A Place with no Pain

"The regal realm with the sorrowless name:

they call it the Queen City, a place with no pain,

No taxes no cares, none own property there,

no wrongdoing, worry, terror, or torture.

O my brother, I've come to take it as my own,

my distant home, where everything is right.

That imperial kingdom is rich and secure,

where none are third, or second--all are one;

Its food and drink are famous, and its people

dwell in ease and in common wealth.

They do this or that, they walk where they wish,

they stroll through fabled palaces unchallenged.

O, says Ravidas, a good-for-nothing tanner,

those who walk beside me are my friends."

----Sant Ravidas, Dalit poet of late 15th C.

"Begum-pur"

--or, Be-Gham-Pur.

Kaash-mir!

The Bloody Brothers

One day, in the mid-Nineties, I was walking back from school through one of the busier lanes in the Anantnag town, when two Kashmiri gunmen appeared from nowhere and entered a CRPF bunker in Cheeni Chowk. My 14 year-old heart skipped a beat. I couldn't believe that the two gunmen could be so foolish as to enter the camp just like that. It meant a certain death. And remember, it was long before the suicidal fidayeen attacks became common.

I froze in my feet, and waited with bated breath for the sputter of gunfire to begin. A prominent Islamist preacher and politician of Anantnag had recently been assassinated by the pro-Pakistan Hizbul Mujihideen (HM). His bullet-ridden body had been dumped a couple of miles from my home. Local municipality workers had spotted and recognized his body early that morning, and it wasn't long before the news spread like wild fire.

On that morning, I remember, I had gone out to the market place to get the hot, steamy early-morning lawasa-a kind of Kashmiri flat bread. The baker quickly handed me my bunch, poured a bucket of water into his oven, and pulled down his wooden shutter. He joined a long line of wailing people, men and women, who were running toward the spot. I scampered off to my home, and gave the news to my parents. My father came out onto the street, and I followed. Thousands of people had gathered. They were chanting slogans for independence. Many raised anti-HM slogans. At a distance I could see Qazi Nisar's body, wrapped in a white shroud, with blood still oozing out.

Nisar's body was taken to the Hanafi prayer ground where thousands of people came to see it, and pay tribute. For the next one week Anantnag rang with anti-HM sloganeering.

Although HM had never been a strong force in the town, in adjoining villages it was predominant. In a bid to emerge as the only Kashmiri resistance group, it had managed to kill and silence many of the JKLF men as well as the cadre from other smaller groups. In villages close to Achabal, a town southeast to Anantnag, after fierce turf battles with one of its own splinter groups, the Muslim Mujahideen (MM), it managed to maintain its dominance--even though the MM wasn't completely wiped out, and would come to haunt them. In the town, Ikhwanul Muslimeen, had remained assertive despite its bloody battles with the HM, as well as the Indian troopers.

The commander of the HM in the region was a local young man from a village close to the town. He had personally killed a respected JKLF commander from Dialgam, a man known for having once single-handedly defended Dialgam from the murderous Indian soldiers, who madly chopped to pieces three villagers and a truckload of unarmed Kashmiri policemen.

A week after Nisar's assassination, a major gun battle between the Indian soldiers and the HM in Dialgam led to the death of five major HM figures. All of them were war veterans from the Afghan jihad. Mast Gul, a Pakistani militant commander, who was suspected of having killed Nisar, survived. After the battle was over, and the soldiers had left, Gul assembled Jammat-e-Islami members in Dialgam's central market, and asked them to march with the bodies of his dead comrades to the Anantnag town, which was four miles north.

People fleeing from the gun-battle in Dialgam had told my mother that the Indian soldiers had used my grandfather and my uncles as human shields. My mother got hold of her burka, and in an instant was on the road to her natal home. I ran after to accompany her.

On the way we were met with Mast Gul's march. Dozens of HM men atop trucks, waving Pakistani flags, were raising their fists into the air and singing rhythmic slogans. We could see the five bodies, one of which was of Bombar Khan, who was famous for his bravery, and known for compassion as compared to Gul. Upon reaching my grandfather's home, we came to know that one of the dead mujahids was Captain Tariq, an Afghan, who was shot by soldiers while holding their rifles on the shoulders of my relatives. Apparently, Tariq hadn't fired back because it would have killed my grandfather.

Upon reaching Anantnag, Mast Gul had had the bodies placed in the Ahl-Hadees prayer ground, where prayers were offered for the dead. HM men and their supporters carried the bodies through the town's labyrinthine streets, and challenged anyone to raise anti-HM slogans. The bodies were buried close to Nisar's grave. All the while Indian soldiers were watching with glee what was unfolding in front of their eyes.

On the day the two Kashmiri militants entered the CRPF bunker, Anantnag was slowly beginning to emerge from a month of severe trauma. I waited for the gunfire to start, while slowly retracing my steps and entering another lane. I was in a fix. Should I shout and warn the passersby? But raising an alarm would mean alerting the soldiers, which could foil the militants' plan, and land me in serious trouble. No gunfire started. I wondered what was going on. I could see a startled look on a few other faces, but people continued to go about their work.

