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

[Aditya Raj Baul]

Thank you for sharing this account. It makes you want to sing Sahir
Ludhianvi's words from the rooftops:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tH32hZxyfk

http://www.hungamaforums.com/5189-jinhein-naaz-hai.html#post13472

best,
Aditya Raj Baul


On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 8:54 PM, Shuddhabrata Sengupta
<shuddha at sarai.net> wrote:
> 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
>
>
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