[Reader-list] Killing Kashmiris by Comparison

[Junaid]

The debate "Nationalism vs. Separatism" on NDTV last week looked promising
in the beginning, because for once the host, Barkha Dutt, keeping aside her
usual national-security mindset, began by asking some pertinent questions,
and the academic voices in the panel set the tenor of the debate right.
Given, however, NDTV's habit of pulling together a big crowd of relevant and
irrelevant speakers, the debate lost track and sank into a pointless and an
all-too-familiar noise. This noise, let it be said, works perfectly well for
Indian establishment because it gives them a chance to say, "Look, we give
'em an opportunity to speak; what a great democracy we are!", and yet
Kashmiris, as inarticulate as they are, come off sounding tired and tedious;
their voices lost in the din.



Sunil Khilnani, who is a US-based academic, put the question right where it
must. The trouble is with the idea of India itself, in the way it seeks to
run roughshod over different identities and affiliations with its singular,
homogenous Indian identity. The point, in fact, goes even further, one which
Khilnani did not (could not get a chance to) speak about. The real problem
is the twin construction of India and of Hinduism as organic
wholes—territorial consolidation of one, and the 'semiticization' of the
other—with the former acting as the sacred space where the latter, the
sacred community, must act itself out. That there was nothing called "India"
or "Hinduism" before the Brahmanical elite and their British colonial
masters drew from each other, entirely in self-interest, to engineer these
territorial and cultural monoliths, has not been in much popular discussion.
Both concepts are so naturalized and consecrated in public consciousness
that questioning them is tantamount to blasphemy. In its present shape India
is actually an empire which is masquerading as a modern state. The Indian
rhetoric of "secular nationalism" has acted as a liberal cover in
international fora for a swelling Hindu *imperium*, which was territorially
achieved in 1947; Indian elite has gratefully allowed the use, and
continuous manufacture, of a Hindu civilizational self-identity to justify
the empire.



Khilnani spoke only a little about the idea of India; he did not stretch his
argument to reflect on how the Hindu consciousness underlines the idea of
Indian nationalism; yet even the preliminary remark that there are a number
of nationalisms jostling for recognition within the territorial space of the
Indian state is appreciable. It, at least, gave a lie to the binary of the
show's name: "Nationalism" vs. "Separatism". To give due recognition to
Kashmiri nationalism has been unthinkable in India, so they call it by other
names: separatism, terrorism, extremism, and* pro-Pakistanism*. In an
earlier show, on the same TV channel, Swapan Dasgupta, a rightwing columnist
for The Pioneer, in fact, criticized the host of the show for allegedly
affording a *moral*-equivalence to "Kashmiri separatists" on par the "Jammu
nationalists" (the host was in no way doing that). No one asked Dasgupta as
to why Indian nationalism should be a touchstone of morality. But this
becomes easier to explain once we realize how Indian nationalism has become
akin to a religious faith and India a god worthy of worship.



It is important here to reflect briefly upon the original issue of the
*Amarnath
Yatra* to illustrate the point about *Indian nationalism as a religious
faith in the service of the Hindu empire*. Let me not speak of how India's
political elite goaded, duped, threatened, and forced the peoples of
different regions of British India and the princely states to merge with
India; it was the same process through which Kashmir was *annexed*. Let me
not speak, too, of how *most* people of the subcontinent that were called
"We, the People of India" had virtually no say in the formation of what was
called the "Union". Let me just say that Nehru inherited an empire from the
British, and he wanted to consolidate his spoils by making it look like a
state. Not for nothing did he stand atop the Red Fort (a symbol of the
Mughal empire), on August 16, 1947, with a flag that no longer had Gandhi's
*Charkha*, but Ashoka's *Chakra* (a symbol of the Mauryan empire)—an act to
declare continuity with past empires of the subcontinent. Nehru was touted
as a secular democrat, but one can find plenty of evidence to show how he
gave in to the inexorable march of the Hindu nationalists, many of whom
decked his own cabinet. The *rebuilding* of the Somnath temple, to assuage
the feelings of the Hindu nation "*for until then they would not think that
the real freedom had come" *(the words of Vallabhbhai Patel), was just a
starter.



Hindu nationalism, which ran amok over, what Ashis Nandy has called "the
little cultures of Hinduism", actually came in handy in the drive to turn
the empire into a state. Hindu pilgrimages were boosted to this end; new
places to worship were found and given nationalistic appeal. Issues like
Ram's birthplace, and in recent times 'Hanuman's bridge to Lanka' (the
Sethusamudaram) were made national issues to rally a fictitious nation
around fictitious symbols. In short, a sacred geography for Hindus was
outlined where it did not exist. India became synonymous with *Bharat Mata*,
the territorial Hindu deity to be worshipped through *deshbhakhti*. Kashmir,
which is called "the secular crown of India" without any hint of shame or
irony, was actually imagined as "the crown of *Bharat Mata*", and only so
because the crown of the bejeweled image of Bharat Mata, often juxtaposed
against the map of India, was where Kashmir was. Kashmir in the same vein
also became the *atoot ang* (an unbreakable body-part) of the
anthropomorphic goddess Mother India.