Next day, in school, one of my classmates, who had become famous after stealing a bullet from a soldier's rifle from right under his nose, told me Ikhwan had joined the Indian troops. That was impossible! I couldn't believe him. Only a few months back army had laid seige to a house near our school, taken out two Ihkwan members from the attic, and shot them dead a little distance away. How could avowed foes come together!

Over the next few days, I saw Ikhwanis packed to the full in army vehicles patrolling Anantnag streets. Raids were taking place in surrounding villages where old-time Jammat members were rounded up and beaten, and their houses burnt. Jammat members had used the HM to settle scores with their enemies, and many people were happy that they were now reaping what they had themselves sown. Senior Jammat members would hold their own separate kangaroo courts where summary justice was issued to people. HM had acted as the brutal arm as the executors of this justice.

Drunk with new found power, Ikhwan started to soon bare its teeth further. A prominent member of Jammat and respected surgeon from Dialgam was abducted and taken to the town. He was shot dead in front of people as a warning not only to the Jammat but to others too.

What followed was worse than what Kashmiris could think of. Jammat families were targeted with such ruthlessness that you needed monumental courage to say that you were from a Jammat family. The wrath of Ikhwan wasn't faced exclusively by Jammat for long. They set their eyes upon anyone who questioned their brutal authority. Women folk were harrassed, and people were forced to pay money. People were randomly picked up and tortured.

Safely ensconced within Indian security establishment, and with absolute impunity, Ikhwan became monstrous villians who imposed their will with extreme violence. One Ikhwani, Setha Gujar, who was especially dreaded for his brutality killed common people like people kill chicken. One day he beat up a doctor from another town so badly that some people who were watching fainted. The doctor who had returned to Kashmir after spending years in Saudi Arabia left Kashmir the moment he could walk again. It was only two years later that Gujar was shot dead by unknown people.

One of my friends whose family owns an apple orchard up on the hill overlooking Anantnag was slapped and had to prostate in front of an Ikhwani one day. We were walking through the main street, when he noticed a man with scraggy beard, and black sunglasses holding a Kalashnikov. He was an Ikhwani manning the street.

My friend told me that he knew that man, and unfortunately told me a bit too loudly that the guy used to be an orchard worker. The Ikhwani heard him, and grew crimson with anger. He asked my friend to come to him. My friend went smilingly and extended his hand expecting nothing more than a warm shake with an old acquaintance. Instead of taking the hand, the Ikhwani pulled his own hand high up into the air, and landed a big slap on my friend's face. After abusing him for saying that he was an orchard worker, which apparently had hurt his reputation as a much dreaded man, he asked my friend to lie prostrate in front of him and beg for mercy. My friend furtively did as told, and in the process dirtied his shiny white school shirt with street muck.

The Ikhwanis said they were going to rename Anantnag as Ramnagri, probably just to irritate the residents who fondly called and remembered it as Islamabad. In early 90s the Indian soldiers would beat up shopkeepers or tear down billboards with Islamabad written on them. If a soldier asked you where you were from and you accidentally answered Islamabad, that would mean either a big slap or a kick was on your way. People feared this possible second changing of name.

The Ikhwanis established camps in three separate places in their Ramnagri. The one in Kadipora was closest to my school. They would come to the school and start harrassing young school girls. Some of my class teachers were picked up for suspected Jammati links, and tortured. Thankfully none of my teachers was killed. Often our beleagured Principal would ask the students and the teachers to assemble and go to the camp, and request the release of our teachers. The camp was housed in a huge Pandit house would reek of blood and liquor.

One day I was walking near Mattan Chowk, and I saw two Ikhwanis run toward an auto-rickshaw. They pointed their rifles at the occupant in the back, ready to shoot. They asked the auto-driver to continue driving as they ran with on either side. A few meters ahead they fired a volley of bullets in, and then dragged out the limp body of a young boy. I never came to know who that little boy was.

In an incident that happened over a cricket match, an entire team of cricketers and the umpires were roughed up black and blue, when a member of the opposing team, with connections to the Ikhwan, claimed that he was falsely given out. It was the bloodiest cricket match I had ever seen.

When Farooq Abdullah was made the chief minister of Kashmir, Ikhwanis grew even more brazen. They started building and occupying properties in the town. Many vacated Pandit properties were occupied, and some were bought at low prices. A big Pandit house in Janglat Mandi was turned into a camp where poor villagers from far away were brought, tortured and killed, and their bodies left haphazardly strewn across on streets or in sewage drains.

Setha Gujar built shopping complexes on public land like the General Bus Stand. He built another in front of the district court, probably as an open challenge to the judges who might want to issue stay orders on his illegal constructions. Rows and rows of ugly structures, which were pulled down only after his death.

Another top Ikhwani joined politics. He had a palatial house built for himself in a posh area generally reserved for bureaucrats. He started his own political party, which till last year paid poor Kashmiris a hundred-rupee note each to join his election rallies.

Farooq Abdullah's government started the process of integrating Ikhwanis into regular forces. Some Ikhwanis were recruited to form the Special Operations Group (SOG), a mercenary wing of the Kashmir police. Last year when protests broke out against Indian rule over the Amarnath land deal, I saw dozens of SOG men beat up villagers who were peacefully protesting. The SOG men, all drunk, pounced upon the people like hungry wolves devouring a kill, leaving behind streams of blood and gore. For years that I was away in Delhi I hadn't seen such open brutality.

