[Reader-list] The Kashmiri Encounter

[syed bismillah]

The Kashmiri Encounter

I was planning to interview some Kashmiris .I had talked to some of them to fix time for the interviews and was awaiting their response when the phone rang. It was from Ms Nandita Haksar . She told me that my brother had been shot and was in hospital. 

I have not been able to think things through or reflect on the event that has overtaken our lives since February 8, 2005. The only thing that has dawned on me is that I was witnessing yet another aspect of the Kashmiri encounter. In December 2001 my brother was arrested and framed in a false case. It was the experience of fighting for his acquittal that exposed me to the meaning and significance of the encounter between Kashmiri Muslims and the Indian State. Now I was witnessing a totally different reality, even more frightening.

Naturally the question uppermost on everyone�s minds is: who tried to kill my brother? 

When the police asked my brother�s friends, other family members and colleagues of Delhi University all of them said they suspected the hand of the Special Cell of the Delhi police. Even my brother�s lawyers gave statements to this effect. And when my brother was well enough to give his statement to the investigating team he too told them that he suspected the Special Cell.

At once the media started reporting that we had all "blamed " the Special Cell without any reason. We should have waited for the investigation to find out. But the problem is that we were asked as to whom we suspected and we told them. It would be logical that the line of investigation should include the possibility of the involvement of someone in the Special Cell.

But instead we found ourselves the prime targets of suspicion. 

The media ran stories that I had hidden my brother�s blood soaked clothes and the police "recovered" them from our house. They insinuated that my brother�s lawyer had tampered with the evidence because there were no bloodstains either in her car or in her house. The police "seized" the computer my brother had presented to his children on his acquittal. We had once again become the accused.

Then there were the innumerable theories put forward for the motive for the murderous attack on my brother:

   The National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN) This theory was premised on the "fact" that my brother�s lawyer is married to a Naga.
   Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan They even arrested one Kashmiri and later released him No one knows what happened to him. No one was really bothered.
   Road rage Some fight over parking space led to this murderous atack.
   Sexual angle. This was not elaborated.
   Personal enmity. Perhaps over some land or property. No details were forthcoming.
   Some Kashmiri militant group. None was named. In fact Kashmir papers show that every group has condemned the attack and they all suspect the hand of the Indian State.

These theories are put out only as a way of distracting the real issue at stake: the nature of the Kashmiri encounter with the Indian state. The most disturbing feature of the disinformation campaign is that it is directed at undermining the civil society rage that surged forth spontaneously in response to the murderous attack on my brother. A spontaneous reaction which has a potential of becoming a movement which could perhaps have brought Kashmiris and Indians into a meaningful relationship.


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