The Amarnath issue stems from here. By bringing in millions of Hindus from
across India, facilitating their travel, increasing the number of pilgrimage
months, and trying to create permanent bases for them, the state seeks to
firmly place Kashmir within the Hindu imagination, as another point on the
sacred map of *Bharat Mata*. By doing so, Kashmir ceases to be the land of
Kashmiris, but becomes an abode of *Baba Bole Nath*. The consolidation of
this vision, along with parallel efforts to invent ancient Kashmiri links to
India (read the debates on the Institute of Kashmir Studies), in effect
seeks to integrate Kashmir with India in its Hindu sense. What else can
explain the comical demand of Jammu Hindus that their lost honour could be
regained only if Kashmiri land is given to them (perhaps the entire Kashmir
should be given to them in lieu of their lost Dogra honour!), and what else
can explain the whole of India, the state *and* the nation, rallying behind
Jammu Hindus?



Despite the spin Indian strategists gave the recent protests that they are
an issue between Jammuites and Kashmiris (remember the monstrous lie about
discrimination), or however much space the Indian media gives protests in
Jammu as compared to the mammoth pro-Independence rallies in Kashmir, the
fact of the matter remains, it is India, in its true Hindu colours, that is
strutting in front of the powerless Kashmiri nation. I, for one, was not a
wee bit surprised to see the saffron Hindu flags getting replaced by Indian
flags in Hindu protests in Jammu, and chants of "*Bam Bam Bole*" and "*Bharat
Mata ki Jai*" being raised together. I am not surprised to see Muslim
Kashmiris getting killed by the dozen in protest marches or massive military
clampdowns on peaceful rallies, or bullet injuries sustained by thousands of
Kashmiris—many in India (like Tavleen Singh) wonder why the government isn't
actually pushing Kashmiris, sans Kashmir, into Pakistan. Marches in Jammu,
by comparison, look like a party, what with soldiers standing around for
photo-ops. No one has been killed in Jammu city in any kind of police
action, even though many protestors went on a rampage, and attacked, injured
and forced out many Muslims of the region. Despite the easy protests in
Jammu, the government looked desperate to talk to the Amarnath Sangharsh
Samiti, and scrambled a committee comprising a Kashmiri Pandit and a few
Jammu Hindu bureaucrats. The "talks", which looked like a family affair,
ended with government respectfully and expectedly giving Kashmiri land to
the Amarnath Shrine Board for exclusive use for three months each year (for
the only months the land could be used anyway). The government, shamelessly,
put out advertisements suggesting it consulted political parties and the
civil society of Kashmir before stealing their land; one wonders when,
during its brutal clampdowns and large-scale arrests, did government find
time to consult Kashmiris? Or, is Farooq Abdullah again the sole spokesman
of Kashmiris?



This brings us back to the NDTV debate and the very intriguing answer that
an ex-military person (one of those irrelevant speakers on the debate on
nationalism) gave to a question from the audience as to why the army kills
so many Kashmiris. His answer: Kashmiris get killed because they happen to
be at *the scene of action*. How can you argue with such a reply? One might
say that perhaps Kashmiris get killed because the action happens on them,
that their bodies *are* the scenes of action. His answer, in any case,
derailed the debate, an attempt which Mani Aiyar of the Indian National
Congress was also making by trying to take the argument away from Kashmir
toward the "North-east" (I put Northeast in apostrophes because this
description links it cartographically to India, when I think the region is
closer to southeast Asia). Aiyar's insistence on talking about
*other*places is not different from all those noises with which
Kashmiris are
silenced by drawing contrasts to violence in other places: "so many get
killed in Bihar", "so many rapes happen in Delhi", what are you Kashmiris
whining about? (It is a separate matter that nationalist Indians
inadvertently, thus, equate their state with criminals of Bihar and rapists
of Delhi).Though issues in Nagaland, Manipur, etc. are similar to Kashmir,
in the sense that they too emerge from the rather predatory "idea of India",
but Aiyar was using it to suggest, rather bald-facedly, that there are other
people demanding independence, what are you Kashmiris whining about. Let us
call it, for the sake of a better phrase, killing (occupying) Kashmiris by
comparison.



It is also time we put to rest the phrase "Autonomy". Kashmiris don't want
autonomy. Even National Conference, its original votary, does not look
enthusiastic about the word any longer after its much-fêted proposal was
consigned to the dustbin in Delhi without even a discussion. The point is
Kashmir *had* autonomy; that is where India started with Kashmir. When the
NC says they want to go back to the pre-1953 status, it automatically means
that Kashmiris were there once. For all these years India has slowly gnawed
it into shreds. Going back to that political status will mean trusting India
over something of which it has proved totally untrustworthy. Who wants to
give India another try for another 62 years? Perhaps, the NC?



Aiyar, at his noisy best, kept saying *ad nauseam*, that the Kashmiri
"separatists" should participate in elections to prove their representative
character, forgetting in the process an entire ignominious history of rigged
elections in Kashmir. Those "mainstream" parties that India sees as
representing Kashmiris cannot, by their own admission, bring so many
Kashmiris out on the streets as pro-Independence leaders have in Kashmir
over the last many years. And this is despite the presence of 700 thousand
Indian soldiers to muzzle Kashmiris. If one sixth of the Kashmiri nation is
out on the streets on a given day demanding Independence, one can imagine
the level of support and endorsement the "separatists" command. How many
people joined the Quit India marches at the height of India's independence
struggle? A lakh? Two? India says Kashmiris are confused; that they don't
know what they want. India describes the *need* for Kashmir's freedom as an
*aspiration*, a Kashmiri desire. Kashmiris, however, are talking to them as
straight as possible. When a million Kashmiri voices rose together in August
2008, they told India something quite uncomplicated: leave.



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