Burden of Memories

By Uzma Falak for Kashmir Dispatch

My memory keeps getting in the way of your history - Agha Shahid Ali.

A little over fifteen years ago, while holding my mother’s arm, I looked out from a window of my house in Srinagar. The sight though blurred now, my memory bears an indelible impression; men shouldering the dead in shrouds, women wailing and the air resonating with slogans of Hum Kya Chahtay? Azaadi! (What do we want? Freedom!) I vividly remember asking my mother, “When shall we get Azaadi?” I didn’t know what Azaadi meant, though I knew that the people of my land desperately wanted it. A long silence had followed my question.

Today, after all those years, I stand at the same window, now with a broken pane, bearing witness to the same yearning, anger and asking the same question to myself. When shall we be free?

No matter how hard our elders tried to shield us from the trail of destruction outside, their efforts failed. My generation grew up listening to terms like Curfew, Crackdown, Martyr, Tehreek. Azaadi was in the air – at the bakers’, in dining rooms, in buses and on the streets.

My childhood passed under the shadow of a gun. Dreams were interrupted by the deafening sound of gunshots and grenades. I remember my brother’s favourite past time was to make wooden toy-guns and play what he called ‘encounter-encounter’. During cricket matches no one around me would cheer for India. As a child, I failed to comprehend the sentiment, however, gradually in those small but strong signs I started to find my identity as a Kashmiri.

On a sunny afternoon, I remember walking home from school with my friends. The roads were barricaded, the troopers stopped us and one of them frisked our school bags. He even frisked my friend’s lunch box, which made me angry. I snapped back saying, “We are school going children and this is a lunch box. How can you expect...” He was red in the face as I looked sharply at him and walked away. Anger and excitement gripped me at the same time as I hurried back home to narrate what I thought was an act of gallantry. But, my mother was scared. She scolded me saying, “They could have shot you there and then.”

At educational institutions books conceal our history, even maps are distorted. But planners of such tactics forget that children here live in conflict and life is the greatest teacher.

The heavy presence of troopers, the army pickets at every nook and corner, the barbed wires and barricades, the frisking – it all seemed ‘normal’ until I stepped out of Kashmir and found a different world. It was then I realized that my home was not ‘normal’.

Debates surrounding us made me inquisitive and I found that in the United Nations, the state of Jammu and Kashmir was registered as a dispute after litigation made by the first Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The UN suggested a plebiscite, which was accepted by Nehru and promised to the people of the state during his speech on All India Radio in 1948 and also while addressing a mammoth gathering at Lal Chowk in Srinagar. Nehru made this promise time and again.

But instead of holding to the promise, New Delhi indulged in systematic abrogation of the special status guaranteed to the state under the Treaty of Accession. Till 1987, observers say not a single state election could be termed ‘free and fair’; such doctored democracy could only breed rebellion. Two years later, an armed uprising erupted and New Delhi’s response was repressive, to say the least. The number of people killed is disputed, but the widely accepted figure is 70,000.

Since childhood I have only known the inhuman face of India’s presence. Victims of torture, rape, forced disappearances, unmarked graves, widows, half widows, orphans – their common address is Kashmir.

In 2005, a bomb blast outside Tyndale Biscoe and Mallinson girls’ school, where I studied, left me uneasy for days. Disturbing images of my classmates and children yelling, crying in pain; blood soaked uniforms and blood spilled floors. My helplessness at not being able to locate my younger brother in that huge crowd of media men, ambulances, OB vans and troopers still haunts me.

The picture perfect Kashmir, is not only about the picturesque Dal Lake and Mughal gardens it is also the most densely militarized zone in the world. Here minors are booked under draconian laws like the Public Safety Act (PSA), which allows people to be held without trial for up to two years. There are no juvenile homes here. The Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) gives Indian troops free hand to search, arrest, shoot and also provides them with immunity from prosecution. Human rights violations, a plagued justice system and bad governance are what people are protesting against.

With my childhood memories hoarded, 2010 only reinforced my identity as a child of conflict. And, it also came with a yearning to express our collective pain. For me writing became a consolation and a need.

Marked as the year of Innocent Killings, 2010 began with the killing of Inayat Khan, 16, who was shot by troopers on his way to tuition on January 8. Days later, Wamiq Farooq and Zahid Farooq, both school going boys like Inayat, became victims of the government forces’ actions. Worst was yet to come; on April 29, the Indian Army killed three Kashmiri youth in a fake encounter near the Line of Control (LoC) in the Machil sector. The situation became aggravated after 17-year-old, Tufail Ahmed Mattoo, who was returning from tuitions, was hit in the head with a teargas canister inside the Gani Memorial stadium in Srinagar’s old city. After that our days passed counting the dead; in total 118 people were killed during the summer unrest of 2010.

The words of Faiz Ahmed Faiz sum up our miseries. “The executioner's hands are clean, his nails transparent. The sleeves of each assassin are spotless. No sign of blood: No trace of red…”

Kashmiris have been alienated for decades. With every case that is forgotten, the memory sharpens. With every act of injustice a new stone thrower is born. The government has failed to reach people. In a volte-face, the government charged dead Wamiq, 13, of causing injury to a cop instead of bringing his murderers to book.

“There are countless pending cases and everyone knows the fate they meet. We don’t have any hopes. We can’t push it to the court for long. We are common, poor people and can’t afford the costs. Allah is the witness and that is the only consolation.” These words of a brother, whose sister was among those killed, speak volumes about the faith common man has in the judiciary.

Terms like healing touch, negotiation table and dialogue have been used and abused by the government repeatedly. In reality India’s answer to stones has been brute force. Though India’s diagnosis has always entered on development and employment, intentionally shoving the real issue under the rugs of oblivion. Labelling the unrest as part of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) backed is seen as yet another desecration of Kashmir’s sentiment.

A 5th grader in my neighbourhood secretly comes out of his house, without letting his mother know, to pelt stones and register his protest. Is he, a boy in grade 5, funded by ISI or LeT or is he crying for employment? I will let you be the judge.

I saw 9-year-old Sameer Rah in shrouds, his tiny body on a stretcher, being carried for the burial. He was ruthlessly beaten to death, and when his body was found he still had a half eaten toffee in his mouth. I can’t forget the face of his wailing mother and my own helplessness as I stood on the street testifying. The tearful voice of Sameer’s friend from a mosque loudspeaker still echoes in my head, “Sameer your blood will bring revolution!”

