[Reader-list] What would independence mean to Kashmiris ?

[Appu Esthose Suresh]

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Appu Esthose Suresh




Land and freedom Kashmir is in crisis: the region's Muslims are mounting
huge non-violent protests against the Indian government's rule. But, asks
Arundhati Roy, what would independence for the territory mean for its
people?

   - Arundhati Roy
   - The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian>,
   - Friday August 22 2008
   - Article history

 [image: A Kashmiri Muslim shows a victory sign during a march in Srinagar,
India] A Kashmiri Muslim shows a victory sign during a march in Srinagar,
India. Photograph: Dar Yasin/AP
For the past 60 days or so, since about the end of June, the people of
Kashmir have been free. Free in the most profound sense. They have shrugged
off the terror of living their lives in the gun-sights of half a million
heavily armed soldiers, in the most densely militarised zone in the world.
After 18 years of administering a military occupation, the Indian
government's worst nightmare has come true. Having declared that the
militant movement has been crushed, it is now faced with a non-violent mass
protest, but not the kind it knows how to manage. This one is nourished by
people's memory of years of repression in which tens of thousands have been
killed, thousands have been "disappeared", hundreds of thousands tortured,
injured, and humiliated. That kind of rage, once it finds utterance, cannot
easily be tamed, rebottled and sent back to where it came from.
A sudden twist of fate, an ill-conceived move over the transfer of 100 acres
of state forest land to the Amarnath Shrine Board (which manages the annual
Hindu pilgrimage to a cave deep in the Kashmir Himalayas) suddenly became
the equivalent of tossing a lit match into a barrel of petrol. Until 1989
the Amarnath pilgrimage used to attract about 20,000 people who travelled to
the Amarnath cave over a period of about two weeks. In 1990, when the
overtly Islamist militant uprising in the valley coincided with the spread
of virulent Hindu nationalism (Hindutva) in the Indian plains, the number of
pilgrims began to increase exponentially. By 2008 more than 500,000 pilgrims
visited the Amarnath cave, in large groups, their passage often sponsored by
Indian business houses. To many people in the valley this dramatic increase
in numbers was seen as an aggressive political statement by an increasingly
Hindu-fundamentalist Indian state. Rightly or wrongly, the land transfer was
viewed as the thin edge of the wedge. It triggered an apprehension that it
was the beginning of an elaborate plan to build Israeli-style settlements,
and change the demography of the valley.
Days of massive protest forced the valley to shut down completely. Within
hours the protests spread from the cities to villages. Young stone pelters
took to the streets and faced armed police who fired straight at them,
killing several. For people as well as the government, it resurrected
memories of the uprising in the early 90s. Throughout the weeks of protest,
hartal (strikes) and police firing, while the Hindutva publicity machine
charged Kashmiris with committing every kind of communal excess, the 500,000
Amarnath pilgrims completed their pilgrimage, not just unhurt, but touched
by the hospitality they had been shown by local people.
Eventually, taken completely by surprise at the ferocity of the response,
the government revoked the land transfer. But by then the land-transfer had
become what Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the most senior and also the most overtly
Islamist separatist leader, called a "non-issue".
Massive protests against the revocation erupted in Jammu. There, too, the
issue snowballed into something much bigger. Hindus began to raise issues of
neglect and discrimination by the Indian state. (For some odd reason they
blamed Kashmiris for that neglect.) The protests led to the blockading of
the Jammu-Srinagar highway, the only functional road-link between Kashmir
and India. Truckloads of perishable fresh fruit and valley produce began to
rot.
The blockade demonstrated in no uncertain terms to people in Kashmir that
they lived on sufferance, and that if they didn't behave themselves they
could be put under siege, starved, deprived of essential commodities and
medical supplies.
To expect matters to end there was of course absurd. Hadn't anybody noticed
that in Kashmir even minor protests about civic issues like water and
electricity inevitably turned into demands for azadi, freedom? To threaten
them with mass starvation amounted to committing political suicide.
Not surprisingly, the voice that the government of India has tried so hard
to silence in Kashmir has massed into a deafening roar. Raised in a
playground of army camps, checkpoints, and bunkers, with screams from
torture chambers for a soundtrack, the young generation has suddenly
discovered the power of mass protest, and above all, the dignity of being
able to straighten their shoulders and speak for themselves, represent
themselves. For them it is nothing short of an epiphany. Not even the fear
of death seems to hold them back. And once that fear has gone, of what use
is the largest or second largest army in the world?
There have been mass rallies in the past, but none in recent memory that
have been so sustained and widespread. The mainstream political parties of
Kashmir - National Conference and People's Democratic party - appear
dutifully for debates in New Delhi's TV studios, but can't muster the
courage to appear on the streets of Kashmir. The armed militants who,
through the worst years of repression were seen as the only ones carrying
the torch of azadi forward, if they are around at all, seem content to take
