That being so, the Indian state and civil society must needs muster the strength and the will to defy and overcome their shenanigans if the nation is to be saved not so much from the Kashmiris as, first of all, from them. 

It is good, better late than never, that the prime minister has made some moves of the sort suggested here. Let his government and society at large understand fully that it is now or never in Kashmir, and thus avoid slipping into another decade-long siesta after the ongoing violence inevitably lulls. 

As for Pakistan, I am tempted to simply nod in assent to the words of Sheikh Abdullah before the UN Security Council when he went there to plead India’s case in February 1948: “I refuse to accept Pakistan as a party in the affairs of Jammu and Kashmir state. I refuse this point blank.”

After what Pakistan has done to its own people over the decades, this refusal seems entirely appropriate. What the people in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir choose to do, how they decide their fate, is best left to them. Significantly, a 2009 Chatham House poll showed that some 58 per cent of Kashmiris favoured the formalisation of the Line of Control between the two parts of Kashmir as the international border between India and Pakistan. This is as it should be. And once that happens, human and other commerce between the two Kashmirs can be put on a sound international footing, all ambiguities and hassles removed. 

If initiatives along the lines of those mentioned above are not undertaken soon, it may be pointless to write anything further on the subject of the Kashmir problem. Neither reason nor analysis nor conjoint effort will then sort it out, only a conflagration that could lead who knows where.

Note

Literature on Kashmir is mind-bogglingly plentiful and I have sought to look into as much as time and tide allow. But, for purposes of this piece, I wish to record my indebtedness to three authors on Kashmir, chiefly – Prem Nath Bazaz, Balraj Puri and MJ Akbar, on whose work I have drawn with abandon. The interpretations thereof being entirely my responsibility.

Archived from Communalism Combat, July-August 2010, Anniversary Issue (17th).Year 17, No.153 – Cover Story 1

Urgent appeal for peace in Kashmir: Citizens

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To the Chief Minister, Mehbooba Mufti, the leadership of Hurriyat (M) and Hurriyat (G), The civil society of India and in Kashmir.

In the past few days we have seen Kashmir sink once again to unprecedented levels of anarchy. Kashmir is burning yet again.

The tragic deaths and maiming of youth due to firing, pellet guns and excessive use of force is unacceptable. Arson, loot and destruction of public property, attacks on the security personal of CRPF and J&K police and sporadic attacks on the vulnerable communities and their places of worship that are continuing unabated, also are unacceptable.

We, the peaceful and law-abiding citizens of Kashmir and other parts of India, with stakes in a peaceful Kashmir and belief in nonviolent resolution of conflict situations, make this humble appeal, first of all to the Chief Minister of J&K: Please take immediate steps to reign in the security forces and issue orders for minimal use of force against the angry mobs.

At the same time, we extend this appeal to the political leadership of Kashmir and the civil society members in India and in Kashmir to exercise their moral leadership and urge the volatile and angry youth of Kashmir to calm down and find more peaceful ways to express themselves.

To the youth, who are out in the streets to express their rage and anguish against the state, we urge that they take a moment and contemplate on the consequences of escalating an already out of control situation. Irrespective of which side of the complex political problem one stands on, we are certain that no idea is worth more than the life of a fellow human being. Many precious lives have been lost in this turmoil in the past twenty-six years and we are continuing to lose more in the present, with each passing hour. Families are being shattered for their entire lives losing loved ones. Please spare a thought for the incalculable harm and damage the consequences of your anger will inflict on these families for many years to come.

The need of the hour for both sides – ever more for the state administration and its security establishment, which has experienced in the past how such situations can spiral out of control and escalate – is to exercise thorough restraint and prevent the unnecessary loss of lives in the state.

To the young protesters, we urge calm and suggest peaceful ways of expressing themselves even if they want to protest about some issue. This can only be achieved if we work together through secular and peaceful means. We urge the involved parties to choose a middle path of non-violence and inclusiveness. Let us create an atmosphere that enables peaceful resolution of the current situation. Only dialogue is the most viable means. Let us bring back peace to the valley of Kashmir.

Signatories:
Rajbir Bhattacharjee, Rafiul Alom Rahman, Pickee Kaul, Danish Iqbal, Sushant Taing, Saransh Joshi, Shoaib Mehraj, Rajesh Dudeja, AjoyBhan, Sherwani Khan Amir, Kishlay Sharma, Anusuya Datta, Shakun Sethi, Harleen Bhogal, Aalok Aima, Ayshaa Saeed Mir, Wasim Mushtaq, Romil Dhar, Mankanwaldeep Rampal, Faiyaz Shaikh, Aakash ChowkaseApaang, Rashmi Talwar, Sunitha Choudhry, Pamela DharAnand, Sadaf Munshi, Mufti Shahid Hussain, Aamir Ahmed Amin, Sualeh Keen, Ajay Raina, Khalid Baig, SonuSuneja Jan, Tina Anjila Shah, Raju Moza, Rafiq Lasne, Feroze Mithiborwala, Rohit Bhat, Roxy Raina, Zeenat Nissa, Manmeet Bali Nag, Mohammad Anas, Shivani Taploo Raina, Hirday Nath Patwari, Sudipta Sen Gupta, Premanand Mishra, Shivendu Mittal, VineetKaul, Anil Kaul, Indrajit Gupta. 

Cover Image Credit: AFP/Tauseef Mustafa

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