[Reader-list] Invitation for Discussion on Civil Society Concerns about Dialogue

[Lalit Ambardar]

Desperate attempt to draw analogy with the ‘Azadi-bara-e-Islam’ inspired bloody insurgency in Kashmir only trivialises the issue of Palestine in general. It belittles the continued pathetic plight of Palestinians & their right to coexist with Israel.
 
Islam flourishes in Kashmir & it is the Kashmiri Muslims & only Kashmiri Muslims who have been ruling Kashmir including the regions of Jammu & Ladakh ever since the state’s accession. It is these very Kashmiri Muslims who have at one time or the other been part of the main stream polity who now regard Kashmir as the unfinished agenda of the two nation theory based partition of India. Even the Kashmiri Islamists themselves have never complained of any cultural, linguistic persecution or economic deprivation. Even today when Kashmir is described as a conflict zone, average Kashmiri Muslim is many times better off than any other average Indian outside the valley. Given the ‘glamour’ & ‘luxury’ that Kashmiri separatism enjoys, the separatists prefer continuation of the status quo. Delete foreign sponsored guns & mercenaries; pan Islamic fervour & funds, the Kashmir issue stands more than half resolved.
Contrast it with the impoverished West Bank or Gaza strip…..???....
 
Regards all 
LA
Ps:
Following comment by Kuldip Nayar himself no less a sympathiser of separatists should help….
 
   http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-  newspaper/editorial/kashmir-without-a-soul-309
 
Kashmir without a soul 
By Kuldip Nayar /Dawn
Friday, 23 Oct, 2009 | 01:35 AM PST 







IT is unbelievable but Srinagar has changed beyond recognition in the past four years since I was there last. Right from the swanky new airport to the hotel, a distance of about 10 km, there is modern construction. 

However, trees have been cut down mercilessly to accommodate fancy thoroughfares. Walls running along the road have been demolished and the rubble is there for all to see. As I covered the journey to my hotel, I missed the old Kashmiri houses from where women with long trinkets would peer out. 

Shops are well stocked and full of customers. Too much money is flowing in and the guess is that it is from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and India in that order. The number of cars on the road is many times more than before. There are traffic jams and one has to keep the snarls in mind when one plans a trip. People move freely. I saw many women on the road without burka or headwear. 

Militancy is by and large over. Some terrorists strike once in a while. They attacked the police at Lal Chowk recently. But I get the feeling that the media magnifies stray incidents. When attacks were a regular feature, there was curfew after sunset. Now the people are on the road even at 11 pm. 

I did not see a single policeman on the road from the airport. Bunkers are mostly gone. I found one at Lal Chowk where some policemen stood with their fingers on the trigger. Papa One and Papa Two, the interrogation centres, have been closed. But detentions still take place. The biggest worry is the occasional disappearance of youth. Incidents like the rape of two women at Shopian are rare. But whenever they take place, they infuriate the people to the extent that they come out on the streets. 

The mode of search, whether of a vehicle or a person, has changed. Policemen are more polite and less intrusive. Still a member of a very respected family told me how he and his wife were stopped on the road. A policeman wanted to search the woman but on his insistence a female officer did so. 

The anti-India feeling is there beneath the surface. People are not afraid of saying so. However, pro-Pakistan sentiments have practically disappeared, more because of the Kashmiris’ perception of the mess in which the country is. 

I found the Hurriyat leaders sober. One leader told me that they had vibes from Delhi that something positive would emerge. They are looking forward to talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. There is an effort to have a consensus among the different parties, including the Hurriyat, before the prime minister’s arrival. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah wants New Delhi to talk to all political parties but has also emphasised that India should have a dialogue with Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir problem. 

It was an interesting talk which I heard when I was sitting with the Hurriyat leaders. A young Pakistani American told them that what had surprised him after the span of three years since his last visit was that Kashmir was “being assimilated by India quickly”. They were embarrassed but did not want to reply to him in my presence. 

Born in Kashmir, this young man is a member of a think tank in Washington. He told them that free state elections, watched by a large number of Americans on televisions, had made a great impression. He said they were beginning to believe that the problem was “more or less over”. 

Former chief minister Farooq Abdullah is more candid than his son, Omar, who is losing his popularity fast. Farooq says there are “paid lobbies” in the state to keep the problem alive. He accuses security forces, politicians and bureaucrats of having “a vested interest in the Kashmir crisis”. He has a point when he says that New Delhi has failed to make headway in resolving the problem. Not many solutions are hawked about now. 