Also activated last year was the Mehndi Kadal camp of the Ikhwan, who had been integrated into India's territorial army. Mehndi Kadal was the third Ikhwan camp in the town, which was also housed in a large Pandit house. Standing right in front of the main police station in Anantnag, the camp tortured people and dared them to go and register complaints.

Last year I passed the Mehndi Kadal every single day, on my way to work and back. Over the run down fence I would see Kashmiris in Indian army fatigues roaming about with rifles slung down their shoulders. There were Indian soldiers too, but they seemed to be largely manning the gates.

The Indian soldiers had a Kashmiri Ikhwani commander, an illiterate man known for his stutter, and for killing dozens of people. It sometimes gave me a fleeting sense of unexplainable pleasure to see the equations changed. For once a Kashmiri was ordering the Indians to stand in line! But the moment would immediately pass. The man was a killer, who had harrassed, tortured, and killed his own people. "Own people"?

Ikhwan in Arabic means "Brotherhood." In Anantnag, the brothers wreaked havoc. For the last 16 years they have visited unimaginable suffering upon the town's residents, and worse on the neighboring villagers. The brothers have a bloody trail behind them. The brutal irony of the brotherhood is probably illustrated by the case of the three brothers from Anantnag, eldest of whom was a famous JKLF commander, who was arrested in the early 90s and released after 16 years in jail, and then shot dead a month later, his younger brother who was roasted alive by the Indian army camping on the hill, and the youngest brother who seeing all this became a vicious Ikhwani.

Today I read in the newspapers that the Mehndi Kadal camp was closed down on court orders. Although the camp will be relocated into the army area, I still think it is a great news. Every time a camp, a bunker, a picket, is removed, it is a joyous moment. It means a little less fear, a little less chance of torture, a little less threat to life for the people.

Charter for a Free Kashmir

“Walo ho baghwaano nav baharuk shaan paida kar;
Pholan gul gath karan bulbul timay samaan paida kar,”

—(Come, O Gardener, create the glory of a new spring day; Where flowers bloom and bulbuls dance, O craft such a way).

Mehjoor’s famous poem was a prayer for a better future, for a new dawn of freedom. 1947, for which the peoples of the subcontinent had struggled and sacrificed together, turned out to be a great disappointment.

Faiz Ahmed Faiz expressed this disappointment like this:

“Yeh daagh daagh ujaala, yeh shab guzida sahar;
Woh intizaar tha jis ka, yeh woh sahar to nahin.
Yeh woh sahar to nahin jis ki aarzoo lay kar,
Chaley tthey yaar key miljaegi kahin na kahin”

—(This stained light, this night-devoured dawn; this is not the dawn for which we were waiting This can’t be the dawn in quest of which, hoping; to find it somewhere, friends, we had set out.)

The struggling people of Kashmir, despite the betrayals of the 1947, continue to hope for that new, real dawn, the Azadi. The many decades of oppression haven’t been able to extinguish the hope. Azadi, which is not so much an end but a process, means Kashmiri people’s perpetual struggle to be able to live in an independent state, where a just and peaceful society could be created.

But what could be the possible contours and contents of such a society?

A number of debates are happening among people who are at one or the other level interested/involved in Kashmir. I here put forward some of the possibilities—I would say goals—which must be pursued. Some of the points/premises have been drafted by others but I agree with those in full.

1. Kashmir would be an independent state, with full status as a member nation among the comity of nations.

2. It would have no standing army and no programs for weaponization.

3. It would harbor peaceful intentions toward all neighboring peoples (in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tibet, Central Asia and China, and beyond), and it would declare Kashmir as a sanctuary of peace.

4. It would use its good offices and hospitality to bring together contesting parties in the region and help develop mutual understanding and nurture peace and justice for all.

5. Kashmir would be a decentralized, federal republic, with its constituents having a right to secede, as well as to unite.

6. In independent Kashmir all citizens, irrespective of language, creed, sex or caste, would have equal rights. Its citizens will have the right to life with dignity, security and equality before the law, complete freedom of expression and movement, rights of free education and health care, right to work, leisure and recreation. It will seek to make Kashmir a society without prisons.

7. It would welcome all displaced Kashmiris, including the Kashmiri Pandits and those who were forced to migrate to the Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, and call for an open dialogue with responsible and peace-loving representatives of all displaced Kashmiri communities. It would set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to help account for and address the years of violence in Kashmir.

8. It would treat with respect, pride, and affection the unique cultural heritage and history of Kashmir, and the contributions made by Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and others to this heritage down the centuries.

9. It would take a special care to safeguard the unique biological and natural heritage of the mountains, rivers, forests, lakes, springs, and meadows of Kashmir for the sake of all humanity.

10. People from the world over can freely travel in Kashmir; and the pilgrims would be treated as honored guests. Those who come to its gates to seek asylum or shelter from the repression in their own countries would find welcome.

Of Resignations at the Cost of Justice

By resigning from his position following PDP leader Muzzafar Beigh’s charges of his being on the Central Bureau of Investigations’ list of suspects in the 2006 sex exploitation case Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has, to many, set an example of moral integrity in politics. Omar Abdullah took no time to resign in front of Governor N. N. Vohra, after Beigh made the allegation in the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly.

