[Reader-list] Pankaj Mishra on Kashmir in the New York Times

[Pawan Durani]

Pankaj Mishra knows Kashmir as much about Kashmir as Shivam Vij does.

On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 12:18 PM, Shuddhabrata Sengupta
<shuddha at gmail.com>wrote:

> A Jihad Grows in Kashmir
>
> by Pankaj Mishra,
>
> The New York Times, 27th August, 2008
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/27/opinion/27mishra.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
>
>
> FOR more than a week now, hundreds of thousands of Muslims have
> filled the streets of Srinagar, the capital of Indian-ruled Kashmir,
> shouting "azadi" (freedom) and raising the green flag of Islam. These
> demonstrations, the largest in nearly two decades, remind many of us
> why in 2000 President Bill Clinton described Kashmir, the Himalayan
> region claimed by both India and Pakistan, as "the most dangerous
> place on earth."
>
> Mr. Clinton sounded a bit hyperbolic back then. Dangerous, you wanted
> to ask, to whom? Though more than a decade old, the anti-Indian
> insurgency in Kashmir, which Pakistan's rogue intelligence agency had
> infiltrated with jihadi terrorists, was not much known outside South
> Asia. But then the Clinton administration had found itself compelled
> to intervene in 1999 when India and Pakistan fought a limited but
> brutal war near the so-called line of control that divides Indian
> Kashmir from the Pakistani-held portion of the formerly independent
> state. Pakistan's withdrawal of its soldiers from high peaks in
> Indian Kashmir set off the series of destabilizing events that
> culminated in Pervez Musharraf assuming power in a military coup.
>
> After 9/11, Mr. Musharraf quickly became the Bush administration's
> ally. Seen through the fog of the "war on terror" and the Indian
> government's own cynical propaganda, the problem in Kashmir seemed
> entirely to do with jihadist terrorists. President Musharraf could
> even claim credit for fighting extremism by reducing his intelligence
> service's commitment to jihad in Kashmir — indeed, he did help bring
> down the level of violence, which has claimed an estimated 80,000 lives.
>
> Since then Pakistan has developed its own troubles with Muslim
> extremists. Conventional wisdom now has Pakistan down as the most
> dangerous place on earth. Meanwhile, India is usually tagged as a
> "rising superpower" or "capitalist success story" — clichés so
> pervasive that they persuaded even so shrewd an observer as Fareed
> Zakaria to claim in his new book "The Post-American World" that India
> since 1997 has been "stable, peaceful and prosperous."
>
> It is true that India's relations with Pakistan have improved lately.
> But more than half a million Indian soldiers still pursue a few
> thousand insurgents in Kashmir. While periodically holding bilateral
> talks with Pakistan, India has taken for granted those most affected
> by the so-called Kashmir dispute: the four million Kashmiri Muslims
> who suffer every day the misery and degradation of a full-fledged
> military occupation.
>
> The Indian government's insistence that peace is spreading in Kashmir
> is at odds with a report by Human Rights Watch in 2006 that described
> a steady pattern of arbitrary arrest, torture and extrajudicial
> execution by Indian security forces — excesses that make the events
> at Abu Ghraib seem like a case of high spirits. A survey by Doctors
> Without Borders in 2005 found that Muslim women in Kashmir, prey to
> the Indian troops and paramilitaries, suffered some of the most
> pervasive sexual violence in the world.
>
> Over the last two decades, most ordinary Kashmiri Muslims have
> wavered between active insurrection and sullen rage. They fear,
> justifiably or not, the possibility of Israeli-style settlements by
> Hindus; reports two months ago of a government move to grant 92 acres
> of Kashmiri land to a Hindu religious group are what provoked the
> younger generation into the public defiance expressed of late.
>
> As always, the turmoil in Kashmir heartens extremists in both India
> and Pakistan. India has recently suffered a series of terrorist
> bombings, allegedly by radicals among its Muslim minority. Hindu
> nationalists have already formed an economic blockade of the Kashmir
> Valley — an attempt to punish seditious Muslims and to gin up votes
> in next year's general elections. In Pakistan, where weak civilian
> governments in the past sought to score populist points by stirring
> up the emotional issue of Kashmir, the intelligence service can only
> be gratified by another opportunity to synergize its jihads in
> Kashmir and Afghanistan.
>
> What of the Kashmiris themselves, who have repeatedly found
> themselves reduced to pawns in the geopolitical games and domestic
> politics of their neighbors? In 1989 and '90, when few Kashmiris had
> heard of Osama bin Laden, hundreds of thousands of Muslims buoyed by
> popular revolutions in Eastern Europe regularly petitioned the United
> Nations office in Srinagar, hoping to raise the world's sympathy for
> their cause. Indian troops responded by firing into many of these
> largely peaceful demonstrations, killing hundreds of people and
> provoking many young Kashmiris to take to arms and embrace radical
> Islam.
>
> A new generation of politicized Kashmiris has now risen; the world is
> again likely to ignore them — until some of them turn into terrorists
> with Qaeda links. It is up to the Indian government to reckon
> honestly with Kashmiri aspirations for a life without constant fear
> and humiliation. Some first steps are obvious: to severely cut the
> numbers of troops in Kashmir; to lift the economic blockade on the
> Kashmir Valley; and to allow Kashmiris to trade freely across the
> line of control with Pakistan.
>
> India's record of pitiless intransigence does not inspire much hope
> that it will take these necessary steps toward the final and
> comprehensive resolution of Kashmir's long-disputed status. In fact,
> an indefinite curfew has already been imposed and Indian troops have
> again killed dozens of demonstrators. But a brutal suppression of the
> nonviolent protests will continue to radicalize a new generation of
> Muslims and engender a fresh cycle of violence, rendering Kashmir
> even more dangerous — and not just to South Asia this time.
>
> Pankaj Mishra is the author, most recently, of "Temptations of the
> West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet and Beyond."
>
>
> Shuddhabrata Sengupta
> shuddha at gmail.com
>
>
>
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