[Reader-list] A Just Peace in Kashmir? Reflections on Dynamics of Change By Richard Shapiro

[Kshmendra Kaul]

Whether or not Shapiro suffers because of his association(s) with Angana Chatterji, this piece by him is replete with prejudice, bias, ill-concieved presumptions and mis-constructed deductions. 
 
The sweeping generalisations he makes and his misrepresentations bordering on outright lies are only to be expected with his more than evident prejudice and bias. 
 
Kshmendra

--- On Thu, 8/6/09, Khurram Parvez <khurramparvez at yahoo.com> wrote:


From: Khurram Parvez <khurramparvez at yahoo.com>
Subject: [Reader-list] A Just Peace in Kashmir? Reflections on Dynamics of Change By Richard Shapiro
To: "SARAI" <reader-list at sarai.net>
Date: Thursday, August 6, 2009, 11:23 AM




A Just Peace in Kashmir? Reflections on Dynamics of Change

By Richard Shapiro





August 04, 2009

http://www.sacw.net/article1090.html





What
are the various roles that diverse constituencies must play to
facilitate political processes that undo militarization and subjugation
in Indian administered Kashmir? How can systemic structures that
institutionalize violence, cultural annihilation, economic
impoverishment, and political disempowerment be countered through
non-violent, ethical resistance? What alliances are necessary to allow
hope for overcoming cycles of oppression and breaking with histories of
domination? How can international, national, and local actors and
institutions work together to disrupt socially unnecessary suffering
and ameliorate the conditions of existence? What forces must cohere to
enable a just peace to emerge in a democratic Kashmir in the
foreseeable future?



Numerous obstacles present tremendous
challenges to movements for social justice. The current world order is
predicated on systems of inequality that hierarchically divide
countries, peoples, cultures, classes, genders, sexualities,
ethnicities, and faith traditions to the benefit of the few and the
detriment of the many. Dominant powers prescribe the rules of the game
to their advantage and utilize knowledge, technology, and markets to
structure social relations in their interests. The new global order
presents itself as the best of all possible worlds in which sovereign
nation-states organized through representative democracy, rule of law,
free markets with government regulation, Enlightenment rationality, and
human rights are promised as the solution to the problems of poverty,
war, ecological devastation, genocide, and terrorism.



This
dominant narrative of progress through the spread of capitalism
organized in nation-states and guided by knowledge has attained
hegemony as it has captured the imagination of postcolonial nations
like India. Postcolonial nations have largely reproduced the structures
of colonial oppression and organized themselves to become players in
the existing global order as militarized, hyper-masculinized, nuclear
powers measuring their worth on the basis of GDP (Gross Domestic
Product). Emerging middle-classes of massive proportion in postcolonial
nations like India buttress this process of nation building that
mirrors and enforces dynamics of globalization through the production
of unparalleled poverty, massive and multiple dislocations, genocide of
indigenous peoples, ecological disaster, and abundant psychological
malaise. India is embraced by the international community, meaning
largely the United States and Western Europe, precisely because it
marches in step with the new world order. India amasses great cultural
capital as “the world's largest democracy” in spite of the fact that it
is home to 40% of the worlds most economically destitute, and seeks to
constitute itself as a nation through policies that disregard the needs
of the vast majority of its population.



India is inventing
nothing new in its self-constitution as a powerful nation-state.
National identity is being fabricated through the equation of India
with Hindus, in blatant form in entities like the RSS and BJP, and in
more subtle form in the Congress and progressive Indian citizens for
whom nationalism linked to 'Hindu cultural reassertion' is an
unreflective response to a colonial past. The equation of Hinduism
(unity in diversity) and Christianity with tolerance for difference,
and Islam with terrorism, backwardness, and fanaticism, functions as a
global trope supportive of unleashing disproportionate violence on
Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine, as well as within the
territory of India in Gujurat, Orissa, and in the 'disputed territory'
of Kashmir. India forms itself as nation with unexamined Hindu
majoritarianism at its base, just as unexamined Christian cultural
dominance organizes the United States, rendering explorations of the
links between religionization, nationalism and particular secularisms
close to impossible. India is also typical in its self-formation as
nation in fashioning internal and external enemies as crucial to
defining itself, and super-exploiting its most proximate 'others' to
fuel its prosperity. European nations had the Jew as internal enemy.
The United States is founded on the backs of its twin others - enslaved
Africans and massacred Native Americans.