Concertina wires, barricades, burning tires or its leftover, crushed glasses, scattered stones – these have become signposts on every street in Kashmir. The graffiti Go India Go, We Want Freedom – a message loud and clear, is what every street in Kashmir says.

While the idea of Azaadi remains dear to the heart of Kashmir, there has been a clear transition from guns to stones and slogans and many other forms of dissent. While peaceful protests on the streets are quelled, they have reached cyberspace. Videos and pictures, depicting the gory realities of New Delhi’s troops have been shared across the globe.

In these times, when the mind is busy in damage control and when everyday brings with it new ordeals, we have to keep our head and wage war against our memory lest we forget. Our memory is the strongest weapon in such times.

As a Kashmiri I don’t hate Indians; I have many Indian friends. The protest is against the impotency of the Indian government to understand our sentiment. It is over 60 years and India should respect the ideals of the democracy that it claims to uphold, otherwise, its global image of being the world’s ‘largest democracy’ might be dubbed as the biggest PR scam in history.

Iram, a forty-day-old baby girl, died just because she couldn’t make it to hospital as government forces did not allow her family through during curfew. Iram’s 5-year-old sister, when asked, innocently said woh margayi, military walon ne jaanay nahe diya (she died because troopers didn't let her go). Iram’s sister will find her identity as a Kashmiri in these signs, the way I did when I was a child. And when she grows up she too will sing the songs of Azaadi.

Courtesy: Kashmir Dispatch

Imagining Srinagar - Sarajevo

The City is the memory of massacres. I hope words grow out of Gaw Kadal, Hawal, Burzalla, Zakura – cancerous, as Genet’s love of the Palestinians…

Srinagar is a city in mourning. Who remembers Srinagar in winter? The winter sky is a Hiroshima sky. The city is the martyrs’ graveyard at Eidgah.

The life of Srinagar is mourning,

To recover that memory, or to forget?

The brightness of the sky in Srinagar is cruel.

The midnight soldiers demand forgetting… They promised us flags of Fatah, they tantalised us with Jerusalem? But where did the Palestinians go?

I am a Kashmiri Palestinian; Srinagar Sarajevan. I no longer live in Srinagar but I see Srinagar as the absolute present of freedom. Of Srinagar’s singularities I can never forget the terrible Beauty of the Srinagar Intifada, Srinagar’s Rivers of stones. Why talk about this

Revolution? It too resembles a long drawn out burial, with me following the funeral procession from afar.

Naipaul writes of Srinagar that it sleeps through winter… in the winter of 1990, Srinagar is Berlin-Budapest-Bucharest, and Srinagar is Sarajevo. Naipaul’s medieval city explodes the night of January 20th 1990… on the stroke of midnight. My mother and grandmother are indifferent; they go back to sleep. I put on my phiran. I cross over to my neighbour’s; the women prepare kehava for the men while they are getting dressed. The women prepared kehava for the Sarajevans before they disappeared in the Hills. My neighbour is ecstatic. “I take no chances. I am ready. The UN is coming. Tomorrow is Independence Day”. They call the Faithful to the mosques…

Khoon-e-Shahida Rang Laya/ Fatah Ka Parcham Lahraya/ Masjid-e-Aqsa Roti Hain/ Kyon Yeh Tabahi Hoti Hain ((Blood of the martyrs has born the fruit/ the flag of victory waves from the root/ Masjid aqsa is wailing/ why this destruction is prevailing?)

… The loudspeakers speak to the Muslims. They killed more than a hundred demonstrators that night, the night of the Gaw Kadal massacre. The night of January 20th – the night of massacres.

“Srinagar, my friend, is the most dangerous city in the world”, said the JKLF sympathiser.

“Here the oppressor and the oppressed are too close to destroy”.

The intimacy nurtures Srinagar’s first suicide bomber for 9 years. Afaq, the Jaish suicide bomber who blows himself up outside the Army Cantonment (the ancient Srinagar of King Pravarsena) is just 5 years old in 1990.

January 1990 to March 1990 Srinagar is Prague, The city of demonstrations. They march to the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan. There is a

Demonstration of Srinagar Chambers of Commerce, of students, of auto drivers, of Policemen… the incessant demonstrations last the winter. The March demonstration brings more than 1 million Kashmiris to Srinagar. People offer food to the demonstrators on the roads to Srinagar. Kashmiris turned azaadi demonstrations into an Urs fair. The soldiers open fire on the demonstrators… kill 10, 20, 50 Kashmiris, as many as it takes to clear the streets, the downtown bylanes – the hecatombs of the slaughtered.

The city is Curfewed for 17 days. There is no relaxation in the Curfew for 17 days in Downtown Srinagar, the nerve centre of the Kashmiri revolt. The Army is out in Kashmir, the schools, the hospitals turn into barracks and bazaars into battlefields.

Everybody blames the government. I blame myself. I cross many military checkpoints on the way to school after the curfew days, fearless, in identification with the men behind the sandbags. You carry your identification on you. India’s national emblem emblazoned on

the ID card. Ashoka’s Lions – the symbol of India’s commitment to peace, the sole guarantee of your existence. There’s also the vague assurance: Truth alone shall prevail.

My grandmother blames Sheikh Abdullah for this permanent Revolution, the Inquilab. My mother is overanxious, all Srinagar mothers are overanxious:

Hum Hindustan ka khate hain, Always. I listen to Radio Azad Kashmir. I fight with my mother. I change. Spring is the season of blood. The JKLF militants hide in sewers or shrines before the city opens its doors. Buddhist monks fleeing persecution had sought sanctuary in Srinagar. Now the JKLF marches to Chrar-e-Sharief. They vow liberation. They fail. No one, nothing can put into words the six months, and especially the first weeks, in Srinagar

In 1990, Things get worse. The Pandits leave Kashmir. Srinagar lays siege to Jammu and Delhi as refugees. I am no longer in Green Vale, my school. The Green Vale School is miniature Srinagar; the experimental school humbled by its rival – the Muslim Educational Trust. Green Vale is Albinioni’s adagio, the Romeo-Juliet Bridge in Sarajevo. We study the Ramayana in class. We speak of Yusuf’s Beauty and Yaqub’s Patience. Inallaha ma’al Sabireen. Allah is with the Patient.

I remember my Srinagar… Tushar loves Muslim mythology (Friday sermons to bribe Tushar), Deepu roots for Pakistan in the India-Pakistan hockey matches, Vivek’s father lend me the book on Dialectical Materialism and I lose my religion to Vishal’s 25-paisa Hindu roti, my Kashmiri Shaivism… the city of absences. I’m everything you lost. You won’t forgive me.

