[Reader-list] A Just Peace in Kashmir? Reflections on

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear Junaid,

Once again, thank you for your considered and thoughtful reply, and  
for this opportunity to develop my thinking further. I am in  
agreement with most of what you say. Most importantly, with your last  
point, about the necessity to remain vigilant about the possibility,  
while commenting on the situation in Kashmir, of stripping the  
resistance of the context it has to function in, and over- 
contextualizing the actions of the occupiers. However, I do believe  
that an absence of 'critical' solidarity, de-contextualizes this  
resistance, (and for that matter, any resistance) encircling it with  
a halo it does not need as much as a 'holier than thou' attitude born  
of a complete insensitivity to the actual conditions on the ground.

Of course it is completely counter-productive to expect people to  
articulate their positions on gay rights, ecology or the gender  
question while soldiers are trampling on their homes, raping their  
sisters, mothers, lovers and daughters, killing their sons, brothers  
and friends and holding them at gun-point. But, let us not generalize  
too much in the other direction either. We all know that there is a  
certain degree of articulation and exchange possible, even in these  
times, within Kashmiri civil society. Not a great deal, but not  
negligible either. There are newspapers, blogs, online platforms such  
as this one, even conversations in peoples homes and coffee shops. I  
am concerned about the quality and volume of that exchange, and the  
fact that it is intimidated, not just by the occupation, but also, by  
an 'internal occupation' - an 'occupation of the intellectual and  
imaginative space of the resistance' that is exercised by some  
amongst the self proclaimed leadership of the same resistance.

While, it is unrealistic, and indeed unfair, for me, or for anyone to  
demand that the Kashmiri who is at gunpoint declaim nuanced  
statements that runs the gamut from global warming to gay rights, it  
is equally patronising to persist in saying that we continue to  
endorse the reticence of those who are indeed at liberty to speak,  
however softly, and who yet refrain from doing so, either because  
they do not think these issues are important, or worthy of their  
support ( in which case they must be opposed, but at least I  
understand that their position on these matters is sincere and  
honest) or, because though they may 'privately' sympathize, they wish  
to remain 'publicly' silent, because they do not want to annoy the  
'leadership' of the resistance, and go against the supposed  
'sentiments' of the majority of the population (which, under  
conditions of occupation, they have no way of ascertaining one way or  
another). In fact, I think that this is one of the most violent and  
brutal legacies that the occupation has left in Kashmir, a narrowing  
of the space of the 'sayable',on all sides, on many things. And if  
the long term effects of the occupation need to be confronted, then  
one of the things that I believe is urgent, is an 'expansion' of the  
sayable, to include statements that might even appear heretical and  
blasphemous today.

I have always believed that it is the responsibility of intellectuals  
to articulate positions that might make them unpopular (if they hold  
such positions to be true) especially amongst their own  
constituencies and publics,even while expressing their solidarity  
with the situation of the same publics. Until some years ago,  
whenever someone like me would raise the question of the indian  
state's role in Kashmir, the standard response amongst Indian leftist- 
liberal intellectuals was an embarassed plea for silence, because,  
even if some of them 'agreed' with me and others like me in private,   
'an anti-national' stand on Kashmir would, in their view, only be  
'unpopular' and would further 'alienate' 'us' from the 'masses'. I  
even recall being told, 'People are starving in India, and you  
persist with the luxury of talking about freedom in Kashmir.' These,  
things, I was told, could wait, until after the urgent tasks of  
tackling the situation in India was completed.

