The military lockdown and communications blackout imposed by the Government following the abrogation of Article 370 last month seems unending. Seeking solace, many Kashmiris in different parts of India have turned to social media. An account on Instagram (@alleyeson.kashmir) carriesa series of posts on voices and stories from the people of Kashmir, their pain, their poetry, their strength and resilience. One such post encouraged a conversation about the woman poets of Kashmir. Kashmiris fondly recalled rich stories of their poets, the most revered being Lal Ded. Born in Kashmir in the early 1300s, her verses are remembered more as oral tradition in the form of “vaakhs” than the written word. Married off as a child, she renounced her marital home in her mid-twenties and became a disciple of the Shaiva saint Siddha Srikanta, and her verses reflect her spirituality of Shaivism and eventually Yogacara Buddhism, and her experiences with Sufism. At one point in time, her popularity reached a level where people started considering her an incarnation. Also known as Lalleshwari, Lal Ded practised Shaivism throughout her life and was revered by Hindus and Muslims alike as “Mother Lalla”. She bridged the various religious and spiritual beliefs of her time with her poetry. An excerpt from one of her poems reads (translation):

As one of her contemporary translators, renowned poet Ranjith Hoskote says, “She represents ‘a Kashmiri identity’ if not ‘the Kashmiri identity’ characterised as an instrument of mobilisation and consolidation (as Benedict Anderson put it)”.

Syncretism has been an essential part of spirituality practised in Kashmir for centuries. The Sufi tradition which came to be known as “Kashmiriyat” lies in the philosophy of brotherhood, mutual love and respect, as propagated by one of the valley’s Sufi pioneers, Bulbul Shah, commonly known as Bulbul-e-Kashmir. During the time of Bulbul Shah three distinguished religions Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam were being practised in South East Asia and he propagated the synthesis of all three faiths and introduced the message of peace acceptable to all, signalling an era of peace enshrined in Sufism.

The presence of coexisting spiritual traditions and religions particularly influenced the unique style of Kashmiri Sufis. Sufism- all over the world- is real, individual, and unorthodox, claiming for the individual the rich power of faith with the Sublime and Only One, unrestricted by agency or definition of which form of divinity is the sublime One. So too was the case of Kashmiri Sufis, thusfor some, they are “Muslim rishis”, a rich manifestation of the “Sufi Bhakti” tradition in the Valley. Nund Rishi (aka. Sheikh ul Alam) is considered to be the founder of the Rishi order of Sufi saints which influenced mystics like Hamza Makhdoom, Resh Mir Sàeb, and Shamas Faqir. Lal Ded was his contemporary and had a great impact on his spiritual growth. He has in one of his poems prayed to God to grant him the same level of spiritual achievement as God had bestowed on Lal Ded. His poetry preached a message of peace and tolerance. One of his famous poems begins with,

Persia, Kashmir, Sufism inter-meshed and interacted for centuries, and we have the Kashmiri weaves and designs of the exclusive Kashmiri carpets. During the 14^th century, Mir Sayyed Ali Hamadani visited Kashmir multiple times travelling back and forth to Iran. It was Hamadani who brought various crafts and industries from Iran into Kashmir; it is said that he brought with him 700 followers, including some weavers of carpets and shawls, who taught the craft of Pashmina textile and carpet-making to the local population. The contribution of Mir Sayyed Ali Hamadani to Kashmiri society is everlasting and infinite. He not only brought a social revolution by preaching the tenets of Islamic social justice, fraternity, love, and equality but also wrote a political treatise Zakhiratul Maluk for the guidance of kings about how to rule. His literary works and teachings showed his connection to both the Quran and Hindu-Buddhist thoughts thus promoting the universal language of love that preached how people of different faiths could live peacefully together.

The traditions of Sufism andsyncretic poetry continued through the years to come. Poetry, after all, is the focal point of the message of love throughout the world. A popular story refers to a poem written by a Kurdish governor Ali Mardan Khan in the 17^th century, about his sighting of God Shiva. It is believed that as the Governor was strolling in Shalimar Garden, he caught sight of Mahadeo peak and felt that he had seen God Shiva. He went on to describe this experience in a poem (originally in Persian), excerpts of which remain popular as songs in present day Kashmir:
 

 
Poetry still thrives in the present-day Kashmir with young poets at the helm, creating powerful verses of love, loss, peace, and resistance. The team behind Instagram account @alleyeson.kashmir told Sabrang India, “Even under curfew and lockdown, words flow and inspiration comes from scant food, black balloons, blood on the streets, burning tyres, and even just the lack of milk.The poetry emerging from Kashmir is also an archive of an enormous sadness manifest in news of blinding of children, the wailing of mothers who have lost their sons, unexplained disappearances, and the madness of frustration of not being able to counter the media narrative of the state of things on the ground as can be seen in the current situation.
 