“Send him to Bombay with us. We can take care of him. He is quite talented. Yeh yahan is mahool mein kya karega” (What will he do in this chaotic environment?), The Principal tells my mother. I change my school. My new school is New Era, New Era Public School. We dodge grenades for years to meet friends at Hideout Café where I exchange Poetry for coffee and the azaadi

I carry with myself is the moment when I kicked the barricade outside a military bunker.

There is no news of us in the world. People tune to BBC Urdu every evening at 8:30 & 11:00… we become the children of news. "Yeh BBC London hai" (This is BBC London)… we lower the volume so as not to attract any attention and huddle over the radio as if it’d tell our truth to us.

There is no electricity in Sarajevo, no electricity in Srinagar. Srinagar is deserted in winter. Blackouts. BBC London. No electricity for days. Before dying my grandmother looked out the window at the sky and said, “Now I want to be free”.


You can choose your target in Srinagar-Sarajevo, kill the son and then shoot the mother in the stomach so that she can watch him die before her own death. They keep firing to even kill two people you end up firing for minutes. It isn’t easy to kill people.

People hear shouts from interrogation centres. Landmines tore bodies to bits and pieces, severed the limbs and peeled off faces as if they were masks. Five thousand years of Srinagar is ruins, the shatter of shrapnel. The ruins of Beirut. The ruins of the spirit. The spirit is Sabra, the spirit is Shattila.

The relatives of nearly 2,000 people who disappeared are still tracing their loved ones.

“Please tell us whether they are dead or alive”. They destroyed the memorial that the children of the disappeared had built for their missing fathers. They write slogans with the barrels of

their guns, the seven-year-old boy’s splattered brains their ink. The Sikh soldier confesses in the Crackdown… he pulls out this diary to read out names of localities where if attacked they must fire indiscriminately, to kill. “Here on the Airport Road we must be careful”.

In spring as the almond trees bloom, the war tourists come to Srinagar, Journalists from Delhi. They occupy the Ahdoos Hotel on river Jhelum in the restaurant at Ahdoos the air is thick with xenophobia that the journalists carry with them from Delhi. Loss and suffering, just like the global debt, are negotiable and for sale.

Welcome to Sarajevo.

The ubiquitous TATA bus transports dreams to Lal Chowk “ Apoor, apoor” (across, across the Jhelum) to Lal Chowk. Srinagar-Sarajevo is the city of Border Crossings. Crossing over is quite common. The bus crosses Miljacka-Jhelum to apoor apoor Lal Chowk. Cross over to Srinagar-Sarajevo. The Land of Forgetting, Paradise on Earth. And then the boys of the border crossings also get killed… 73 on 5 May 1991… People in Srinagar mourn them in colourful wedding tents.

This then is the Imaginary of my Srinagar,the houses abandoned by Kashmiri Pandits, Pir-e-Rishiyan Nund Rishi, Lalla Ded, Nagarjuna, Abhinavagupta, Left melancholy, the fetishism of Kashmiri nationalists, the hyacinth roofs, fin-de-siècle bricks, the Jewish faces (I too am a bit of a Jew), the Aryan noses, Lal Chowk and other squares, Hideout and other Cafés and saints’ shrines.

The Space in my city is a ribbon of bullets.

Hind Bookshop no longer exists and there are no books in Kashmir Bookshop. Lal Chowk is set ablaze. Palladium cinema is destroyed. Only the facade of the foyer is left…the broken wall frames the singed Srinagar sky as the screen of the Palladium’s past…countless Hindi films fade to flames. I see Dr. Guru’s dead body. There is a hole under his neck… tears flow… this must be madness. My friend, how can I share your grief? They shot Dr Guru in cold blood outside his hospital. We move out with the funeral, they shoot at the funeral procession… I lie buried under people bicycles people… La Illaha Illallaha Muhammada Rasul Allah… this is Death. I run. They killed everybody, they killed everybody…and they killed just one man… I follow him through blood on the road and hundreds of pairs of shoes the mourners left behind, as they ran from the funeral, victims of them firing… “Who remembers who killed whom?”… I turn to psychoanalysis and Buddhism.

Maybe in the words of Fawaz Turki, I am too young to be Kashmiri. I am running away.

How long do I run?

How I Became a Stone-Pelter...

I am from downtown Srinagar born in 1991. I was admitted to one of the best school of valley. As a child I had dream to become engineer. Whenever somebody used to ask me about my aim I would proudly say engineer. As I started to grow up I started to become familiar with many words which everyone used to talk about that among them few were "azadi" (freedom), "hartal" (shutdown) but I was unable to understand the meaning of these words. I loved the word hartal as it was holiday, so I always wished for hartal. As I grew up I came to know about mujahids. I used to listen to the stories of mujahids. I would often ask my elders to tell me about mujahids. They told me stories of many mujahids like Isaaq, Ishfaq, and Jan Malik which I liked to share with my friends. 

Even I was named after a Shaheed Mujahid (martyr fighter) who was killed before few weeks I was born. Then Came the summer of 2007, I was passing by Nowhatta, It was month of Muharram. There was heavy stone pelting going on. I found it very interesting. I saw youth pelting stones and shouting freedom slogans. Initially I was afraid to go in front and pelt stones on Police and CRPF.

I used to think they are some angels fighting on the front. Days passed. Now I too had gathered guts to pelt stones on the front line. It was now 2008 I was busy with my exams. I heard about Amarnath Land Row. Things started changing very fast I had never seen kind of hartals (shutdowns) before. I had never seen kind of stone pelting before. It was totally new experience to me.

Now tear gas shell wasn't shot anymore, now bullets were fired directly. I saw many boys hit by a bullet and dying on spot. I was disturbed by this. I asked my grandfather once why they directly shoot on us. His answer was "Tse chuk mangaan azadi" (You are asking for freedom). This answer changed my mind. I started realizing neither we are part of India nor India considers us their part.

Now I started reading history about our freedom struggle. I came to know about many things about the Kashmir struggle. Now I started reading newspaper, magazines very keenly. I started observing everything about the political system. I wept when I read about Gawkadal, Zukura, Hawal, Bijbihara, Sopore, Kupwara massacres. I too wanted to become Mujahid.
I once joked with my mother that I will become Mujahid, her answer was pain full, first give me poison then you will become Mujahid.
Came 2009 I again started to remain busy with my studies but whenever there was stone pelting in Nowahatta I used go there and pelt stones. Stone pelting for me now, has become a reaction to the atrocities and d illegal occupation of India. I do it for a cause.

