Bullets and stones

By: Asif Ezdi

When Abdul Ahad Jan, a Kashmiri police official, hurled a shoe at Omar Abdullah at a ceremony in Srinagar to celebrate India’s Independence Day, he became an instant hero. Ahad also waved a black flag and chanted, “We want azadi,” The Indian authorities immediately declared him to be mentally disturbed but thousands of Kashmiris descended on his home village to congratulate his family. Women showered flowers on Jan’s wife and kissed and hugged her.

Omar Abdullah tried to laugh off the incident, saying that hurling a shoe was better than hurling a stone. But for the Kashmiris this is no laughing matter. They have been facing not shoes – or stones – but bullets from an occupying force which has been given the license to use lethal force to keep demonstrators off the streets and enforce curfews. Since June this year, when the current wave of protests began, nearly 60 Kashmiris have been killed, most of them youngsters and teenagers, some mere children. Scores have been injured, some maimed for life.
Abdullah’s Indian masters are also unlikely to have been amused by the shoe-throwing incident. They have been rattled by the mass scale of the demonstrations and especially the breadth of the support the protesters enjoy from the general public. Besides the youth, women have also been demonstrating on the streets with their pots and pans and have joined in throwing stones, the only “weapon” available to the unarmed population, at the hated occupation force. The New York Times wrote on 12 August that Delhi has been facing an intifada-like popular revolt against the Indian military presence that includes not just stone-throwing young men but their sisters, mothers, uncles and grandparents.

Indian officials have tried to belittle the scale and significance of the Kashmiri protest. Contrary to all evidence, Home Minister Chidambaram has said the protests were confined to Srinagar and “perhaps some other towns.” India has also pointed its finger at Pakistan for instigating the mass movement. Chidambaram said on 30 June that Lashkar-e-Taiba was behind the mass protests. In a statement in Parliament on 6 August, he went further and hinted that official agencies in Pakistan could be behind the protests. “Pakistan appears to have altered its strategy in influencing events in Jammu and Kashmir,” Chidambaram said. “It is possible that they believe that relying upon civilian unrest will pay them better dividends.”

At a meeting of the Congress Working Committee on 17 August, leaders of India’s ruling party expressed worry at what they saw as a “new chapter” in the history of separatism in Kashmir. There are good reasons for Delhi to be worried because the Kashmiri intifada signals the complete failure of India’s attempt spanning six decades to give legitimacy to its occupation of Kashmir. It also illustrates the truth of the maxim that what has been won through force and fraud can only be kept through more force and more fraud.

The response of the Manmohan Singh government to the mass protests has been to come up with some old tricks. On India’s Independence Day, he invited anyone “who abjures violence” for talks, offered greater autonomy to the state “within the ambit of the Indian constitution” and promised more jobs for the youth and more money for development. These “offers” were quickly rejected by the Hurriyat leaders who pointed out that their struggle is for azadi, not for autonomy, jobs or money.

In his speech on India’s Independence Day last year, Manmohan Singh had claimed that people of all areas of Jammu and Kashmir had participated in elections to the State Legislative Assembly in 2008 and the Lok Sabha in 2009. That was proof, Manmohan asserted, that there is no place for separatist thought in Jammu and Kashmir. The current resurgence in the Kashmiri movement for azadi has now proved this to have been an empty boast. As the New York Times noted, Kashmir’s demand for self-determination is sharper today than it has been at perhaps any other time in the state’s troubled history.

Clearly India has failed completely in winning the hearts and minds of the Kashmiris. But the silence of the international community at India’s bloody response to peaceful protests shows that it may be winning the diplomatic battle. The only significant voice raised against the excesses of the Indian occupation forces was a bland statement by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressing concern at the situation in Kashmir and calling on all to exercise the utmost restraint. Ban quickly backtracked when India protested.

The US and other major Western countries, which are usually quick to denounce human rights violations elsewhere, have been mum over Indian brutalities in Kashmir to avoid riling Delhi. Before becoming president, it is true, Obama considered appointing a special envoy on Kashmir, but he quickly gave up the idea when Delhi rejected the proposal out of hand. Obama’s interest in Kashmir, short-lived as it was, in any case did not arise from a concern for the rights of the Kashmiri people. Rather it was aimed at reducing Pakistan-India tensions so that Islamabad might be more forthcoming in responding to Washington’s demands for the deployment of the Pakistan army on the western frontier in support of the US war in Afghanistan.

The US is a strategic partner of India and has been assiduously cultivating the country. It is therefore naïve on the part of Pakistani leaders to keep seeking Washington’s mediation on Kashmir. We also need to realise that any intervention by Washington would be in favour of cementing the status quo. What we should be doing instead, loudly and publicly, is to urge Washington and the international community to use their leverage to press Delhi to end its human rights abuses in Kashmir.

At the same time, we will have to redefine our own Kashmir policy. Musharraf’s sellout in the back channel talks with India from 2005 to 2007 caused a setback to the Kashmiri freedom struggle. Foreign Minister Qureshi’s statement last March that Pakistan was reverting to its old stand on Kashmir was reassuring because it suggested that this government would repudiate the deal that Musharraf was negotiating.

But in his talks with Krishna in July, Qureshi gave a different message, apparently at Washington’s behest. According to the Indian side, he told Krishna that Pakistan regarded the “gains” made in back-channel talks under Musharraf as “important and useful” and would not put them “at naught.” The Indians see this concession as a major plus from the otherwise unproductive meeting.

The government would do well to clarify its position on this issue. Otherwise, it will lay itself open to the charge that it is trying to keep the Pakistani public in the dark on this important matter. An unambiguous statement from the government that it rejects the deal under which Musharraf was prepared to barter away the right of the Kashmiris to self-determination would also give a boost to their movement for azadi.

The government has so far been very timid in expressing support for the Kashmiri intifada. During his nine-day junket in France and Britain, Zardari did not utter the K-word even once. He may be forgiven because his interests and priorities lie in another field. But the reticence of the prime minister, the foreign minister and especially the Foreign Ministry is indefensible. If we are serious about extending political, moral and diplomatic support to the right of the Kashmiri people to self-determination, as we keep saying, the government will have to come out boldly in support of those who are braving Indian bullets to demand this right and mobilise international support for their demands.

Not only the government but also Parliament, political parties, the media and the civil society have a responsibility in this regard. The least they can do is to break their silence and proclaim their solidarity with the unarmed Kashmiri men, women and children who have decided to take their destiny in their own hands and are defying brute force.