They say that it is the poet’s burden to fight against forgetfulness. That’s what Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinian poet of resistance argued.The new generation of poets in the Valley say the same. From Sheikh ul Alam to Lal Ded to Habba Khatoon to Samad Mir to Rasul Mir, the folk Ladisha (satirical ballads), Chakar (Kashmiri folk music), to the slogans and songs and elegies that echo in the streets of Kashmir, the history of poetry in Kashmir is long and reflective of Kashmir’s journey.
 
As Nobel laureate poet Seamus Heaney said in his acceptance speech- To begin with, I wanted that truth to life to possess a concrete reliability, and rejoiced most when the poem seemed most direct, an upfront representation of the world it stood in for, or stood up for, or stood its ground against. This is the principle contemporary Kashmiri poets like Uzma Falak, Mohammad Tabish, Omair Bhat, Huzaifa Pandit,Ather Zia and more, are taking forward. They are bearing witness.”
 
An excerpt from Uzma Falak’s poem Echoes of a strangled song reflects the same sentiment-
 

 
Mohammad Tabish writes these gut-wrenching and distinctly Sufilines in his poem Stone–
 

It is heart-breaking to read some of these poems, which is why it is even more pertinent that we do. As Kashmir lies silent entering the second month of its communication blackout, we hope poetry is still being written and spoken in the valley. We hope the Kashmiris are still singing Lal Ded’s vaakhs sitting with their grandmothers, we hope Kashmiriyat still breathes, and always will.

But when will the Indian dispensation recognise the true spirit of Kashmiriyat? In the words of poet Nidhi Saxena (translated):

Related Articles:
1. Communications Blockade Creates New Mental Health Challenges In Kashmir
2. News Behind the Barbed Wire – Voices From Behind Kashmir’s Information Blockade
3. The Mental Health of Kashmiris is Everybody’s concern: Dr Kala
 

The post Remembering Kashmiriyat, One Month, Eight Days after a Clampdown appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Although, the onslaught of the forces of globalisation  after post-modernism have added a new colour to the contours of social dynamics and set in motion a new wave of  societal organisations in the world, the case of Kashmir portrays a different tale of ever evolving, unaltered communal harmony. The only narrative that can ensue an atmosphere of peace and prosperity is that of the peaceful coexistence in the society in order to avert the crisis that makes inroads within a society from time to time.

Jammu and Kashmir is the only northern state of India with a longest tag of amity and brotherhood that has survived the currents of time and remains so in the contemporary times. Kashmir called as the land of rishis, saints, seers and sadhus is known for its communal harmony not only at the local level, but also the world over since times immemorial.

The sort of mysticism that the Sufi and Bhakti movements have lent to the cultural ethos of Kashmir is found much nowhere in the world besides Kashmir. The vale of Kashmir is full of various religious faiths who have survived the onslaught of the forces of globalisation with the changing signs of time. Muslims form the majority of the vale along with the religious people of Hindus, sikhs, Buddhists, Christians; etc.

Over the period of time, a sort of communal harmony has permeated the socio-cultural space of the society creating a congenial atmosphere of communitarian responsibility and social bond among the people of Kashmir surpassing religious lines of thought. This has not only added to the peace horizon of the land, but also created a sense of mutual trust and unified bond among the various communities of the land. In Kashmir, the communal harmony is deep rooted in the historical narratives.

The ethos of the Kashmir culture has time and again withstood the travails and tribulations of the time despite the currents of odds and challenges through the changing times. On a miniscule scale, there has been disturbance to the communal harmony of the state following the partition of the Sub-continent into India and Pakistan.

The exodus of the Hindus in nineties ascribed to the circumstances was a gory chapter in the chronicles of Jammu and Kashmir history. However, the return of the same has added a new threshold to the scene. The separatist leadership has time and again been vocal for their return as being part and parcel of our composite Kashmiri culture.

However, the time has served as the best healer of the same wounds and paved renewed ways for the cherishment of the communal harmony. The social harmony vindicates the notions of love and affection among different religions and is a blessing in disguise for the times.

Status
The state of Jammu and Kashmir reflects the true plural ethos of the secular India where people of different communities strive for the love and harmony, complementing the lives of each other on a day-to-day basis.

The festivals of one community are celebrated with gaiety and fervour by the other religious community, solidifying the ethos of multiculturalism and pluralism. Kashmir represents the thread of the confluence of communal harmony and brotherhood. The communal harmony of the state is neither instant nor accidental, but is a legacy of the past times till date that has permeated the psyche of the people and created a bond of unity in the socio-cultural milieu of the valley.

The recent installation of a church bell in a church at Srinagar after a span of 50 years by the Christian community with the support of the Sikh, Muslim and Hindu communities is a reminder of communal harmony that is deep rooted in the cultural milieu of the state.

The annual Hindu pilgrimage of the Amarnath yatra is the biggest and ever glaring example of the amity where old and young, men and women, etc all are hospitably treated with care and concern by the native Muslims and even carried on their shoulders towards the sacred place of cave through the difficult terrains and ways enroute to the cave.

