[Reader-list] Kashmir's Sea Of Stories

[M Yousuf]

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20080903&fname=kashmir&sid=1

*Kashmir's Sea Of Stories*  *These stories—and their storytellers—are
everywhere. Stories which move and mobilize, with which to irrigate their
suffering and their struggle. We, on the other hand, have no stories to
offer, or at least none that are not hollow, corrupt and coercive...* [image:
...] <http://www.outlookindia.com/dossiersind.asp?id=14>  Suvir
Kaul<http://www.outlookindia.com/author.asp?name=Suvir+Kaul>

To visit Kashmir, even for a short while, is to drown, slowly but surely, in
a sea of stories. It is impossible to avoid them, for like the legendary
lakes that dot Kashmir's valleys, these stories—and their storytellers—are
everywhere. I will re-tell some stories here to suggest one powerful reason
why, this summer, in the midst of seeming calm and teeming tourists, an
administrative decision about land usage has precipitated such a social and
political crisis. The issue is not simply that of land any longer, but of a
land so drenched in tales of suffering and violence that peace is never more
than surface-thin.

There is the story that begins as the snow-melt from the high mountains,
which each year swells the streams, rivers, and lakes, and brings life to
paddy fields and vegetable gardens. For the past nineteen years, this rush
of water has featured strange new fruit--bodies and faces--mangled or
sometimes oddly preserved, as they bob along the surface. No Kashmiri who
watches them pass by, or sees them being pulled to the side, forgets what
they have seen. These visions sear themselves into the brain, and the only
comfort is to tell of what they have seen, till the vision itself, and the
tone of the story, becomes muted, and matter-of-fact.

There is the story of the Gujjar girl, raped by three paramilitary soldiers,
and left to die in the fields. She lived, the three were prosecuted, and
perhaps punished, but the story does not end with this intimation of
justice, for the restless story-teller still wonders why no one asked about
the seventeen other soldiers who watched and did nothing? Should they not
have intervened, for were they not in uniform, and supposed to be protecting
their own, their fellow-citizens of the republic? Then there is a tale with
many variations: two brothers, on their way to till their fields, run into a
contingent of soldiers. The soldiers demand that the brothers show them the
route up a hillside, and then, when they are near the top, tell them to
stand by the lip of the river gorge. How many brothers are you at home, they
ask. Four say the brothers. Good, says one of the soldiers, then we can kill
the two of you and there will still be two others. This will be good
population control but your families will survive. They tell them to raise
their pherans and cover their faces. Two shots ring out, both bodies plummet
into the gorge. The younger one dies, but the older lives, as the shot
enters one cheek and exits the other, shattering one side of his face. Their
village below hears the shots, and then sees, in the stream, the red of
blood. This story too is told without flourishes, for the teller knows that
even as he tells the story of his best friend, the younger brother who was
murdered, he can claim no unique pain, for there are so many more stories
just like this one.

There are stories that feature buildings, Papa 1 and Papa 2, the notorious
interrogation centers in the heart of posh Srinagar. Many died there, or
were mangled in mind and body, and some claim that their cries still
reverberate there. These buildings are now reclaimed by the civil
administration, and house important people. The administration claimed that
this would heal these buildings of their histories, but the many who were
interned there, and the many, many more, whose loved ones disappeared into
the two Papas, see little healing, only a handing over of property from one
set of rulers to another. This too is one effect of the circulation of such
stories, for those who hear them, and have heard them for almost two decades
now, cannot hear when those in power speak. They stand and listen—Kashmiris
have always stood and listened—but all they hear are the songs of the
disappeared and the dead.

Pictures tell stories too, of course, and there are so many to be seen, for
the world has an insatiable appetite for images of suffering.


  Kashmir's Sea Of Stories


  [image: Previous]<http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20080903&fname=kashmir&sid=1&pn=1>

 [image: 1]<http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20080903&fname=kashmir&sid=1&pn=1>
 (2 of 2)Crying women crowd these frames, their sorrow and their anger at
odds with their chunnis and head-scarves of many colours.

   Their faces, and those of the little ones, who cry not because they know
who has been lost but because their mothers and aunts are distraught, are
the new face of Kashmir. They weep as one for their gun-toting insurgent
son, who climbed the high mountains in pursuit of a dangerous dream, or
their carpenter-brother, who left the house for supplies and never returned
home. There are pictures of buildings aflame, the end result of a skirmish
between violent men, or the more spectacular one of the precise moment when
the military blows up two homes from which militants fire at them. The tone
of the photograph is uncannily like the tone of the stories: the roar of the
blast is muted into the visual whoosh of debris flying high, with the quiet,
understated certainty of death. Pictures and poetry, stories and songs—who
could have known that two decades of violence could have made these the
weapons of the weak? And then there are other pictures that are almost as
inspiring: masses of men, and of women, mobilized into processions, surging
forward, arms in the air and mouths open with slogans, storming into a
future that holds few promises except for the certainty of more pain.

There is another set of stories though, that is told less and less often as
the years go by, but whose power to haunt and to vex does not fade. They too
feature people who were killed, but they are mostly about exile, about
leaving homes and hearths in fear. These are Hindu stories, or at least
stories of Hindus, and of their horror at hearing, in their neighbourhoods,
the strident voices of hate. There is no compensation for their loss, which
is also the loss of a set of stories that complemented and completed
Kashmir's web of enchantments. They will never be replaced, but, slowly but
surely, their telling will fade in the face of the other more urgent, more
recently painful, stories Muslims have to tell.

And finally, when all the policy planners, the politicians, and the military
men have done their work, it is these stories that will defy their logic.
We—I now write as an Indian and a democrat—have no convincing stories to
offer Kashmiris, no narratives of inclusion and oneness. We have watched,
and listened—but not really done either—as large sections of "our" Kashmiri
population are brutalized and reduced to the status of supplicants. We think
our promises of development, and of belonging to an India burgeoning into a
superpower, will wean them away from the stories they now imbibe. We should
know that we have in fact, no stories to offer, or at least none that are
not hollow, corrupt and coercive. And they now have a sea of stories,
stories which move and mobilize, with which to irrigate their suffering and
their struggle.

I will be keenly affected by the outcome of this struggle, I know, but I
know also, even more forcefully, that we have lost the moral right not to
let Kashmiris compose their own stories. We do not know what form those
stories will take, nor what conclusions they will offer. They might tell of
the coming of an Islamic state, or of union with a Muslim neighbour, or they
might imagine a future of continuing toleration and exchange, a reassertion
of the Islam and Hinduism of the sufis and the rishis. Or they might yearn
(and I hope this will be the case) for a secular polity in which Kashmiris
of all religions and of none can participate fully. We cannot know in
advance what those stories might be, but they need to be conceived, shared,
and debated.If we value democracy, we can encourage no less.
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*Suvir Kaul is A. M. Rosenthal Professor and Chair, Department of English,
University of Pennsylvania, USA*