Had I, and several others like me, not persisted in making our stand  
clear, over several years, in the face of determined (and I have to  
say, in the main, cynical) opposition from within the 'left-liberal- 
secualr-soft nationalist' constituency in India, I doubt if we would  
have the (not insignificant) space we do have to debate the entire  
matter of Kashmir in Indian public fora today. Today, several amongst  
the same, formerly 'reticent' intellectuals have found it possible to  
shed their 'reticence' on Kashmir, and this is a good thing. But it  
would have been a much longer time coming, had we 'waited' for the  
'urgencies' that always besiege us in india to cool down. And, I  
think that continuity of deliberate indifference on the part of large  
sections of the Indian intelligentsia, would have then made the  
situation in Kashmir much worse than it is today. We are in a  
situation today, where the silence that greeted the brutal violence  
by the Indian state in Kashmir in 1989 and the early nineties, can no  
longer be repeated, not with the same measure of success.  (the  
violence may be repeated, but the silence wont be so easy to produce)  
This was most evident to me during the 'Anti-Amarnath Yatra Board  
Linked Land Grab' movement, when many more Indian intellectuals began  
saying what had been hitherto considered 'unsayable'.

Let me now take this opportunity to clarify a few things.

I for one, do not hold out preconditions for standing in solidarity  
with my thoughts and words with a movement against a violent  
occupation. A violent occupation, or any situation founded on  
oppression, in my view needs to be opposed, even if many of the  
people being oppressed are not necessarily those one would normally  
be in agreement with. My opposition to the occupation, and the  
question of my agreement, or disagreement, with the world view of  
those being oppressed by the occupation, or the leadership of the  
resistance to the occupation, are two distinct things, and I do not  
see any reason to confuse them. I know for a fact that there are many  
people in Kashmir who share my point of view on most things, and that  
there are many who do not. And I am well aware of the fact that for  
instance, in many respects, Kashmiri society is far more egalitarian  
in terms of the relationship between the sexes for instance, than  
most parts of north india. That is why, i am not over anxious about  
the possible dominance of a misogynist Islamist fundamentalism in  
Kashmir. I think that Islamists will have a far harder time in  
Kashmir than the media would have us believe. But let us suppose that  
this is not the case. That in fact, upon 'Azadi', they will have a  
walkover. Would I then regret my choice to support the movement  
against the occupation? This response, that I am writing now, is an  
attempt at answering that question.

Let me put it this way, the immense concentration of military might  
that the Indian state maintains in Kashmir is evil, in and of itself.  
An opposition to it does not need justification with reference to my  
understanding of the actual or supposed innocence, or political  
correctness, of those who bear the brunt of the occupation, or, lead  
the resistance to it, or will overcome it.

So, I am never going to ask, or expect people (however many or few  
they may be) who are homophobic or patriarchal  in Kashmir to change  
their views, say on gay rights, or the place of women, or non- 
believers in society, which may be diametrically opposed to mine, as  
a necessary condition for my standing by them in their fight against  
the violence of the occupation. At the same time, I will refuse to  
mask my disagreement on key issues with those i stand by, and to keep  
insisting that the vision of 'azadi' that they hold out, in my view,  
is deeply flawed. Not to do so, is first of all disrespectful, to  
them, to me, to to the differences between them and me, to those in  
Kashmir, such as you, who are not like them, and to the  
responsibility of solidarity. If, they, embarassed by my libertarian  
intransigence, were to choose to shun me, and be inhospitable to the  
expressions of my solidarity, then, that would be their problem, not  
mine. I would still speak in the favour of their liberty. Not because  
I like them, but because I love liberty.

Let me make it very clear, my fight is against the military  
occupation of Kashmir by the Indian state. I am not in agreement,  
either with Kashmiri secular nationalism, or with the various strands  
of Islamism, or pan-Islamism that striate the Kashmiri political  
landscape about their vision of the future of Kashmir. I also do not  
buy the argument that the vision can be 'improved' upon later.  
Neither do I feel embarassed in any way about my disagreement. Nor  
have I ever chosen to conceal it.

