[Reader-list] Gun Salutes for August 15
Shuddhabrata Sengupta
shuddha at sarai.net
Fri Aug 15 22:03:26 IST 2008
Dear Aditya Raj Kaul,
Thanks again for what must be a super prompt response. If this was a
buzzer round in a quiz show you would be a champion. :)
By the way, I am curious, who is R. Chaudhuri?
regards, I remain,( always ready to think with as many different
perspectives as is necessary in a given situation)
Shuddha
On 15-Aug-08, at 9:55 PM, Aditya Raj Kaul wrote:
> Dear R.Chaudhuri,
>
>
>
> Thanks for your reply. I never told you to only read these old
> newspapers
> again (that is if you have really read them at the first place); I
> just
> asked all in a humble way to think with a different perspective for a
> change.
>
>
>
> I'll narrate something to you on this; which I got to know from
> someone
> on this episode. A few days back a senior official of Food
> Cooperation of
> India called up his J&K Counterpart to verify on this media hype of
> "Economic Blockade". The person from the other side said, "Yes sir,
> Economic
> Blockade hai". FCI official asked, "How come?". How can you say
> that?". The
> man further replied "Jenab, har kahin shor hai ki economic blockade
> hai"
>
>
>
> This is what has happened. It is a cry over something, which never
> really happened. Later, a journalist friend from Delhi called up many
> Traders in Delhi's Aazad Pur Mandi, asking about the same. The
> Traders said
> that all trucks were coming; and it was a season of brisk business.
>
>
>
> Army on the other hand has ensured that all trucks to Kashmir
> valley ply
> safely; but on the other hand Jammu city and neighboring areas have
> been
> totally cut off with supplies for almost 40 days. I bet you never
> had a
> thought about it. I request you to personally visit the Lakhanpur -
> Jammu -
> Srinagar Highway and see what the ground reality is. It is just too
> amusing
> to see posts and also those few people, screaming on news channels
> about
> unavailability of "Baby Milk, Food, etc etc". They have stooped
> really low
> this time around to gain publicity and world sympathy. A perfect PR
> Strategy.
>
>
>
> I can't believe that farmers + orchard owners in the valley are
> poor. Not
> only because I belong to the valley and know the worth of these
> multi-crore
> orchards; because I've interacted with few of them.
>
>
>
> On the second part of your post; let me tell you that the President
> of Jammu
> Resident Doctors Association is a Muslim named Dr. Arshad. And, he
> was the
> one who gave a call for full support to the Sanghash Samiti. Need I
> say more
> ?
>
>
>
> I'm sure even by mistake you must have caught images of people
> jumping into
> the Tawi river as a mark of protest (innovative indeed!). It wasn't
> just
> your RSS/BJP. Those people were led by Sikhs and majority of people
> were
> Gujjars+Muslims and of course Hindus; holding the tricolor high in
> the air;
> and also a symbol of Lord Shiva - The Trishul. Its again
> unfortunate for
> people who accuse Hindus of having arms (Trishuls). I think they
> high time
> need to study history of religions. Isn't AK47 which was used by
> Terrorist
> Yasin Malik to kill Hindus and of course even his own people; a
> weapon?
>
>
>
> Jammu has been the best example of Hindu-Muslim-Sikh unity in these
> 46 days
> of protest. Unfortunately, in Kashmir we see communal slogans; Hindu
> Truckers and at times even Amaranth Pilgrims being attacked. Not to
> say,
> disinformation campaign is in its peak.
>
>
>
> Now, people can better judge; who adds fuel into the fire....
>
>
>
> Regards
> Aditya Raj Kaul
>
> On 8/15/08, Shuddhabrata Sengupta <shuddha at sarai.net> wrote:
>>
>> Dear Aditya Raj Kaul, Dear Sonia Jabbar,
>>
>>
>> Many thanks for your responses to my post earlier today. And
>> apologies in
>> advance for what is going to be a longish posting. So those not
>> interested
>> in the Amarnath row, or Jammu and Kashmir, may please skip this post.
>>
>>
>> It is difficult to put all one's points across in a single posting,
>> (without making it unwieldy) and so I am grateful that your
>> responses have
>> given me an opportunity to make some necessary elaborations.