I was once caught by police and was put in custody I was also beaten but that also couldn't break me. When I was released I again started pelting stones. A policemen in custody told me why you pelt stones, do you think you will get freedom by pelting stones. If it is the case I am also ready to pelt stones, he said.
But still it is the only thing which makes me feel that gun or bullet cannot suppress my thoughts my sentiments and to live in occupied I want to be free....

I am happy when I pelt stones because I want to take revenge for every innocent killing. I know my stone wont harm them but remember it is not stone it is my feelings. I pelt stones because we are oppressed.

It was June 2009 Shopian rape had occurred. It was unbearable to hear rape and murder case of a girl and her sister in law. Tears rolled from my eyes when I read story of Asiya in newspaper. Once again hartals, stone pelting emerged with more boys felling to bullets to a response for protesting for justice from brutal Indian military.

I watched a press conference of Omar Abdullah on news channel promising to bring culprits in front of people and punish them in 24 hors. Honestly I was happy with his promise I saw a hope in him in bringing justice to the duo.
But nothing happened instead of justice their relatives were beaten. This made me more aggressive I wanted to take revenge, I wanted to punish murderers. More ever I considered cm for all this because his behaviour made me much aggressive much angry against India and their brutality here.

After one month of continuous strikes life was back on track. Again we started to remain busy with our studies.
But I always used to think why didn’t the duo got justice I once had seen news of a 14 year old girl from Delhi who was killed by unknown person in her bedroom. But Police wasn’t able to solve the case. It was then handed over to CBI who arrested the culprits in few weeks.

But in case of Kashmir CBI solved the case differently they didn’t arrested the culprits but made a funny story of the victims that they died due to drowning in stream whose depth was hardly unto knees. This clearly showed policy of India in Kashmir.

But whom could I ask these questions why didn’t they get justice? Why they shoot us if we protest for seeking justice? These questions always were in my mind. By pelting stones I dint got answer but I was happy I felt I am taking revenge by pelting stones but what else I could do who was their to listen me. I felt satisfaction by pelting stones by pelting stones I wanted to say them give us justice leave our Kashmir let us leave in peace let us live in place where no mother has fear that her son may return dead. These are not stones these are my feelings.

Came 2010 it was January once I saw Wamiq Farooq, He was a neighbour of one of my relatives residing at Rainawari area of Srinagar. Wamiq was very good boy he used to offer my times prayers. He used to call me bhai (brother).
After few weeks on one Friday evening I heard that a boy has been martyred after hitting by tear gas shell but I didn’t know unfortunately it was Wamiq the same guy whom I had seen before a day. When I woke up next morning I saw a picture of boy whose identity was yet to be revealed in newspaper. After few minutes I got call from my cousin that Wamiq has been martyred. For few minutes I totally froze I wasn’t able to speak. A boy hardly 13 was no more. You can understand how it feels when you hear death of person whom you know.

Wamiq was like my little brother I had never thought an innocent young boy will fell prey to their brutality. Once again hartals (strikes) and stone pelting emerged with more boys getting injured and martyred. Indian occupational forces were responding with more brutality, they are occupational forces their cruelty and brutality is not a surprise to us but I was surprised by the role of Jammu and Kashmir police our local police they are playing absurd role. One fails to understand the cause of their cruelty and brutality, Is it they want to show more loyalty to India or they are killing their brothers for money. What ever the reason is but the way they behave with their own countrymen is painful. Maybe they have became blind because of power government has given to them.

Wamiq's death gave birth to a powerful revolution. The revolution shook the existence of Indian rule in Kashmir. Now India started to show their military power to unarmed civilians. The way they deal with protests is answer to those people who call India integral part of Kashmir.

India has started to engage its every front to curb this revolution from politically to technically even media is being used to curb this revolution.
Streets of Kashmir have become red with the blood of innocent people. Jhelum has become red with blood of innocent people.

I know one day may be I will also fell to their bullets even I am mentally prepared for that because I have attained extreme limit of stone pelting. But remember my death will give birth to hundreds of kale kharab (hotheads). As I became kale kharab (hothead) after death of innocent boys from last three years. 65 deaths have already given birth to hundreds of kale kharab (hot head) who are ready to fight till their last breath. These kale kharab (hothead) are present at every corner of Kashmir. What ever will the future of present intifada but the struggle to free Kashmir will continue even if takes 100 more years. Next generation will produce more dangerous kale kharabs (hot heads) to free Kashmir.

The Author is Anonymous

Rapes with Impunity

Indian forces and paramilitary militias working with them have been responsible for rape throughout the conflict. Although the cases are created but most of them are never heard, and those which are heard are delayed and apparently denied.Reports of rape from Doda and other border areas have increased since the crackdown in these areas began in 1997.

The case of Sameera illustrates the army's practice of assaulting villagers in punishment because they believe they have supported the militants, or as a means of terrorizing them so that they will not do so. Sameera about fifty, a resident of Ludna, Doda, told Human Rights Watch that on October 5, 1998, the Eighth Rashtriya Rifles came to her house and took her, her husband and her eight-month-old grandson to their base in the village of Charote, some fifteen kilometers away. There they were separated. She said:

They began beating me. They said that we had been feeding the militants. They used electric shocks on my feet. I was raped. They stripped off my clothes and said they would kill me. There were many soldiers and a captain. The captain raped me, keeping everyone else outside. He told me: "You are Muslims, and you will all be treated like this." He was a Hindu, but he told me that he was a Muslim, and that his name was Shahnawaz. He forced me to confess that I had been feeding the militants. This happened on the first night. I was there for fifteen days. Then we were released.

Ten days after their arrest, while the family was still in Charote, Sameera's daughter, daughter-in-law and son were arrested and taken to another army base in Gundna village, where they were held for two days before being released.

When the family returned to their home they discovered that all of their belongings had been taken, including Rs. 10,000 [U.S.$ 250] and jewelry. At the time that Human Rights Watch interviewed Sameera., she had not yet filed a police report but had received medical treatment from a local practitioner. She stated that she was still in pain.

Residents of Marmal, Doda, told Human Rights Watch that in early October 1998 the army cordoned off some twenty villages in the area for fifteen days and during that time took some of the local women to the army camp. Although the women did not talk about what had happened to them, from their behavior the other residents believed that a number of them had been raped.

