[Reader-list] The Azadi We Need

[Sanjay Kak]

Thanks, Jeebesh, for posting Umair Ahmed Muhajir's piece "The Azadi We Need"
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20080904&fname=umair&sid=1

The Sarai list has robustly reflected the recent revival of interest in the
idea of Kashmir's Azadi, and I think many of us would be in synch with the
despair reflected in Muhajir's understanding of the monstrous contours of
the modern nation state, especially as it has unfolded in our part of the
world–India, Pakistan, Bangladesh...

What I do not share is the certainity with which he–like many writers in
recent weeks both here and in other public forums in India–have visualised a
possible Azad Kashmir. Perhaps because few in Kashmir have been able to
spell out their vision, our assumptions have flooded in and filled the
space. One of these is that Azadi necessarily means an Islamic Nation.
Certainly there are pointers from some of the political leaders of the
movement that this may be the idea. Syed Ali Shah Geelani has spoken of the
centrality of Islam in his vision, and no doubt there are other elements in
the Hurriyat that would concur. (Although even here it is an open question
what their Islamic role model is: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Malaysia, Syria,
Qatar? Or another: Kashmir,) But surely it cannot be the case that what
Geelani says, or what elements of the Hurriyat hint at can be taken as
conclusive in our understanding of the aspirations for Azadi? (Especially
when most people who draw these conclusions are also the first to question
the representative character of Geelani or the Hurriyat!)

Our discussions of where Kashmir is headed is already moving so giddily
ahead of the state of play, that sometimes I get the sensation that these
are not really conversations about Kashmir, and the abominable situation
there, but really about our anxieties about ourselves. (Here I use "our" for
those of whose of us who do not see ourselves as Kashmiris–so Indians,
Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, whoever.)

Let us for a moment ignore the hardliners in the public discourse, the G
Parthasarathy, K Subrahmanyam, Harish Khare (and for comic relief, Jaitirath
Rao) line on Kashmir. (In a nutshell: fry them).
Let's turn to the liberal discourse, where however sophisticated the
language, and however much sympathy for the "ordinary Kashmiri" is evoked,
the main preoccupation seems to be around what a possible Azad Kashmir–one
which wears it Muslim majority and its Islamic character on its sleeve–will
do to the idea of Indian secularism, to Indian democracy, and to India's
Muslims. In India, for example, the failure to fulfill the aspirations of a
Secular, Socialist, Democratic Republic that We The People were promised,
seem to hinge entirely on whether or not Kashmir continues to be part of
India... How fragile is this notion of the Secular Socialist Democracy that
it hinges entirely on a part of the map that has never enthusiastically
embraced the geographical entity that bounds that ideal!

So too in Muhajir's otherwise excellent discussion of the Nation State,
Kashmir is only the peg upon which the larger anxiety hangs. I tended to
read his piece as a lament about the failure of our nations to meet the
aspirations of our decolonising imaginations. About what he calls the Azadi
We Need.

To say, as Muhajir does, that "the idea of an independent Kashmir for
Kashmiris must be resisted precisely because, as the experience of the
once-colonised has amply illustrated, nation-states are appallingly inhuman"
is a suggestion of some casual brutality. And when he says that "nothing in
the Kashmiri independence movement suggests that it will throw up anything
different; indeed given that the movement aims at a traditional nation-state
just like all the others, I submit that it cannot yield a different result",
I can only wonder at his certainity of what the movement aims at. He is
asking us not just to doubt, or raise a red-flag of warning, but to "resist"
because he believes that an Independent Kashmir may turn into the monster
with the big floppy ears and the sharp tusks? Remember the Six Blind Men of
Hindustan, and the Elephant?

Because in the absence of democracy, in the absence of free and fearless
politics, and in the presence of a quite monstrous apparatus of occupation,
none of us can as yet lay claim to saying that we know what the movement
aims at.

The discomfort with the Nation State is a valid one. If indeed there are
those within the movement who casually think of such an entity, then they
would do well to make themselves familiar with the arguments Mohajir
assembles against it. But for the vast majority of people in the valley, the
idea of Azadi does not as yet have such elaborate contours. It still means
removing the Army, bringing back some elementary dignity into everyday life.
We can lay the charge at the door of the Separatist leadership that they
have failed to start that conversation about what Kashmir could be like. But
before we "resist" the idea of Azadi we–and here I speak of Indians–must
also take on board our complicity in a system that has not allowed any form
of genuine democratic process to emerge in Kashmir, not just since 1989 when
the armed conflict broke out, but for at least three decades before that.

And what if, in the absence of another workable alternative that they can
come up with, or indeed we can offer them, they still choose the tattered
and torn robes of the Nation State? Will we say to them that their struggle
is meaningless, their suffering inconsequential, the repression they have
dealt with somehow appropriate? Because they don't understand the perils of
the Nation State they must cease to resist?

In recent weeks, one can see the furry edges of the Establishment fluffing
up in defence of old atrophied positions. Forget the Intelligence Bureau
plants and the Home Ministry hand-outs. Academics Sumit Ganguly and Kanti
Bajpai, separately and together, placed a series of articles all over the
national and international media that set up a sort of Qualifying Standard
to Permit Secession. Minimally you are required to say Yes to the following:
Genocide? Ethnic flooding? Major human rights violations? Since India has
fallen short on all counts, they aver, with only 70,000 dead, and No Major
human rights violations, the Standard is not met . Sorry then. No case for
Azadi.
Who set up this Gold Standard, and who calibrates it?

While it is not my intention to place Muhajir's arguments on the same shelf
as the Hawks and the Hawks-in-Dove-feathers, I bring them together because
collectively they serve the same end-result: "This may not end up the way WE
want it, so lets just wait and watch".

That was the position that British Liberals could well have taken in the
years before Independence: hand over India to the Hindu Mahasabha? The
Muslim League? To Gandhi?.
Better a part of Empire than to allow India to destroy itself under the
weight of its own contradictions.

That has been the position of liberal Indians for at least twenty–if not
sixty–years. Frozen in a rigor mortis of wilful ignorance, political
correctness, and theoretical purity.

This may not be The Azadi They Need.

Sanjay Kak