But that does not mean that I agree with the way in which the  
occupation deprives secular nationalists in Kashmir, or Islamists,  
for that matter, and most of all -  the vast majority of ordinary  
people, of their liberty. Similarly, while I abhor the politics of  
Panun Kashmir, I know that the majority of Kashmiri pandits have been  
let down historically, both by the indian state, which manipulated  
them and cultivated a peculiarly intense paranoia within the Kashmiri  
pandit community to its own ends, and by those segments within the  
Kashmiri muslim community, which benefited from their departure.  
However, I refuse to privilege the suffering of either Kashmiri  
muslims or of Kashmiri pandits as the sole determinants of my  
position on Kashmir. My position on Kashmir has to do with the nature  
of the occupation, not with the identity, or the anxieties regarding  
identity, of either those who are suffering from the occupation, or  
those who have been displaced by the logic of the occupation. I see  
both as victims of the situation, and nothing irritates me more than  
a politics based on an exhibition of competitive victimhood.

Most of all, I do not believe that the indian state has any business  
being in Kashmir if the majority of the population of the valley do  
not want it there. If it is proved otherwise in a free and fair  
plebiscite, it would be a completely different matter, then, the  
'separatists', in my view, would have no business imposing their  
agenda on an unwilling population, were it to want to remain within  
India, and then, I would oppose that, (the separatists refusal to  
take into account what I am currently signposting as a possible,  
'hypothetical' endoesement of the Indian union by the democratic  
majority of the Kashmiri people) just as vigorously, as I currently  
oppose the hegemony of the Indian state, even though, I have no  
sympathy at all with Indian nationalism.

For me, that is a simple question of respect for a democratic  
principle. And to accept a democratic principle does not necessarily  
mean that one has to be in agreement with the sentiments that are  
democratically expressed. To return fleetingly to another  
conversation we have been having, had I been convinced, by the  
evidence clearly available to the world at large, that the  
Ahmadinejad regime did in fact enjoy the trust and confidence of the  
majority of the Iranian people, I would have been saddened, but I  
would have endorsed the acceptance of a deeply unfortunate verdict,  
with a determined hope that it will be different the next time  
around. I would not have been outraged in the way that I am today as  
a result of knowing that the election in Iran was stolen and a  
colossal exercise in fraud. I say this to point out that even if I  
were in disagreement with the future destiny that the people of  
Kashmir were to choose for themselves, I would still support their  
right to choose it, were they able to do so by free and fair means,  
un-encumbered by a military occupation.

Let us assume a worst case scenario, only for the sake of the  
argument (I do not believe this to be true, though, I am putting this  
forward only to clarify my position).

It may be that in the not so distant future the majority of the  
Kashmiri population do indeed agree to give themselves the worst,  
most reactionary, fundamentalist constitution or charter, that strips  
all minorities, women and other vulnerable sections of Kashmiri  
society no space or rights whatsoever. Will this mean that my  
position on the violence of the occupation will change. That I will  
suddenly see the occupation as some kind of 'lesser evil'. No, it  
will not. I will continue to argue against holding people in thrall  
against their will, even if their will is abhorrent to me. I will  
treat both as forces to be confronted, and if need be, militantly.  
The option of selecting one thing over another when both ought to be  
anathema is precisely the kind of false 'pragmatism' that i feel  
traps people into positions that they come to deeply regret later.

There are many people on this list whose views I totally detest, and  
argue vociferously against. Most of them are sincere Indian patriots,  
radicalized Hindus, many of them are Kashmiri pandits, who percieve  
themselves to be persecuted by what they call a 'pseudo- 
secular' ('sickular') establishment. I neither agree with, nor  
sympathize with this self-aggrandizing perception of victimhood that  
they exhibit. I also know that their fantasy includes the act of  
identifying people like me as being part of that 'establishment'  
which they perceive as 'oppressive', even if erroneously.

Yet, I have always personally maintained (often to the frustration of  
close friends and allies) that the nature of the space we have  
created on this list must ensure that they too should be at liberty  
to say what they feel, provided they do not abuse that liberty by  
spreading slander against individuals or threatening individuals with  
violence. That the only way to confront them is not by banning them,  
but by taking them head on, politically, which I now see this list  
doing, more or less organically.