The move to resign was clearly quite calculated, despite Omar’s assertion that it was an emotional knee-jerk reaction. For starters, the resignation was a conditional one; the governor was requested to accept it only if the charges were proved. There was no way to prove it then and there. With both PDP and the NC-led government sticking to their own documents, the CBI and the entire Indian establishment came furtively in defense of its poster boy in Kashmir, who, vindicated in his little histrionics, was suddenly elevated to the status of a role model for all politicians not only in Kashmir but in India too. It was a shot in the arm for Omar whose image had taken a huge hit only a few weeks back because of his “drowning remarks” in the press conference he held after the Shopian rape and murder incident.

Some questions arise here. Beyond allegations and resignations, what do these events in the legislative assembly symbolize? What are the likely implications of these events on the public discourse? And, lastly, what constitutes moral integrity?

In 2006, when the magnitude of the sex exploitation case surfaced, because of sustained public protests in Kashmir, for the first time the nexus between the pro-India politicians, the state police, the Indian troops, and the bureaucrats was exposed. The case became symbolic of the Kashmiri ruling class’ criminality and corruption. For the first time, it was clearly delineated who the Kashmiri masses were resisting. Virtually all the different sections of the ruling class were well represented: two sitting legislators—one a Muslim Kashmiri another a Pandit—, the Advocate General, a BSF DIG, some high-ranking state police officers, bureaucrats, a rich hotelier and many others.

The issue would have been hushed up completely, but there was no let up in public protests. New Delhi, understanding the scale of involvement, realized it would be disastrous to objectively pursue the case, for it could engulf the entire spectrum of political assets the Indian government had nurtured in Kashmir over the years. CBI, which was handed over the case, prepared a list of people named by the victims—who included minor girls. The ones who could not be saved were put in the accused list and the rest—mostly highly valuable assets—were put among the suspects. After a lot of dilly-dally in arresting the culprits, the case was moved out of Jammu and Kashmir to Chandigarh district and sessions court. In Chandigarh the case crawled on very slowly with charges against 14 people only being filed in the March of 2007. With new events emerging the case was lost from the Kashmiri public discourse. One of the legislators from the Congress Party, Ahmed Mir, charged under Prevention of Immoral Trafficking Act (PITA), contested and won election from his Dooru-Shahbad constituency in 2008. A senior Kashmiri IAS officer, also charged under PITA, was reinstated and subsequently promoted. And the rest of the charged are out on bail.

It all happened when the PDP-Congress coalition government was at the helm of affairs. When Beigh—from PDP—(howsoever ill-intentioned and with no ethical locus standi of his own) referred to the case in the legislative assembly, it instantly caused many a feather to ruffle. So spontaneous was Omar Abdullah’s response that before any one could even talk about the case any more, he turned the attention of everyone toward his dramatic “resignation”. He killed two birds with one stone: first, he managed to draw sympathy from the media and some sections of the public to offset his recently wilting image; second, he killed the case itself.

In the larger schema of things PDP and NC are the same species. Run each by an influential, India-loyalist family, both try to outsmart each other on trivial issues. On substantial issues they silently maintain a similar position. Both parties/families know that as long as they are on the Indian payroll and they serve Indian interests in Kashmir, they will always have power—be they in the government or in the “opposition.” On this substantial issue, however, Indian government gave PDP politicians a quick rap on the knuckle. PDP lost no time in bringing their rhetoric down. This small rupture (events in the assembly) had the potential to become a major event in our recent memory, what with small, hairline fractures emerging within the structures of the Indian occupation in Kashmir; but the fractures were quickly stitched up.

Omar resignation drama has now made it impossible to discuss the 2006 sex scandal in the legislative assembly anymore. All the legislators will be wary of bringing it up. And this is where the question of what constitutes moral integrity can be answered.

Imagine if Omar, instead of staging a resignation drama, had said that 2006 sex scandal case would be investigated afresh, the guilty would be brought to book, and justice would be done to the victims, how ethical that would have been! Is there integrity in resigning from a position you know is going nowhere or in providing justice to the victims when you are in a position to do so?

In 2002, when BJP-led government in Delhi endorsed the Gujarat pograms against that state’s Muslim minority, Omar, then Minister of State for External Affairs, failed to resign (a shame—his two-line apology in the Indian Parliament notwithstanding). In May 2009, when the case of two Shopian women, raped and murdered, was barefacedly described by him as “a simple case of drowning,” he failed to resign in acknowledgement of his lack of scruples. When government forces shot dead four people in Baramulla in June 2009, Omar failed to resign. He did not acknowledge the incompetence of his rule in providing security to the people. But here, when there was a genuine chance to discuss a serious case and provide justice to the victims, Omar resigned—exactly to prevent any such discussion.

The Karobar of Occupation:Media, Cricket and Lies

So, at the end of May, with all the hoopla about assembly elections washed out by a very poor turnout in the Parliamentary elections, ‘Kashmir-watchers’ from India were bitter. So they turned to cricket and other usual diversions. Lucky for them the Indian Premier League was going on; the Indian middle-class divided its loyalties and short attention span toward fancily-named cricket teams—Lions, Royals, Chargers, Knight Riders, Big Talkers, Useless Stinkers. News channels, to show that they also speak about the underside of their Greeeeat Democracy, chose to speak about the low-turnout in Lalgarh instead of Kashmir.