They are looking for the militants. But they are unable to find any. So they harass the local population .... Our womenfolk are taken into the army camp, all separately. They round up the women, then take two or three in the evening. They come back after two or three days. They are very shy then, and don't want to talk about what has happened to them. The army has pressured them not to speak about what happened.

(Names have been Changed)

"The infant came down in smithereens"

A small village that gave Kashmir’s counterinsurgency an alternative name wants to change its name now - hoping they would not be identified as Nawabadis. Ibrahim Wani and Farooq Ahmad (KASHMIR LIFE) report on the Nawabadi Mohalla and its haunting baggage.


Nawabadi Mohalla may pass off as just another small village in the Sonwari belt of north Kashmir, but for its street lights that make it stand apart. Those familiar with the village, don’t dare to take it for any other village, anyways.

Nawabadi has entered Kashmir’s lexicon as a word that strikes terror. There were many villages in Kashmir that became hotbeds of counterinsurgency in mid 1990’s but Nawabadi was one name that stuck.


A village of some three hundred people, two and a half kilometres from Safapora, Nawabadi residents now want to change its name to Mirabad. They no longer want to identify with its past.

A few kilomteres from father of counterinsurgency Kuka Parrey’s Hajin village, Nawabadi Mohalla gave Ikhwan some of its most dreaded men. Many remember the village as the birthplace of ruthless renegades, like Fayaz Mir alias Fayaz Nawabadi, notorious for extortion, rape, politically motivated killings. For the state security apparatus, that patronised them, these men were important to break the back of militancy in the Sonawari-Ganderbal belt and by extension whole of Kashmir. So they did. Hardly anyone was spared.

Perhaps because many of the first renegades came from Nawabadi village, the name in local parlance became a synonym for all the counterinsurgents or police informers. An alternative name for Ikhwan, the largest renegade group.

Nawbid was actually used in the area to refer to the residents of the Nawabadi Mohalla. So anyone from the area was a Nawbud. After the switching of Ikhwan to counter insurgency, apart from the ruthless renegades who emerged from Nawabadi Mohalla, the village provided a haven for all counter-insurgents. Even though only a few from the village carried out the dirty work, almost all residents were Ikhwan sympathisers.

Nawabdis trace their shift of allegiance to the killing of a JKLF militant from the village by Hizbul Mujahideen in inter faction rivalry in 1993.

Manzoor Ahmad was the first postgraduate from the village. He did his MA in Urdu from Kashmir University. Later he joined Jammu Kashmir Students Liberation Front and crossed the LoC for arms training. After this he joined Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front as Deputy District Commander. This was around the time when animosities between Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) and JKLF were building up.

While on his way back from Sopore Manzoor was picked up by Hizbul Mujahideen. “They accused him of being an Indian agent,” say the residents, “but at that time it was widely known that Manzoor was a man of character. It was actually that Ahsan Dar wanted him to join HM.”

When news of Manzoor’s abduction spread in the area, desperate attempts started to secure his release. “The negotiations were carried out at the highest level; almost all the known militants and separatist leaders were involved.

The residents were promised his release. “But he was not released. We kept on searching for him. We formed search parties and would search for him throughout the area,” says Kawaam Din. But the search yielded no result. At this time Fayaz, Manzoor’s cousin was in jail.

“Even Syed Ali Shah Geelani searched for him in his car. He told us that he had spent 13000 rupees searching for him,” he says, “Moulvi Abbas Ansari and Saleem Geelani also mediated but to no avail.”

Demands for Manzoor’s release were building up. People were protesting. The Hajin bazaar remained shut down for 25 days at a stretch.

Then, residents say, a HM rebel Shams-u-Din informed the villagers that Manzoor had been killed on the second day of his abduction, and lay buried in Hari-Taar, on the banks of Jehlum near Sopore.

“We rushed to the spot. Some militants from HM were guarding the spot, and they fired on the crowd. People from the surrounding areas like Shah-Gund joined in and we retrieved the body,” adds Kawaam. The eruption of emotions and sentiments was spontaneous. “It was an angry crowd, which sees nothing in rage. On the way from Hari-Taar to Nawabadi Mohalla, around 14 houses belonging to Jamat-e-Islami (JeI) members or sympathisers were burned,” adds Kamaal. “It was a day which this region can not forget. It was a day of pain.”

After this the rift between JKLF and HM-JeI deepened. A civil war sort of situation ensued where people from both sides were being assassinated. The Nawabadis became fiercely anti-HM and anti-Jamaat. “In all this all the militant organisations united against HM, and opened a united front against them,” he says.

Peer Ziya-ud-Din of Asham, a JKLF sympathiser and father of Nazir Ahmad Geelani of JKLF was also gunned down by HM. This added oil to the fire. Around 500-600 people would die in this infighting, many among them were civilians.

It was around this time that 28 militants surrendered, and under the leadership of Kuka Parray formed the renegade Ikhwan. Fayaz, now released, joined the Ikwan, and with the wounds of Manzoor’s loss still fresh, many Nawabadis followed him into the fold. “When we had seen the body of Manzoor, we could see nothing else. He had come out for the cause. We had followed in his footsteps, but Jamaat and Hizbul mujahideen ruined it. They targeted everyone who was not their supporter. We could tolerate it no further,” says an ex-counter insurgent.

Fayaz was merciless. He soon gained notoriety and was gifted the post of commander-in-chief of the Ikhwan. Kuka Parray reigned as the supremo. Thus started the reign of terror. After that it was “catch and kill,” accepts Kawaam.

Though the actual gun wielding Nawabdis did not number more than 10, all the counter insurgents in Valley - estimated to be between 1,000-1,200- came to be known by the name.

The shifting allegiances of Nawabadis created animosities with adjoining villages. Residents recall that after Manzoor’s death the adjoining villages in Safapora and Bandipora enforced a boycott of the village.

“The shopkeepers won’t provide us amenities. We were not given medicines even for around six months,” says a Nawabadi resident.

Mohammad Sidiq, father of Fayaz Nawabadi says the boycott forced them to loot any trucks that passed the village. “But we would pay them,” he said in the same breath.

In coming years, the response from the Nawabadis was often brutal. Fayaz Nawabadi walked the streets like a king.

“Even policemen had to look down while walking past him,” says a resident of Ganderbal.

He was the most notorious export of Nawabadi Mohallah to the rest of Kashmir. The Commander-in-Chief of Kuka Parray’s Ikhwan, he is said to have killed hundreds of people. “If his eyes fell on something he liked, it had to be his,” the resident adds. One day his eyes fell on a new scooter parked in the Safapora market. The scooter belonged to Waseem, a 21 year old.