>>
>>
>> First of all, let me categorically state that Sonia, by pointing
>> towards
>> the violence that farmers faced in Greater Noida yesterday, and by
>> referring
>> to the histories of the Narmada agitation, and the Nandigram issue
>> has
>> helped me clarify some of my own thinking.
>>
>>
>> This process of clarification does not require me to revise what I
>> had
>> written in relation to the current climate in the state of Jammu &
>> Kashmir,
>> on the contrary, it actually allows me to extend and develop my
>> argument. I
>> will come to this later, but first, there are some other issues
>> that I need
>> to deal with.
>>
>>
>> When I had referred to the two kinds of treatment meted out to two
>> different kinds of protest, I had not in fact thought in 'Hindu' and
>> 'Muslim' terms, and after reading Sonia's response, I re-read my post
>> carefully to see if there was any suggestion that I was referring
>> to a
>> difference in the state's response that could be attributed to the
>> religious
>> composition of the two different protesting crowds. I did not find
>> the words
>> 'Hindu' or 'Muslim' anywhere in my post. And while I do agree with
>> Soina
>> that when Jammu and Kashmir Police personnel open fire on
>> protesting crowds
>> in the Kashmir valley, what we witness is nominally 'Muslim'
>> policemen,
>> firing on nominally 'Muslim' protesters. The same Jammu and
>> Kashmir police
>> personnel firing on protesters in Jammu are likely to be a mix of
>> nominally
>> 'Hindu' and 'Muslim' personnel firing on a similarly mixed crowd of
>> protesters (if that is, we agree with the assertion that the SASS
>> protests
>> have featured the participation of 'Jammu Muslims'). This fact may
>> or may
>> not be true, but let us for the sake of the argument, assume that
>> this is
>> so.
>>
>>
>> Similarly, the caste/identity composition of western UP policemen
>> is not
>> likely to be very different from crowds of protesting western UP
>> farmers in
>> the unhappy place that is Greater Noida. It is a well known fact
>> that the
>> most brutal torture in the detention centres and interrogation
>> centres in
>> the Kashmir valley is meted out by STF (Special Task Force) personnel
>> attatched to the state police. Almost invariably, these enforcers
>> of the
>> sharp edge of the Indian states marks on Kashmiri bodies tend to be
>> Kashmiri, and Muslim.
>>
>>
>> One clarification here though, the bulk of firing in the Kashmir
>> valley has
>> been undertaken by CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force) personnel,
>> and the
>> bulk of public anger has been, in this case against, the CRPF
>> bullets, and
>> CRPF sticks that smashed so many windows last night in downtown
>> Srinagar.
>> Now, anyone who has been to Srinagar knows, that the scared and
>> vulnerable
>> and aggressive faces that man CRPF bunkers are not Kashmiri. Their
>> bodies
>> (more often than not) come from hotter places in the plains and
>> plateaus of
>> the Indian hearland. And I see their deplyoment in a war zone like
>> Kashmir
>> as unfortunate, as saddening
>>
>>
>> Sonia has referred to Kashmiri protesting crowds 'baying for
>> blood' during
>> the last few days during the mass gatherings that took place on
>> the road to
>> Muzaffarabad, and in Srinagar and other towns. I have been
>> speaking to
>> friends in the Kashmir valley today, and they told me that the
>> slogans that
>> were raised during the protests
>>
>> on the road to Muzaffarabad were as follows (in order of frequency)
>>
>>
>> 1. 'Hum Kya Chahtey, Azaadi' (What do we want, Freedom), The
>> staple full
>> throated cry that rings out, and has rung out in most protests in the
>> Kashmir valley for the last two decades.
>>
>>
>> 2. 'Fruit to bahaana hai, Muzaffarabad jaana hai' (Fruit is an
>> excuse, we
>> want to go to Muzaffarabad). This has been chanted, not by the
>> truckers
>> carrying fruit, but by the accompanying marchers.
