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

[Inder Salim]

Dear Shuddha, Dear Jnuaid

so far so good. both of you have debated passionately about Kashmir. i
am glad to read all of it.
Shuddha has rightly pointed out :

"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"

and very few on the list will post their disagreement on it, unless
the person is a old nationlist nothing wrong even with that, as long
as it peacefully done.

i quote Shuddha further.

"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"

This is really true. and it is here, i am also inclined to write about
those 'cynical' voices in kashmir who destest any revival or mention
of cultural activism in kashmir. And i think we need to applaud those
who contiuned to engage themselves with differnet cultural
expressioins in the valley. The threat  from those who consider it as
conspiracy against the freedom movement is real. I really endorese the
view that expressions on art and culture should be left alone and
allowed to reflect the situaition or a reality or a history of a place
without any pressure or threat.

So, on the ground there are two schools in kashmir. One, which is
mainly dominated by journalists/intellectuals and other graduates who
think that art and culture can wait till KASHMIR ISSUE is resolved.
and the second school is of the opinion that art, music and culutre
should be left alone. for example, i met an artist in Srinagar
recently, who strongly debated with his friends on the issue. He
agreed with me that the domain of art should be left alone, to
express, to deal with the issue(s), and there is no questiion of
accepting the heirarchary of the first shcool.

Strangly, the first shcool, which is indiffernt to ( both old and new
) cultural practices, are overwhelmingly dominating our social set up,
both inside the kashmir and outside. Culure was always on the
backfoot, but yes, post 1990 scenario in kashmir has given ample
ammunation to the indifferent-culture front in kashmir.

The presence of Indian security forces in each and very mohalla in
kashmir has really aborted any attempts to restore cultural life in
kashmir. It is here, Dr. Shapiro's term ' culural annhilation' should
be understood. The uprising in 1990 along with the unprecedented
violence by hidden players in kashmir ushered in an era where Indian
Security Foreces can be squrely blamed for this Cultural Annhilation
in kashmir. The shoool which is already indifferent to anything other
than 'freedom' issue in kashmir  was alway grinning about the little
cultural face in kashmir. Then the reasona of that ' cultural
annhilation' were of course different. For example, wine shops and
cinema halls were attacked during Sheikh Abdullah's time. The Jammati
islami face of KASHmiri politics was always encouraging the first
school, and they must be happy that they have a deep net working of
sorts at their command.  The loss of kashmiri sufi msic and poetry in
that case is not regretted by this first school, but the second
school, pro- culture, who happen to favour ' independance ' of kashmir
 at the same time want to understand kashmiryat on their own terms.
The first school's priority is a merger of kahmir with pakistan, which
i feel, are intellecutally in minority.

It is the second school, pro-cutlure which is open to debates of
'multiculturalism based on ethics' in a new free kashmir as against
the first shcool.

the question is then what is culture. Perhaps, it is not simply
talking about culture as a token presence in our daily life. But a
reinvigorated face of culture does mean some intense music, poetry,
theratre and writing workshops on all subjects, No, it must be
something more than what we already know.  Yes, anything, of course,
but  without any pressures or guidelines. The second school of thought
needs encouragement and support.

The question therefore arises, if there is some support coming from
indian institutiions to initiate some exercises with a long term
benefit in sight. what then? I know there, are some  Left leaning art
organizations in India who refuse funding by Ford or something which
has american name attached to it. I dont see much merit in the
aversion to the source of of funding. Again, it is open for debate...

REcently there was workshop conducted by INTACH for a workshop on
theatre, writing, photography, and painting in downtown srinagar. I
was there, as a visitor, and i found the participants extremely
involved and happy to be part of that exercise.

I guess, such exposures on culture and other modern ways of
understanding it only help the individuals to understand their
respective present/conflicts in a better way, than living in
isolation.


with love
is




On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 1:13 PM, Shuddhabrata Sengupta<shuddha at sarai.net> wrote:
> 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
>
>
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