There is a suggestion that both Kashmirs should be demilitarised, India withdrawing its forces from the valley and stationing them on its border and Pakistan doing likewise and pulling out its forces from Azad Kashmir. But this depends on India and Pakistan reaching a settlement, supported by the Kashmiris. 

The problem of Jammu and Ladakh has become ticklish. They do not want to stay with the valley. Jammu wants to join India and Ladakh wants a union territory status. True, the Hurriyat has never tried to woo Jammu and has seldom cared for the Kashmiri Pandits languishing there. Still both Jammu and Ladakh can be brought around if they were to be given an autonomous status by the valley within the state. 

I have no doubt that the Kashmir problem will be solved sooner or later. But too much has happened in the state in the past. This makes it difficult for the old Kashmir to come back to life. Familiar symbols are dying. Sufism has been replaced by assertive teachings. Kashmiri music is dying out because society has been forced to acquire a religious edge. Old crafts attract fewer artisans because there is a race to earn a quick buck. The wazwan, a string of Kashmiri dishes served at one sitting, is still there but new cooks are hard 

to get. 

The reintegration of Muslims and Pandits appears difficult. An Islamic identity has taken shape, reportedly more in the countryside. Kashmiriyat, a secular ethos, is beyond repair. The animosity among the three regions Kashmir, Jammu and Ladakh, may dilute but will remain. It may still remain the state of Jammu and Kashmir. But its soul would be missing.

The writer is a leading journalist based in Delhi. 