>>
>>
>> 3. 'Aadhi Roti Khayenge, Sar nahin Jhukayenge'. (We can eat half a
>> piece of
>> bread, but won't bow our heads')
>>
>>
>> 3. 'Jeeve, Jeeve, Pakistan' (Long live, Long live, Pakistan)
>>
>>
>> Now, whatever these slognas may or may not imply, none of these
>> slogans,
>> bayed for anyone's blood. Not only did the marchers refrain from
>> raising any
>> slogans that can be construed as calls to violence, the 'separatist'
>> political leadership that had aligned itself with the mass
>> protests also
>> repeatedly called for peaceful protests, using all available
>> channels,
>> including those afforded to them by the mainstream media. I have
>> seen the
>> Mirwaiz calling repeatedly for protests to be peaceful. If this
>> leadership
>> had wanted to queer the pitch by asking for violence, I am sure it
>> would
>> have been heeded by some sections in a very angry crowd. No such
>> call was
>> made, and no policeman, or paramilitary force personnel were
>> attacked. In
>> some instances, CRPF bunkers were torn down (and this happenned
>> after the
>> incidents of firing) but the demobilization of offensive
>> fortifications on
>> the street can be hardly called a violent act. In my book, it is
>> an act of
>> disarming the infrastructure of occupation, without causing any
>> injury or
>> violence to the occupiers themselves.
>>
>>
>> Once the bodies of people killed by the CRPF started to make
>> themselves
>> visible in funeral processions, many young people started shouting
>> 'Khoon ke
>> badle Khoon' (blood for blood). But this 'baying' if it can be
>> called that,
>> occurred once blood had been spilt, and not, as I may point out,
>> by the
>> bayers.
>>
>>
>> On the contrary, I have seen Dr. Praveen Togadia (who has endorsed
>> the SASS
>> agitation in Jammu by calling mass protests in other cities in India)
>> declare on television 'agar maange nahin poori ki gayi to
>> sangharsh aur bhi
>> ugra roop lega' ('if the demands are not met, the agitation will
>> take on
>> even more extreme forms'). We have heard crowds in Jammu chant,
>> 'Jaan denge,
>> par baba Amarnath ki Zamin vapas lenge' (we will give up our
>> lives, but
>> will not give up on Baba Amarnath's land) and variations thereof.
>> In fact,
>> two 'jaans/lives' have been tragically offered as suicides. For
>> me, this is
>> just as shocking, just as violent, as any other kind of call to
>> violence.
>> These crowds have set Gujjar huts on fire. And setting shepherds
>> huts on
>> fire is not exactly the same thing as tearing down the sandbags of
>> a CRPF
>> bunker. So any attempt at 'equating' the degree of violence in
>> these two
>> instances needs to be read as disingenuous.
>>
>>
>> As for the fact that in one instance (in Jammu) the crowds carried
>> the
>> Indian flag, and shouted pro-India slogans, and that in the other
>> instance
>> (in Kashmir) the crowds carried Pakistani flags and that some (or
>> many)
>> shouted pro-Pakistan slogans does not say anything about the violent
>> intentions or tenor of either of the two protesting crowds.
>>
>>
>> As someone who carries no brief, for any form of nationalism,
>> (Indian,
>> Pakistani or Kashmiri) I am not willing to judge a crowd on the
>> basis of
>> which kind of nationalism they choose to profess. What interests
>> me is the
>> fact that given two crowds, with two different kinds of behaviour,
>> one of
>> which carries an Indian flag, and another which carries a
>> Pakistani flag,
>> black flags, or no flags at all - the Indian state chooses to fire
>> on the
>> second crowd, even though the second crowd, which may be greater
>> in numbers,
>> is not indicating that it is anything but a peaceful assembly of
>> people
>> intent on going from 'A' to 'B'. That they choose not to go to
>> 'C' (the
>> Srinagar-Leh-Manali road that Sonia refers to) cannot be a
>> criterion on
>> which we can evaluate the merits or demerits of the state's
>> decision to fire
>> into this amassed crowd.
>>
>>
>> Notwithstanding the multitude of links supplied by Aditya Raj Kaul
>> in his
>> response to my posting. Facts, remain, facts. Three casualties of
>> police
>> firing in one instance (in a very militant protest in Jammu) and
>> now thirty
>> casualties (and likely to mount) in police and CRPF firing in the
>> other
>> instance (in Kashmir) including instances where CRPF personnel
>> fired on
>> ambulances ferrying the wounded to hospital, and inside hospitals.
>> These
>> instances of violence against ambulances, the injured and doctors
>> and nurses
>> attending to them must go down in the history of the Indian state as
>> examples of the very worst forms of state brutality.