I know for a fact that they have their exact and almost identical  
mirrors within Kashmiri today, including within the resistance,  
though their number or influence is nowhere near what the mainstream  
media makes it out to be with its Islamophobic hysteria. And I detest  
them too, the greybeards lost in their dreams of a fantasy caliphate,  
which can only mean a the replacement of an occupation with a  
'homegrown' prison, with an equal intensity.

But even if one of them were to be taken into custody under AFSPA, or  
tortured, or executed in an extra judicial encounter, I still think  
it would be the responsibility of any decent human being to stand by  
them and their families against an evil and draconian set of laws,  
regardless of what one felt about the politics of the victims. I  
would not wait, for the prisoner to change his mind, about how he  
sees people who are not of his faith, before holding out the  
solidarity that I believe is their right to expect and my  
responsibility to offer.

I completely disagree with the Catholic Church's view on most things,  
be it papal infallibility, reproductive rights, contraception, womens  
rights to safe and legal abortion, or homosexuality, and would in  
most circumstances be totally against the mainstream of Catholic  
doctrine. And yet, in a situation where catholics, or other  
christians are persecuted as a minority, as they were in Orissa, I  
see no problem at all in standing in solidarity with them. I do not,  
in those instances, expect them to clean up the church's stated  
position on homosexuality to align with mine as a precondition for  
the expression of my solidarity with them.

At the same time, I will always also speak in criticism of the  
catholic church's doctrine, and speak, wherever necesary and  
possible, in defence of dissident catholics, lapsed catholics and non- 
catholic, and non-believing critics of the church's reactionary  
positions.

This is the only 'pragmatic' approach that i can adopt to much (not  
all) of the resistance including in Kashmir (and anywhere else where  
conditions similar to those in Kashmir operate,including in much of  
India's north east, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh, Palestine, Tibet,  
Iranian, Iraqui and Turkish occupied Kurdistan, Balochistan, the  
Uighur areas in China, Chechnya and eslewhere), unconditional support  
for their right to liberty from an oppressive occupation or from the  
violence of state initiated armed assauts, and to seek self- 
determination or a defeat of the armed might of the state, combined  
with uncompromising and frank opposition to what I consider to be  
their deeply flawed politics and their narrow, restricted vision of a  
future, be it for Kashmir or anywhere else. I know of no other way of  
relating - not as colonizer to colonized -  but as an equal, to those  
who bear the brunt of a humiliation meted out to them in my name, and  
in the name, essentially, of every Indian citizen, and of every  
citizen of every occupying power - and as a person who tries to  
fashion a consistently  ethical politics.

I hope that I have made myself abundantly clear.

best,

Shuddha



On 09-Aug-09, at 11:03 PM, Junaid wrote:

> I, however, believe that many of us who live outside Kashmir, or  
> are relatively freer, need to have a pragmatic approach toward the  
> resistance. Most of us may be well-intentioned but when it comes to  
> lending actual solidarity to the Kashmiris we begin to ask them to  
> first achieve the Ideal before any support could be extended. We  
> trenchantly criticise a Kashmiri protestor for not simultaneously  
> raising the issues we have been talking about while he is battling  
> soldiers attacking his home.  At many times, it reduces to asking  
> Kashmiris to resist within a prescribed norm of decency. We feel no  
> actual sympathy for the bearded protestor for perhaps he represents  
> to us everything we abhor.
>
> And then there are those of us, who have extremely stringent  
> standards of what constitutes a legitimate, justified resistance-- 
> where abberations in the resistance are turned into its dominant  
> feature, while the structurally violent nature of the occupation  
> becomes aberations that can be improved. (For Kashmir, it means  
> making its resistance absolutely contextless, while Indian actions  
> get overcontextualised).

Shuddhabrata Sengupta
The Sarai Programme at CSDS
Raqs Media Collective
shuddha at sarai.net
www.sarai.net
www.raqsmediacollective.net