Mihirgulla’s reign,
all Kashmiris remember,
was a long night of massacre
that they thought would never end.
Does India know
as one more spring sharpened Jhelum’s air
the Hun took his own life?
The age of frenzy has descended on India. Intermittent mob rule has been the distinguishing characteristic of the tenure of Hindu supremacist Prime Minister Modi (May 2014 to the present). The demon of lawlessness is now manifesting itself in its most virulent form across large swathes of India. The saffron (anti-muslim, majoritarian, ultranationalist) mob is in charge and is calling the shots. Where will this lead? In cities across India Kashmiri students, traders and workers are cowering in fear for their lives. With each passing moment they think they hear the terrifying roar of vengeful mobs baying for blood. Some Kashmiris have been attacked and severely beaten. Hundreds of Kashmiri students and businessmen have fled India and returned to Kashmir. So far no actual deaths have been reported. It’s just a matter of time. The murderous mob craves bloodshed. Only the bruised, mangled corpse of the hated Kashmiri will satiate its lust for blood. The mob will stop at nothing. How long before its fury finds vent in an orgy of killing that will join the bloodstained tally of periodical massacres and pogroms that have given independent India its history of violence?
In the immediate aftermath of the Pulwama attack official and public rage was directed at Pakistan although in this instance there was no evidence of collusion between Pakistan’s government and Jaish-e-Muhammad the group that claimed responsibility for the bombing. The attack had been carried out by the Kashmiri rebel Adil Ahmad Dar. The strongman PM shook his fist at Pakistan and threatened to wreak havoc and destruction on the neighbor. His words were thunderous but actual steps taken have been anodyne. India has revoked Pakistan’s MFN (Most Favored Nation) status. Since trade between India and Pakistan is less than substantial, revocation of MFN status will present no great loss to Pakistan. The public now waits with bated breath for military action in the wake of the PM’s blood-curdling threats. It will have to wait for a long time. India boasts one of the largest armies in the world. Her conventional capability far outstrips that of the hated neighbor. However the nuclear tests of 1998 have brought about a kind of parity between the two powers and severely restricted India’s military options.
Still which self-respecting warmonger can content himself with merely crying havoc and straining to let slip the dogs of war? It’s not so easy to balk the bloodthirsty of their prey. So the PM has blithely outsourced violence to the lynch mobs waiting on the sidelines. In the Pulwama fallout the mob has turned against Kashmiris who live in India and unlike nuclear armed Pakistan present an easy target. Geopolitical constraints ensure that the mob’s desire for all out war on Pakistan will not be gratified. However nothing stands between the howling hordes and defenseless Kashmiri students and traders. Certainly not the Prime Minister. For days he did not utter a word of condemnation of the mobs that laid siege to Kashmiri students residing in campus housing or in rented apartments. The ongoing backlash is only an escalation of the hostility Kashmiris have faced in India since the outbreak in 1989-90 of the armed struggle for freedom from Indian rule. No matter that armed struggle subsided for the most part after a few years of vicious military repression by India and was eventually replaced by peaceful protest. Prior to the present crisis from time to time harassment of Kashmiri students in Indian institutions has been reported. Yet like a stuck gramophone needle India tirelessly reiterates the claim that India controlled Kashmir is an integral part of the Indian union.
India’s claims to Kashmir rest upon an instrument of accession signed by the then Maharajah of Jammu and Kashmir in 1947 when British ruled India was partitioned into Hindu and Muslim majority states of India and Pakistan respectively. The legality of the document has been challenged but India remains unyielding in her determination to hold on to Kashmir by foul means. When recent attacks on Kashmiris began many Indians took to social media to offer beleaguered Kashmiris shelter in their homes. Such solidarity is admirable. At the same time it is a flawed sentiment. It is based on unshakeable faith in the legitimacy of Indian sovereignty in Kashmir. This is precisely the assumption that a great many Kashmiris would challenge by non-violent means–and some through armed struggle. For Kashmiris the land in its entirety–both India held and Pakistan administered Kashmir–constitutes a disputed region where the question of sovereignty remains unresolved. Pity the desperate student in Delhi or Mumbai or Jammu or Dehradun. He or she is caught on the one hand between an incensed mob in full cry and and on the other the liberal but at best obtuse Indian whose offer of shelter is grounded in imposing a hated, despised or unwanted Indian nationality on the Kashmiri. Acceptance of hospitality is somewhat fraught when as in this context the recipient must conceal his or her bitter experience of occupation.
Most Indians are oblivious or indifferent to India’s brutal, decades long occupation of Kashmir. By some estimates as many as 700000 military and paramilitary are deployed in Kashmir making it the most militarized region in the world. Purportedly Indian forces keep daily vigil in Kashmir and protect India’s borders. They are also known to commit acts that ordinarily take place in lands groaning under the jackboot of military occupation. Protected by impunity laws imposed on Kashmir by Delhi Indian forces in Kashmir may commit crimes at will. They have subjected Kashmiris to daily humiliation. They have purloined valuables from houses in the course of search operations; they have burned houses; they have looted valuable timber from forests; they have raped women; they have used civilians as human shields; they have imprisoned and tortured Kashmiris; they have killed and disappeared tens of thousands. All of this has been documented by human rights organizations, Kashmiri as well as Indian media and independent observers.
There is no dearth of reliable reporting of war crimes or as they say human rights violations committed by the armed forces in Kashmir. Nevertheless the Indian public remains indifferent to the horrors enacted in India held Kashmir. The reign of terror remains in effect with no end in sight. Writes Ather Zia, Kashmiri poet and political anthropologist: The policy of the Indian government towards Kashmir has been to replace one technology of punishment with another while sustaining the political status quo (Violence breeds more violence in Kashmir). Mass blinding is the latest technology of punishment used in India-controlled Kashmir. An eighteen month baby has been to date the youngest victim of the abandon with which in the name of crowd control Indian paramilitary fire guns loaded with pellet cartridges.
To speak openly in India of the Indian occupation of Kashmir is to invite mob fury and wrath of people from all walks of life. This was witnessed in the Pulwama fallout when a college lecturer dared to publish a Facebook post in which she highlighted the link between crimes committed by the armed forces and blow back of Pulwama. The woman was summarily suspended from her position. On social media and in news analysis there is endless condemnation of the “cowardice” of Pulwama’s fidayeen fighter. Naturally nothing is said of the cowardice of those who burn houses and use lethal weaponry to terrorize the population of an occupied land. For the average Indian the armed forces in Kashmir are above scrutiny. They are heroes one and all. They become martyrs when the oppressed strike back and Indian military personnel die in India’s war on Kashmir. The implicit assumption is that the other side should absorb all the casualties.
Is it even possible to conceive an end to India’s decades long war on Kashmir? In the aftermath of Pulwama there will be, if possible, intensified repression in Kashmir–even more CASOs (cordon and search operations), houses burned to ashes, encounter killings and blindings. They come and go–the India-Pakistan peace forums, the confidence building measures, the ceasefires, the back channel negotiations, the Track-2 and Track-3 talks. Yet unspeakable cruelties flourish and darkness deepens in India occupied Kashmir. Catharsis has only been offered to date through the medium of literature. In “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness,” renowned writer Arundhati Roy’s unflinching novel about contemporary India, the Kashmiri freedom fighter Musa utters words of warning to India: One day Kashmir will make India self-destruct in the same way. You may have blinded all of us, every one of us, with your pellet guns by then. But you will still have eyes to see what you have done to us. You’re not destroying us. You are constructing us. It’s yourselves that you are destroying.
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.
Donate