>>
>>
>> For more details - see -
>>
>>
>> This needs to be seen also in the context of the fact that the
>> opening of
>> the "Srinagar-Muzaffarabad' road is a long standing demand of several
>> sections of political opinion (not all of them separatist) and
>> that in fact
>> predates the current troubles in the valley (from 1989) by several
>> decades.
>> It needs also to be seen in the light of the fact that what the
>> people on
>> the highways in the Kashmir valley were demanding had already been
>> agreed to
>> in principle by the governments of India and Pakistan. If
>> anything, the
>> current situation was an opportunity for the governments of the
>> state of
>> Jammu and Kashmir (currently represented by the Governor, a
>> representative
>> of the Union of India) and the Union of India to display a modicum
>> of vision
>> and sagacity by opening the line of control, especially when the
>> people of
>> the valley were voting with their feet, and their bodies for this
>> to be
>> done.
>>
>>
>> Even those who wish the Indian state well in its continuing
>> occupation of
>> the Kashmir valley would no doubt see this turn of events as a
>> tragically
>> wasted opportunity.
>>
>>
>> Let me now turn to the second important question that has arisen
>> from this
>> discussion. The question of what might enable us to think about the
>> situations of the Greater Noida farmers and the protesting masses
>> in the
>> Kashmir valley (and elsewhere, in Nandigram, and in the Kashmir
>> valley).
>>
>>
>> Sonia has pointed out in her posting that as far as the transfer
>> of land
>> to the Amarnath Shrine Board is concerned, "Of the 100 acres in
>>
>> question, only 5 acres belongs to the forest department and the
>> rest is
>>
>> private property belonging to several locals."
>>
>>
>> If this is indeed the case, then the extent of the anger against
>> the move
>> to effect a transfer of land to the Amarnath Shrine Board is all
>> the more
>> understandable. (I do not doubt that it would be understandable
>> even if this
>> were not the case, but that is another matter. )
>>
>>
>> Land is a highly emotive issue in all parts of South Asia, and in
>> many
>> parts of the world where it is tied to livelihood and to survival.
>> The
>> desire to acquire land (usually with the mediation of the state) for
>> purposes other than those relevant to the livelihood and survival
>> of the
>> customary owners, users and custodians of land is what gives the
>> common
>> sharp edge to the question of the arbitrary acquisition of land by
>> state or
>> state backed agencies, whether in Kashmir, or in the Narmada
>> valley, or in
>> Nandigram is what is clearly evident. In Kashmir, (in the absence
>> of any
>> other viable form of sustainable economic activity, barring
>> tourism, land is
>> all that people can fall back on. And we need to remember that
>> some of the
>> capital that the National Conference still falls back on when its
>> naked
>> collusion with the occupation comes to the fore, is the vivid, yet
>> fading
>> memory of land reforms in the early fifties.
>>
>>
>> So, then, what is the story about land, in the Kashmir valley.
>>
>>
>> "In 2003 Abdul Rashid, Member of Parliament was told in Rajya
>> Sabha that
>> the army and the Central Para-Military Forces (CPMFs) have
>> 41,594.767 acres
>> (332760 kanals) in J&K. This comes to about 170 sq kms for which
>> records
>> exist. But an equal amount, if not more, is under illegal occupation,
>> according to The Economic Times [December 6, 2006]. The most
>> recent figures
>> being circulated suggests that 6,81,839 kanals are under the armed
>> forces'
>> possession. Of this 3,10,184 kanals is unauthorized possession. In
>> Srinagar
>> officially, the defence establishment have 45,080 kanals of land
>> located at
>> Badamibagh, Rangreth, Danodhar Karewa, Sharifabad, Tatoo and Militia
>> Grounds. In 2006, it has been reported that the Indian Army's
>> Northern
>> Command has acquired 8000 kanals in Awantipora. There have also
>> been reports
>> of Indian Air Force wanting land for a new air base in Mansbal and
>> in the
>> same area 3Rashtriya Rifles (RR) has submitted a request to
>> acquire nearly
>> 1500 kanals adjoining its garrison. Manasbal also highlights
>> another feature
>> of this 'land grab'. Villagers complain that since the irrigation
>> canal
>> passes through land which the 3RR wants, thousands of kanals of
>> land would
>> be denied irrigation. So widespread is the concern in J&K over
>> land under
>> security forces occupation that even the pro-Indian Peoples
>> Democratic
>> Party, led by Mufti Mohammed Saeed, in a resolution adopted on
>> February 11,
>> 2007 states "with distress… that over the last 15 years thousands
>> of acres
>> of orchards and agricultural land have been acquired in the state
>> particularly in Kashmir Valley, districts of Rajouri, Poonch and
>> Doda by the
>> Armed Forces." The resolution also says that "many institutional
>> buildings
>> including hospitals and schools have been occupied by the armed
>> forces." A
>> conservative estimate suggests that 35,000 ha of such land is
>> under the
>> control of the Indian Army alone.
