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Jammu Vs Kashmir
Death of the Ampersand
Sach Kanwal
Singh
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A whole new generation is growing up. Toddlers offering drinking
water to thirsty protestors will grow up as men and women who
would know instinctively right from their childhood that New
Delhi is an entity that orders firing, tear gassing and killing
of their parents who merely wanted to get their fruit produce
across the road to sell it in the plains |
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 The fragility was perhaps built into the very name:
JAMMU and KASHMIR.
Currently, it is JAMMU against KASHMIR. The Valley has risen in one
voice, and
India's
saffron voice has risen with
Jammu.
By all accounts, worse days are ahead as L K Advani prepares to join
the Jammu protesters on August 25.
Jammu
protesters claiming they must rightfully get the 100 acres of forest
land of Kashmir for a Hindu shrine have broadbased their allegation:
“Jammu has been discriminated against in the last 60 years.”
India is not a country with any tradition of a logical political
debate. Only perceptions matter. So, no one will turn to BJP and ask
if that indeed was the case, then what did their government do? And
why has it never occurred to the party to state as much earlier?
Also, no one will refer to one after the other panels appointed by
the government earlier which deduced that in fact the per capita
expenditure in Jammu was higher than in Kashmir.
But if perceptions are the only thing that will matter, then look at
Kashmir.
 When the march on Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road flowed like a river of
people covering the highway from Chanakhan in Sopore to Khanpora
ahead of Baramulla, the young men at the front leading it belonged
to a generation who were just toddlers in the 1990s when
Kashmir exploded with massive public demonstrations. A whole new
generation has grown up in Kashmir with a feeling that the real
enemy is
New Delhi,
not Jammu.
And a whole new generation is growing up. Toddlers of age six were
seen offering drinking water to thirsty protestors, their mothers
shouting slogans as they guarded the children. These will grow up as
men and women who would know instinctively right from their
childhood that New Delhi is an entity that orders firing, tear
gassing and killing of their parents who merely wanted to get their
fruit produce across the road to sell it in the plains or trade with
the businessmen in a territory India calls its own.
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New
Delhi has a situation where its carefully crafted notional
fabric of secularism is ready to be shredded into pieces.
Jammu
wants to go its own way, and Kashmiris are not stopping it. The
fig leaf is gone. Jammu protesters call themselves nationalists
and the others as separatists. By joining such elements, L K
Advani is showing the true face of Hindu communalism.
Fortunately, the Kashmiris can read the writing on the wall,
particularly when it is accompanied by the caricature of Hindu
communalism’s national brand, the saffron. And has a trishul in
hand, lest the Muslim fails to get the point. |
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For nearly two months now, Indian nation state has shown that it can
do more harm to itself than all the Pakistan, ISI, jihadis etc (the
usual suspects) put together. In 40 days, the Hindu communalism
masquerading as regional aspiration but joined in by the saffron BJP,
Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Shiv Sena and with the symbolism of trishuls
and Har-Har Mahadev sloganeering has underlined who could put into
danger the lives of millions of people, and the so-called and
much-touted integrity of the nation state.
New Delhi's response has been almost clownish: “So helpless are we
that we have no other way out but to shoot to kill you, just as we
have been doing for years now.” So, security forces are firing, and
firing right into the crowds. Is anyone even keeping the count
anymore, of bodies with bullet wounds to the head, of teargas shells
fired, of men and women gone missing, of babies dying for want of
milk, of traders committing suicide because their entire produce has
rotten?
Generation after generation of Kashmiris is growing up watching
hundreds of smoke shells lobbed at them, pelting stones at the
police and security forces, watching army boots marching over their
democratic aspirations, burning police posts and vehicles.
 But how easily has
India, helped by its Hindu communalist streak, wrested defeat from
the jaws of victory? Only two months ago, the only buzz in the
Valley was about elections. Thousands of tourists were flocking the
Valley, film crews are surveying locations for a shoot, politicians
were planning rallies and Kashmiris had a faint hope that finally a
free and fair election may be around the corner. The militant
attacks were becoming rarer,
Pakistan’s
President Musharraf seemed to have withdrawn from his traditional
Kashmir agenda, he was even condemning militant attacks and had
clearly dropped the demand for plebiscite in
Kashmir.
The new democratic dispensation of Zardari-Sharif had publicly
altered
Pakistan’s Kashmir-centric foreign policy; emphasized on friendly
relations with New Delhi to boost bilateral trade.
But how could it suit the saffron lobby? It needed an enemy.
Fulfillment of Muslims' aspirations could suit notions of secularism
but the brahamnical hold over power levers must not be allowed to be
disturbed.
And how was it possible if Muslim leadership was allowed to think of
things better than just survival?