 
> Date: Sun, 15 Nov 2009 01:40:21 +0530
> From: indersalim at gmail.com
> To: reader-list at sarai.net
> Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Invitation for Discussion on Civil Society Concerns about Dialogue
> 
> 1.
> 
> A little working parody to understand Kashmir: ‘I went to terrorism,
> as to the liberation as to the light’
> 
> I quote, Jean Genet. “ I went to Theft, as to the Liberation, as to the Light “
> J.P.Sartre saw a saint in Genet, and I guess he indeed was. Genet
> supported Palestinian Armed struggled, but declared with clarity that
> his support is not for another bureaucracy, another Army, another
> state with another boarder for other humanity to stop from entering
> into it. He supported Black Panthers in America for their underground
> struggle against the White Racist Politics. His own grave is somewhere
> in Morocco. He had no address, no home, no relatives, but too much of
> love in his heart. Love of higher order indeed.
> 
> This way, Genet’s Palestine was not limited to Palestine only, but it
> spilled like fragrance beyond that piece of land. So, can we see
> Kashmir issue too turning into another Palestine issue beyond mere
> physical volume of Kashmir Issue. Can we see Kashmir issue beyond
> history even, beyond written references and paper work, accessions,
> and endless debates emerging out of that. can we have some alternative
> approach to this...
> 
> Genet himself was the product of ‘ghettoized’ life in France: a
> liberated, egalitarian, democratic and free France. He was
> illegitimate and had no place to go, but lived in a French social
> reform-centre which was a factory to make thieves, pimps etc from
> homeless children in France. In his book, Miracle of the Rose, Genet
> praised his friend who killed a guard in the Prison. The convict was
> guillotined later, but he saw him fainting like a woman, on the day
> his hair was cut before execution. Genet saw a prophet in him. A
> martyr in other sense, for whom we can not have a shrine in any system
> of committed worshipers, but Genet seemed to elevate characters like
> him to the status of a Saint. He, himself saw very ordinary ‘planner’,
> in comparison to a ‘ crasher’ ,until Sartre wrote a 600 page book on
> him: Saint Genet.
> 
> Kashmir, Palestine, and now Afghanistan and Swat like areas too are
> perhaps products of a ‘ghettoized’ life forced on them by superior
> powers. Kashmir may be not a ghettoized place if ,we search literal
> meaning in it, but politically, yes. Kashmir too looked for an
> identity of its own which was denied by Afghans, by Mughals by Dogras,
> by British, and then finally by the state of India. The entire
> kashmiri population ( minus a miniscule minority ) questioned the
> merger of valley with rest of India.
> 
> One such was, for example, Ghulam Nabi Gilkar . I read on him in a
> essay from book BOUQUET: a tribute to unsung heroes of kashmir, by
> JKCCS) which becomes a case in the point to understand how such a
> ‘ghettoized’ life can gift an identity crises to a normal human
> being, who was jailed by both Pakistanis in POK and by Indians in IOK.
> The essay rightly deconstructs some heroic sheen from Sheikh Abdullah,
> who perhaps ditiched him, but it is too quickly written piece on a
> hero called GN Gilkar. One can see, some Rosy Fragrance coming out of
> his grave in POK, which is similar to one coming out of dead
> Mujaheedeen homes who died fighting Americans in Afganistan, as we
> read in Landscapes of Jihad by Faizal Devi Ji’s book.
> 
> Recently, Yasin Malik rightly pointed out in Delhi that Kashmir has no
> beggers , but why all Kashmiris dislike India, in spite of the fact
> that so much money is being pumped in the valley. Is it somehow
> similar to France which once maintained reform centres for orphans,
> which only produced criminals. The criminals who were proud of their
> violent activities, murder, rape and what not. Has ‘ ghettoization
> of Kashmir,too, here, in political sense, produced freedom fighters
> called terrorists who justify killing, of not only Indian security
> forces, but anybody whom they feel are an impediment to their cause.
> Islamisation is a term invented by the west, like we have terms for
> criminals, and nothing for those who loot oil, land and other
> resources from the others....
> 
> While reading Genet, one comes across stories which narrate the
> changing pattern of thieves, pimps and other such elements. Some of
> them indeed want to settle down and live an domestic life ( so called
> normal ), which becomes a challenge for them. For their second half
> time of life, they produce different set of rules to fit in a society
> as well as identifying themselves with their first half of life, which
> was explicitly criminal once. A differnet imbalance sets in, as i
> have recently posted about two friends ( one hindu and other muslim )
> who met after a while and victimized a woman, unwittingly.
> 
> So we hear, amazing stories from French Reform centres and how
> characters develop into full fledged criminals, and also stories from
> Kashmir about how these ghettoized people narrate their pasts and
> betrayls even. In Delhi, Teen Murti, no one could answer Yasin Malik
> that why he was arrested in pre 90 election when elections were openly
> rigged by Indian State in collaboration with local partiies there. He
> openly blamed the civil society for his surrendering of armed
> struggle. He used the word ‘ cheat’. He is a character from Genet, if
> seen politically.
> 
> Reading Genet one can see how characters use all the systems of
> thought to overcome their past, but cant get rid of their ghettoized
> tag. A Kashmiri is a Kashmiri, a muslim is a muslim etc. Yasin Malik
> rightly pointed out that how power struggle guided Kashmiri Pandits to
> look towards Delhi, when Muslims in the valley started getting
> educated. It is not about religion then, he pointed out.
> 
> 
> 2.
> 
> ‘Global’ is a handy term which is not limited to commerce only but
> also to other spheres of life. All the political conflicts are in
> fact global in nature, although they tend to concern few of that
> region in the first place, but a deeper understanding on how
> realities are interconnected which marks every soul on this earth in
> a single unique way.
> 
> Perhaps, things are moving at a very different pace than we realize in
> actuality. For example, internet itself has mingled with our banking,
> media, and even marriages are fixed or unfixed through net. ‘
> Internet is not a spectacle’ I quote Jacques Ranciere, and to say so,
> he perhaps, meant that a huge civil society and its operative
> mechanisms have merged its genetic fibre with the digital wave. So
> take it more seriously.
> 
> So, what about political debates being settled on the Net Itself,