In the town of Seer Hamdan, Anantnag, the legal heir of a deceased hindu Pandit namely Arzan Nath is a Muslim man namely Nissar Ahmad Wagay.Long ago, through the oral history of the people, have heard of him serving the former during ups and downs of life. Arzan Nath was a govt employee with no one to look after. Nissar Ahmad served him through the turbulent times and offered heart-catching services, which even a true descendent, could not offer. Nissar used to accompany Arzan Nath through thick and thin times of life. Having personally observed, both of them used to pay the dusk obeisance at the shrine of Hazrat Shahi Hamdan (R.A.). At the time of his death, it was none other than Nissar who performed the last services to the deceased.

Another Hindu Pandit Shadi Lal in the same town is a hope for the hopeless patients who turn up in large numbers at his Ayurvedic shop. The most important trait of the said person is that he cares and heals the patients of the whole South Kashmir. In other words, he has turned out to be a saviour of the whole community. Come dawn, the people could be seen in large flocks outside his shop. People respect him out of reverence and reciprocate in great regard. Recently, after suffering from body disease, the final remedy to my ailment surfaced only after i took the herbal medicine of the pandit gee.

Challenges
The biggest obstacle and roadblock for the cherishment of the ideal of communal harmony in India is the fanaticism and extremism of fringe elements of the society. Since, all religions preach the message of peace and harmony, there can be no way to justify the claims of the demeaning and demoralising of whatsoever religious community a society carries on. The biggest issue of the current and contemporary times is to contain the fringe elements of the society and let the people live in whatsoever capacity they live to carry on the cog in the wheel of the life.

The Few reasons in the path of communal harmony are:- Egoism, Lack of vision in Education, Lack of discipline, Lack of Cooperation, Social disorder, Casteism, Violence, Immorality ,Lack of faith in true religious values, deficit of good leadership, etc.

Education can be exploited as a powerful tool against these threats in the path of Communal Harmony. On his return from South Africa, Gandhiji envisioned for a unity among different communities of India and did his best in capacity for the realization of the same.

Last Word
In order to realise the goal of communal harmony, peace is the main pre-requisite and a necessary condition. Disharmony creates the forces of disarray and disruption, rendering harmony handicapped and ultimately towards a state of paralysis. To promote the ethic of communal harmony, it is imperative for all the stakeholders of the society to play a part in particular and work in sync for the realization of the same in general.

Youth as a main driving force and an asset of a nation can be the best ambassadors of peace and communal harmony. The only way to achieve that goal is the proper education of the youth across the spectrum of education spanning the whole level of education. This way youth can learn to make communal harmony as a way of living, rather than ethic in simpler terms. Besides, the govt of the state as well as the centre have a shared responsibility to promote communal harmony further.

Although, some ground work has been done, but, there are still miles to go before we sleep. The need of the hour is the further promotion of the communal harmony in the society. The recent publication of ‘Living in Harmony’ books for school going children by Oxford University Press (OUP) in India to foster values of peace and cooperation is a good attempt.

Also, the Social media and yellow journalism of the mainland India should try to cherish the instances of communitarian love and amity in Jammu and Kashmir. Instead of fomenting trouble to earn TRP’s and portrayal of the news which creates wedge in the bond of the society, the main urge should be to plead the cases of injustices and show a solidarity for the same. The problem of binary has to do away with.

Today, when the world is envisioning for the state of annihilation of crisis, the crisis in Kashmir takes a major sway with each passing day. The gory tales of widows, half-widows and orphans who have been rendered so after the loss of their dear ones has permeated the society deeply and created a multidimensional layer of unwithering pain and sorrow and a state of unabated alienation of the masses.

The question is not of the otherness of the other, but, of oneself in tandem with the other. Not a single day is devoid of pain, agony, and other tragedies. The question is the question of order. The major onus lies on the representatives of the people who represent the masses which have been rendered heart-broken and empty hoped. Let the seers of politics take on. The answer to all the problems can be cherished in unity within the broader perspectives of the humane approach by which peace can return to a treacherous path within the domain of the whole society. Government in J&K should understand and circumvent in Toto and try to dive from the static deficit of governance to good governance. After all, time in consonance with care serves as the best cosset.

The author has done M.Sc.(Biochemistry),B.Ed from Jamia Millia Islamia New Delhi,M.A.(History) and also qualified CTET from CBSE. Previously,he was also working as a project trainee at JNU,New Delhi.He has over dozen of articles to his credit on socio-politico-economic issues and currently works in J&K, government education department.He can be reached at abidjmi121@gmail.com.

Courtesy: https://countercurrents.org/
 

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Representational photo

The feeling of separatism among the people of a bordering state is easily identified. But there are two types of separatism. In a state or region like Kashmir and North – Eastern states, separatism is identified in such a way that there is a group or more than one group of people who want to secede from Indian nation and they carry out “actions” to fulfill this desire. They try to galvanize public support through their “actions” and harm government machinery as well. But have we ever identified the separatism that is professed by the majority section of the society?