>>
>>
>> Take deployment in just one tehsil; Pattan in Baramulla, to
>> appreciate its
>> significance. This tehsil has 92 villages. Amongst these 92
>> villages there
>> are 4 army brigade headquarters and 12 checkposts. Pattan plus
>> Babateng also
>> hosts camps of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Border
>> Security Force
>> (BSF) and Special Operations Group (SOG). There are three police
>> stations
>> in the tehsil; at Pattan, Mirgund and Kreeri. Each check post has
>> anywhere
>> between 100-150 soldiers although there are few which have much
>> larger
>> numbers in excess of 300. Thus roughly a cluster of nine villages
>> come under
>> one check post. And one brigade is available for operations
>> covering 23
>> villages whereas one police station caters to 30-31 villages. Thus
>> all
>> movement to and from the village to fields, market, town is
>> monitored and
>> accompanied by regular patrolling. Thus, the margin for normal human
>> 'errors', such as stepping out for a smoke after dark, or a stroll
>> can
>> result in death. On top of this, the extent of deployment of
>> troops and the
>> land under their occupation acts as a brake on people's own
>> capacity to
>> propel growth. It also results in difficulties in getting easy
>> access to
>> markets for commodity export because of delay in transportation
>> due to
>> security drills, slowdown on highways because of military convoys
>> carrying
>> troops, material and weaponry etc, and relatively higher fuel and
>> labour
>> costs due to all this."
>>
>>
>> Were this land to be freed of occupation it would contribute
>> immensely to
>> increasing agricultural/fruit production and generation of revenue
>> and cut
>> back on net outflow from J&K.
>>
>>
>> If this is true (and the statement recorded in the minutes of the
>> Rajya
>> Sabha do have official sanction) then, the armed forces and
>> paramilitaries
>> of the Indian state, together occupied 41,594.767 acres, and since
>> the
>> majority of force deployment in J&K is in the Kashmir valley, then
>> the
>> majority of this land would logically be seen to lie in the
>> Kashmir valley.
>>
>>
>> The net area under fruit cultivation in the State of J&K is
>> 174,000 ha are
>> under fresh fruits (orchards). 174,000 ha is equal to 4,29,963
>> acres. If we
>> compare this figure against the reliable estimate of land under
>> direct
>> occupation my armed forces of the Indian state (41,594.767 acres)
>> we get the
>> following figures. The armed forces occupy land that is roughly
>> equivalent
>> to what would amount to 10 % of the land under fruit cultivation.
>> In crude
>> terms, one in every ten orchards is not an orchard, it is a fortress.
>>
>>
>> All figures are sourced from the Fifth Economic Census [published
>> by the
>> Central Statistical Organisation together with Directorate of
>> Economics and
>> Statistics J&K, 2005] and Economic Survey 2006-07 for Jammu &
>> Kashmir (ES
>> 2006-07) [The Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Government
>> of Jammu
>> and Kashmir, 2007]as cited in 'Understanding the J&K Economy' by
>> Gautam
>> Navlakha, Kashmir Affairs, Volume 2, No.2, April-June 2007
>>
>> http://www.kashmiraffairs.org
>>
>> Gautam_Navlakha_understanding_J&K_economy.html
>>
>>
>> [And before anyone jumps on me for citing a source that comes by
>> way of
>> Gautam Navlakha, let me state that Navlakha may not have read the
>> Rajtarangini with great care, but he certainly does take the time
>> to read
>> the Economic Survey 2006-2007 for J&K, and other official
>> documents with a
>> certain degree of care. And the figures under question here are
>> not his
>> opinions, but notes in these same official documents.]