a back seat and let people do the fighting for a change.
The separatist leaders who do appear and speak at the rallies are not
leaders so much as followers, being guided by the phenomenal spontaneous
energy of a caged, enraged people that has exploded on Kashmir's streets.
Day after day, hundreds of thousands of people swarm around places that hold
terrible memories for them. They demolish bunkers, break through cordons of
concertina wire and stare straight down the barrels of soldiers' machine
guns, saying what very few in India want to hear. Hum Kya Chahtey? Azadi!
(We want freedom.) And, it has to be said, in equal numbers and with equal
intensity: Jeevey jeevey Pakistan. (Long live Pakistan.)
That sound reverberates through the valley like the drumbeat of steady rain
on a tin roof, like the roll of thunder during an electric storm.
On August 15, India's independence day, Lal Chowk, the nerve centre of
Srinagar, was taken over by thousands of people who hoisted the Pakistani
flag and wished each other "happy belated independence day" (Pakistan
celebrates independence on August 14) and "happy slavery day". Humour
obviously, has survived India's many torture centres and Abu Ghraibs in
Kashmir.
On August 16 more than 300,000 people marched to Pampore, to the village of
the Hurriyat leader, Sheikh Abdul Aziz, who was shot down in cold blood five
days earlier.
On the night of August 17 the police sealed the city. Streets were
barricaded, thousands of armed police manned the barriers. The roads leading
into Srinagar were blocked. On the morning of August 18, people began
pouring into Srinagar from villages and towns across the valley. In trucks,
tempos, jeeps, buses and on foot. Once again, barriers were broken and
people reclaimed their city. The police were faced with a choice of either
stepping aside or executing a massacre. They stepped aside. Not a single
bullet was fired.
The city floated on a sea of smiles. There was ecstasy in the air. Everyone
had a banner; houseboat owners, traders, students, lawyers, doctors. One
said: "We are all prisoners, set us free." Another said: "Democracy without
freedom is demon-crazy." Demon-crazy. That was a good one. Perhaps he was
referring to the insanity that permits the world's largest democracy to
administer the world's largest military occupation and continue to call
itself a democracy.
There was a green flag on every lamp post, every roof, every bus stop and on
the top of chinar trees. A big one fluttered outside the All India Radio
building. Road signs were painted over. Rawalpindi they said. Or simply
Pakistan. It would be a mistake to assume that the public expression of
affection for Pakistan automatically translates into a desire to accede to
Pakistan. Some of it has to do with gratitude for the support - cynical or
otherwise - for what Kashmiris see as their freedom struggle, and the Indian
state sees as a terrorist campaign. It also has to do with mischief. With
saying and doing what galls India most of all. (It's easy to scoff at the
idea of a "freedom struggle" that wishes to distance itself from a country
that is supposed to be a democracy and align itself with another that has,
for the most part been ruled by military dictators. A country whose army has
committed genocide in what is now Bangladesh. A country that is even now
being torn apart by its own ethnic war. These are important questions, but
right now perhaps it's more useful to wonder what this so-called democracy
did in Kashmir to make people hate it so?)
Everywhere there were Pakistani flags, everywhere the cry Pakistan se rishta
kya? La illaha illallah. (What is our bond with Pakistan? There is no god
but Allah.) Azadi ka matlab kya? La illaha illallah. (What does freedom
mean? There is no god but Allah.)
For somebody like myself, who is not Muslim, that interpretation of freedom
is hard - if not impossible - to understand. I asked a young woman whether
freedom for Kashmir would not mean less freedom for her, as a woman. She
shrugged and said "What kind of freedom do we have now? The freedom to be
raped by Indian soldiers?" Her reply silenced me.
Surrounded by a sea of green flags, it was impossible to doubt or ignore the
deeply Islamic fervour of the uprising taking place around me. It was
equally impossible to label it a vicious, terrorist jihad. For Kashmiris it
was a catharsis. A historical moment in a long and complicated struggle for
freedom with all the imperfections, cruelties and confusions that freedom
struggles have. This one cannot by any means call itself pristine, and will
always be stigmatised by, and will some day, I hope, have to account for,
among other things, the brutal killings of Kashmiri Pandits in the early
years of the uprising, culminating in the exodus of almost the entire Hindu
community from the Kashmir valley.
As the crowd continued to swell I listened carefully to the slogans, because
rhetoric often holds the key to all kinds of understanding. There were
plenty of insults and humiliation for India: Ay jabiron ay zalimon, Kashmir
hamara chhod do (Oh oppressors, Oh wicked ones, Get out of our Kashmir.) The
slogan that cut through me like a knife and clean broke my heart was this
one: Nanga bhookha Hindustan, jaan se pyaara Pakistan. (Naked, starving
India, More precious than life itself - Pakistan.)
Why was it so galling, so painful to listen to this? I tried to work it out
and settled on three reasons. First, because we all know that the first part
of the slogan is the embarrassing and unadorned truth about India, the
emerging superpower. Second, because all Indians who are not nanga or bhooka
are and have been complicit in complex and historical ways with the
elaborate cultural and economic systems that make Indian society so cruel,
so vulgarly unequal. And third, because it was painful to listen to people
