[Reader-list] 'Kashmir: cri de coeur' by Seema Kazi

Sanjay Kak kaksanjay at gmail.com
Sat Jul 31 11:22:40 IST 2010


Just to share a thoughtful–and informed–comment on the ongoing crisis in Kashmir
Best
Sanjay Kak

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Kashmir: cri de coeur
Seema Kazi, 16 July 2010

http://www.opendemocracy.net/seema-kazi/kashmir-cri-de-coeur

Labelling Kashmiri anger "separatist" or "anti-national" does a
disservice to the victims of violence while serving to cover up and
excuse state repression, argues Seema Kazi.

8 January: Inayat Khan (16 years) shot dead by CRPF, Srinagar.
22 January: Manzoor Ahmed Sofi (23 years), shot dead by the CRPF,
Parahaspora (Pattan).
31 January: Wamiq Farooq (13 years) shot dead by JK police, Srinagar.
31 January: Zahid Farooq (16 years) shot dead by Border Security
Force, Srinagar.
13 April: Zubair Ahmad Bhat (17 years) drowned to death by CRPF, Sopore.
11 June: Tufail Ahmad Mattoo (17 years) attacked and killed by JK
police, Srinagar.
19 June: Rafique Ahmad Bangroo (24 years) beaten to death by CRPF, Srinagar.
20 June: Javed Ahmed Malla (22 years) shot dead by CRPF, Srinagar.
27 June: Shakeel Ahmad Ganai (17 years) shot dead by CRPF, Sopore.
27 June: Firdous Ahmad Kakroo (16 years) shot dead by CRPF, Sopore.
27 June: Bilal Ahmed Wani (21 years) shot dead by CRPF, Sopore.
28 June: Tauqir Ahmed Rather (9 years) killed by CRPF, Sopore.
28 June: Tajamul Bashir (17 years) shot dead by CRPF, Sopore.
29 June: Ishtiaq Ahmed Khanday (15 years) shot dead by police, Anantnag.
29 June: Imtiaz Ahmed Itoo (17 years) shot dead by police, Anantnag.
29 June: Shujat ul Islam (16 years) shot dead by police, Anantnag.

India’s war in Kashmir has, of late, acquired a particularly deadly
edge. During the past six months, a disproportionately large number of
teenagers and young men have been shot dead on the streets by the
police or CRPF. It is far from clear as to whether all those who died
were actually throwing stones. Be that as it may, Chief Minister Omar
Abdullah and his administration have deemed stone-throwing a criminal
offence punishable with death or a lifetime in prison. Having
‘legalised’ the repression of dissent, Abdullah, Home Minister
Chidambaram, and Home Secretary GK Pillai hold the separatists and
‘anti-national’ forces responsible for the present crisis in Kashmir.

There cannot be a greater folly than to attribute the deep and
overflowing reservoir of collective anger and outrage against a
twenty-year-old occupation to the Machiavellian powers of a fragmented
and fairly discredited separatist conglomerate. In no state, least of
all in one that claims to be democratic, can the act of stone-throwing
or public protest legitimise a shoot-to-kill policy. As democratic
channels for dissent in Kashmir remain blocked, and the institutions
meant for the protection of civilians (military and paramilitary) or
the enforcement of the rule of law (police) deprive citizens of the
right to life, stones, slogans and mass protest are all what the
Kashmiris have to oppose and resist a shameful and scandalous state of
affairs.

To represent Kashmiri public outrage as a ‘separatist’,
‘anti-national’ conspiracy is an exercise in self-delusion and deceit;
it also betrays a profound disrespect for Kashmiri public opinion.
Separatist leaders may or may not support stone-pelting but to suggest
that all the boys and young men shot dead were part of a grand
separatist ploy is, at best, a patently tendentious claim. However
unpleasant stone-throwing may be for soldiers or the keepers of law
and order, it is, quite simply Kashmiri resistance against a
relentless counter-offensive characterised by violence, dispossession
and death.