>>
>>
>> In a situation of direct occupation of a resource as precious as
>> land in
>> Kashmir, the arbitrary decision to appropriate even just 100 more
>> acres of
>> land by an unrepresentative body (the office of the governor) for
>> whatever
>> purpose cannot but be seen as a deliberate affront to a population
>> stretched
>> to the very limits of its patience by the violence of a continuing
>> occupation. I fail to see, why the anger of fruit growers, denied
>> markets,
>> smarting under the knowledge that their orchards have in many
>> cases been
>> taken over by the Indian state, should look upon any act of land
>> acquisition
>> with kindness.
>>
>>
>> Look for instance at a news item in the Kashmir Times of Friday,
>> April 18,
>> 2008
>>
>>
>> Rental hikes by Army may adversely affect fruit production in
>> Jammu and
>> kashmir
>>
>> With fruit production in Kashmir static, the Kashmiri growers have
>> asked
>> the state and central government not to acquire horticulture land
>> for any
>> official purposes. They are also not satisfied with recent rent
>> hike by the
>> defence ministry.
>>
>>
>> The growers fear that acquiring of the horticulture land for official
>> purposes will reduce the fruit production in the state. Jammu and
>> Kashmir is
>> the only state in India that has around 2.75 lakh hectares of land
>> under the
>> horticulture.The major portion of this land is used for the
>> cultivation of
>> fresh fruits especially apples.
>>
>>
>> President, Kashmir Fruit Growers and Dealers Association, Ghulam
>> Rasool
>> Bhat told Kashmir Times that, "The government should come up with
>> a law for
>> banning the use of horticulture land for any official purpose." He
>> said that
>> in Western countries, the government has already banned use of
>> horticulture
>> land for any official purposes, he said, adding similar ban should be
>> imposed in Jammu Kashmir as well. "If steps are not taken, time
>> will come
>> when we will lose major portion of our orchards."
>>
>>
>> How deep this connection between orchards and armed bases runs is
>> evident
>> from another source, this time a more subjective account. Which
>> bears being
>> read through right to the end.
>>
>>
>> There are no Djinns in Anantnag, they don't scare us anymore'
>>
>> http://bluekashmir.blogspot.com/
>>
>> Uzma Mohsin
>>
>> Originally published in the Personal Histories section of the Tehelka
>> weekly; July 28, 2007 issue. I thank Uzma Mohsin for the sketch.
>>
>>
>> "...Relations between the townspeople and the army were tense.
>> Early each
>> morning, as the town came alive with the azaans from its many
>> mosques, the
>> army would switch on huge loudspeakers on three sides of the hill,
>> and Hindi
>> songs and bhajans would blare out of them for hours on end. It was
>> some kind
>> of a unilateral, undeclared war; we all lived in terror of the day
>> this war
>> would come down the slopes in heavy muddy boots and trample on us
>> like ants.
>> It stopped only in the late 90s, when I left Kashmir at age 16.
>>
>>
>> THE TOWN had become very gloomy — by six in the evening, the
>> streets wore a
>> deserted look. Lights were kept low, curtains were always drawn.
>> People made
>> guesses about the origins of distant gunshots. Scary stories for
>> children no
>> longer had any tasrupdars, djinns or haputs in them — there was no
>> need for
>> them, they didn't scare us any more. Only the snow surprised us
>> when, after
>> a perfectly clear day, we would wake up to find bright snow covering
>> everything open to the sky. In the distance, the snow-covered hill
>> would
>> merge with the whiteness of the surrounding town, and become almost
>> invisible. These were perhaps the only happy moments for me at
>> that time.
>>
>>
>> One apple season, many years later, we found the courage to go up
>> the hill
>> to pick apples. A new, utterly strange city had sprung to life on
>> the flat
>> plateau. It was such a contrast to the choked, dying town below.
>> There was
>> an elaborate army infrastructure, with its own buildings, streets,
>> armoured
>> vehicles and helicopters. There were families living there,
>> families of army
>> men. There were many shops too. Not many people in the town knew
>> what was
>> going on here, for it was happening on the hill's invisible side.
>>
>>
>> To our dismay, we found many orchards had been torn down; our best
>> apple
>> trees were dying for want of care. The army, we heard, was
>> planning to build
>> an airstrip there. Years later, when I came to study in a northern
>> Indian
>> university, I realised that the army city on the hill that
>> overlooked my
>> town had a peculiarly North Indian town feel to it. I have been
>> living away
>> from home for the last nine years, as have so many of my other
>> childhood
>> friends. I hear stories from my parents about the killings and
>> injuries of
>> some friends who stayed behind..."