“Waseem would not just let go of his new scooter when the Nawabadis asked him to give it to them,” says the resident. Fayaz then walked up to him, and held him by his throat. He then pumped bullets into him. Waseem fell to ground. When a shopkeeper raised his voice, he too met the same fate. One more onlooker also fell to the ground. “Three innocent people died that day,” adds the resident. With three dead bodies on the streets Fayaz issued his threat, “People of Safapora, whosever goes against us will meet a similar fate,” he says.

Fayaz would be accompanied by his trusted lieutenants, Abdul Hamid Mir alias Nikka Bhai, Mohammad Afzal Mir alias Commander Adil, Ghulam Nabi Mir alias Kaka among others, all Nawabadis. They reign of terror engulfed Sonawari, Safapora, Ganderbal areas. Hardly anyone was spared, but the families of militants and Jamat-e-Islami supporters were especially targeted. It started a wave of migration from the area to the urban areas. Many people even left the state. “No one was safe,” says the resident. The killings continued.Saif-u-Din Bhat, a 60-years-old teacher from Safapora was killed because his brother was associated with HM. Another teacher Abdul Karim Bhat was killed because of links with Jamat-e-Islami. A bank employee, Mohammad Afzal of Yongoora Chak also fell to bullets, for unknown reasons. The number is estimated to be above 300. Some locals say the number of the people killed was much higher than 300. “Many deaths were never reported. Many of these will never be known,” the resident adds.

Nawabadis once went to the house of a Jamaat-e-Islami sympathiser in Banyari village. The man was not there. “The routine would have been to harass the family and leave,” says Yasir, a resident of the area. But on this day death was in the air. “One of the Nawabadi commanders caught hold of a six month old son of the man,” he says. Then hell broke loose. “He flung the child into the air, and the Nawabadi party started firing.” The infant came down in smithereens. “I can not forget that day,” says Yasir, “there are no words to express this cruelty.”

Tales of the atrocities abound. “One more case still resonates in the minds and hearts of people. It always gives me pain,” says Yasir as he recalls. “There was a girl in Asham, a beautiful girl, Nazima, the daughter of one Ghulam Mohammad Lone. And then their eyes fell on her,” he says.

Nazima was kidnapped and raped. “For days together no one knew of her,” he recalls. Then details related to her emerged. It was Fayaz actually who had sought her. When she had resisted she was raped, by many Nawabadis, says Yasir. They raped her for days. She became pregnant. After a few months she was let go.
In the meantime, Ashraf Nawabidi, Fayaz’s brother started pursuing Nazima’s sister. She too was kidnapped.

“The family would not have protested if they would have known what was to come next,” says Yasir. The Nawabadis converged on the Asham market. Nazima was dragged out on the street. Fayaz oversaw everything. “What transpired next is engraved in the psyche of the people there forever,” says Yasir.

The eight month pregnant woman was held forcibly. Then her clothes were torn. After this she was paraded naked. “Fayaz pulled the trigger, and shot her in the abdomen first. He kept on shooting and shouting - see the result,” recalls Yasir. Nazima died on the spot. Her sister is still with Ashraf.

Even after an incident of this sort, no one raised a voice. That was the peak of Nawabadi terror. “But nothing is permanent. Whatever goes up, has to come down,” says Yasir. Most of the Nawabadis met cruel deaths. Kaka was shot dead in 1994, Nikka Bhai was killed in 1995, Afzal in 1996. The kingpin, Fayaz after surviving 18 attempts on life finally met his fate on Feb 17, 2000. He was blown up in an IED blast in Sumbal, just a few kilometres away from where he had shot Nazima. According to locals the intensity of the blast was such that his body parts could be seen hanging from the power supply wires. Many people believe that he was killed by his own people - the Ikhwanis.


Fayaz Nawabadi is considered a martyr and a hero in his village. So are the other Nawabadis killed in these years. Their graveyard reads Mazar-e-Shohada. Fayaz’s grave is decorated and fenced. It lies on way to the shrine of a saint in the mohalla, called Sayeed Sahib. A stone throw’s distance from the graveyard is a model school. His house has a 12 foot high wall topped by barbed wire. He is survived by two wives and four children. “Similar is the case for many others too,” says Afzal, a government employee who was assigned a task in the area. For him too the visit was painful. His best friend had been killed by Fayaz. “I tried to skip the area, but I had to do my job,” he says.While walking through the village he saw a man walking behind him. Initially he became suspicious. Then when he finally gathered the courage to ask the person as to why he was following him, he came to know that he had no job or work to do. The reply startled him. The man had identified himself as an ex-counter insurgent, some of the few who had survived. He did not venture out of the village, out the fear.
“Even though almost all the notorious Nawabadis were killed, the people of the surrounding areas can not forget the mayhem inflicted by them,” says Afzal, who happened to meet a relative of Waseem on return from the mohalla. Their response was, “There is no question of forgiveness. Even if they repent it, nothing is going to change. There can be no forgiveness.”

Ejaz from Safapora echoes similar sentiments. “We cannot forget what Nawabadis have done to us. They are traitors. There is no question of having any sort of relation with them. They are still like that only,” he says.

However, the residents of the Nawabdi Mohallah insist they want to stay aloof of politics.

“We want to be away from politics,” says Mohammad Kamaal Mir, a resident of Nawabadi Mohalla, “We have already suffered a lot. Now we want to be away from all this. We also have same aspirations like all other Kashmiris, and our children like others too also cheer for the Pakistani cricket team. But we are silent spectators. We will not repeat our mistakes again now.”

The residents of the area are self confessed supporters of National Conference. “It is we who made (Mohammed) Akbar Lone successful in Sumbal,” says Kawaam Din. He further adds, “(Mohammed) Akbar Lone is the most honest politician in all of Kashmir, and he is an ideal for all the politicians.” They credit him for most of the development work in the village, including the street lights and the tube wells.

“We were even approached by the opposition parties with an offer of 40,000 rupees to vote for them, which we out rightly rejected,” say Kawaam. According to him recently when they had gone to meet Lone, he gave their issues precedence over all the other works on hand. “He even sent prayers on Fayaz and recalled how he had saved him when once Kuka Parray had grabbed his collar to beat him.”

