[Reader-list] Reflections on the Massacre in Nandimarg

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear All on the Reader List,

It  would be unfortunate if in the midldle of the spectacle of the war in 
Iraq, we were to forget what is going on in Kashmirr. Muzammil Jaleel’s 
report on the Nandimarg massacre (forwarded on to this list by Harsh 
Kapoor) in which, 24 Kashmiri Pundit men women and children were 
murdered while they lay asleep by unidentified men wearing Army 
uniforms, (some of whom reportedly spoke Kashmiri ) makes for horrific 
and very disturbing reading. It is also a strange echo of the 
Chattisinghpura massacres three years ago. Even as we spend a lot of 
our time thinking and reading about Iraq (which we must continue to do) 
I want to spend some time thinking about this, which is closer home for 
many of  us on this list.

This latest incident, whosoever it has been perpetrated by, deserves to 
be condemned in the strongest possible words. The fate of Kashmiri 
pandits, who have been at the receiving end of the violent campaign 
carried out by insurgents in Kashmir on the one hand, and have been 
victims of the most callous and cynical treatment by the Indian state and 
mainstream Indian political forces on the other, is one of the great 
underestimated tragedies of our times. While nothing can justify the 
brutal regime of repression and violence unleashed by the Indian state 
in Kashmir since the nineties, nothing can also justify the violence that 
the kashmiri pandit minority have experienced, at the hands of those 
who claim to speak for the ‘freedom’ of Kashmiris. It is clear that this is 
one of those instances, where, as Ranjit Hoskote said during his 
plenary presentation in the Crisis/Media workshop at Sarai, speaking for 
one set of victims, should not compel us to turn a blind eye to another 
set of victims. There are more than two sides to this conflict, and the 
third side, the one that is a partisan to the truth, is one that we must 
always be vigilant in defending. For it is the one that suffers the most in 
times like this. 

Just as to condemn the naked aggression on the people of Iraq being 
unleashed by the militaries of the United States and the United 
Kingdom, does not mean one has to hail the genocidial Iraqi state as a 
vanguard of the rights of oppressed people, so too, to be resolutely 
against the state repression in Kashmir, does not mean that one has to 
be silent about what happens to Kashmiri Pandits. In fact, the two must 
go hand in hand. 

The most common explanation that we are likely to get for the heinous 
Nandimarg massacre  is that it is the work of Kashmiri separatist 
militants. This may be true. If  it is, then it will only illustrate the moral 
bankruptcy of Kashmiri nationalist and/or islamist terrorism. Any political 
tendency that has to massacre defenceless villagers of another faith, 
while they were asleep cannot be trusted to lead any people into 
‘Azaadi’ or freedom. They will only replace today’s tyranny with their own 
brand. Indeed the record of movements of national liberation 
(especially, though not only, of those that deployed terrorism to achieve 
their goals) all over the world is a depressing record of the replacement 
of one form of tyranny with another. The gun that speaks the language of 
Azaadi will no doubt turn against its own people, if and when the 
occupiers are gone. Few people know the macabre record of the Indian 
National Army, under the leadership of Subhash Chandra Bose, for 
instance in the “liberated” territories of Malaya, Burma and the 
Andamans in the 1940s . It is no different from the conduct of Afghan 
mujahideen, or the Bangladeshi mukti joddhas or the victorious 
Zimbabwean nationalists. Once the occupying powers left the scene, it 
was time to take on the people that the ‘freedom fighters’ had ‘freed’. 
The slogan of “national liberation’ is only the fig leaf of the thugs who 
speak the language of victimhood, for a while.

However, there may be, other possible explanations as well. Which are 
equally if not more disturbing. And these have to do with the shadow 
world of Kashmir, where (like in other parts of the world, like the 
mysterious synergy between state and free lance terror in Algeria, the 
close links between Mossad and Hamas, between the CIA and the Al 
Qaida, between RAW and the LTTE) it is often difficult to distinguish 
between state and non state actors of terror. Nothing in this murky world 
is organized along easy black and white, ‘for and against’ polarities. The 
world of Kashmiri insurgency is a game of reflecting surfaces, a lethal 
special effects/’special operations’ spectacle made up of mirrors and 
mist. “Miltiants” wear the uniforms of the Indian armed forces, and the 
forces of the Indian state often work with militants or ‘surrendered’ 
militants to provoke specific  situations. 

The Cchatisinghpura massacre came at an awkwardly convenient time 
– when Clinton was visiting India. The necessity of staging a fake 
encounter in the wake of the Cchatisinghpura incident, elaborate efforts 
at forensic deception and a systematic manipulation of information, 
have led to a host of un answered questions. The attack on the Indian 
parliament, to this date remains shrouded in mystery. And the present 
Nandimarg massacre too can be seen to be much too convenient for 
two major powers (India and Pakistan) committed to keeping a climate 
of fear and terror alive in the Kashmir valley, and to ensure that 
international attention, which is conveniently distracted by Iraq at the 
moment, can be jolted back on to some grandstanding by either regime. 
Could we consider this an instance of the skilful deployment of what 
Arundhati Roy (at the Crisis/Media Workshop at Sarai) called ‘the 
Weapons of Mass Distraction’.

