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A country called Kashmir
Jagmohan Singh
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This is an image-essay. Experience Kashmir in the words of the
editor of World Sikh News, who recently visited Kashmir. He is
convinced that the rights of Kashmiris have been trampled
brutally and there is a need for urgent positive international
intervention. |
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 Welcome
to Kashmir. Welcome to the heaven on earth, as those living there
and those who visit call it so.
As soon as we
alighted from the Srinagar airport, I felt and realized that I was
in a different land. I could see gun-toting security men in
different colours and with a variety of guns all around.
The day I landed
there, I saw a senior TV anchorperson of a well-known TV channel
being whisked by a senior army person. I am not sure who was helping
whom.
As soon as we
left the airport, some hundreds of black-cat commandos in full
fighting gear were present. All roads to the airport were dotted
with policemen, para-military forces and Indian armed forces
personnel. Kashmir was under siege.
Kashmir is a
country where a huge number of Indian armed forces occupy every
conceivable place –sometimes becoming sitting ducks for armed
Kashmiri insurgents but more often splashing their Kalashnikovs and
other modern weapons in fighting mode. They are visibly at war with
the people of Kashmir.
The people of
Kashmir live in a climate of fear compounded by global warming
conditions resulting in a sweltering summer with scores of new shops
in
Srinagar
selling fans and air-coolers.
A visit to the
Sher-e-Kashmir Hospital in the heart of Srinagar tells me that it is
a government hospital where patients fend for themselves. A good
chunk of the hospital premises is under the control of the security
forces. Entering the hospital is scary.
Before reaching
the hospital, we were able to see two flags aflutter the Kashmir
secretariat –one of India and one of Jammu and Kashmir, a clear
indicator that this part of the world has had special status and
deserves more attention than a mere law-and order approach.
It is only when
you spend some time in what is wrongly called as “the valley” that
you understand the full import of how Jammu and Ladakh are
administered differently.
Politics in this
part of the world is discussed either in hushed tones or in a fully
agitated manner. Each Kashmiri –men, women and children are
politically aware, conscious of their rights and above all –willing
to die to have their homeland.
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Politics in this part of the world is discussed either in hushed
tones or in a fully agitated manner. Each Kashmiri is
politically aware, conscious of his rights and above all,
willing to die for his homeland. |
Meet Saif (name
changed for you never know). He is all but 9 years old. He was part
of the sit-in protest demonstration at Shopian where two young
ladies were sexually assaulted and then brutally murdered by so-far
unidentified security forces. I asked him, “Why are you here?” He
replied, “Kya?” I asked again, “Why have you come here? “Hamari Behn
ko kyon mara –Why did they kill our sisters?” he retorted promptly.
I probed further, “Who killed them?” Again, barely allowing me to
complete my query, he said, “India
ne –India killed my sisters.” I asked him, “What will you do when
you grow up? That was the only question over which he thought for a
while and said, “Teacher.” What he will teach is anybody’s guess. I
will not be surprised if joins the ranks of stone-pelters, who have
their own significant history in
Kashmir.
If any one has any doubts about how clear the Kashmir-India divide
is, read this dialogue again.
The new
government of the new youngest chief minister of
Jammu and
Kashmir
is a “classic government.” The “charming good-faced chief minister”
does all things in Bollywood style -whether it is of the hero
variety or otherwise you have to judge. Prior to his melodramatic
resignation, the faux-pas he committed in the Shopian case and then
the acts of his administration are nothing short of a tin-pot little
dictatorship –at the outset, the rape and murder case was dismissed
as a drowning case. The most disgusting and sad part is that the
government gynaecologist -Dr. Nighat who confirmed gangrape has been
suspended! The CM allowed SP Javed Matto to say, “Aise Wakye to
hothe hi rahten hain.” Not just that, in the name of
investigation, the two sons of the lone witness in the case are in
unlawful detention! Anyone in
India
who wants to defend rape by security forces to perpetuate Indian
rule in Kashmir should do a rethink. If the hold of “nationalism”
is still strong, then only God can help, just as it did to Ugandans
under Idi Amin.
Participating in
the pain of widows and orphans of the border village Dardpora was an
experience which shook me to the heels. This village had witnessed
172 deaths, there were 125 widows and nearly 450 orphans and a
non-existent state administration. The Pahari-speaking widows almost
wanted us to stay there and look after them. I wish I could.
 Somebody
in Kashmir should soon write a treatise on how elections are
obfuscated, how census figures are manipulated or even not done, how
all work in
Jammu and
Kashmir
is being done with 1981 as the census figures.