“It is us who voted against Kuka Parray. We made him fall. He did no development work here,” says Sidiq Mir, father of Fayaz. He describes Kuka Parray as a fool who was made the king. “If he would have been in Srinagar he would have been taken to a mental hospital,” he remarks.

Narrating an incident when he had rebuked Kuka Parray for letting his brother go on a looting spree all over the area, Sidiq says, “I told him that his brother was like a wild bull that was going wild throughout the area and causing damage and action should be taken against him.” Later Kuka Parray according to him called him privately and told him that he should not have said this in front of everyone.

When Fayaz’s father, an employee of the cattle farm operated by SKAUST in the vicinity was about to retire, he was put under suspension. So his pension was automatically stopped. He attributes the development to Kuka Parray. At this time, Fayaz was among his main men. The issue was finally resolved when some politicians close to both the sides intervened.

Mehraj, a resident of Ganderbal was a child when the Nawabadis were at the peak of their power. He remembers a day when Nawabadis converged on his village, and cut down all the willow and poplar trees on the government land. “They sold it to their own friends at the cheapest possible rates,” he says adding that the fear was such that no government official either resisted or complained of the incident. Such was the case with all of the area. “They even cut trees in the Jarokha Bagh,” says Yasin another resident of the area, “Loot was a common thing with Nawabadis those days.”

Yasir says, “Any vehicle which plied from the area was looted. People would think twice before passing through the area dominated by renegades.” Sidiq accepts. “The people from the surrounding areas on the directives of militants had imposed a blockade on us. So we had no option left but to loot for survival.” But according to Gulzar from Sumbal, “Nawabadis have always had a bad image in the area. They were involved in thefts and robberies before they became associated with counter-insurgency. After that they would carry out their activities openly. Extortion became their main business.”

With Fayaz’s death, Nawabadi mohalla’s power waned. The village elders approached other surrounding areas, with a message of reconciliation. But they have met little success. The scars ran deep.

When the Northern Command chief visited the area, post counter-insurgency, Nawabadis too were invited. “I stood up and asked them that what had the Government of India done for us,” says Kawaam. “I asked them what had they paid the families of the soldiers who had been martyred in Kargil, and in relation to them we were paid nothing. I told them that India has not paid us a penny.”

Despite fighting a bloody war for the state, Nawbadis say they were neglected. Many of them, say, all they got from their haunting past were dead bodies.
“If I had been in some position then, and could think the way I do today, I would not have let these things to happen,” says Kamaal.

However, Kamaal maintains they do not face any social ostracism today, and are well heard in corridors of power. “We have good relations with people of other village, even among from people of Jamaat. We are invited in their functions,” says Kamaal.

But still the villagers want to get rid of the baggage their village name carries.

They expect Mirabad to conceal their identity, and bring them back into the fold of the society. Travelling around with a identity card bearing the name of the village may not be wise option always, they admit.

“Nawabadi has now become associated with us. It is a sort of stigma. Wherever we go, people see us in a particular image. With the name change we hope things may get better,” say the Nawabadis.

The story of Nawabadi Mohalla is the story of a village which switched sides en-masse. It tasted power, and wealth, until the downfall started. Now it is trying hard to merge back with the society it stood against. But neither the society, nor the village seems to have made its mind fully.

Some names have been changed on request.

Kashmir Life (http://bit.ly/dtCJRo)

"Yasmeena was raped thrice in a Single night by these bastards"

The Heir of the Kashmir Conflict. Shahid Nabi writes his ordeal of living in the horrendous years in his hometown Sopore, which even today is the bastion of Freedom Activities in Kashmir.

The night was not peaceful but it was good, in the morning I woke up and saw that the whole compound of my home has turned into a sea of blood. I cried as much as I could. I called for help, but none came to my rescue. I stepped forward like a paralysed person as I found my dearest Sons and Daughters slaughtered. It was a case of indiscriminate massacre. Yes, the only way to help myself at that time was to shed tears, tears, tears, tears, tears, ……….. I was lost in tears. The cold blooded murderers said that they have massacred seventy thousand of my beloved sons and daughters, but being the mother I could count them by their names. I knew that I have lost more than one lakh. Still managed strength as it was not new for me, had saw all this happen to my home for more than a sixty years. I arranged for the shroud for my beloved sons, daughters, who were martyred by the ruthless, shameless, beasts, and cowards, (read as Indian security forces). I cremated their remains, but I knew they are not dead, as Allah says in the Quran, “………Count not those who were slain in God’s way as dead, but rather living with their Lord, by Him provided, rejoicing in the bounty that God has given them……..” (Quran 03:164). They are the martyrs, and I am sure their sacrifice won’t go in vain.

There was a temporary period of quiet, but that did not last long. As now again my sons are being martyred every now and then. These military personnel kill them because they are Kashmiri, because they are Muslims, because presence of my sons terrorizes them, because they want freedom, because they want to live the life of tranquillity, because they want dignity, because they don’t want the validation of the killing in the valley, because they want their rights to be given to them, because they want that no pagan should rule the Muslims and many a more. But India won’t listen to them, instead will instruct forces to massacre my children. But my children are not afraid of them. They never were nor will they be in the future. They will fight till their last breath. I know that I don’t have any sort of weapons to give them to fight these cowards. But I am proud to provide them with the only available arsenal of stones to fight the coward beasts with sophisticated guns in their hands, I know they will kill my sons, but they will die to live forever and despatch these security persons to hell to taste the eternal torment.

I know the ghastly views of my beloved sons being martyred and carried in the coffins would never let me sleep again, but the presence of the Indian security forces here had given sleepless nights to my daughters since the night my eight year old daughter “YASMEENA WAS RAPED THRICE IN A SINGLE NIGHT BY THESE BASTARDS”

Sopore and Me were Never Same Again by Shahid Nabi

I was born in a middle class family in one of the most volatile towns of Kashmir called Sopur. (Also called Sopore Kandahar). It was only couple of years after my birth that armed upheaval against india started in Kashmir (also known as Tehreek). This revolt was against the barbaric, forceful, callous, uncivilised and pitiless occupation of Kashmir by India. This uprising against the illegal occupation of Kashmir by india was not a spur-of-the-moment one. As nothing is spontaneous when it comes to revolt against any deceitful nation. Its seeds are sown deep in the emotions, imaginations, feelings, deeds and hearts of the down trodden. Kashmiri’s were subjugated in every feasible mode by india since 1947. So a volcanic stack was in the making which exploded in the year 1989.

