Why Kashmir bothers us more

There are more deaths from violence in the Adivasi belt and the North East

This week, Jammu and Kashmir’s Chief Minister accused India’s television anchors of encouraging nastiness against her people. “I request national media to not show discussions on TV that spread hatred against people of J&K in the country,” said Mehbooba Mufti. “A few people pelt stones, all youth of J&K doesn’t do that. If all had done sloganeering, so many people wouldn’t have passed in the recent exams,” she added.

There is zero chance, of course, that we will stop our Manichaean discussions on Kashmir. That delicious cocktail of anti-nationalism, Islamism, terrorism, separatism etc. fuels outrage better than anything else. Question is: Is Ms Mufti right in saying that the hatred is being fanned deliberately? And if so, why? Let’s have a look at the thing. 

First, J&K is not the only place where India faces civil protests and armed conflict. The two other areas are the North East and the Adivasi belt. Can we compare the three and is there a hierarchy? The numbers here will bring clarity. 

In the last 10 years, the total deaths from violence in the Adivasi belt (from what we call Maoist terrorism) have been 6,020. This number includes civilians, terrorists and armed forces casualties. In the North East, the total number of deaths is 5,010. In J&K, the total number of deaths is 3,254. Meaning it is less violent than the other two.

Now that the data is in, the question we should ask ourselves is: Does this fact reflect in our debates and in our priorities? Do we worry as much about killings and violence in the Adivasi belt, our most violent area for a decade, and the North East, our second-most violent, as we do about Kashmir? The honest answer is: No. Though the themes are common to all three, that is to say, terrorism and separatism, Kashmir gets disproportionately more attention than do the other two. This is true both at the level of the state, meaning the government’s focus, and that of media.

Given our national mood, we must ask another question: Could this be because more security forces are killed in Kashmir? Again, the answer is no. More than twice as many died in this period in fighting “Maoists” (1,547) than did fighting “jihadists” (667). 

The answer to the original question — whether Ms Mufti is right about discontent being deliberately spread — does not lie in the data, then. We non-Kashmiris must look inwards at ourselves for the answer.

The simplest reason the struggle in Kashmir receives more prominence is Pakistan: They’re doing it. Reduction is more easy for us here than it is in our other two regions because it can be externalised in our imagination.

The second reason pertains to visuals and accessibility. The locus of protests in the Valley is the city of Srinagar. In the Adivasi belt and the North East, the struggle is remote and distant. The violence in Kashmir can be shown daily in real time, and images with action sequences is what television news craves. Because the area is urban, the protests are easier to orchestrate (some foreign agency did a brilliant sequence exposing the same “protestor” pulling angry faces in multiple protests, each with only a couple of dozen or fewer individuals, but framed to make it appear larger). 

A third possible reason is the relative recentness of violence in J&K. Though the jihad broke out three decades ago, it is still the most recent of the three. The Maoist struggle is now 50 years old. Resistance to the Indian state in the North East actually precedes Independence. Sir Jadunath Sarkar’s guru William Irvine in his great work, Later Mughals, describes the hammering Aurangzeb’s successors received when trying to force Assam to accept Delhi’s rule.

Fourth, it is easier to understand the issue in Kashmir, particularly from the nationalist lens. Mischievous Muslims, having broken up India once, are at it again. 

Fifth, and this is related, the anthropomorphic nature of our map assists this thinking: That is, mischievous elements are trying to take away Mother India’s head. 

Illustration by Binay Sinha

Sixth, again related: It is not easy to understand the struggles in the North East and in the Adivasi belt. The former is actually a whole group of struggles, with demands ranging from a rejection of Indian sovereignty to statehood status to a change of borders and laws to a resentment against migrants. The latter is also difficult to understand for most of us because land rights is an issue which is behind us. We no longer have any empathy for it. 

Seventh, and this will come as a strange one to some. We urban, middle-class Indians can actually identify more with Kashmiri protestors, who are also urban and middle-class. We are far less likely, for obvious reasons related to race and class, to feel strong emotion for the North East and Adivasi protestors. 

For these reasons, we have reversed the hierarchy. Kashmir is the thing we are most upset about. This has produced consequences and Ms Mufti has referred to them. We are willing (I would say eager) to violate the constitutional rights of Kashmiris because of the strength of our sentiment. It upsets few of us that hundreds of Kashmiris have had their eyes torn out by the firing of shotgun shells on civilians by the armed forces but we are angered by the slapping around of a jawaan.

The fact is that for all the fake honour we pretend to bestow on the jawaan, we actually have no real respect for the Indian soldier. It is his duty to fight and fall for our causes. It is our duty to be rigid and ensure enough pressure on the state that violence becomes the only acceptable response to grievance and protest. 

It is difficult to see this changing. The passion we feel on the issue is indescribably strong, and will overwhelm even facts and data. Ms Mufti’s pathetic plea will not even be considered before being dismissed.