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)