I belong to a Hindu family of north India. Right from the beginning, a separatist feeling against Kashmir has been cultivated within me. A survey can be conducted in entire north India to know how a relationship with Kashmir has been nurtured among the people of this region during their childhood. If I ask 100 children, they all know Kashmir only through the materials available in media. I want to repeat the story how I was introduced to Kashmir. I was born in the early years of 1960s. While going to school or returning back, I was told that Kashmir has a separate flag which is different from Indian tricolour. Like prime minister of India, it also has a prime minister. There is a separate section in Indian Constitution for it and Muslims are in majority there. Since Pakistan follows Islam, therefore loyalty of Kashmir people is also doubtful.

Interestingly, there is hardly any book on Kashmir which narrates the true story of accession of Kashmir into India. Particularly in Hindi, there is no such book yet. I saw a Facebook post, which was liked and shared by hundreds of people. The post contained the names of books which could prove helpful in understanding Kashmir. Dozens of them were in English, but there was none in Hindi.  A book that can develop affinity for Kashmir is not found, but a book is available to associate you with cow. Since school days, we have been taught to relate everything with cow like “G se Gai” (G for cow); “Gai hamari mata hai” (cow is our mother) and so on. There have been films on Kashmir. But they didn’t really associate with the fields and lives of Kashmir. Instead, they used to associate with ice – balls which were hurled by the hero of a Hindi film on his heroine.

 They also used to associate with the mountains laden with ice, which was eye – catching for the people belonging to the plains. In rhetoric, Kashmir was the crown which was a symbolic reminder of a Hindu king. And yes, the national catchphrase – “from Kanyakumari to Kashmir” – was made for our ears. Like books, there was so such film that could integrate with the people of Kashmir. For a child like me, Kashmir always remained in the mind as a beautiful piece of land and a threat to our nation. It was viewed as a threat at that time because Pakistan has an eye on it. In other words, a sense of insecurity was developed towards Kashmir. While the sense of insecurity generates separatism among minorities, it produces aggression among the majority section of the society.

If any cultural organization that has utilized Kashmir issue to the optimum level as a shield for its politics, it is none other than the Rashtriya Svayamsevak Sangh (RSS).  During its cultural activities, the Sangh narrates how atrocities are inflicted upon Hindus in Kashmir.  There are many handbills that recount such stories. Photographs, without any forensic test, can also be found. An art of generating separatism among the people of north India towards Kashmir has been an integral part of Sangh’s cultural activities.  The turning of cultural activities towards Right is the factor that separates people from each other. However, for the majority section, it triggers integration with the motherland. Motherland means the assets of the mother. Sangh’s story of atrocities on Hindus completes with the attacks by Muslims. Its literature is devoid of Kashmiriyat, a sentiment that motivated Kashmiri people irrespective of their religion to fight against the invasion of Pakistani tribals and laid their lives. The list of martyrs against Pakistani tribals includes those names only who participated in the war due to their faith in Kashmiriyat, not because of their belief in Islam.  

When I see the materials on activities related to Kashmir in media, it reminds me of those days when Panchajanya was the only nationalist mouthpiece of RSS in Hindi which used to come to those who were the regular visitors of Shakhas in our city.  This mouthpiece used to paint a negative image of Kashmir and depict it as a Pakistani base and a place where atrocities are inflicted on Hindus. Today I find various editions of Panchajanya, which have developed technically and emerged as TV news channels. Interestingly with growing numbers of nationalists in media, separatism against Kashmir and Kashmiri people is multiplying within me. More they become loud, more I secede from Kashmir. Really, I have become extremely secessionist. I am hostile against Kashmiri people. But I am known as a nationalist. My sensitivity is humane, but it is divided on Kashmir.  I am sensitive towards Kashmir, but am equally insensitive for Kashmiri people.

The separatism towards Kashmir within me is the nationalism of my beloved India. I have grown up with separatist tendencies. But this separatism is not called by name because it belongs to the majority section of the society. In a parliamentary democracy, majority is crucial. A separatism catered by minorities is dangerous for the parliamentary politics. My separatism wins elections. It works magic in north Indian politics.

(This article was first published on kafila.online).
 

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Jammu and Kashmir is again in the news for violence and counter violence. Again, several solutions are proposed. Any such exercise, however, needs a reality check if peace is to return in the state in the foreseeable future.

The present unrest began after killing of Burhan Wani, a local commander of Hizbul Mujahidin, an organisation that vows to liberate Kashmir by unleashing suicide bombers in Kashmir (Times of India, 4 September 2016). The unrest is restricted to the Kashmir valley comprising 7.1 percent of land and 54.9 percent of population of the state numbering 6.8 million (Census of India, 2011). In a fresh round of bloodshed over seventy people have died and thousands are injured.