The advantages of  a climate of terror in Kashmir for the Pakistani 
regime are transparent. At a time when the population is restive about 
the war in Iraq, what could be more convenient than provoking a severe 
backlash of state repression in Kashmir, to distract the people, yet 
again, with the ‘Kashmir Cause’.

But, as I am more familiar with what happens east of the India Pakistan 
Border, I would like to think aa little bit about what advantages might 
accrue to the Indian state from such an incident. I think it is important at 
such times for all people to subject those who speak for them, and rule 
them to the most stringent scrutiny. Suspect all rulers, but suspect 
those who rule you, first of all.

The fall out of the Nandimarg massacre can have several possible 
consequences which are beneficial to the Indian regime at the centre. It 
can create the conditions of a build up of tension at a time in the 
Kashmir valley, when it  was looking as if the PDP led government in 
Kashmir might actually be successful in bringing some displaced 
Kashmiri Pandits back into the valley, and also lead to an actual 
marginal improvement in the conditions of  everyday life in the valley 
through a refusal to endorse at lest the  worst excesses of the security 
forces. 

The Nandimarg massacre yields two direct results, it stonewalls the 
return of Kashmiri pandits to Kashmir, and catalyzes another exodus. It 
leads to a direct increase in the intensity of state terror in the name of 
confidence and security building measures. These become unpopular, 
leading to a greater climate of unrest, a breakdown of what is called  the 
“constitutional machinery” – a re-imposition of ‘governors rule’, 
dismissal of the PDP government and a heightening of tensions on the 
border and the LOC, yet again – in other words, a depressing repetition 
of a pattern with which we are all too familiar.

The second consequence, is a chain of  spiraling violence, which can 
be used to argue for unilateral military engagements with Pakistan, this 
time with a measure of support from key constituencies of the “coalition 
of the willing”, in exchange for a softening of the stated Indian position 
on Iraq, and what that translates into, in actual terms. The playing out of 
this script, may actually be a part of the small print of the future 
development of the  Project for a New American Century scenario, which 
has just begun being realized in Iraq, and which, has a much larger 
agenda, than the simple disarming of Iraq per se. This is far fetched,  
but it is not unimaginable.

Whichever of these two cases may be true, they will have required the 
deployment of people who can kill, leave a confused impression (army 
uniforms, and the unlikely fact of them speaking Kashmiri – which 
suggests, that they could be militants, or the armed forces, depending 
on your point of view) and disappear into the night, with no one claiming 
responsibility. It is noteworthy to remember here that several leading 
militant organizations, pro independence politicians, the APHC And the 
Pakistani government have all condemned the incident, and that no one 
has claimed responsibility so far.

Who or what could deploy this lethal confusion. A key suspect would be 
the so called ‘renegade’ militant outfits, such as the one that Koko 
Parray used to lead – called the Ikhwan ul Muslimoon ( the same name 
as the oldest active international muslim fundamentalist organization 
also known as the ‘Muslim Brotherhood’, which is particularly active in 
north Africa) and several others. It is well known now that the security 
forces and intelligence agencies, the army, the BSF and other state 
paramilitaries have worked closely with a number of shadowy outfits led 
by ‘surrendered’ militants. This is also the case in Assam, where the 
SULFA (Surrendered ULFA) has had a particularly dubious record. 
There is also apparently a Kashmir based  outfit called ‘surprise’ the 
Taliban, (a local group which claims no connection to their more 
famous eponymous counterparts)  which also enjoyes the patronage of 
key counter insurgency operatives.

Here is a link to a report titled  "Renegade Militants in Kashmir" By 
Akhila Raman which outlines in some detail the dubious shadow world 
of the usage of ex -miliants, supposedly for counter insurgency.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=32&ItemID=27
80

Readers might also find Akhila Raman’s exhaustive chronology of the 
conflict in Jammu and Kashmir quite useful as a background to the 
news that we get from there. This is available at  
http://www.mindspring.com/~akhila_raman/kashmir/kashmir_nutshell.h
tm

As I have said before. It is not clear as to who killed the 24 men, women 
and children of  Nandimarg village. Perhaps it will never be. It may well 
be an act of the separatist /and or islamist militias (backed by Pakistan) 
– who have been known to commit the most heinous atrocities in the 
past, and there is no reason to think that they would not do so again. 
But, given the Indian states record in deliberately stage managing 
incidents of the most gruesome kind, it too is not above suspicion. 
Perhaps the truth indicts both, a cynical state (or two cynical states) and 
a cynical miliant outfit, dancing a macabre tango into the Kashmiri night, 
collaborating, each to their own end, (knowingly, or unknowingly) to 
prolong the agony of the people who are in Kashmir, of the Kashmiris 
who have been forced to leave Kashmir, and also those who may be 
compelled to leave Kashmir now.

I hope that this leads to some hard thinking on all our part about what 
exactly is going on in Kashmir, without jumping to hasty conclusions 
either way. Remember, the truth is likely to have more than two sides.

Regards

Shuddha

-- 
Shuddhabrata Sengupta
SARAI
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
29 Rajpur Road
Delhi 110054
Phone 23960040