An activist at
Dolipora, where another young student was brutally assaulted and
killed in her own house, said, “The beauty of our womenfolk has
become a curse.” Though I am a feminist at heart, I strongly
advocate the use of pardah in Kashmir, till the army is
pulled out from this internationally recognized disputed territory.
I must however admit that I was deeply impressed by the bravery of
Kashmiri women.
We also met the
sister of Maqbool Butt in the remains of a hundred year old mud hut
house, in which this father of the Kashmiri nationhood movement
lived. She had been badly beaten up during the boycott of the
recently held elections in Kashmir for propagating boycott. To every
question about when the Kashmiri people would be free, she would
look up to the sky and say, “Insha Allah”. There was a living hope
in her eyes.
Kashmir is in a
state of “bandh.” Perpetually. There is hardly any day when some
part of this beautiful region is not closed in protest against some
killing and harassment. Significantly, as a Sikh restaurant owner
told us, “Kashmiris do not shy away from closure of work. They have
no other means of protest and they cannot give this away.”
In present-day
Kashmir, in many districts, the Deputy Commissioner and Senior
Superintendent of Police live outside the main cities. The chief
minister and ministers and members of the opposition live in
garrisons. Passing by the roads where they lives virtually scares
one to death.
As the Indian
army is above law, due to many laws in existence like the Armed
Forces Special Powers Act and Enemy Agent Ordinance (have you heard
about this, I did not till I reached there) and many others about
which the common man is unaware -natural resources –water, lands,
apple orchards, forests –have been taken over. Even if you are not
politically inclined, which is rare, you are at the mercy and
‘benevolence’ of the forces.
A visit to the
Bar Association of Srinagar was enough to convince us more that the
administration, police, politicians, security forces are all above
the law in this country called Kashmir. A habeas corpus petition
which should take hours to decide, takes a year. Contempt
proceedings are unheard of. Judges don’t seem to judge at all.
Suo-moto proceedings should be the norm, but there is no mention of
this. Police chiefs shred orders of the courts in the face of the
victims or their lawyers. Around a score of lawyers have been killed
under mysterious circumstances. Lawyers are denied passports.
This country has
Muslims, Kashmiri Pandits (who I am told consider them to be super-Brhamans),
Sikhs and Christians. The government of India has been engaged in a
relentless campaign to subvert the social balance, apparently to
give the Kashmiri struggle a bad name. Kashmiri Pandits did not flee
Kashmir on their own; they were made to flee in a state-sponsored
programme. Pilgrimage to shrines and the numbers of pilgrims are
bolstered to enhance the theory of peace in the region. Each shrine
has units of security forces guarding them –some visible and some
not. The minority Sikh community has no special status in this
region despite losing thousands in the partition riots of 1947.
Kashmir is also
a country where the leadership of the independence movement is
divided in its approach as regards the road map towards their final
destiny. Perhaps, they were being strategic, if so, good luck to
them. Their clarity and determination was inspiring. Octogenarian
Syed Geelani and young Yaseen Malik may have different approaches,
but each one was clear of the goal and unwavering in their
fortitude. Yaseen Malik was at his diplomatic best when he said
these words at his non-descript house in
Srinagar,
where he was under a long house-arrest, “India
and Pakistan must accommodate the aspirations of the people of
Kashmir and the people and leadership of Kashmir will certainly take
into account the concerns of
India
and Pakistan.”
Expressing
gratitude to everyone who stands by Kashmiris in their present hours
of crisis, Syed Ali Shah Geelani said, “We are grateful to all who
support us, governments will continue to be tyrannical and we will
continue our fight to the finish.”
 In
this land, the nomenclature of occupation has been widely used. Over
the years, cease-fire line has become the line of control,
plebiscite has been replaced with a weird definition of self-rule,
UN resolutions have lost meaning altogether, the writ of the Supreme
Court of India vis-à-vis detention, arrests, rights of prisoners,
etc, does not apply here and any talk of it attracts rebuke and the
present international intervention is changing according to the
geo-political alignments in South Asia.
Strategically
located Kashmir is now an occupied territory. Barbed wires aplenty
separate
Kashmir
from
India. It is time to recognize and implement the right to self
determination of the people of Kashmir so that this heaven on earth
which has been made hell by the occupying forces of India regains
its lost glory.
Jagmohan Singh
is editor of World Sikh News. He may be contacted at jsbigideas@gmail.com
5
August 2009
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