To defuse the situation, among the solutions being offered is merger with Pakistan and 'freedom' from India. The third solution — status quo — is supported by the major political parties, though with differing caveats.

Merger with Pakistan

The merger with Pakistan is incongruous for the simple reason that Kashmiris will be an additional minority group in Pakistan that already has a disturbing record towards its ethnic and sectarian minorities including Mohajir, Baloch, Pashtun, Ahmadis and Hazaras. Many of these people are forced to seek refuge in other countries.

According to latest figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Pakistanis are the sixth largest group seeking asylum in Europe following Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis. Australian immigration report 2013-2014 reveals that the largest number of people who sought humanitarian visa on arrival came from Pakistan (Elibritt Karlsen: 2014, Parliament of Australia).

Pakistan's human rights record on Baluchistan has also been disconcerting. Since the last decade about 18,000 people have allegedly ‘disappeared’ in the province. According to the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons, 157 mutilated bodies were found and 463 people disappeared in the state in 2015. (Balochwarna News, 3 January 2016). The prime suspects in these incidents are the security forces.

Pakistan administered Kashmir is no better. Of the $38bn proposed investment in energy sector on the  China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, Gilgit-Baltistan has not received any allocation as compared to other provinces (The Dawn, 12 May 2016). On the contrary, the planning minister of Pakistan warned the protesting farmers of the region that the terrorism act would be invoked against them if they obstructed the project (Times of India, 18 August 16).

Freedom

The option of freedom for J&K is equally fraught with problems. If freedom is a demand for all the five regions of the state, then it seems a non-starter given the Indian and Pakistan position on it; and if it relates only to the Indian part then without taking into consideration the views of the people of Jammu and Ladakh region it is unlikely to move any farther.

The demand of freedom for only the valley of Kashmir is fraught with a moral dilemma in light of about a half a million Kashmiri pundits' virtual exile from the region. Besides, freedom for Kashmir will have a ripple effect in Muslim majority districts of Poonch and Rajouri, and Kishtwar and Doda, separated by Hindu majority districts of Jammu and Udhampur, which will further add to the instability in the region.

Another difficulty regarding freedom for Kashmir is the use of violence and terrorism as a method to achieve it. Contemporary history shows that a violent movement does not produce a sustainable democratic state as is seen in many African countries which were inspired by various violence based ideologies.

And finally, there are reports that mosques are being used for mobilisation of people and ISIS flags are being waved in rallies in Kashmir (Indian Express, August 21, 2016). Successful culmination of such a movement can only lead to a theocratic state that would be against the spirit of 'kashmiriyat', which has already suffered considerable erosion in the valley.

Way Forward

The central government owes it to the Constitution of India to restore civil liberties by withdrawing the laws like AFSPA from civilian areas in the Valley, ensure accountability for human rights violations, secure transparent governance, launch de-radicalisation programs and identify a genuine leadership in the valley for a dialogue. Nationally, toning down ‘saffron nationalism’ might greatly assist. It is the only way forward for a humane and democratic Kashmir.

(Pushkar Raj is a Melbourne based author of Kahsmiri origin. Formerly he taught political science in Delhi University and was the national general secretary of PUCL. He can be reached at raajpushkar@ gmail.com).
 

The post Restoring Civil Liberties, Respecting Human Rights the Only Way Forward in Kashmir appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Breaking his 32-day long silence on Kashmir, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made a statement which is full of empty political rhetoric, lacking substance to address the real issue concerning political aspiration of Kashmiris.

“It is said that boys who should be holding laptops, cricket bats have been handed stones in their hands,” Modi said while addressing a rally in Madhya Pradesh’s Alirajpur district. This irresponsible and juvenile statement stereotyped Kashmiris as gullible and naïve who are ready to pick up a stone at someone’s behest.

“Every Indian loves Kashmir. The freedom that every Indian has also belongs to every Kashmiri. We want the same bright future for every youth in Kashmir,” he said. Bright future after blinding them forever with pellets! In which place other than Kashmir have the government forces killed 60 civilians, injured 6,000 and made over 300 blind in a span of 30 days, he wouldn’t bother to explain.

“Whatever Kashmiris want for betterment of their livelihood, the Centre will help. We want development for Jammu and Kashmir. Be it the J&K government under Mehbooba Mufti or the central government, we are finding solution to all problems through development,” he added. The development of pellet guns and bullets, perhaps!

For rhetorical purpose alone, Modi again invoked Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s famous words to end up saying nothing concrete how to address the Kashmir dispute politically: “There are ways, including dialogue, to resolve issues in a democracy. My government believes in Atal Bihari Vajpayee's mantra of "insaniyat, jamhuriyat and Kashmiriyat (humanity, democracy and Kashmiriyat)."

