[Reader-list] Kashmir as Living Hell by Giogiana Violante

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear All,

Here is an account of daily life nowadays,  in Srinagar, Kashmir,  
through the eyes of a woman student (a westerner) currently resident  
in Kashmir University.

best

Shuddha

-------------------------

India’s brutality has turned Kashmir into a living hell

http://www.thecommentfactory.com/indias-brutality-has-turned-kashmir- 
into-a-living-hell-3472/

By Giogiana Violante


This is the first time in weeks I have had access to the internet. I  
have not been allowed to receive or send text messages for three  
months. Just like all Kashmiris my telephone has been barred from  
such contact. The local news channels have been banned. India  
controls everything here. And then kills it. The situation is  
horrific. Over these months of food rationing and persistent curfew  
whereby all is closed and the streets totally deserted in utter  
silence, suddenly a protest arises and then spreads throughout the  
whole city in a surge of frustrated and famished rioters shouting  
‘AZADI AZADI AZADI’ (freedom) until it dissipates suddenly into a  
cacophony of gunshots and clouds of teargas.

I observe all this going on at a  safe remove of only one metre by a  
big thick brick wall interrupted by the Mevlana Rumi gate to Kashmir  
University, where I am residing. I see through the iron bars hordes  
upon hordes of protesters being shot at randomly, and I stand there  
repellently incapable of doing anything. An endless cycle of silence  
and violence. The Indian army own total control and freedom to shoot  
at will, to shoot to kill, anyone whom they choose to.

Last week a seven year old child was beaten to death. You cannot  
accidentally beat a seven year old to death. It is not like a bullet  
that goes astray. I cannot see how a stone thrown by a seven year old  
child can do sufficient damage to any man to warrant his being beaten  
to death. Children in this part of the world are tiny. A seven-year- 
old is the size of a three year old westerner. So what kind of person  
beats a tiny child to death when his stone throw must carry so little  
force that it barely deserves a shrug? This is such a common  
occurrence here.

The other day I left the university grounds to visit a professor only  
one minute away. True there is curfew but his house is in a private  
road attached to the university so I thought I would risk it. When I  
returned a roofless sumo vehicle full of ten Indian army thugs  
laughing and shouting came charging through the street waving their  
batons and guns. They headed for an old man and tried to hit him and  
then they knocked a 4-year-old boy off his tricycle. For fun. He was  
only 50 centimetres outside his house’s garden so that hardly counts  
as disobeying the curfew and yet they charged at him on purpose. They  
knocked him off the tricycle and then headed for me, which as a  
western woman I did not expect.

I am living here within the deserted university grounds, alone with  
the security guards and a few random professors and clerks. The  
university was evacuated three months ago when the troubles commenced  
and the students and school children all over the valley have  
experienced, as they always do, a great void in their education.

The Indian army gun down eleven-year-old girls banging on the doors  
of pharmacists when it is clear that their disobedience of the curfew  
is purely out of desperation. How can a full grown man gun down and  
kill an eleven-yea- old girl banging on a pharmacy door in an empty  
street? A woman kneeling on the pavement covering her face with her  
hands had her hands beaten to a pulp and they had to be amputated.  
Two weeks ago, on a Friday, I heard the usual impassioned pleads for  
freedom hailing from Hazratbal Mosque, which is just outside the  
university. For an hour the calls of ‘Azadi’ escalated and escalated  
until suddenly I heard a spray of gunshots. The shots continued  
sporadically over the next hour. I later found out that the mosque  
was raided by the army and people were beaten severely. Some died, of  
course.

The Indian army have the right and the freedom to behave like this,  
invading places of worship simply because of impassioned calls for  
freedom by a people who are being totally crushed and obliterated.  
This sort of thing happens every day. Total abuse of power by the  
occupying forces. But the people of Kashmir have no right to  
retaliate. Nor the freedom to even leave their homes. I cannot bear  
my complete and utter uselessness in this situation. As a rich  
westerner even I cannot get food. The other day myself and seven boys  
shared two carrots between us and a handful of rice.

So how can these Kashmiris be managing when they have not been able  
to open their businesses for three months? How can they even have the  
money to afford food, even if there WAS food to be had from  
somewhere? You risk your life in order to get food. How can you get  
food without leaving home? Yesterday a young boy working as a clerk  
in the university showed me his mauled arms and the gash in his  
thigh. His arms were black and purple with crusted blood from last  
week. His legs were obscene. Flesh made hell.

‘I went to get medicine’ he said, ‘and the army caught me’. I smiled  
and said, ‘Oh you people are always getting caught on the way to get  
medicine. Rubbish it was medicine. You went to get biscuits.’

‘Aren’t biscuits medicine?’ he replied, smiling the same smile as mine.

Lat week as I circled the admittedly beautiful university grounds, a  
forest of chinar trees and endless rows of roses in full bloom,  
moghul gardens outside every department (Why are these gardens  
perfectly tendered? Given the situation outside how do these people  
have the strength and hope to even care to tend their gardens?  
Everything here is death and hopelessness. I would have expected the  
gardens to have been left to run to desolation), I saw a thin little  
old man with a cotton bag full of lumps. Usually one doesn’t see  
bags. Certainly not ones with lumps in them. Not in these conditions.  
My mind viciously wondered how he got the food? Who he got it from?  
Had he bribed one of the army pigs at the university gates? I  
suddenly realised I was frowning and in a very ugly-minded manner.  
The ugly things hunger does to a person’s mind is shocking. His bag  
was probably full of dirty laundry.

Sometimes someone will address me angrily as I pass by, something  
along the lines of:

“Hey you, America! Why aren’t you helping us? You do something.”

“What can I do?” I reply, “I’m neither a politician nor a journalist.  
I’m just trapped here like you.”

“But you’re a Westener. You see how things are here. We have been  
living like this for twenty years. When you go back to your country  
you tell them. You ask them why they aren’t helping us.”

“It’s your own fault,” I reply. “Why should we bother saving your  
country when its got no natural resources worth raping? All you’ve  
got is apples, goats and saffron. You’re doomed.”

A few seconds of silence will be followed by a warm invitation to  
tea. Muslim hospitality. At this time when every tea leaf is precious  
these people will share even their last few crumbs of powdered milk  
with you. And you sit there sipping the tea wondering how and where  
they managed to procure it and how much it cost them in beatings.



Shuddhabrata Sengupta
The Sarai Programme at CSDS
Raqs Media Collective
shuddha at sarai.net
www.sarai.net
www.raqsmediacollective.net