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

[Kshmendra Kaul]

Dear Inder
 
A citizen of India (which I presume you are) using the phrase "Indian occupation of Kashmir"; Interesting. Doubly interesting since you use the phrase  "Pakistan Administered Kashmir" for that part of J&K which is under Pakistan's control.
 
That is just a reiteration of my often stated "Nationalist" position.
 
That said, may I thank you for pointing out some of the critical flaws and half-truths in Richard Shapiro's essay.
 
Kshmendra


--- On Thu, 8/6/09, Inder Salim <indersalim at gmail.com> wrote:


From: Inder Salim <indersalim at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Reader-list] A Just Peace in Kashmir? Reflections on Dynamics of Change By Richard Shapiro
To: "reader-list" <reader-list at sarai.net>
Date: Thursday, August 6, 2009, 2:34 PM


Thanks Dear Khurram for forward, wonderful essay.

I quote from the article.

“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'”

It reminds me of the article written by Arundhati Roy some time back,
which created a huge storm in Delhi and around, but not because of the
above questions which she too raised, but by saying ‘Kashmir needs
freedom as much as India needs from Kashmir’.

So we have two points, one for the Indian Administration in Kashmir ,
one for those who want freedom in Kashmir.  Both the parties somehow
escape the critical part of it.   The article has not asked a single
question to Pakistan Administered Kashmir.  Kashmiris need to ask
questions to all.

The article has exonerated the entire diplomatic legacy of
Anglo-American policies which cleverly divided  Kashmir in 1947 and
continued to support that divided legacy, which ensures their sale of
Arms in this subcontinent. It is not  difficult to guess how much of
both Indian and Pakistani budget contributes in maintaining their
defence industry. So why on earth they will let the Kashmir issue be
resolved. Needless to mention about what they did in Iraq ,
Afghanistan or elsewhere in the past. It is a large mess. Blaming
India alone will be a short cut to the problem.

So how to read the incomplete essay which is nevertheless seriously
written and deserves a debate.

We all know how WITH DISSENT COMES RESPONSIBILTY, and if in the
present we are searching  a non-violent solution to the pending issues
based on Ethics then we need to create a situation which gives no
excuse to the Indian Army to be there. Let there be no violence, not
even a six inch pebble throwing catapult. Let there be creative ways
to make the Indian presence irrelevant. One of them is, don’t use the
Indian goods, as Gandhi did to British. But it is not easy, there must
be other  effective ways too, if there is a will.

So, again there are two methodologies which are working in Kashmir.
One is Armed Struggle and the other is non-violent strategy. We have
no mechanism to talk about the armed part of it, because either we
approve that methodology or demand its abandonment.  The blind support
to Armed Struggle would automatically tantamount to ‘ bad faith’. Yes,
they wont listen to us, because there are mechanisms which legitimizes
the others ( American ) intervention simply because there is
violence/war on the ground. And Americans like Violence, which suits
both Indian and Pakistani position on Kashmir. We are certainly
waiting for a simple Sufi Kashmiri version of freedom based on ethics
and tolerance for the other. Where is cultural expressioin of freedom,
why it is inferior to a gun shot.

If we were wise enough in the first place to resolve the issue at our
own then we ( Indian and Pakistani) should gift
The entire nuclear  weaponry to USA. It is because we are unwise that
we approve violence that gives shape to a politics, and we ( writing
and reflecting the written ) become end users of their actions. We
need to support a change that renders the Violence impotent.

Mr. Richard also writes about ‘Cultural Annihilation’ ( of Kashmiris
by Indians ) . To club cultural annihilation with Indian Security
excesses is again slippery and contrived.  Kashmiris themselves are
indifferent to their cultural moorings. But there is a reason for
that, which is again because of Indian position with regard to
Kashmir.

No one can deny that Kashmiri Pandits and Muslims have a shared past
in Kashmir but since Kashmiri Pandits are Hindus too, who happen to be
Indians too, and therefore, supporters of Indian policy on Kashmir.
So, unfortunately, Kashmiri Muslims had to chisel out any similarity
that make them resemble Indians. Here, again, we can blame Indian
occupation of Kashmir, but at some point of time, Kashmiris need to
protect their heritage, culture and language. No excuses, whatsoever.

Recently, I happened to visit amazing ruins of Parihaspur of great
Lalitaditya of 700 AD. Wahabi radical sect of Islam disapproves
presence of such ruins around the place they live. The fear of
contamination in fatih leads them to motivate the young to deface the
figures in any ruins they discover , which is ‘ swaab’ ( work in the
name of god ).

Language: I saw many younger generation Kashmiris speaking Urdu (
kashmiri-urdu) to each other even in normal conversation. One of the
students said frankly that only Villagers speak now Kashmiri. The
modern fast changing life style is the other main reason for  Cultural
Annihilation which the intellectuals of Kashmir should take note of,
if there is a need for a free and independent Kashmir. Or, if the
modern ways of living approve every change we experience then to talk
about ETHICS engages the entire changing global scenario on the earth.
Then again, we may include ENVIRONMENT to ethics as well.

With love
is




On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 11:23 AM, Khurram Parvez <khurramparvez at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> 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.
>
>
>
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