[Reader-list] On JKLF and Indian Airforce Personnel

[junaid]

The Indian state has entered the bodies of Pawan Duranis and Aditya Kauls imperceptibly. When Mr. Durani or Mr. Kaul speaks, it is the voice of state, as the sole provider of values, which comes out. The State says "My violence is my right, and my right alone, but anyone who challenges this right, that is my sovereignty, she/he/they should be deemed criminal, fit only to be eliminated through the laws that I make." 

So Mr. Durani, who has unconsciously become the spokesman of the state, and regurgitates its litanies, would be confounded if someone punctures his seemingly coherent discourse by refusing to accept the legitimacy of the state. He will label anti-national and unpatriotic people who don't accept the state's "natural" logic.

When Kashmiris started an armed struggle against Indian state, its main actors, the militants were not separate from, what are mistakenly called, civilians. No one is innocent in Kashmir, militants, "civilians", Indian troops or officials, Pandits. They have positions on political issues. 

When a Kashmiri is killed by Indian troops, instead of seeking justice from Indian state, people come together to forge a solidarity, they bear individual pain collectively. Take the example of Pathribal killings when the police fired on Kashmiris protesting fake killings of five Kashmiris, and seven more died. Why would Kashmiris allow such a thing to happen to themselves?

The responsibility for the acts of militants, or armed Kashmiris, was shared equally by the Kashmiri society. It was quite evident in the way Kashmiris liberally funded the movement (many people gave away part of their salaries, month after month, and from the returns from their trade), participated in popular protests on the call from militants, gave shelter and food to militants, protested in thousands in funerals for militants, and suffered individual and collective brutalities at the hands of Indian army. Militants were seen as the soldiers of the Kashmiri nation, their freedom fighters, not brigands or criminals.

Kashmiris never participated in funerals for killed Indian soldiers. Like the way people in India mourned the death of Indian soldiers. Kashmiris have always seen Indian forces as occupation troops. Occupation: unlawful, illegitimate control of territories whose residents don't endorse or authorize that control. And by popularly and violently opposing Indian rule in Kashmir, expressed in the slogans and motifs of the movement, a vast majority of Kashmiris declared their position.

Now the incident referred to here: The Indian airmen, armed or unarmed, were part of the Indian state's most visible and brutal aspect, the Indian defense. Logically, in war the enemy's soldiers, armed or unarmed, are legitimate targets. That is what they became. If Yasin Malik is hanged, then those thousands of Indian soldiers who killed thousands of militants should be hanged too. If he is forced to say sorry to India, then Indian soldiers should say sorry to Kashmir. 

Kashmir's freedom movement is not a series of individual crimes. As Indian states atrocities and brutalities are not acts of individual crimes by soldiers. They are political acts. In Kashmir they are seen as such. 

Personally I am against wars; but at the same time, I am against the appropriation of the right to violence by the state; and I especially despise this appropriation in occupied territories. 

Junaid