Modi’s silence over killings of 60 unarmed Kashmiris, grave pellet-and-bullet injuries to over 6,000 civilians and blinding of over 300 youths in the Kashmir Valley since July 9 is least surprising to most Kashmiris.

Modi’s silence over killings of 60 unarmed Kashmiris, grave pellet-and-bullet injuries to over 6,000 civilians and blinding of over 300 youths in the Kashmir Valley since July 9 is least surprising to most Kashmiris.

After all, it has been India’s ‘standard operating procedure’ (SOP) to speak to Kashmiris in a language of power since 1947 with a sole aim of criminalising their political struggle. In this endeavour of delegitimising Kashmiris’ struggle for the right to self-determination, understanding the language of India’s corporate-owned media and the armed forces operating in Kashmir becomes very critical.

For instance if 50,000 common Kashmiris, including women and children, will gather at a place to demonstrate peacefully for their political rights, the Indian media will use the word “miscreants” for such a huge assembly of people. Mind you, this is being done deliberately to mislead the common Indians that people in such colossal numbers have assembled at the behest of Pakistan, and, therefore, any amount of force used by government forces against them stands ‘justified’.

If everything in Kashmir is happening at Pakistan’s behest it is a telling remark on India’s own standing in Kashmir.

For the sake of an argument, if everything in Kashmir is happening at Pakistan’s behest it is a telling remark on India’s own standing in Kashmir. That is, however, another story.

Not only this, when the trigger-happy Indian paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and accountable-to-none armed forces open direct fire on peaceful and unarmed protesters, the injured are described as “stone pelters”, “miscreants”, “agitational terrorists” and “terrorist sympathisers”. This colonial language is employed by vast sections of the Indian media, especially television channels, and government forces to justify India’s colonial practices in Kashmir.

Here is an example. A statement issued by the J&K police media centre on August 8 reads: “….It is clarified that a mob of more than 2,000 miscreants assembled at main chowk Langate (north Kashmir) and started heavy stone pelting on deployment and police post Langate, due to which 38 police/security personnel were injured. While dispersing the mob, 11 miscreants were injured, most of them due to stampede out of which three of them were referred to Srinagar. The condition of all of them is stable…”

Now look at this statement carefully and focus on the choice of words. First, the police use the term “mob” for common people. Secondly, they are described as “miscreants”. Thirdly, they are then accused of “stone pelting” on deployment and police post, Langate in north Kashmir.

These are all blatant lies. The number of people participating in a demonstration is reduced by design. The people are shown as “perpetrators” and police as “victim”. Then derogatory terms are used to describe people and their actions or lack thereof. Police never comes up with solid evidence to prove that their men are indeed injured. If they are injured, they should be in the hospitals undergoing treatment. But that is not the case.

The question that arises is this: from where do the government forces gather such courage to peddle lies after lies in public domain? State’s shameless backing to violence against common people and a draconian law, which acts as a shield against persecution, are the two major factors behind this audaciousness.

When Omar Abdullah, former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir and working president of the pro-autonomy National Conference (NC), was running a coalition government with the Congress from 2009 to 2014, more than 117 persons, mostly boys in their teens, were mercilessly killed by government forces during the summer mass agitation. Not a single guilty armed forces person was punished till date.

This became possible because the armed forces enjoy impunity and a license to kill in Kashmir under the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, AFSPA, which is in force in Jammu and Kashmir since 1990. The fact that hardly any perpetrator is punished only emboldens the armed forces to go berserk and enjoy a free run.

Even in 2008, when Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Congress were running a coalition government, more than 60 Kashmiri civilians, most of them in their teens, were killed when they were protesting against sanctioning of 99 acres of land to Amarnath Shrine Board.

Having said that, it may well be very convenient and politically very smart for the junior Abdullah to ask New Delhi whether “it has declared a war on the people in Kashmir*” at a juncture when the PDP is heading a coalition government in Jammu and Kashmir, but the fact remains that he too could not prevent civilians killings when he was at the helm of affairs in 2010.

"To blame Pakistan for the unrest or to delude ourselves into thinking this is a law and order situation is criminal. There is an extreme sense of resentment and disenchantment among the youth of the Valley and that is the basis of this unrest.” (Omar Abdullah)

On August 6, Omar Abdullah told this to India Today: “Has New Delhi declared a war on the people in Kashmir? Hundreds of young boys and girls have potentially life-changing injuries, most of them caused by pellet guns. Thousands of youngsters have sustained injuries in this unrest. To blame Pakistan for the unrest or to delude ourselves into thinking this is a law and order situation is criminal. There is an extreme sense of resentment and disenchantment among the youth of the Valley and that is the basis of this unrest.”

Indian media is at liberty to dub Omar Abdullah as “Pakistan sympathiser” for making a statement that he has made as an Opposition leader.

Look at another statement made the same day by yet another pro-India legislator Hakim Yasin, Peoples Democratic Forum (PDF) chief and MLA Khansahib Budgam, who said that the Indian forces were repeating Jallianwala Bagh massacre* in Kashmir on a daily basis.