who have suffered so much themselves mock others who suffer, in different
ways, but no less intensely, under the same oppressor. In that slogan I saw
the seeds of how easily victims can become perpetrators.
Syed Ali Shah Geelani began his address with a recitation from the Qur'an.
He then said what he has said before, on hundreds of occasions. The only way
for the struggle to succeed, he said, was to turn to the Qur'an for
guidance. He said Islam would guide the struggle and that it was a complete
social and moral code that would govern the people of a free Kashmir. He
said Pakistan had been created as the home of Islam, and that that goal
should never be subverted. He said just as Pakistan belonged to Kashmir,
Kashmir belonged to Pakistan. He said minority communities would have full
rights and their places of worship would be safe. Each point he made was
applauded.
I imagined myself standing in the heart of a Hindu nationalist rally being
addressed by the Bharatiya Janata party's (BJP) LK Advani. Replace the word
Islam with the word Hindutva, replace the word Pakistan with Hindustan,
replace the green flags with saffron ones and we would have the BJP's
nightmare vision of an ideal India.
Is that what we should accept as our future? Monolithic religious states
handing down a complete social and moral code, "a complete way of life"?
Millions of us in India reject the Hindutva project. Our rejection springs
from love, from passion, from a kind of idealism, from having enormous
emotional stakes in the society in which we live. What our neighbours do,
how they choose to handle their affairs does not affect our argument, it
only strengthens it.
Arguments that spring from love are also fraught with danger. It is for the
people of Kashmir to agree or disagree with the Islamist project (which is
as contested, in equally complex ways, all over the world by Muslims, as
Hindutva is contested by Hindus). Perhaps now that the threat of violence
has receded and there is some space in which to debate views and air ideas,
it is time for those who are part of the struggle to outline a vision for
what kind of society they are fighting for. Perhaps it is time to offer
people something more than martyrs, slogans and vague generalisations. Those
who wish to turn to the Qur'an for guidance will no doubt find guidance
there. But what of those who do not wish to do that, or for whom the Qur'an
does not make place? Do the Hindus of Jammu and other minorities also have
the right to self-determination? Will the hundreds of thousands of Kashmiri
Pandits living in exile, many of them in terrible poverty, have the right to
return? Will they be paid reparations for the terrible losses they have
suffered? Or will a free Kashmir do to its minorities what India has done to
Kashmiris for 61 years? What will happen to homosexuals and adulterers and
blasphemers? What of thieves and lafangas and writers who do not agree with
the "complete social and moral code"? Will we be put to death as we are in
Saudi Arabia? Will the cycle of death, repression and bloodshed continue?
History offers many models for Kashmir's thinkers and intellectuals and
politicians to study. What will the Kashmir of their dreams look like?
Algeria? Iran? South Africa? Switzerland? Pakistan?
At a crucial time like this, few things are more important than dreams. A
lazy utopia and a flawed sense of justice will have consequences that do not
bear thinking about. This is not the time for intellectual sloth or a
reluctance to assess a situation clearly and honestly.
Already the spectre of partition has reared its head. Hindutva networks are
alive with rumours about Hindus in the valley being attacked and forced to
flee. In response, phone calls from Jammu reported that an armed Hindu
militia was threatening a massacre and that Muslims from the two Hindu
majority districts were preparing to flee. Memories of the bloodbath that
ensued and claimed the lives of more than a million people when India and
Pakistan were partitioned have come flooding back. That nightmare will haunt
all of us forever.
However, none of these fears of what the future holds can justify the
continued military occupation of a nation and a people. No more than the old
colonial argument about how the natives were not ready for freedom justified
the colonial project.
Of course there are many ways for the Indian state to continue to hold on to
Kashmir. It could do what it does best. Wait. And hope the people's energy
will dissipate in the absence of a concrete plan. It could try and fracture
the fragile coalition that is emerging. It could extinguish this non-violent
uprising and re-invite armed militancy. It could increase the number of
troops from half a million to a whole million. A few strategic massacres, a
couple of targeted assassinations, some disappearances and a massive round
of arrests should do the trick for a few more years.
The unimaginable sums of public money that are needed to keep the military
occupation of Kashmir going is money that ought by right to be spent on
schools and hospitals and food for an impoverished, malnutritioned
population in India. What kind of government can possibly believe that it
has the right to spend it on more weapons, more concertina wire and more
prisons in Kashmir?
The Indian military occupation of Kashmir makes monsters of us all. It
allows Hindu chauvinists to target and victimise Muslims in India by holding
them hostage to the freedom struggle being waged by Muslims in Kashmir.
India needs azadi from Kashmir just as much as - if not more than - Kashmir
needs azadi from India.
*· *Arundhati Roy, 2008. A longer version of this article will be available
tomorrow at outlookindia.com.


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