[Reader-list] Muzamil Jaleel : The politics of condemnation

[Harsh Kapoor]

The Indian Express
9 April 2003
http://www.expressindia.com/kashmir/full_story.php?content_id=21667

The politics of condemnation

Muzamil Jaleel

Two gory incidents shattered Kashmir's calm last month and pushed the 
state back to the brink. The massacre of 24 Kashmiri Pandits in 
Nadimarg where unidentified assassins arrived in the night, dragged 
men, women, even infants and sprayed bullets.

Even a physically challenged girl was not spared. Two days later, 
gunmen swooped on another village called Panihad in Poonch. They 
barged into two houses, collecting men, women and children. They beat 
them up and later chopped off the noses of six. The victims included 
the wife and children of a local Muslim priest.

Both incidents were shockingly brutal. In both cases, the victims 
were ordinary Kashmiris. But the way the country, especially the top 
leadership, reacted to these two incidents points to the genesis of 
the Kashmir problem.

Nadimarg was strongly condemned and rightly so. J&K Chief Minister 
Mufti Mohammad Sayeed was summoned to New Delhi and categorically 
asked to review his healing touch policy.

He was not only asked to act tough on militancy but the massacre 
provoked a review of the entire counter-insurgency grid in the state. 
A senior Union home ministry official was tipped to co-ordinate the 
counter-insurgency operations. Senior leaders from Deputy PM L.K. 
Advani to Congress president Sonia Gandhi rushed to Nadimarg to show 
solidarity with the survivors.

Advani told the Pandits who still live in Kashmir that the Centre 
would make all possible arrangements if they wished to migrate. 
Meanwhile, he promised that his government will do everything to 
provide adequate security to them, though he forgot to acknowledge 
the way the Muslims had come out to show solidarity with their Hindu 
neighbours in Nadimarg. Sonia Gandhi was equally concerned, but again 
she forgot that it was essential for her to compliment the Muslim 
neighbours in Nadimarg and around Kashmir who had come out to 
register their protest, especially as she had come as the chief of a 
party that claims to be the custodian of the country's composite 
culture and secular ethos.

Ghulam Nabi Azad made two trips to Nadimarg, accompanied by all the 
senior Congress ministers in the Mufti government. The media camped 
in the otherwise godforsaken village for days.

But the six villagers of Panihad - whose noses were chopped off and 
faces disfigured because they were suspected of helping the security 
forces - mourned alone.

This is not new to Kashmir. Tragedies have always been 
compartmentalised here. The Panihad villagers don't form part of 
Advani's or Sonia Gandhi's constituency. If the victims were 
sympathisers of the militants or were killed by security forces like 
in the Gowkadal, Khanyar, Bijbehara or Sopore massacres, the absence 
of a reaction may have been understandable.

But when Muslims are killed in the name of India, it exposes a 
pattern of selective condemnation, where the religion of the victim 
influences reaction to the tragedy.

Such examples lie scattered from Kupwara to Surankote. One night a 
few years ago, a group of unidentified gunmen descended on Sheikhpora 
village at Ganderbal. Fourteen men were massacred leaving behind 30 
orphans. Ghulam Mohammad Sheikh's family lost all its men, so did 
many among his neighbours.

Reason: several of the village men had been actively involved in the 
counter-insurgency operations of the security forces. Nobody from 
South Block ever came rushing here with even a cosmetic condemnation.

The Kashmir problem is more complex than the twin narratives of 
militant violence and security force atrocity would have us believe. 
It is bigger than the failure of democratic process and the rigging 
of elections. Its epicentre is perhaps in the people's sense of 
belonging to the country and its power structures. If the Panihad 
villagers or the widows of Sheikhpora fail to relate to India, the 
situation doesn't call for a POTA. The problem lies elsewhere.