[Reader-list] Kashmir's young , educated , angry and politically aware

[shuddha at sarai.net]

Kashmir's young, educated, angry and politically aware

9 Aug 2010, 0031 hrs IST, Parvaiz Bukhari
Economic Times,
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/6277584.cms?prtpage=1

They are being called the children of conflict, but the stone throwers in
Kashmir today represent a connection with their political history free of the
distorting prisms that for long have twisted the local worldview and their
aspiration of a future outside the Indian union. 

This summer the identity of a stone-pelter became something that an average
Kashmiri began to feel proud of, the frontline of the articulation of a
political demand. For he is young, educated, angry, brutalised and politically
aware. He demands to be heard, to express what he wants, thinks and feels. He
supports what his earlier avatar, the armed militant, stood for. But in the
post 9/11 world he is not allowing himself to be branded a terrorist. 

Shabir (name changed) is an internet savvy doctoral student at the University
of Kashmir who comes across as a mild mannered character. Shabir hurled a stone
for the first time ever in 2008 at a contingent of paramilitaries during the
Amarnath land row. From the window of his house in a congested downtown
Srinagar area, Shabir says he saw some CRPF soldiers call a few young boys over
to them and lined them up. “Azadi chahiye tum ko, ye lo (So, you want freedom.
Here, take it.) Each one of them was slapped several times,” he said. “My
blood boiled in anger.” The next time there was a protest in his area Shabir
joined it and hurled stones at the men in uniform. “I cleansed myself of the
feeling of helplessness and I did not need a gun.” 

Apart from being a participant in Kashmir's own intifada, Shabir is pursuing
his research and hopes to become a university teacher. He also spends long
hours at his internet-enabled laptop digging out details of events that have
marked Kashmir's bloody history from 1931 when people rose against the Dogra
autocracy. He shows notes he has prepared situating the present in the
political struggles by Kashmiris in the past. One of his notes has a
statistical chart of death and loss listing rapes, torture, custodial killings
and disappearances by the army, BSF and police. At the end is a question and
his own answer to it. “Can India afford justice in Kashmir? No.” 

“I circulate this among students who ask me what the future of Kashmiris will
be like,” says Shabir. 










Amid curfew a few days ago in the aftermath of the stone throwing clashes in
Srinagar I caught up with a young man and asked him if he was also protesting.
He said he was one of the most “timid” of men. A few others standing by
smiled and went away. As I persisted, the young man invited me home and called
a few others over. A postgraduate student, he said he shivered on seeing a dead
body or blood of which he had seen a lot. Last year, he said, on hearing of
protests in his area he returned early from university. When the protest was
over he met a taxi driver who had just returned from Leh and had found it
difficult to reach home. “Visibly tired and lost, he was quietly leaning
against an electricity pole when I left him and walked on,” the university
student said. “Suddenly I heard a gun shot,” he said. “I looked back and
saw him fallen face down on the road.” That day the university student
participated in the protest that broke out after the taxi driver's killing.
“I throw stones at the CRPF. I overcame fear. I do not want to be timid in
the face of death.” 


Listening on, a college student said he prays that he would never have to go to
India for anything. “I do not throw stones but I join stone-pelters because I
think it is important to add my voice to what they are protesting for,” he
said. “The world should listen to us and not just those who claim to
represent us.” 

But it is not just the young and ‘educated’ alone who rain stones, shaping
a new discourse over Kashmir. I recently worked my way to a group of stone
throwers in a relatively new 'flashpoint' of protests in Srinagar. One of them,
an illiterate businessman, displayed an amazing understanding of electoral
politics in Kashmir - the main source of his anger. On how the seven-phased
assembly elections were conducted in 2008, he hit the nail on the head. “We
were told the elections were held for local issues and not for or against azadi
from India,” he said. “We voted for something and the world was told we
voted for India. Was it a referendum?” 

Today the protester on the streets of Kashmir understands that mainstream media
in India is the biggest participant, besides the politician, in muzzling and
misinterpreting his voice. And the stone flung at everything that symbolises
state authority has become the voice of a neglected people who are subjected to
extreme militarisation and believe the world is not interested in changing their
plight. 

(Parvaiz Bukhari is a journalist based in Srinagar)