NDTV, which seems to be suffering from some kind of a cognitive disorder, in fact advised the people of Mumbai for their low-turnout(43 percent) to learn a lesson from the faith Kashmiris were putting in the Indian democracy (23 percent turnout). Mumbai attacks last November, which apparently should have stirred their conscience, hadn’t. (And, by the way, if you want more examples of NDTV’s disorder recall when William Burns came to India carrying Obama’s most recent letter to Manmohan urging India and Pakistan to start talks, adding that both India and Pakistan should determine where and when, Vikram Chandra forgot the “both” and self-congratulatingly stated that Obama said India will determine everything.) But anyway, that is how things are.

Around that time, two women were gang raped and murdered in Kashmir. It happened during the night of the last Friday of May, and by Sunday, as news reached and shook all parts of Kashmir, people started pouring out of homes to protest. Monday was total strike. Tuesday and Wednesday witnessed more protest and strikes. As the pace of the protest gathered, the young CEO of Kashmir, the darling of teenagers in India, a two-line-in-Indian-Parliament-wonder-kid (two-lines to wash away his past association with a government that gave clean-chit to Narendra Modi government after the Gujarat pogroms in 2002), said that an enquiry would be conducted but that there was not much to it as it was a simple case of drowning. It didn’t matter that the bodies of the two women had been fished out of land and not water. People got angrier still.

I don’t understand why people get angry with him. As a member of the family that has long represented the interests of Indian political establishment in Kashmir, he said what his brief from India allows him. Nevertheless protests continued.

At this point, NDTV’s polished and articulate Kashmir correspondent Nazir Masoodi came on TV (did you catch it?). With his head held high and a demeanor suggesting a lot of personal commitment, he candidly stated “NDTV’s position”: we have maintained all along that rape has happened but murder hasn’t. After that he had nowhere to go but underground. A friend suggested he might be in a bunker under the 15 Corp HQ information centre in Srinagar. His vanishing act was brilliant, giving a distinct impression that there were these imaginary murderers after his life, when no one gave two hoots about him. But, no, he failed to get attention similar to what journalists imprisoned in North Korea or Iran normally get. You might have also noticed the Sunday story in the Indian Express by Muzamil Jaleel who re-wrote the most popular family story of the Abdullahs? It reminded Delhi of whose son and grandson Omar was, at a time when doubts were being raised about his ability to rule.

People, on the other side, with no other available way to express solidarity with the victims continued the protests. Geelani and his camp followers, with very limited imagination, continued to call for more hartals. And, soon, hartals began to pinch hard. As if the Indian occupation was not enough oppression already, hartals began to look like self-inflicted wounds. I was surprised to see a national movement act like a railway union. I mean, striking is like legitimizing a government; saying that the state (or the Indian) government could address grievance. I mean the only way these governments can address grievance is by not being there; they are the grievance.

Look, how many cases of rape and murder in Kashmir have happened? Has any substantial change taken place on the ground? On Kunan Poshpora incident way back in the 90s, Indian media denied that any rape had happened at all. Then there are rapes in Pahalgam and other places. Unless events like these are woven into the larger struggle for national independence, media will always portray them as small crimes, instead of built-in systemic requirements of a military occupation.

Now that Jan Commission has established both rape and murder, and indicted the administration for carelessly letting vital evidence be lost, one shouldn’t expect any drastic changes. There will be some transfers, some suspensions, just to give an impression that heads are rolling. The draconian laws will continue. Military presence will continue. The karobar of the occupation will continue. And I don’t think evidence was allowed to be lost so carelessly!

Indian media, which was planning to spend the next few weeks celebrating Team India’s T20 victories, is suddenly speechless. Cricket was supposed to smother Kashmir. But, na, it didn’t happen that way! On top of that, the Pakistani win in cricket has come as a personal loss to India.

When a Jessica Lall or a Priyadarshini Mattoo gets raped or murdered Indian media acts as if their own sister or mother was raped and murdered, but when it comes to Kashmir they take the “principled stand.”

The Perforated Sheet

It is nine in the morning. Overnight drizzle has darkened the winter bare trees. The hill, around which the town is wrapped, has disappeared in the mist. I look out onto the road in the distance to see if anyone is moving. There was an explosion a couple of hours ago. It must have been somewhere close. A few jeeps can be seen moving fast every few minutes. I am curious to see if people are going out to vote. My family advises me to stay indoors. We have been without electricity since last evening. I use this fact as a pretext, and announce that I am going to go out to get it fixed. I see large boot prints in our mud-spattered kucha. Soldiers must have been moving about in the night. It is election-day in Anantnag, and the bandobast is tight.