India has as its main
'internal other' the Muslim, who can take no solace in also occupying
the role as external enemy in India's dominant narrative. This double
site is what the state uses to legitimate the brutalization of the
Kashmiri people. Firstly, there is India's need for a majority Muslim
state within its borders to legitimate itself as a progressive,
pluralistic, secular nation. Without a Muslim majority state within
India, India cannot as easily legitimate itself as a progressive member
of the new global order. Secondly there is India's need to establish
national identities that take precedence over regional, local,
traditional identities. As a nation, India is in the process of
seeking: (1) to establish territorial dominion over the current
boundaries of the nation, (2) attain a monopoly on the means of
violence, and (3) organize human and natural resources to enhance the
productivity and power of the nation. Every nation that has achieved
the normative status of modern democracy has utilized sustained and
prolific violence to realize these three imperatives and in the process
establish its identity. India is in a very vulnerable moment in this
process as is evident from an examination of the myriad territories and
forces fighting for autonomy in some form from the Indian state. Part
of the strategy to foster national identity, simultaneous to providing
very little to the vast majority of its population, and in fact
fostering mal-development that impoverishes and displaces poor, rural
'citizens', is to fabricate an 'us' that must protect itself from
'them'. Without internal enemies India cannot unify itself as a nation.



This
internal enemy is also resolutely claimed as integral to India. The
state and its loyal subjects repeat the same refrain: 'Kashmir is an
integral part of India.' 'Kashmir is integral to India.' Kashmir is the
other that is integral to the self, a difference that is integral to
the identity of India. How then does India treat this other, this
integral difference? To debase, devalue, disrespect, destroy the
people, culture, history, land, waters, aspirations, imaginations,
passions, thoughts, of this other that is claimed as integral to self
reveals much about India's current state of existence. What other
measure is available to us to assess ourselves as ethical entities than
how we treat the other, how we engage the differences to which we are
ethically obliged to respond? What nation has satisfactorily answered
to this call? If a day arrives when Kashmir is 'a nation unto itself',
independent and sovereign, an equal to all other nations, will Kashmir
point the nation-state in a new direction? Will the differences
integral to Kashmir be respected, affirmed, heard and engaged? Will
'the other' be the call to 'the self' to practice hospitality? Will the
Gujur, the village woman who buried loved ones and waits in silence for
words of/from other loved ones, the atheist, the ardent believer, the
Shia, the Sufi, the pundit, the Buddhist, the differently abled, the
homosexual, the beggar, the prostitute, be welcomed as participants in
constructing a nation that will be 'a light unto other nations'? Will
the other be welcomed without the demand or structural incentive to
assimilate, to mirror/mimic dominance to be recognized as human? These
questions are too much, perhaps even unfair. Yet, is it not necessary
to raise them?



Kashmir occupies a literal and imaginary border
as inside and outside of India in ways that structure an impossible
predicament. The state (and its elites and middle-classes) does not
trust Kashmiris whose allegiance is always presumed to lie with
Pakistan as an Islamic Republic, thus denying Kashmiris the rights of
citizens of India, while asserting the inviolability of its sovereignty
over Kashmir as a secular, democratic nation governed by equality under
rule of law. The distrust legitimates military rule organized through
special laws as necessary to provide law and order as a matter of
internal security. Thus, on the basis of being part of a democratic
state, the rights granted citizens of such a state are denied to
Kashmiris. Inclusion in nation is coupled with dispossession from
historical memory, rights, and life. India legitimates its mistreatment
through a logic originating with European nation-states. This denial of
civil and human rights, rule of law, and the freedoms of citizenship to
Kashmiris is because the state must protect itself from forces within
itself that threaten its character as a lawful, democratic nation.
India must violate what is most inviolable, through a state of
exception (the use of law to suspend law as definitive of sovereignty),
to protect itself. The discourse requires the allegiance of the
Kashmiri people to India, as proof that Kashmiris are not what the
nation suspects - traitors and terrorists, as precondition to access to
the rights of citizenship. These same rights of citizenship provided by
the nation, while denied to Kashmiris, are used by India to justify its
claims to being a legitimate state entitled to act as it does in
Kashmir. As a legitimate state, India is predicated on civil rights and
rule of law that it may legitimately suspend in the name of national
security. Kashmiris must align with India given this legitimacy, while
living as subjects without rights in so far as the state defines them
as a threat to its sovereignty. India must violate what gives it
legitimacy in order to protect itself from the internal enemy integral
to it. India must destroy itself to protect itself. The state of
exception produces a state of autoimmunity. India is also asserting
itself as superior to other regional nation-states, and an emerging
player in relation to Western Europe and the United States. Like other
powerful democracies, India is entitled to do whatever is necessary to
fight terrorism and strengthen itself as a powerful, sovereign,
capitalist nation, aligned with the movement of progress (dominance).