Ever since the eruption of mass rebellion in Kashmir in 1989-90, New
Delhi has lacked the moral courage to publicly acknowledge, much less
redress Kashmiri grievance. The domestic political consensus on
Kashmir has consequently centred on the denial of local Kashmiri
grievance and a concerted focus on Kashmir’s external (Pakistan)
dimension commonly referred to as ‘cross-border terrorism’. Global,
especially Western fears regarding Islamist terror, Pakistan’s own
dubious and destructive role in Kashmir, together with the tragedy of
26/11 allowed India to escape local democratic accountability within
Kashmir. It has been relatively easy to claim that if at all there is
a Kashmir problem, Pakistan and its terror machine are to blame.
India’s self-created domestic crisis in Kashmir (that Pakistan
subsequently exploited) has been consistently understated or
overlooked.

As a result of this political and intellectual dishonesty, the opinion
and subjective experience of Kashmiri Muslims is ignored. India could
mobilise over 500,000 soldiers to safeguard Kashmir’s territorial
frontiers yet betray a cruel and callous disregard for the security,
rights or dignity of the people within it. For two long decades, the
use of coercive, frequently lethal force, resort to arbitrary
detention, custodial death, fake encounters, rape and sexual abuse,
extrajudicial killing, torture, and bouts of undeclared curfew has
been the standard state response to accumulating Kashmiri grievance.
The 2008 assembly elections are India’s answer to awkward questions
regarding democracy in Kashmir.

But like any other oppressed people in the world, the Kashmiri Muslims
have not been cowed down by force; nor have they ceased protesting
India’s democratic deficit in Kashmir. Indeed, it is precisely during
these moments that India’s feeble and tenuous claims to democracy and
normalcy in Kashmir are forcefully exposed. The stones cast by a
young, radicalised generation of Kashmiri boys today symbolise the
unequal battle between truth and power in Kashmir. The truth is that
the youth who throw stones and the masses of people who march with
them raising ‘anti-national’ slogans wish to be rid of Indian hegemony
in their contested homeland. They want the security forces withdrawn;
those languishing in jails released; the extraordinary powers vested
in the military curbed; public accountability for the disappeared;
prosecution for those responsible for crimes against citizens; a
chance to determine their own political future; a life of freedom and
dignity. In short, the truth is that the Kashmiri Muslims vehemently
reject their existing relationship with the Indian state.

What is India – the de-facto ‘power’ in Kashmir – doing about this
truth? Precious little. Bereft of imagination or morality, the Indian
state focuses on the symptom of the malaise: by maligning and thereby
de-legitimising Kashmiri public opinion as ‘anti-national, it seeks to
legitimise its own authoritarian counter-offensive (curfew, arbitrary
detention, a ban on sms and mobile services, restrictions on
journalists and the media, restrictions on public mobility, a ban on
public gatherings, etc.) that passes for governance and democracy in
Kashmir. The possession of superior force and enforced curfew, it is
hoped, shall eventually quieten things down. That shall indeed happen,
as has happened for the past twenty years: curfew restrictions shall
be relaxed, schools shall re-open, people shall go to work, tourists
shall throng Dal Lake, and there will be traffic on the roads.

Yet, as ‘power’ well knows, the latent, festering truth of injustice
and anger underpinning Kashmir’s deceptive veneer of ‘normality’ can
erupt any time with terrifying intensity - with blood on the streets
and swarms of stone-throwing and slogan-shouting crowds. As tragic and
grievous as the loss of Kashmir’s young men is India’s refusal to
concede the truth. Cornered and defensive, lacking the courage and
conscience expected of a mature and self-confident democracy, India
has no option other than digging in and playing for time. Sadly,
neither time nor history is on India’s side. No people have ever
surrendered to the untruth of the abuse of power. No state has ever
erased a people’s history, memory or quest for justice.


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