A few meters ahead, after a bend in the kucha, two people from the colony, father and son, are looking dejectedly at the electricity transformer that supplies our neighbourhood. The father turns to me: “Every soldier in this cinema has a heater and a boiler of his own. They get two phases. And the rest of us get one. It can’t take this load.” He is talking about the cinema hall in our neighbourhood which was taken over by military almost 18 years ago, and turned into a camp. It houses more than two hundred soldiers. Our colony has around thirty houses. The transformer was installed way back in the 80s for these thirty houses and the cinema. Each night of the winter the fuse blows. An elderly man comes out of his house with a piece of aluminum wire in his hand. “To hell with them. And if that wasn’t, why would they be here!” he spurts. We laugh.

A military chopper comes out of nowhere, and flies low overhead. Our laughter is drowned in the sound. It disappears quickly; both the laughter and the chopper. We can see the main road from where we are standing. A car is stopped by angry soldiers. The driver is asked to come out. He shows some papers. His door is flung open by one soldier. As soon as the driver steps out, another soldier lands his heavy muddy boot on the driver’s behind. The elderly man standing next to me says: “Oh, ho, they have destroyed his perfectly clean pheran. How will he wash it now in this cold winter with no electricity?” He giggles at his own black sense of humour. His own son was beaten to pulp two months back, and soldiers had dug a hole in his arm with a screwdriver. The driver receives a rain of blows, and soon passes out. Soldiers drag him to the side. The father says the man is pretending to be unconscious. He is right. One soldier kicks him hard in the belly, and the driver is up. He limps back to the car, and drives away.

Two trucks packed tightly with sullen and frozen Kashmiri men move down the main road. A young man, who has joined us, says, “They are bringing people from outside to vote. They don’t need our vote.” A sumo cab is driving toward us slowly. We are alert, and ready to dart back into our homes. It is a Kashmiri driver; it is safe. He stops near us. A thin vein of blood is issuing from the corner of his mouth. He begins instantly, “These sister-fuckers pulled me out of my home in the night, and asked me to ferry troops to Kadipora. They gave me a paper telling me no one would ask me questions on my way back. But at every checkpoint they stop me and hit me, even after I show them this damn’d paper.” The elderly man commiserates: “Hat haz, they have no sympathy, no humanity.” I came back home to write.

For the last two months elections have been taking place. Kashmir’s assembly elections are happening in six phases. Anantnag is the fifth one. Srinagar will be last. Today, like in all other phases, the rest of Kashmir is under an undeclared curfew. It reminds me of Dr. Aziz in Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children” observing the body parts of his future wife through a perforated sheet, one by one.

People have been barred from going out on Fridays as well. No prayers have been offered in the largest mosque in Srinagar, Jama Masjid, for the last six Fridays. People are not allowed to assemble. The main preacher at Jama Masjid, and head of Hurriyat, Mirwaiz Umar, is under house arrest. Thousands of separatist activists have been bundled into jails. Against many draconian black laws have been slapped, which means they will be in prison for the next two years. Yasin Malik, who has already been in jail at various times for a decade, is one of them.

In Anantnag, last month a hundred parents were picked up randomly by police, and asked to warn their sons not to indulge in pro-independence campaign. Many young men have already been beaten up, and warned to stay indoors. A friend, who works with a local newspaper, was threatened, and his younger brother tortured, for reporting police atrocities. He was told to do favourable stories about the election. He is following orders to the word, he tells me. He doesn’t want to leave his job. Pro-government Ikhwani militias, which are funded and armed by the Indian state, who wreaked havoc on Anantnag for a full decade, have been reactivated. Many of the militiamen who were integrated into the army wander about the town in civvies and harass people.

A lot of people want to vote, if not in Anantnag town, then in the villages. They need their representatives to relieve them of the tremendous pressure the Indian state puts on them. During the past few months of pro-independence protests thousands were arrested and harassed. They had no one to go to for redress. Governor’s rule meant one inaccessible Indian bureaucrat controlled everyone’s lives in Kashmir. A legislative assembly means they can go to people who’ve at least some say. That is what contestants are promising. People in jails shall be released. The level of military oppression will be brought down. Government militias will be reigned in again. Major parties, like the People’s Democratic Party and the National Conference, are saying this vote is not a vote for India. And thrown in between are a number of others who have one or the other motivation to contest, and none of which is loyalty toward India. One contestant, who I’ve known since childhood, told me privately that he is contesting to get some special papers and a residence in Jammu so that he can take his ailing mother away from Kashmir.

In Delhi, sharp political analysts are yet again claiming victory over separatists. Indian newspapers and TV channels are agog with percentages, 68, 51, 57… The numbers encouraged Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to come to a village in Anantnag a few days back, to support a Congress candidate from there. The village he visited is surrounded by hills full of bombs. Indian military has one of its largest ammunition depots in the region. Last year the hills in Khundru exploded into a huge ball of fire and gulped dozens of Kashmiri lives. Military asked villagers in fifteen villages surrounding the depot to vacate so that the depot could be expanded. To his Kashmiri audience, Manmohan Singh said India will defeat terrorism soon. He was talking about Mumbai.

Across the stream that runs behind my home, young men from the neigbourhood who were leading stone-pelting duels and protests against Indian soldiers over the summer and the autumn are playing cricket. The stream almost dries up in winter, leaving a little plain island behind. Soldiers can’t see it. It is almost three in the afternoon, and I haven’t seen anyone go to vote, yet. But there are two more hours to go, and who knows.

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But Bush is insisting the shoe didn’t hit him!

