[Reader-list] Azadi(Freedom) and swaraj( Self-Rule): Save the idea of India

[Bipin Trivedi]

Yes you have posted here so addressed to you but somehow forgot to send cc to ananya which I have sent now. Thanks


-----Original Message-----
From: gowhar fazli [mailto:gowharfazili at yahoo.com] 
Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2010 10:40 PM
To: Bipin Trivedi
Cc: reader-list at sarai.net
Subject: RE: [Reader-list] Azadi(Freedom) and swaraj( Self-Rule): Save the idea of India

Dear Bipin,

You have erroneously addressed your response and challenge to me while it should have been addressed/sent to the author,  Ananya Vajpayee an Indian professor who teaches in the U.S. probably at Columbia. I simply shared her article in public interest. 

warmly,
gowhar

--- On Sun, 8/29/10, Bipin Trivedi <aliens at dataone.in> wrote:

> From: Bipin Trivedi <aliens at dataone.in>
> Subject: RE: [Reader-list] Azadi(Freedom) and swaraj( Self-Rule): Save the idea of India
> To: "'gowhar fazli'" <gowharfazili at yahoo.com>
> Cc: "sarai-list" <reader-list at sarai.net>
> Date: Sunday, August 29, 2010, 1:22 PM
> Dear Gowhar,
> 
> Your suggestion perhaps to the Kashmir solution, will it
> not be one sided?
> 
> So, you believe that authority imposing curfew
> unnecessarily. If disturbance continued, curfew bound to be
> there. Concentrate to stop the disturbance or put pressure
> on separatists to stop the disturbance, curfew will be
> removed automatically. No one wants to put armed forces in
> civilian area willingly. So, let the protest end, military
> will leave from the civilian area. Put pressure to stop
> infiltration across the border and terrorism activity, armed
> forces will removed fully from the civilian area and
> restricted to border places only.
> 
> You said that Kashmiri leaders from the prisons should be
> released, again one sided suggestion? Are they ready to give
> affidavit that they will not involv in any separatists
> activity? 
> 
> Ruin in the valley? Who ruined it? It was not ruined by
> India or even common people of Kashmir. It is ruined by
> separatists of Kashmir involved in anti national activity
> supported by the rogue state, Pakistan.
> 
> Who are you to suggest to government about foreign affairs.
> Earlier many times government tried to talk in open manner
> with Kashmir separatist leaders, what was the result?
> Separatist insists Pakistan for joint talk reflects their
> malign intention. Why they want to include pak in talk? Who
> is pak to decide in our internal India matter?
> 
> You quote Gandhi and advised to learn India from Gandhi
> taught lessons. Do not forget that while pin pointing
> something, 3 fingers lean towards you. All the separatists
> and Pak have to learn lesson of ahimsa from Gandhi.
> 
> Thanks
> Bipin Trivedi
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: reader-list-bounces at sarai.net
> [mailto:reader-list-bounces at sarai.net]
> On Behalf Of gowhar fazli
> Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2010 6:55 AM
> To: reader-list at sarai.net
> Subject: [Reader-list] Azadi(Freedom) and swaraj(
> Self-Rule): Save the idea of India
> 
> Azadi(Freedom) and swaraj( Self-Rule): Save the idea of
> India
>  
>  A few things must happen in Kashmir before a political
> solution is found. There have to be public apologies and
> reparations from both the state and central governments for
> the deaths of civilians, particularly minors and women, in
> the summer of 2010. Curfew has to be lifted. Bereaved
> families have to be permitted peaceful, dignified and safe
> funerals for their dead. Orders to shoot-at-sight and fire
> live ammunition at protesters should be withdrawn with
> immediate effect. Representatives of the state government
> must show greater empathy for the people who elected them,
> especially by visiting the wounded in hospitals. 
> 
> A phased scale-back of paramilitary forces has to be
> announced, with numbers and dates, to be executed over the
> next three years, until eventually the Armed Forces Special
> Powers Act (AFSPA) may be repealed altogether and troops
> confined to border areas only. Policies that provide
> monetary incentives and fast-track promotions in
> counter-insurgency operations must be scrapped. 
> 
> Kashmiri leaders in prisons or under house arrest should be
> released and allowed to go about their business, including
> addressing public meetings, talking to the press, leading
> prayers at mosques and shrines, and entering into talks with
