This edited anthology consists of 29 chapters and is divided into three parts: Summers of Unrest; Captive City: A Place of Blood and Memory; and Stone In Hand: New Generation, the last referring to how the security forces reacted when they were confronted with a new technique adopted by protesters on the streets of Srinagar and other towns from June 11 to September 22, 2010. It is not only the immediate context of the stone throwers’ activities that reflects the feelings of Kashmiris as presented by 29 authors. A few of the contributors trace the origin of Kashmir’s discontent from the original sin committed by Jawaharlal Nehru who betrayed his commitment to the Kashmiri people. “The people of Kashmir can’t be led by us like goat or sheep in one direction or the other…,” he had said. This statement has prompted one contributor to assert that “Kashmir’s right of self-determination is, thus, not a right of secession but a right of consent. The possible accession by Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) to India was to be a contract between two sovereign parties and it is common knowledge that consent of both parties is necessary for validating any contract”.
These narrators, mostly non-resident Kashmiris who visit their homeland occasionally, have come to the conclusion that “the demand of the Kashmiri people is Azadi or freedom. Freedom to be themselves, to choose their national identity. We are not Indians. We are Kashmiris. We have a history, a language, a culture that demands recognition”. Another contributor elaborates that “freedom” represents many things across rural and urban spaces in India-ruled Kashmir. These divergent meanings are steadfastly united in that freedom always signifies an end to India’s authoritarian governance.
The contributors do not accept that India has a democratic political system. If they had been right, 80 to 85 per cent of the voters would not have participated in the 2011 elections to Kashmir’s local Panchayat institutions. Democratically elected Kashmiri political leaders have been dismissed as collaborators of the Indian state’s military occupation. If these contributors are to be taken at face value, “…the people of Kashmir have succeeded in giving a clear message to the world community as well as to be Indians — that the people of Jammu and Kashmir want total liberation from India”. These libertarians are annoyed with the international community for ignoring “the ongoing human rights and humanitarian crisis in South Asia’s most violent region” by dismissing it as “an internal Indian matter”. The real villain of the piece is the Indian state which has deployed a little less than a million well-equipped and -armed “men in uniform” and the farce is played out because “the native elites legislate and govern, while the Indian state rules” on the basis of its brute armed power.
The story does not end here. The mainstream Indian media – “disgraceful, third-rate, mostly Hindi-‘news’ channels” – is engaged in sensationalising human tragedies in Kashmir. Pakistan’s armed militants in Kashmir, exported from its own territory to India, do not engage the attention of these “concerned Kashmir-focused contributors” at all. Only one of the writers observes that Kashmir cannot be understood through the simplistic framing of “India versus Pakistan”, “Hindu versus Muslim”, or “China-allied Pakistan versus India”. A contributor has maintained that Kashmir is not a Muslim question because Kashmiri society and culture is influenced by Sufi saints and it is only now that theocratic Madarasas have come on the scene to provide religious education to the deprived Kashmiri children of the Muslim community. So, this writer argues, it is only the media that portrays the tensions in Kashmir as Hindu versus Muslim when the whole story is really a secular struggle for freedom.
Every narrator, without exception, has presented a one-sided picture of conflict-ridden Kashmir. Many important analytical questions can be raised from the way the voices of Kashmiris have been represented and articulated in this anthology. Are these views of “concerned Kashmiris” an authentic and objective representation of the people of this conflict-ridden society? If we accept at face value that Kashmiris do not want to be an integral part of India, the democratic mechanism of dialogue has to be evolved by the Indian state and this anthology is completely silent on the basic issue of the procedures of “negotiations” between the two parties. The authors do not reflect on this simple fact because they are convinced that there is no need for any negotiated settlement. Do they accept that no modern state unilaterally agrees to secession of any territory? This anthology has conveyed only one message: that Kashmiris want azadi and instead of keeping an army of occupation the Indian state should hand over Kashmir — but to whom is not clearly stated or worked out.
Anger and anguish are no substitutes for grappling with the complex reality of Kashmir’s question. How can the Kashmir dispute be presented by any writer without taking into consideration the complex facts of the history of Partition and post-accession events? How can the role of Pakistan and the Cold War power brokers be ignored in any analysis of the Kashmir problem? Mr Kak’s edited anthology ignores the other more complex role of “external’ factors in complicating any solution. As a result, the authors do not leave any space for democratic dialogue. It is only a blame game that satisfies only the writers of this anthology. The real fault line in this anthology is that the writers do not accept or understand the resilience of India’s democratic institutions in dealing with conflict.
UNTIL MY FREEDOM HAS COME: THE NEW INTIFADA IN KASHMIR
Sanjay Kak (Edited)
Penguin Books India
303 pages; Rs 299