> similar to the one which was held at Teen Murti ( Nehru Memorial New
> Delhi ) couple of days back: POLITICAL FUTURE OF KASHMIR, or even now
> organized by Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) in
> Sringar Kashmir itself. Not that face to face things consume lot of
> time and energy and deliver very little, ( to become tamasha in the
> end, as Yasin Malik pointed out ) but other means of communication at
> the same time have become too, but some of them cost effective in the
> least, and so need to be considered as vital tools to settle
> conflicts. So both things do exist.
> 
> 3.
> 
> Khurram Parvez’s invite on the List for the debate on Kashmir issue
> was followed by Sonia Jabbar’s forward on Govt Report: Land Reform. In
> a deeper way I find both these post interconnected. This blend of
> thought is happening now, and which if taken seriously can lead us to
> actual sustainability on the earth.
> 
> Both the issues are about land. Kashmir was a piece of land for Hari
> Singh’s grandfather who bought it for 7.5 million rupees, which has
> snowballed into this Kashmir issue with LoC between two Nuclear
> States. On the other hand, Corporate Networking is hell bent to own
> the land which belongs to poor and indigenous people of this earth and
> the partners in their fight against the very poor is the State. Dont
> we know how land lords are always been critical with polticial
> struggles. They like stats quoes, They like fencing, walls and
> laws....
> 
> In Kashmir it has taken the shape of a political ‘tamasha’ (
> spectacle) between those who want just settlement of the issue and
> those who think Satus Quo is the last word. In North Eastern Regions,
> we have State’s Salwa Judam+security forces and Maoists+people for
> just solution of the land problem which the state thinks is right in
> dealing with so called menace. The state has no mechanism but sheer
> power to deal with these issues.
> 
> So another ‘ ghettoized’ life is emerging with vengeance. Genet was
> right, but now it looks violence is helping the State to crush the
> dissent more ruthlessly. sad .
> 
> Sad, no solution are in sight
> 
> With love and regards
> Inder salim
> 
> 
> On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 5:46 PM, Khurram Parvez <khurramparvez at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > Dear Friends,
> >
> >
> > Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) cordially invites you to participate in a discussion, “Civil Society Concerns about Dialogue”.
> >
> > The programme will be held at:
> > Hotel Grand Mumtaz
> > 11 Maulana Azad Road , Srinagar
> > Phone: 2450281/2452548
> >
> > The programme will be convened on:
> > Sunday 15th November 2009 at 01:00 p.m.
> >
> > The aim of the
> > program is to discuss civil society concerns about the expected
> > dialogue between what the Indian state calls “all stakeholders” in
> > Jammu and Kashmir and New Delhi . It is of paramount importance that
> > the content of this dialogue is clearly understood among the civil
> > society, the primary stakeholders in any such process that embarks upon
> > determining the political status of a people.             Dialogue by its
> > very nature is between two equal stakeholders. The stakeholders as far
> > as the Indian pronouncements are concerned are not clearly defined at
> > all. Indian Prime Minister has already made government of India ’s
> > agenda about the Kashmir dialogue clear. New Delhi is entering the
> > dialogue for “final reconciliation so that peace can be achieved for
> > development and reconstruction” in Jammu and Kashmir .
> > In this program
> > we would like to facilitate a discussion on the below mentioned
> > concerns about the objectives and possible directions of this fresh
> > engagement with New Delhi that is most likely to begin soon.
> >
> > Clear acknowledgement of people’s liberation
> > struggle in its true historical perspective should be the basis of
> > initiating any kind of talks/dialogue.Indian state is talking in contradictory terms.
> > Its army commanders are labeling street protests as terrorism and
> > vowing not to leave the civilian areas, while its home minister is
> > talking about a “unique political solution for Jammu and Kashmir .”
> > Besides India has not reviewed its arbitrary constitutional position on
> > Kashmir .Who is going to talk to whom? If the stakeholders
> > include pro-India participatory parties like the PDP and NC, who are
> > already wedded to accession of J&K to India , then what is there to
> > negotiate about? Should leaders who represent resistance to Indian rule
> > in J&K agree to be equals in a dialogue with those who have carried
> > forward Indian policies in the disputed region since its existence? If
> > so, then the dialogue is about administrative matters, transfer/sharing
> > of power, Indian security concerns and not about determining the
> > political status/sovereignty of Jammu and Kashmir . What is the negotiating position that a section
> > of Kashmir resistance leaders are taking to the table? Will the
> > dialogue be guided by the principle of right to self determination? The political struggle in Jammu & Kashmir has
> > been against Indian rule. Are those who would enter a dialogue with New
> > Delhi going to talk about disengagement with India in any other form
> > than the right of self determination? The Indian Home Minister does not have the
> > authority to discuss sovereignty. Can he be accepted as New Delhi ’s
> > interlocutor in any dialogue for the final status of Jammu &
> > Kashmir? The agenda and format of the dialogue for political rights must be transparent and made public.If and when any conclusions are agreed upon
> > between the parties, how is the agreement proposed to be put to public
> > vote in order for it to be democratically endorsed by the people – the
> > primary stakeholders? And, how would the condition on ground be made conducive for that endorsement to materialize?Will this talks/dialogue process dilute the international character of the Kashmir issue.
> >
> > It is also
> > proposed that at the end of this discussion we would reach a consensus
> > about civil society questions to and demands from those leaders who may
> > go to the negotiating table with New Delhi representing us.
> >
> > Please don’t hesitate to contact us for any clarification or further information.
> >
> > We are looking forward to your participation.
> >
> > Thank you,
> >
> > Program Coordinator
> > Khurram Parvez
> > Mobile : 9419013553
> > Email: kparvez at kashmirprocess.org
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _________________________________________
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> 
> --
> 
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