> the government. A timebound government-appointed commission
> of independent investigators needs to prepare a
> comprehensive report on the deaths, disappearances, unlawful
> detention, rapes and torture cases in Jammu and Kashmir,
> between 1990 and 2010, to be presented to the Indian
> Parliament. 
> 
> All of this is not just imperative for Kashmir to survive
> the immediate crisis — it is necessary for India too, to
> weather this storm. If Kashmir’s future is the primary
> responsibility of the people of Kashmir, then it is the
> responsibility of Indians to save the idea of India and
> bring it back from its near-total ruin in the Valley. One
> thing all players can agree on: the house has to be set in
> order without any reference whatsoever, in the first place,
> to third parties. 
> After the Indian state and the people of Kashmir have taken
> these steps together , then comes the time to open up the
> issue for multilateral talks, with Pakistan , the UN, the
> US, and international humanitarian organisations. The
> process cannot reach the point of dialogue without an
> intensive period of soul-searching , homework and justice
> within the Indian Union. The Pakistanbacked militancy of the
> ’90s is in the past. Once India has established the rule
> of law to its utmost capacity, I am convinced it will have
> nothing to fear from any external agency. Kashmiris may
> still demand partial autonomy or complete secession, but
> that is a bridge to be crossed only after a bridge has been
> built. 
> 
> Talking about Gandhi in Kashmir (or in Maoist India) seems
> laughable. But Gandhi it was whom India listened to, when it
> fought hardest for its own decolonisation between 1920 and
> 1950. Throughout this time, the Mahatma tried to establish
> certain core ethical values for a new politics of swaraj.
> Among these were ideas that had a long history on the Indian
> subcontinent, such as ahimsa. We usually translate this as
> “non-violence”, but what Gandhi really meant was the
> moral courage necessary to relate to another person without
> the desire to harm him. 
> 
> THIS moral courage is difficult to achieve between any two
> persons, but it is hardest, and most essential, that ahimsa
> prevail in the relationship between adversaries, so Gandhi
> believed. He got the lesson of ahimsa, oddly enough, not
> from Asoka the Mauryan emperor of the 3rd century BC, who
> became a pacifist after causing great carnage , nor from
> Jain doctrine, which enshrines ahimsa as a key practice, but
> from the Bhagavad Gita, in which Krishna teaches Arjuna how
> to put up a good fight, without compromising his basic sense
> of morality and decency. 
> 
> But Gandhi also insisted on satya, the truth, enshrined in
> India’s national motto, satyameva jayate, “truth alone
> prevails” . In addition, he wanted India to recover its
> oldest tenets of ethical sovereignty : anukrosha, from the
> Ramayana , the capacity to feel another’s pain;
> aanrishamsya, from the Mahabharata, the elimination of
> cruelty from one’s conduct, which Yudhisthira recognised
> as the highest dharma, the norm-ofnorms , especially for a
> king. Gandhi sought not just political independence from
> British rule, but a truly liberating political culture,
> grounded in age-old ethical norms like non-violence , moral
> courage, non-cruelty , truthfulness and compassion. Without
> these values in place, he said, India would never be free,
> never have true swaraj. 
> Most Indians have little sympathy for an independent
> Kashmiri nation. But an Indian mother would feel the pain of
> her Kashmiri counterpart whose teenage son was brutally
> killed while shouting slogans in a street demonstration. 
>  
>  
> Ananya Vajpeyi 
> Ph.D., University of Chicago (2004); M.Phil., University of
> Oxford (1996); Rhodes Scholar (1994-96)
> Areas of Special Interest
>  
> Professor Vajpeyi teaches South Asian history, with a focus
> on caste, violence and non-violence, modernity, as well as
> nationalism and the state. She also teaches courses on
> imperialism, colonialism and decolonization in Asia and
> Africa during the 19th and 20th centuries. In addition, she
> is interested in intellectual history and the comparative
> history of ideas in India and Europe.
> Contact Information 
> 
> Office: McCormack 4-626
> Phone:           
>    617-287-6877     
>    617-287-6877
> E-mail: ananya.vajpeyi at umb.edu
> 
> 
>       
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