Kashmiris
are placed in a situation where allegiance to India as prerequisite to
participation in a lawful democracy involves allegiance to a state that
has no rational basis to demand or expect allegiance from the people of
Kashmir. India needs to exaggerate the degree of cross-border
infiltration and armed Islamist militancy to rationalize 500,000+
troops, blurred boundaries between police and army, and massive
intervention in daily life through systematic surveillance, land
seizures, checkpoints, torture, disappearances, gendered and sexualized
violence, fake encounter deaths and countless daily humiliations
calculated to break the spirit of the Kashmiri people. This reality is
currently resisted through mass demonstrations, regular protests,
strategic use of elections, strategic boycott of elections, navigating
restrictions on 'free press', civil society mobilizations, legal cases,
an International Tribunal, and regular acts of dignity, courage, and
faith that characterize the present in Kashmir. India demonstrates the
persona all too common in the 'league of nations' - to act with
impunity and disregard for international law and local demands for
justice. India uses this fiction of the Kashmiri as existing in the
shadowy space of inside/outside the nation to legitimate an occupation
that ignores the historical particularity of Kashmir and the promises
made to the people of Kashmir to determine its own future. The plight
of Kashmiri pundits also becomes an opportunity for the state to
legitimate regularized violence and systematic oppression of Kashmiris.
Were all Kashmiris, whether currently residing in the state of
Jammu/Kashmir or elsewhere, to be given voice to express their will,
free from coercion, retribution, and manipulation, the outcome would
not be in doubt.



Kashmir is the longest standing disputed area
in the United Nations, the most militarized spot on earth, and a drain
on the hopes for prosperity, peace and freedom for people throughout
the subcontinent, and the world. There is no moving toward peaceful
coexistence between India and Pakistan, no stabilization of the region,
no possibility for global nuclear disarmament, no hope for forms of
development that prioritize sustainability and cultural survival over
militarization, urbanization, and middle-class consumerism, no space
for the impossible healing through mourning/memorializing the trauma of
Partition, without granting self-determination to the people of Kashmir.



The
realization of that which is demanded by rationality in service of
justice and emancipation is always against the odds. In relation to
Kashmir, a more peaceful future requires at least four interrelated
movements: (1) Massive, non-violent, ethical dissent within Kashmiri
civil society must continue and expand, attentive to alliances that
build stronger relations between men and women, youth and adults,
various faith communities, urban and rural, rich and poor, facilitative
of inclusive forms of polity that enable a diverse, pluralistic
movement for freedom. (2) Leadership must form a unified coalition that
activates and learns from the multiple constituencies that make up
Kashmiri society. Divergent desires and imaginations regarding the
future of Kashmir should be encouraged and discussed, outside the
search for homogeneity or conformity. A Kashmir free of subjugation
should enable multiple forms of life through participatory democracy,
just governance, and economic practice promoting health, education, and
individual and collective prosperity. Natural resources, like water,
should be both safeguarded, and utilized for sustainable development.
Cultural heritage should be understood as an inheritance of all
Kashmiris to fashion a unique society nurturing hospitality,
innovation, and multicultural polity. (3) Education and mobilization to
shift public opinion in India must be undertaken throughout civil
society to expand pressure on the Indian state. Citizen delegations
from the various states and communities of India must visit Kashmir to
learn first hand about the atrocities, resistances, hopes, and concerns
prevalent in Kashmir. Such delegations must bring their new
understandings to their neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and places
of worship to facilitate discussion and reflection that expand the
voices of those who demand that illegal and immoral action in Kashmir
done in their name immediately cease. Institutions in India must
sponsor delegations from Kashmir, composed of diverse peoples who
constitute Kashmiri society, to share the realities they have suffered
and the need for alliance toward justice. Hindu faith communities must
forge relationships with social justice movements in civil society in
Kashmir to oppose Hindu majoritarian dominance and insist that the
Indian state demilitarize the state of Jammu & Kashmir, become
accountable to international agreements, rule of law, and human rights
as the first step on the road to affirming the right of Kashmir to
self-determination. Universities and the press must play a strong role
in addressing the history and present of Kashmir to empower students
and the citizenry of India to participate as informed members of a
democratic republic, whose resources and conscience are systematically
misused and violated by their government. (4) International
solidarities from citizens, governmental and non-governmental
organizations, students, workers, professionals, public intellectuals,
faith communities, and all interested parties must be organized to
educate, inform, advocate, and mobilize for the liberation of Kashmir.
International institutions must be both utilized and strengthened as
legitimate sites able to hold nation-states legally accountable for
their actions. Research, education, and publication on the reality of
present-day Kashmir and its modern history must be supported by and
within universities, think tanks, and civil society forums. Campuses
must become sites where students mobilize themselves to exert public
pressure to ethically resolve the situation in Kashmir. Resistance in
all four 'sites' must struggle to establish alliances, clarify goals,
mobilize resources, deconstruct desires, and carve out space where
different forms of polity and community, promoting ethical dissent, may
live.



To commit to these practices secures no guarantees. The
process must draw from the resolve of Kashmiris to struggle for justice
and strengthen this resolve through principled alliance that breaks the
isolation and despair that accompanies any people subjected to brutal
mistreatment. The multiple legacies that inspire and haunt us must
become the very sustenance that, through sharing, nurtures our
struggle. Allow me to conclude by drawing from a source common to the
three Abrahamic traditions, and of universal relevance in the present,
Deuteronomy 16:20, Justice, Justice, You Shall Pursue.





Richard
Shapiro is Chair and Associate Professor, Department of Social and
Cultural Anthropology, California Institute of Integral Studies in San
Francisco.


      
_________________________________________
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/>