[Reader-list] "No time for the valley"

[Sanjay Kak]

Cutting Corners - Ashok Mitra
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100827/jsp/opinion/story_12849670.jsp

 NO TIME FOR THE VALLEY
- The Indian nation is alienated from Kashmir

Alienation has three facets: (a) I feel alienated from you, but you do
not feel alienated from me; (b) you are disenchanted with me, I do not
however reciprocate your feelings; and, finally, (c) it is a case of
mutual alienation, you dislike me, I too hate you like poison.

Over the years we have been asserting with some vehemence that none of
these three species of alienation applies in the relationship between
India and Kashmir; not only are we enamoured of Kashmir and its
people, but the Kashmiris — the overwhelming majority of them — are
also equally warm-hearted towards us, and there is no question at all
of any mutual alienation. Perhaps this claim was not altogether wide
of the mark in 1947 when Sheikh Abdullah, a great admirer of India’s
freedom movement, had emerged as Sher-e-Kashmir and his National
Conference was the jewel in the eyes of the Kashmiris. The Sheikh’s
passionate love affair with India infected his followers as well.

Those idyllic days did not last long. Sheikh Abdullah had, by 1953,
got so alienated from New Delhi — or it could have been the other way
round — that he was dislodged from the chief ministerial slot and
clamped into prison. The story has been full of tension and confusion
since then. Indian leaders have continued to describe Kashmir as an
inalienable part of the country and Kashmiris as flesh of our flesh.
They have, besides, kept up the pretence of Kashmiris feeling the same
way towards us.

In terms of the contemporary reality, this is sheer bunkum. The valley
is now reduced to a sullen tract. Anger and resentment against India
have accumulated over a hundred issues. Sometimes these explode in
sporadic bursts of violence, including destruction of public property
and incessant stone-pelting of police and security personnel. Phases
of such violence have a cycle of their own. After a while, the riots
die down and relative quiet descends on the valley. But
dissatisfaction with the state of things does not abate.

The Indian establishment has a handy explanation for these occasional
uprisings: every time infiltration and instigation intensify across
the border, there is a fresh bout of mass agitation, accompanied by
renewed violence. This rigmarole has persisted for more or less the
past two-and-a-half decades. The situation had taken a slightly
different turn when a truce was signed with the Sheikh in the
mid-1970s. The fat, though, was again in the fire following the
ejection of the Sheikh’s son and successor, Farooq Abdullah, from the
post of chief minister in the summer of 1984, the same fate that
visited the Sheikh himself 31 years ago. Farooq and his family might
have subsequently reconciled themselves with the powers-that-be in New
Delhi, but the valley people have not, most of the flock constituting
the rock solid base of the National Conference crossed over to
alienation.

It has been a ceaseless restlessness ever since. Kashmiris have
pursued their day-to-day avocations hemmed in by security forces and
constantly under alarm that their claustrophobic way of life might
never end. New Delhi has stubbornly kept silent on Kashmir’s demand
for recognition of its distinct ethos, a demand Article 370 has failed
to satisfy. The valley people aspire for much more. What this
additionality is, or could be, is a matter of discord, but the urge
for something extra has been pretty widespread. Occasional elections
and their outcome do not tell even part of the story. Behind the
façade of the constitutional apparatus rests the nitty-gritty of rude
fact: the valley is an occupied territory; remove for a day India’s
army and security forces and it is impossible to gauge what might
transpire at the next instant. Some of the stone-pelters may nurse
illusions about Pakistan, some may think in terms of a sovereign,
self-governing Kashmir, but they certainly do not want to be any part
of India.

After an uneasy interregnum of sorts, the valley is once more on the
boil. Almost every day, crowds assemble in different street corners of
Srinagar and the smaller towns, and target with abuses and stones the
police and security personnel. Housewives, whose only weaponry are
kitchen utensils and their bare hands, scream slogans protesting
against this or that reported act of infamy committed by the army or
the Central Reserve Police Force. It could be the allegation of a fake
encounter killing where the victims have been young people from their
immediate neighbourhood, or the whisking away of a couple of school
children for interrogation while they were frolicking in the
playground, or an incident where several houses have been ransacked in
the name of search-and-comb operations, or a report of outraging the
modesty of a nubile girl while she was out shopping.

Discontent, howsoever diverse in its source, is out. It is an
aesthetically obscene daily sight on the television screen: women of
various age-groups and backgrounds, fury and agony writ on their
faces, confronting the forces of law and order equipped with AK
rifles. Some of the women even dare to try to snatch away the arms
from the clutches of this or that security man. The rifles suddenly
roar, a few women are injured on a stray day even as killings take
place on a regular basis resulting from encounters between the
rampaging youth and the forces.

This has been, and is, the ground reality in Kashmir. There is no
report of any perceptible reaction in the rest of the Union of India.
Forget the political or legal disputations, it is the ungainly
asymmetry of the spectacle that should wound human sensitivity: this
battle line of security forces armed to the hilt on one side and
weaponless housewives, young and old, on the other. The issue of
ethics apart, it is aesthetically an atrocious asymmetry. But while
some airy-fairy concern is expressed by individual politicians — and
there is cursory talk of a multi-party delegation to be sent to
Srinagar — the great Indian nation, with its load of civilization
stretching 5,000 years, is extraordinarily mum.

The media can afford to be full of narratives of sickeningly shady
deals linked to the preparatory arrangements for the impending
Commonwealth Games. But the debauching of civilization in Kashmir, no
matter what its underlying reason, creates no ripples. One is suddenly
hit by a fearsome realization: Indians by and large do not perhaps
feel at all, this way or that, about the valley’s people; in other
words, the Indian nation is alienated from Kashmir.

The onus suddenly shifts to India. We have till now, at best, conceded
that while we consider Kashmir to be inalienable from the rest of the
land, some Kashmiris, led astray by outsiders, might feel distant from
us. Our other-worldliness with respect to current events in the valley
evokes the suspicion that we could not care less about Kashmiris or,
for that matter, what troubles their womenfolk. This indifference is
accompanied by a reluctance to face facts. A handful of Kashmiris, for
instance, those close to the Abdullah clan, might still nurture
affection towards India. But an incomparably larger number do not.

The fatuity of the prime minister’s so-called all-party conference
notwithstanding, even those considered Mehbooba Mufti’s camp-
followers are having intense second thoughts in view of New Delhi’s
obstinate persistence with the line that, but for Pakistani
machinations, everything would be fine and excellent in Kashmir. In
any case, if the media and the mood of a large cross-section of
practising politicians are taken, India has other priorities, Kashmir
occupies a low position in the agenda.

A postscript seems called for. Activist women’s groups are a dime a
dozen in the country. They are a determined lot, always on the prowl,
no infringement of women’s rights escapes their attention. Official
commissions at both Central and state levels also act as watchdogs to
protect and expand the space for women. A proliferation of
non-governmental organizations are equally active purportedly to serve
the same mission. Moreover, quite a number of political parties have
separate women’s cells to strengthen their base among women and, in
the process, further the cause of women’s liberation. Hardly any of
them has, however, bothered to speak up on what afflicts the battling
women of Srinagar or bothered to travel to Kashmir to study the
problem at first hand. No statement concerning the developing
situation in the valley in which women are so transparently involved
has been forthcoming from any of them. It is as if they have
collectively decided to put across the message that India has no time
for Kashmir; India’s women, too, have excluded the women of Kashmir
from their agenda.