[Reader-list] The Azadi We Need

[inder salim]

History is a strange past. If  Nepal was under British rule,  Sardar
Patel might have loved to begin the formation of Indian Union from
there itself; and by now it might have been part of Uttaranchal, or
just another state by the name Nepal District;  with its erestwhile
princes and kings drinking French wine at IIC. It is just a matter of
chance that that did not happen. Instead of that we have a wonderful
beginning in Nepal under a new leadership. India has no hesitation to
recognise it, although the fact remains that Maoist ways of achieving
it have been criticized by MEA in no other terms but Terrorism.

J&K too was not part of British Rule in 1947. It is just a matter of
chance that Kashmir could not achieve the status of a Free Nation that
time. ( I know the word 'Nation' sounds shitty ).  It had all the
ingredients which Nepal had. The only difference, here is that Nepal
had Hindus and Kashmir had Muslims.  No one has an answer, what ruined
the dream of Sheikh Modh. Abudlah, as Mr. Kak said that even now,
"none of us can as yet lay claim to saying that we know what the
movement aims at no one can say" . But still we don't know why Nepal
is a free country and why  Kashmir is not.  We know dreams, after a
while get blurred and the priorities shift. New things emerge, while
history keeps on mocking at us, which intrigues me, sometimes very
funnily.

So, it is indeed difficult to write on Kashmir. It is, perhaps easy
for those who a single line of action to offer, mainly those who are
overtly nationalistic. After reading, Roy, Muhajir and then Sanjay, I
feel that Kashmir is really a strange land. Something is surreal about
the land. Its people, its past and history makes it unique. If one
looks at the recent poetry of Kashmir in kashmiri, one can feel that
its unique past is still reverberating in its veins, which is quite
different from what is being written in urdu or in English.  It is
simply different. I imagine the constitution of a Free New Kashmir in
Kashmiri.  The language will itself oust the hardliners. The terrible
face of Nation State too might soften. But as we know, fortunately or
unfortunately, we are wedded to  History which is known to all of us.
But that is not all, most of us know that,  but cant do much about
that. History is the puzzle which we are actually trying to solve.

The muslim character is Kashmir is simple a matter of fact and nothing
beyond.  And as Ronald Barthes  writes, there is nothing which is
called a matter of fact. SAS Geelani will disagree,  but deep down,
people in Kashmir want to celebrate life, not fundamentalism. People
in Nepal too finally don't need a King or a declaration that Nepal is
a Hindu State. Kashmir too can refurbish its true credentials. But as
Shuddha, too said that fundamentalism and its terror tactics only
strengthen the State. "The only winner is state". So paradoxically,
our too much of attention on Muslim factor in Kashmir is making things
worst for the core meaning of  Kashmiriyat ( the word, prostituted by
the  State Machinery over the years, but I still use it, although
there can be a Kashmiri equivalent to it, but let us preserve that for
the proposed constitution, here, I hope, 'kashmirityat' would suffice
). But, the British ways of implementing partition made it impossible
for us to see something other than a Hindu or a Muslim reality. We
have a history, which is quite painful. And for the abscess of those
inflicted wounds , we are still looking for British ( western )
anti-biotics, which heals but without a guarantee to heal it at the
core. Kashmiris still have a chance to throw up an agenda which can be
based on a simple understanding of its own poets and saints. They
might succeeded where a great Hero like Sheikh Mohd Abudullh failed.

If there is a movement, in Kashmir beyond the basic demand for removal
of Security forces from Kashmir and restoration of dignity in the
daily life, then it has to be based on some thought of civil society
where people can talk, express freely and sit seriously to talk about
the future of humanity on this earth. A simple aversion of Indian Tri
colour will not lead to some long lasting results, as Ms. Roy also
highlighted 'Doubt ' in her text on Azadi in Kashmir

"Liberty has no refuge in the jurisprudence of doubt" I don't remember
who said it, but it does speak about the necessity of doubt in the
present, even if it means a delay for those who march on path of '
safray azadi'.  To unravel the unpredictable of the present we have no
other chance but to ' wait and watch' as Sanjay hinted. All
calculations might collapse.   I  just am trying to emancipate myself
more on the subject : Kahseer

With love


On Sat, Sep 13, 2008 at 11:13 PM, Sanjay Kak <kaksanjay at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
> whattheir 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
> _________________________________________
> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
> Critiques & Collaborations
> To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header.
> To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list
> List archive: &lt;https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>



-- 

http://indersalim.livejournal.com