The Web Of Isolation

Many years ago, Jawaharlal Nehru, speaking in Parliament, said: "We will bind Kashmiris with chains of gold." We are all seeing the consequences of this strategy. Now, the government seems to have decided to trap the Kashmiris in the web of ignorance and isolation.

On New Year's Day, the government of India cut off the people in the valley from the rest of the world. The department of telecommunication withdrew the STD, ISD and Internet facilities from the public call offices (PCOs) and cybercafes in the Kashmir valley. Given that the percentage of private STD connections is very low there, it can be safely said that this move has crippled the basic means of communication.

It is well-known that the withdrawal is a part of the series of decisions taken by the cabinet committee on security (CCS) in its recent meeting. With this move, the average Kashmiri has no access to the Internet, cable TV and cellular phones, arguably the three most dominant technologies of modern life.

Add to this the fact that the telephones just have local access, there is electricity for barely five hours a day during three to four days a week, and the national newspapers reach you only in the evening, if at all. You are pretty close to being interned.

Apart from isolation, cutting off communication is a sure way of curbing the business development of the state, which, as it is, is on the verge of going bankrupt.

It will no longer come as a surprise if trucks carrying fruits and other commodities, originating from Kashmir, are stopped from going anywhere else in India. For, it is also well-known that militants use these for ferrying people and ammunition. So along with a physical and cultural isolation, the backbone of business is also broken. You will then have completed what can be called sanctions against Kashmiris.

The government's present strategy towards the majority of Kashmiris appears to be to isolate, and make them live under primitive and unbearable conditions. This has replaced the more overt strategy of harassment and imprisonment that drew international condemnation.

But this "spiral of silence" that the government is forcing on the people of Kashmir will not redound to its advantage. The repeated and intense exposure to the existing (deviant) forms of "reality" will no doubt lead to the perception that the current "reality" is normal and the only possible form. Children are growing up taking the current situation as the only possible reality.

This is exactly what the Taliban did in Afghanistan. And succeeded for years in swelling their ranks. In the last couple of years, the Internet was helping reduce the cultural and physical isolation of Kashmir.

It may come as a surprise, but Srinagar had more cybercafes per square mile than Mumbai. Students, who have absolutely no access to public libraries and books, were extensively using the Net. And the Net had enormous social consequences, used as it was for building online communities of Kashmiris where all kinds of opinion were being expressed.

Having myself been a part of such an online community, I have seen extremely useful exchanges (followed by an "off line" meeting in Mumbai) between, for instance, the Kashmiri Pandits and Muslims on the Net. It had the potential of being a tool for social change, and not just for recreation and profit. A growing number of people were coming online from the valley, especially the younger ones, and continuously rooting for ways to put the Net in some positive political or social context.

But by cutting off the access, the distortionary use by "online militias" "" unlike the sex chatters, hackers and cyber-vandals "" has succeeded in overwhelming the social and political possibilities of the vast and diverse medium of communication.