 Rewind to the days before the Amarnath Shrine row broke out. The
chairman of Hurriyat’s moderate faction, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq was
planning to leave for the
US
on a fellowship, hoping to study conflict management in Belfin
Centre at Harvard. Hurriyat hawk Syed Ali Shah Geelani was ill and
disillusioned by Pakistan’s “divorce” from Kashmir. Several
separatist leaders were complaining that Kashmiris are fatigued. The
possibility of a “free and fair” 2008 Assembly polls was looming
large, and Mehbooba Mufti touch had ensured that Muslims had
rekindled hopes of inclusiveness.
From such a situation, the resurgence of Hindu communalism has
brought the situation to a pass where Kashmiri Muslims were braving
bullets to march on the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road, vowing to cross
the Line of Control (LoC). The movement was alive again. Ironically,
this road was re-christened as the “highway of peace” between
India and Pakistan on
April 7, 2005,
when for the first time a bus service connected the divided
Kashmir.
The slogans and flags in the march told another story. There was
hardly any mention of the Amarnath land row or the blockade. The
protests had transcended the issue of the Amarnath land transfer;
it’s only about separatism now.
 A
detailed report in the Indian Express, authored by its talented
journalist Muzamil Jalil, quoted Professor Noor Ahmad Baba, who
teaches political science at Kashmir University, as saying that the
peace process had been slow and had failed to address any of the
concerns of the Kashmiris. “There have been only superficial changes
in the situation here.
Kashmir was a problem yesterday and is a problem today,” he said.
Reacting to the question on why the Amarnath land row and the
subsequent “economic blockade” became a tipping point, he added,
“historically
Kashmir
had been at the centre of cultural and economic interaction. It was
a meeting point for South Asia, China, Tibet and Central Asia. But
since 1947 it has been pushed to the periphery.”
But then there is another problem.
New Delhi has developed a characteristic behaviourial pattern of
understanding only the language of power. It speaks to genuine
voices of dissent only when all is lost. It happened in
Punjab,
it is happening in
Kashmir. Overground leadership in
Punjab
either got misled or made compromises with the Indian nation state,
but the Kashmiri masses are more alert and it is not possible to
strike bargains with
New Delhi behind the scene.
 Mehbooba's PDP ruled, but knew where the concerns of the people are.
It did not make the mistake that mainstream Akali Dal in
Punjab made. Mehbooba did create conditions that made possible for
the Centre to face the real problem in Kashmir and resolve it but
New Delhi remained apathetic in the belief that the problem stood
resolved. Now, it is forced to face the reality in a crude manner.
Peace in
Kashmir
was an illusion, India has just found out.
Kashmir was silently simmering all through. The shrine land transfer
issue was just a trigger. The blockade of the road connecting
Kashmir
with
New Delhi — the only available road link for people and goods —
created a mass feeling of choking. As Jalil wrote, “the issue was
never limited to Kashmir’s fruit growers losing their crop or the
Valley facing shortage of food and fuel because of snipped supply
lines, it was primarily psychological. The blockade reinforced a
perception in
Kashmir
that
New Delhi was not a reliable partner.”
Till now,
India was blaming Pakistan for everything in Kashmir, now the world
knows it has only itself to blame.
Separatist Hurriyat leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq makes no bones about
the fact that the level of anger is the result of the long pent up
disillusionment with
New Delhi’s status quo policies. “New Delhi talks to us when the
situation is really bad here. And when there is apparent peace, they
ignore us,” he said. All talks on
Kashmir
were held for the sake of them, to buy time and to buy
interlocutors, rather than work out a solution.
Clearly,
New Delhi underestimated the potency of the sentiment in
Kashmir,
exhibited an arrogant triumph over the relative peace in recent
past. But now the reality has blown up on everybody’s face. And it
has torn through the lies piled up over the years that whatever was
happening in
Kashmir
was Pakistan-sponsored.
 Now,
New Delhi has a situation where its carefully crafted notional
fabric of secularism is ready to be shredded into pieces.
Jammu
wants to go its own way, and Kashmiris are not stopping it. The fig
leaf of communal harmony has gone. Men, women, children are getting
the bullets in Kashmir. Indian media is dutifully reporting the
statements of protesters in Jammu calling themselves nationalists,
and the Kashmiri protesters as ‘separatists’ who want to go to
Pakistan. By joining such elements, L K Advani is showing the true
face of Hindu communalism. Fortunately, the Kashmiris can read the
writing on the wall, particularly when it is accompanied by the
caricature of Hindu communalism’s national brand, the saffron. And
has a trishul in hand, lest the Muslim fails to get the point.
The ampersand has gone out of Jammu-Kashmir. Be prepared for the
permanent psychological state of Jammu Versus Kashmir.
20 August, 2008
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