Occupying Kashmir by Comparison

The debate “Nationalism vs. Separatism” on NDTV last week looked promising in the beginning, because for once the host, Barkha Dutt, keeping aside her usual national-security mindset, began by asking some pertinent questions, and the academic voices in the panel set the tenor of the debate right. Given, however, NDTV’s habit of pulling together a big crowd of relevant and irrelevant speakers, the debate lost track and sank into a pointless and an all-too-familiar noise. This noise, let it be said, works perfectly well for Indian establishment because it gives them a chance to say, “Look, we give ‘em an opportunity to speak; what a great democracy we are!”, and yet Kashmiris, as inarticulate as they are, come off sounding tired and tedious; their voices lost in the din.

Sunil Khilnani, who is a US-based academic, put the question right where it must. The trouble is with the idea of India itself, in the way it seeks to run roughshod over different identities and affiliations with its singular, homogenous Indian identity. The point, in fact, goes even further, one which Khilnani did not (could not get a chance to) speak about. The real problem is the twin construction of India and of Hinduism as organic wholes—territorial consolidation of one, and the ‘semiticization’ of the other—with the former acting as the sacred space where the latter, the sacred community, must act itself out. That there was nothing called “India” or “Hinduism” before the Brahmanical elite and their British colonial masters drew from each other, entirely in self-interest, to engineer these territorial and cultural monoliths, has not been in much popular discussion. Both concepts are so naturalized and consecrated in public consciousness that questioning them is tantamount to blasphemy. In its present shape India is actually an empire which is masquerading as a modern state. The Indian rhetoric of “secular nationalism” has acted as a liberal cover in international fora for a swelling Hindu imperium, which was territorially achieved in 1947; Indian elite has gratefully allowed the use, and continuous manufacture, of a Hindu civilizational self-identity to justify the empire.

Khilnani spoke only a little about the idea of India; he did not stretch his argument to reflect on how the Hindu consciousness underlines the idea of Indian nationalism; yet even the preliminary remark that there are a number of nationalisms jostling for recognition within the territorial space of the Indian state is appreciable. It, at least, gave a lie to the binary of the show’s name: “Nationalism” vs. “Separatism”. To give due recognition to Kashmiri nationalism has been unthinkable in India, so they call it by other names: separatism, terrorism, extremism, and pro-Pakistanism. In an earlier show, on the same TV channel, Swapan Dasgupta, a rightwing columnist for The Pioneer, in fact, criticized the host of the show for allegedly affording a moral-equivalence to “Kashmiri separatists” on par the “Jammu nationalists” (the host was in no way doing that). No one asked Dasgupta as to why Indian nationalism should be a touchstone of morality. But this becomes easier to explain once we realize how Indian nationalism has become akin to a religious faith and India a god worthy of worship.

It is important here to reflect briefly upon the original issue of the Amarnath Yatra to illustrate the point about Indian nationalism as a religious faith in the service of the Hindu empire. Let me not speak of how India’s political elite goaded, duped, threatened, and forced the peoples of different regions of British India and the princely states to merge with India; it was the same process through which Kashmir was annexed. Let me not speak, too, of how most people of the subcontinent that were called “We, the People of India” had virtually no say in the formation of what was called the “Union”. Let me just say that Nehru inherited an empire from the British, and he wanted to consolidate his spoils by making it look like a state. Not for nothing did he stand atop the Red Fort (a symbol of the Mughal empire), on August 16, 1947, with a flag that no longer had Gandhi’s Charkha, but Ashoka’s Chakra (a symbol of the Mauryan empire)—an act to declare continuity with past empires of the subcontinent. Nehru was touted as a secular democrat, but one can find plenty of evidence to show how he gave in to the inexorable march of the Hindu nationalists, many of whom decked his own cabinet. The rebuilding of the Somnath temple, to assuage the feelings of the Hindu nation “for until then they would not think that the real freedom had come” (the words of Vallabhbhai Patel, clearly showing from whom was freedom desired), was just a starter.

Hindu nationalism, which ran amok over, what Ashis Nandy has called “the little cultures of Hinduism”, actually came in handy in the drive to turn the empire into a state. Hindu pilgrimages were boosted to this end; new places to worship were found and given nationalistic appeal. Issues like Ram’s birthplace, and in recent times ‘Hanuman’s bridge to Lanka’ (the Sethusamudaram) were made national issues to rally a fictitious nation around fictitious symbols. In short, a sacred geography for Hindus was outlined where it did not exist. India became synonymous with Bharat Mata, the territorial Hindu deity to be worshipped through deshbhakhti. Kashmir, which is called “the secular crown of India” without any hint of shame or irony, was actually imagined as “the crown of Bharat Mata”, and only so because the crown of the bejeweled image of Bharat Mata, often juxtaposed against the map of India, was where Kashmir was. Kashmir in the same vein also became the atoot ang (an unbreakable body-part) of the anthropomorphic goddess Mother India.

