Kashmir is aflame again amid a renewed outpouring of popular, non-violent, revolt against India’s military occupation. Kashmiris are out in streets, bringing the Valley to a complete shutdown for more than a month. Despite curfew and the military crackdown, the current political revolt is fast developing into a mass movement, resurrecting the memories of the Kashmiri in the late 80s and early 90s and giving a new dimension to this indomitable struggle for freedom (Azadi).
The hundreds of thousands of protesters that fill the streets of Kashmir’s cities today are overwhelmingly young, many in their teens, and armed with nothing more lethal than stones. Yet the Indian state seems determined to strangle their voices, as it did of the old ones. Since June this year, Indian soldiers have shot dead more than 120 Kashmiri protestors, most of them teenagers. There is a deliberate and direct targeting of young people by the military forces, intent on crushing the anti-occupation movement.
To misrepresent the gravity and magnitude of the Kashmiri uprising, Indian government is crying wolf by raising the bogey of “terrorism”. Kashmiri youths are only pelting stones on trigger-free Indian soldiers. “Non-combatant” youngsters are only suffering fatal losses. Not one casualty has been reported on the side of the Indian paramilitary forces. Which have been given sweeping powers to open fire, search houses, and detain suspects and confiscate property, while themselves enjoying total immunity from prosecution.
Aside from the magnitude of violence unleashed by the military forces against the protestors, the most poignant aspect of the situation is the acute suffering of the whole population caused by the frequent curfews, disregard of normal life, arrests, detentions and sometimes disappearances of innocent civilians picked up by authorities.
This time, as indeed two years ago, nobody can blame a foreign hand for the Kashmir uprising. The Kashmiris have chosen to speak for themselves and are speaking loud and clear by chanting Azadi! Azadi! (Freedom, freedom) They want nothing but freedom from Indian occupation to be able to exercise their inalienable right of self-determination pledged to them by India, Pakistan and UN Security Council resolutions. It is indigenous and inevitable eruption of simmering resentment among the Kashmiri people for several decades.
The New York Times described the present nature of Kashmiri uprising in August 14 publication. It says that “today they (Indian forces) face a threat potentially more dangerous to the world’s largest democracy: an intifada –like popular revolt against the Indian military presence that includes not just stone-throwing young men but their sisters, mothers, uncles and grand parents”.
Now the situation is even more explosive than it was in August more than 6 weeks ago. The consecutive incidents of human rights violations have played instrumental role to create unbridgeable gulf between the ordinary Kashmiri masses and state of India. These tragic events acted as catalyst to bring an impressive chunk of population on the streets that fearlessly challenged the state forces across the Valley. Several times, curfew was broken by spontaneous protests. Ironically, Indian army command is unwilling to demilitarise even from the urban areas or repeal the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a law that gives security forces powers to operate without fear of prosecution.
Additionally, it reinvigorated the long missing indigenous character and non-violent face of people’s movement. The new upsurge has nothing to do with Pakistan or radical Islamic militants. This kind of movement has the potential to elicit support from within Indian masses. The support of working class of India and Pakistan is key for the success of freedom movement in Kashmir. The massive class support from Indian and Pakistani working class can force the ruling classes of both countries to retreat and demilitarise the Kashmir region. The working class and trade union movement of both countries must come out in support of the demands of Kashmiri working masses.
This movement is different from the movement of 90s, which was an armed struggle initiated by nationalist militant groups. It begins in 1989 and lasted for a decade. It was Kashmir’s first significant uprising and it ran its complete cycle. More than 100,000 Kashmiris have lost their lives in this armed conflict. The Pakistani establishment intervened through the reactionary Islamic militant groups and Jehadi organisations. It encouraged Islamic militancy that eventually marginalised the local and particularly the nationalist forces. This policy turned indigenous uprising into an Islamic and broadly Sunni-extremist led movement controlled by the Pakistani security agencies through its Pakistani based militant organisations. The Indian ruling class used this intervention to justify the deployment of more than 700,000 (0.7million) Indian soldiers in the valley. This military presence turned the valley into garrison. Whenever Kashmiri masses tried to organise resistance to this military occupation, they were dubbed as terrorists and Islamic militant intruders from Pakistan and unleashed the brutal military force to crush the movement. Islamic militancy was used to deprive the Kashmiri masses from their basic democratic and political rights.
Now the situation has once again changed. Since the 9/11, Pakistan was forced to change its decade old Kashmir policy and strategy. Even the Indian authorities now confess that militancy is at the lowest levels in the valley. India’s highest-ranking man on the ground, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, acknowledged that “levels of militancy are at the lowest that they have been for the last 20 years”. But still the brutal military operations are continued against the innocent civilians. The militant groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba have been forced to take a back seat. At the moment, Kashmiris have moved away from guns. Very rarely is a Kashmiri young man joining a militant group now a days. Islamist politicians and activists are a minority, though a very visible one. In the post-Kargil period, taking advantage of the global concerns with terrorism, Indian establishment has remained locked on to the alleged nexus between “terrorism” and Kashmiri struggle. In 2006, it managed to secure a guarantee from general Musharaf that Pakistan would not let its territory be used for cross-border terrorist activity. Since November 2008, India has sought to redefine the Kashmir issue purely as an issue of terrorism.
The reality however is alarmingly different. The renowned Indian writer Pankaj Mishra wrote in the Guardian: “once known for its extraordinary beauty, the valley of Kashmir now hosts the biggest, bloodiest and also the most obscure military occupation in the world. The Indian media amplifying the falsehoods and deceptions of Indian intelligence agencies in Kashmir, which argue that the Kashmiri protests are the work of Islamic fundamentalists and/or terrorists. But in case of Srinagar, the population of a major town can not be composed entirely of such elements. Virtually everyone, men, women and children, has taken to the streets in Srinagar against the continuance of Indian military occupation”.
The nature of Kashmir’s defiance has clearly changed, and that must shake the Indian establishment out of any complacency. What is homegrown is usually deep, builds slowly, but persists, as is the case with the current cycle of agitation. It builds to the present levels in last two years and there were moments of lulls in between. What will come from external motivation must of essence be short, violent, destructive and aimed at giving quick results.
The Chief Minister of Indian held Kashmir Omar Abdullah has accepted that the present movement is leaderless. What he is saying is that the traditional leadership of the Huriat conference and liberation struggle has become somehow irrelevant in the present circumstances. The young stone pelters have pushed the old leadership aside and have taken the center stage themselves. In Srinagar, when a gentle knock fails, stones work to break a slumber. Those hurling one do not care about the rebound. The minds of many of those who have grown up in last 25 years of turmoil have been growing harder. The reactions of a vociferous section of youngsters- from elite to dropouts- have been anarchic. Quite often they have humbled even the most prominent icons of the separatist brand of leaders such as Syed Ali Gilani and Umar Farooq. They want to see the back of the Indian army and demilitrisation of Kashmir. They are also demanding independence and freedom. The overwhelming majority of street protesters want an independent Jammu and Kashmir.
The people of Jammu and Kashmir are yearning for peace, justice, freedom and right of self-determination. They want a just and dignified peace that guarantees total freedom from foreign occupation and alien domination.