“The way British used brute force on unarmed protesters at Jallianwala Bagh in 1919, forces in Kashmir are repeating the same in Kashmir every day. Why are unarmed protesters targeted by the forces in every nook and corner of Kashmir,” Hakim Yasin told the local media.

The Kashmir story that the corporate-owned Indian media won’t tell the ordinary Indian audiences is precisely this: Since July 9, 2016, at least 60 unarmed Kashmiris have been killed in cold blood by Indian armed forces; inflicting pellet and bullet injuries on 6,000 unarmed Kashmiris. Besides, more than 1,500 Kashmiri youth have been arrested, some in nocturnal raids for participating in demonstrations. At least 1,030 FIRs have been registered by the police for further persecution and harassment of the youth. And, the fact that Kashmiris are suffering under strict curfew and unprecedented restrictions enforced by the PDP-BJP government since July 9 along with a ban on mobile and data internet on all cellular services except the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), and with no outgoing call facility available to pre-paid mobile phone customers!

Last Friday, August 5, was Kashmir’s Bloody Friday. More than 400 Kashmiris received serious pellet-and-bullet injuries after government forces acted violently to stop people from demonstrating against the state violence across the length and breadth of Kashmir. Doctors at Srinagar’s Shri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) hospital told me that at least 324 youth, hit with the pellet guns, are on the verge of losing their eyesight permanently. Doctors said that most boys have been hit in the eye which has damaged their retina beyond repair. “We have performed as many as 65 surgeries until Monday morning,” Dr Raashid Maqbool said.

Dr Ruveda Salam, a lady IAS officer from north Kashmir working as assistant commissioner at ministry of finance, government of India, could not stop herself from speaking against the state violence.

On August 3, Dr Salam took a dig at chief minister Mehbooba Mufti and her PDP by writing this on her Facebook timeline: “From wooing voters while wearing colour #green to painting #red the same valley streets, and then they question the credentials of the same religion whose symbols they used to mask their evil deeds” #hypocrisy couldn't get worse than this !”

In response to her post, she was harassed by a senior police officer who also made a misogynist remark by dubbing Dr Salam as “ignorant lady”. Police officer Harmeet Singh Mehta threatened Dr Salam of government action as if he was the PDP’s spokesperson. “Government (PDP-BJP coalition government) must take action against you (Dr Ruveda Salam) as a civil servant spreading so much venum (venom) against state. Better resign and join some separatist group.”

Following the assassination of popular tech-savvy Hizb commander Burhan Wani on July 8 under mysterious circumstances in south Kashmir’s Anantnag district, the massive Azadi rallies are being organised on a daily basis across the Kashmir Valley since. According to moderate estimates, at least 3,00,000 people had gathered in south Kashmir’s Tral, hometown of Burhan, to participate in his funeral. Such a huge assembly had already made a statement that India was losing a battle for narratives in Kashmir.

There are many in Kashmir feeling scared of India as a Hindutva project, this time led by a right-wing prime minister. Kashmiris feel under severe attack as they are victims of politics of invasion aimed at crushing their identity as Kashmiris and Kashmiri Muslims under a PDP-BJP coalition government.

There are many in Kashmir feeling scared of India as a Hindutva project, this time led by a right-wing prime minister. Kashmiris feel under severe attack as they are victims of politics of invasion aimed at crushing their identity as Kashmiris and Kashmiri Muslims under a PDP-BJP coalition government.

Even after 60 civilian killings and injuries to 6,000 Kashmiris in last 30 days, the state unit of the Hindu nationalist BJP has asked the government to deal with the current situation in the Kashmir Valley decisively and with an “iron hand”. State BJP spokesperson Virender Gupta said that there was no option for the government other than meeting the challenge posed by the “separatists and terrorists supported by Pakistan decisively and with an iron hand otherwise the situation will deteriorate further and it may not be possible to bring back normalcy in the Valley.”

At present the morale of the state police, CRPF and other security forces have gone down because of the recent happenings where lot of restrictions have been imposed on them,” Gupta told a news agency.

This is Kashmir’s story. And this Karbala is Kashmir’s ‘normalcy’ for which the Indian media obviously has no time. It will relentlessly debate cows, cow protection and cow vigilantism and how Modi beats the drums in Kenya, but will not gather moral courage to narrate Kashmir’s story with a human heart and an unbiased journalistic approach, shedding jingoistic spectacles and hyper-nationalistic binoculars. After all, India is a democracy and its image can’t be tarnished for the sake of 7.5 million Kashmiris!
 

The post PM’s Statement on Kashmir: Rubbing Salt on Wounds appeared first on SabrangIndia.

 
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,

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

The post State of siege appeared first on SabrangIndia.