>>
>>
>> I could go on. But this has been a long enough post already. In
>> the end, we
>> need to look a little less at questions of faith and a little more at
>> questions of land, and here we need to look at the question of
>> what happened
>> to the land left behind by Kashmiri Pandits, just as much as
>> anything else.
>> Some of this land was of course appropriated by greedy neighbours,
>> some of
>> it is in the occupation of the armed forces, which pay paltry rent
>> (if they
>> pay) and some of it is cared for by diligent neigbours who wait
>> for the
>> return of those who left.
>>
>>
>> We need to realize that when it comes to the alienation of land,
>> we touch
>> one of the most emotive chords there can be, and this is in the
>> end about
>> Kashmir, but it is about something much bigger than Kashmir. It is
>> about
>> connivance and corporate greed, wherever it occurs.
>>
>>
>> In a recent report by Sravan Sukla from Kushinagar in Uttar
>> Pradesh in the
>> Tehelka of 9 August 2008, the correspondent draws a sadly familiar
>> picture
>> of arbitrary state action by the BSP government in Uttar Pradesh to
>> arbitrarily grab land for a complex to host a grandiose statue of the
>> Maitreya Buddha (the ostentation of which would have made the
>> Buddha weep,
>> not smile).
>>
>>
>> Will Buddha Smile over Ryots Tears
>>
>>
>> http://www.tehelka.org/story_main40.asp?
>> filename=Ne090808willbuddha_smile.asp
>>
>>
>> It is interesting to read a quote from this article -
>>
>>
>> "Among others, around a hundred Dalit families have been affected
>> by the
>> land acquisition. Interestingly, a Dalit farmer is leading the
>> agitation
>> against Mayawati. Forty-five year old Govardhan Gond, a semi-
>> literate Dalit
>> farmer and president of the Bhoomi Bachao Sangharsh Samiti, says
>> that "there
>> is no question of
>>
>> surrendering our land so long as we are alive".
>>
>>
>> "I will slit their throats if they come to take possession of my
>> land. It
>> is my only source of livelihood," declares Kamli Devi of Siswa
>> village. A
>> forty-year-old mother of six, she is leading a band of woman
>> farmers against
>> the acquisition to save her 50 bighas of land.
>>
>>
>> Apart from the land, about 400 houses, half a dozen schools,
>> including the
>> area's only graduate institution, the Radha Krishna Inter College,
>> a canal
>> and about a dozen link roads are also falling prey to the
>> acquisition.
>> "Where will our children study after these schools have been
>> closed," asks
>> Dasai Gond of Dumri village.
>>
>>
>> Significantly, a few Buddhist monks are also lending silent
>> support to the
>> farmers' cause. "The government should try to refrain from
>> displacing poor
>> farmers for the project. Buddhism is based on non-violence and it
>> does not
>> allow causing pain to anyone. A project based on the woes of
>> farmers will
>> haunt us in future," rues B. Gyaneshwar, the sangh nayak, or head,
>> of the
>> All-India Buddhist Monk Association."
>>
>>
>> It would have been equally interesting had those who are leading the
>> agitation for the transfer of land to the Amarnath Shrine Board
>> and their
>> sympathisers displayed even a fraction of the sensitivity that has
>> been
>> deplayed by the head of the All India Buddhist Monk Association
>> when it
>> comes to the acquisition of land for apparently religious purposes.
>>
>>
>> Then, they (the partisans of the SASS agitation) would have
>> matched the
>> restraint and neighbourly feelings displayed by their Kashmiri
>> counterparts
>> towards the Amarnath pilgrims who have time and again stated that
>> their
>> fight is not against pilgrims or Hindus but against the move to
>> acquire
>> land.
>>
>>
>> In fact, this year has had a record number of pilgrims travel to
>> Amarnath,
>> both by new and old routes, and the pilgrimage has continued,
>> peacefully.
>>
>>
>> Thank you all for the opportunity for this clarification, and
>> apologies for
>> what has been an overlong post,
>>
>>
>> regards
>>
>>
>> Shuddha
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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Shuddhabrata Sengupta
The Sarai Programme at CSDS
Raqs Media Collective
shuddha at sarai.net
www.sarai.net
www.raqsmediacollective.net
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