The Amarnath issue stems from here. By bringing in millions of Hindus from across India, facilitating their travel, increasing the number of pilgrimage months, and trying to create permanent bases for them, the state seeks to firmly place Kashmir within the Hindu imagination, as another point on the sacred map of Bharat Mata. By doing so, Kashmir ceases to be the land of Kashmiris, but becomes an abode of Baba Bole Nath. The consolidation of this vision, along with parallel efforts to invent ancient Kashmiri links to India (read the debates on the Institute of Kashmir Studies), in effect seeks to integrate Kashmir with India in its Hindu sense. What else can explain the comical demand of Jammu Hindus that their lost honour could be regained only if Kashmiri land is given to them (perhaps the entire Kashmir should be given to them in lieu of their lost Dogra honour!), and what else can explain the whole of India, the state and the nation, rallying behind Jammu Hindus?

Despite the spin Indian strategists gave the recent protests that they are an issue between Jammuites and Kashmiris (remember the monstrous lie about discrimination), or however much space the Indian media gives protests in Jammu as compared to the mammoth pro-Independence rallies in Kashmir, the fact of the matter remains, it is India, in its true Hindu colours, that is strutting in front of the powerless Kashmiri nation. I, for one, was not a wee bit surprised to see the saffron Hindu flags getting replaced by Indian flags in Hindu protests in Jammu, and chants of “Bam Bam Bole” and “Bharat Mata ki Jai” being raised together. I am not surprised to see Muslim Kashmiris getting killed by the dozen in protest marches or massive military clampdowns on peaceful rallies, or bullet injuries sustained by thousands of Kashmiris—many in India (like Tavleen Singh) wonder why the government isn’t actually pushing Kashmiris, sans Kashmir, into Pakistan. Marches in Jammu, by comparison, look like a party, what with soldiers standing around for photo-ops. No one has been killed in Jammu city in any kind of police action, even though many protestors went on a rampage, and attacked, injured and forced out many Muslims of the region. Despite the easy protests in Jammu, the government looked desperate to talk to the Amarnath Sangharsh Samiti, and scrambled a committee comprising a Kashmiri Pandit and a few Jammu Hindu bureaucrats. The “talks”, which looked like a family affair, ended with government respectfully and expectedly giving Kashmiri land to the Amarnath Shrine Board for exclusive use for three months each year (for the only months the land could be used anyway). The government, shamelessly, put out advertisements suggesting it consulted political parties and the civil society of Kashmir before stealing their land; one wonders when, during its brutal clampdowns and large-scale arrests, did government find time to consult Kashmiris? Or, is Farooq Abdullah again the sole spokesman of Kashmiris?

This brings us back to the NDTV debate and the very intriguing answer that an ex-military person (one of those irrelevant speakers on the debate on nationalism) gave to a question from the audience as to why the army kills so many Kashmiris. His answer: Kashmiris get killed because they happen to be at the scene of action. How can you argue with such a reply? One might say that perhaps Kashmiris get killed because the action happens on them, that their bodies are the scenes of action. His answer, in any case, derailed the debate, an attempt which Mani Aiyar of the Indian National Congress was also making by trying to take the argument away from Kashmir toward the “North-east” (I put Northeast in apostrophes because this description links it cartographically to India, when I think the region is closer to southeast Asia). Aiyar’s insistence on talking about other places is not different from all those noises with which Kashmiris are silenced by drawing contrasts to violence in other places: “so many get killed in Bihar”, “so many rapes happen in Delhi”, what are you Kashmiris whining about? (It is a separate matter that nationalist Indians inadvertently, thus, equate their state with criminals of Bihar and rapists of Delhi).Though issues in Nagaland, Manipur, etc. are similar to Kashmir, in the sense that they too emerge from the rather predatory “idea of India”, but Aiyar was using it to suggest, rather bald-facedly, that there are other people demanding independence, what are you Kashmiris whining about. Let us call it, for the sake of a better phrase, killing (occupying) Kashmiris by comparison.

It is also time we put to rest the phrase “Autonomy”. Kashmiris don’t want autonomy. Even National Conference, its original votary, does not look enthusiastic about the word any longer after its much-fêted proposal was consigned to the dustbin in Delhi without even a discussion. The point is Kashmir had autonomy; that is where India started with Kashmir. When the NC says they want to go back to the pre-1953 status, it automatically means that Kashmiris were there once. For all these years India has slowly gnawed it into shreds. Going back to that political status will mean trusting India over something of which it has proved totally untrustworthy. Who wants to give India another try for another 62 years? Perhaps, the NC?

Aiyar, at his noisy best, kept saying ad nauseam, that the Kashmiri “separatists” should participate in elections to prove their representative character, forgetting in the process an entire ignominious history of rigged elections in Kashmir. Those “mainstream” parties that India sees as representing Kashmiris cannot, by their own admission, bring so many Kashmiris out on the streets as pro-Independence leaders have in Kashmir over the last many years. And this is despite the presence of 700 thousand Indian soldiers to muzzle Kashmiris. If one sixth of the Kashmiri nation is out on the streets on a given day demanding Independence, one can imagine the level of support and endorsement the “separatists” command. How many people joined the Quit India marches at the height of India’s independence struggle? A lakh? Two? India says Kashmiris are confused; that they don’t know what they want. India describes the need for Kashmir’s freedom as an aspiration, a Kashmiri desire. Kashmiris, however, are talking to them as straight as possible. When a million Kashmiri voices rose together in August 2008, they told India something quite uncomplicated: Leave.