On a summer morning this July in Srinagar, tear gas from the troubled streets of Batmaloo began to roll into the first-floor home of Fancy Jan. The 24-year-old went to draw the curtains to screen the room from the acrid smoke, her mother told a reporter later, then turned away from the window and said: “Mummy, maey aaw heartas fire (my heart’s taken fire, mummy)”. Then she dropped dead, a bullet in her chest, the casual target of an anonymous soldier’s rifle. Fancy Jan was not a ‘stone-pelter’. She was a bystander, like many of the 50 people killed in the last two months. She is not the first woman to be shot by the security forces in 20 years of the troubles. But her random death, almost incomprehensible in the presumed safety of her family’s modest home, coincides with a vigorous unsettling of the way women have been represented in this conflict.

Until the other day, Kashmiri women were little more than a convenient set of clichés, shown as perpetual bystanders in houses that overlook the streets of protest. When seen outside of that protected zone, they were cast as victims, wailing mourners, keening at the endless funeral processions. For an occasional frisson there is the daunting image of the severely veiled Asiya Andrabi, chief of the Dukhtaran-e-Millat, a women’s group whose high media visibility seems inversely proportional to the modest numbers who adhere to their militant Islamic sisterhood. In black from head to toe, Andrabi always makes for good television, her arms and hands concealed in immaculate gloves, only her eyes showing through a slit. For the Indian media her persona insinuates the dark penumbra of Kashmiri protest, signalling the threat of ‘hard-line’ Islam, a ready metaphor for ‘what-awaits-Kashmir-if…’

But now an unfamiliar new photograph of the Kashmiri woman has begun to take its place on newspaper front pages. She is dressed in ordinary shalwar kameez, pastel pink, baby blue, purple and yellow. Her head is casually covered with a dupatta and she seems unconcerned about being recognised. She is often middle-aged and could even be middle-class. And she is carrying a stone. A weapon directed at the security forces. Last week, in a vastly underreported story, a massive crowd stopped two Indian Air Force vehicles on the highway near Srinagar. At the forefront were hundreds of women. The airmen and their families were asked to dismount and move to the safety of a nearby building. Then the buses were torched. This is not a rare incident: women are everywhere in these troubled times in Kashmir, and not in the places traditionally assigned to them. They are collecting stones and throwing them and assisting the young men in the front ranks of the protesters to disguise themselves, even helping them escape when the situation gets tough.

The government’s narrative of ‘miscreants’, of anomie and drug-fuelled teenagers working as Rs 200 mercenaries for the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, has meanwhile started to appear faintly ridiculous. A more reasonable explanation is being proffered to us now: it is anger, we are told, the people of Kashmir are angry at the recent killings and that’s why the women are being drawn in. That is true but only partially. For this is no ordinary anger but an old, bottled-up rage, gathered over so many years that it has settled and turned rock-hard. That accumulated fury is the stone in her hand. To not understand this, to fail to reach its source – or fathom its depth – is to be doomed to not understand the character of Kashmir’s troubles.

Two events will provide useful bookends for this exercise. In February 1991 there was an assault on Kunan Poshpora village in North Kashmir, where a unit of the Indian army was accused of raping somewhere between 23 and a hundred women. And then, a troubled 18 years later, the June 2009 rape and murder of two young women in Shopian, South Kashmir. In the case of Kunan Poshpora, bypassing a judicial inquiry, the government called in the Press Council of India to whitewash the incident, allowing its inadequate and ill equipped two-member team to summarily conclude that the charges against the army were “a massive hoax orchestrated by militant groups and their sympathisers and mentors in Kashmir and abroad”.

The travesty of the investigations into last year’s Shopian incident involved innumerable bungled procedures and threw up many glaring contradictions till the government of India roped in the Central Bureau of Investigation to put a lid on it. They promptly concluded that it was a case of death by drowning. (In a stream with less than a foot of water.) The case remains stuck in an extraordinary place: charges have been filed against the doctors who performed the post-mortems, against the lawyers who filed cases against the state, against everybody except a possible suspect for the rape and murder, or the many officials who had visibly botched up the investigations.

In the absence of justice, the space between Kunan Poshpora and Shopian can only be filled with the stories of nearly 7,000 people gone missing, of the 60,000 killed and the several-hundred-thousand injured and maimed and tortured and psychologically damaged. The men of this society took the brunt of this brutalisation. What of the price paid by the women? It is when we begin to come to terms with their decades-long accretion of grief and sorrow, of fear and shame, that we will begin to understand the anger of that woman with the stone in her hand.

The current round of protests will probably die down soon. The mandarins of New Delhi will heave a sigh of relief, tell us that everything is normal and turn their attentions to something else. But only their hubris could blind them from noticing what we have all seen this summer in Kashmir. This is not ordinary anger. It is an incandescent fury that effaces fear. That should worry those who seek to control Kashmir. 

 This article was published in The Times of India on August 8, 2010; http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Archived from Communalism Combat. July-August 2010, Anniversary Issue (17th).Year 17, No.153 – Cover Story 2

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