I can still remember those days, though my age was tender, but I can’t stop thinking about those horrendous and dreadful days. The crackdowns, sudden raids (chapp’e), indefinite curfews, blood shed, gun shots, funeral processions, mourning mothers, molested sisters, orphaned brothers, cross firings, houses turned into debris, forsaken corpses of young men, Yes, I could remember all those things. From every nook and corner it smelled of blood. The blood that was of the people I relate with, (they were my brothers and sisters in Islam, the most potent brotherhood). That blood was of the Muslim ummah. After every death, people would come out of their houses with the funeral procession, chanting pro-Islam slogans and pro-freedom slogans. “HUM KYA CHAHETE AAZADI (WE WANT FREEDOM)” and “AAZADI KA MATLAB KYA LA ILAHA ILLAL LA (FREEDOM TO WE MEANS, THERE IS NO GOD BUT ALLAH)” were the most sacrosanct verses after the verses of Holy Quran to the people of Kashmir. Revolutionary songs were being aired on loud speakers in mosques. It was the ardour of Aazadi everywhere, be it a 6 years old child like me (those days) or the 60 years old.

I could still remember that fateful day of 6th Jan 1993, when 57 guiltless Muslims were killed in cold blood by the indian security forces in Sopore. In addition to this, there was also lost of property worth crores of amount. 450 buildings were razed to ground, which included 50 houses and 400 shops. Yes, this obnoxious incident still haunts me in my nightmares. BSF and paramilitary forces went on reprehensible rampage to kill innocent people in Sopore. It was early morning on that fateful Wednesday, when according to government sources some militants killed one BSF personal and took away his LMG (weapon), But after that for about five hours BSF went berserk and killed 57 vulnerable civilians, which till date remains one of the most dreadful bloodbath in Kashmir. On that day, we were locked inside our home, outside my home were people being killed. My uncle escaped a sure death when he along with his aunt was outside to help the wounded. When he peeped on to the main road to see if somebody was trapped there, a bullet was shot at him, but miraculously he was safe. After this berserk killing, BSF sprayed paraffin and gun powder on houses and shops and more than 450 buildings were left to ashes. Those trapped inside shops died in these buildings which were burnt and left to rubble.

It was that day of 6th Jan, which changed the course of time in Sopore. Witnessing the cruel nature of the indian security forces, people of Sopore were taken aback from there deep slumber. Next day curfew was imposed, but it was defied as soon as imposed, people came onto the streets carrying the bodies of their dear ones in caskets to bid last farewell to them. But these pagans showed their infidelity once again and sprayed bullets and tear smoke canisters into the funeral processions. Afterwards all I could hear were the cries of mothers and sisters in every nook and corner. And in no time this woeful state would change into the fervour of Aazadi. The whole air would be engulfed by the slogans of Aazadi and Islam. Its an interesting tale that before I could recite rhymes in the school, these pro-freedom and pro-Islamic slogans had made my mind and heart there permanent place of dwelling.

Now it was the daily routine of ours, I mean (crackdowns, sudden raids, disappearances, beating, looting of property, molestation of our mothers and sisters and all these heart breaking things). I could still remember one incident; it was early in the morning. I had been sleeping at that time, when army came inside out house and said to come out quickly from home and gather inside the Girls Hr Sec School Sopore, as crackdown was going on. I think I was 7 years old at that time. I had been woken by the barking of these army men (they were called Pandra Punjab). I was half asleep and half awoken, when suddenly one army man hit me with the butt of the AK-47 on my shoulder. That hit gave me such a pain, which I beared for about a week. In the place of gathering, one informer (mukhbir) in a mask would make out the militants among us. It is still anonymity to me, whether the informer was one among us or it was just a pre-planned approach to arrest innocents and brand them as terrorist. So it was nothing but harassment for we people everywhere in the Kashmir. Young men were getting killed, arrested, tortured and thrashed. Now we are in the year 2010, but nothing had changed. More than 1 lakh people have been killed since 1989 by indian security forces.

Now the only hope is the Allah, May Allah destroys the indian nation and breaks the chains of illegal occupation of Kashmir by India.

Our dreams are our freedom. The Indian state cannot take that away. Our resistance will live.”

By Angana Chatterjee

“FREEDOM” REPRESENTS MANY things across rural and urban spaces in India-ruled Kashmir. These divergent meanings are steadfastly united on one point: freedom always signifies an end to India’s authoritarian governance.

In the administration of brutality, India, the postcolony, has proven itself coequal to its former colonial masters. Governing Kashmir is about India’s coming of age as a power, its ability to disburse violence, to manipulate and dominate. Kashmir is about nostalgia, about resources, and buffer zones. The possession of Kashmir by India renders an imaginary past real, emblematic of India’s triumphal unification as a nation-state.

Controlling Kashmir requires that Kashmiri demands for justice be depicted as threatening to India’s integrity. India’s contrived enemy in Kashmir is a plausible one — the Muslim “Other,” India’s historically manufactured nemesis.

What Is at Stake? Between June 11 and September 22 of 2010, Kashmir witnessed the execution of 109 youth, men, and women by India’s police, paramilitary and military. Indian forces opened fire on crowds, tortured children, detained elders without explanation, and coerced false confessions. Since June 7, there have been 73 days of curfew and 75 days of strikes and agitation. On September 11, the day of Eid-ul-Fitr celebrating the end of Ramadan, the violence continued. The paramilitary and police verbally abused and physically attacked civil society dissenters.

Mother of Showkat Mallik kissing him Goodbye

Summer 2010 was not unprecedented. Kashmir has been subjected to much, much worse. The use of public and summary execution for civic torture has been held necessary to Kashmir’s subjugation by the Indian state. Militarization has asserted vigilante jurisdiction over space and politics. The violence is staged, ritualistic, and performative, used to re-assert India’s power over Kashmir’s body.

The military’s fabrications — fake encounters, escalating perceptions of cross-border threat — function as the truth-making apparatus of the nation. We are witness to the paradox of history, as calibrated punishment — the lynching of the Muslim body, the object of criminality — enforces submission of a stateless nation (Kashmir) to the once-subaltern postcolony (India).

Kashmir is about the spectacle. The Indian state’s violence functions as an intervention, to discipline and punish, to provoke and dominate. The summer of 2010 evidenced India’s maneuvering against Kashmir’s determination to decide its future. The use of violence by the Indian forces was deliberate, their tactics cruel and precise, amidst the groundswell of public dissent in this third summer, since 2008, of indefatigable civil society uprisings for “Azaadi” (freedom).

Last Respects: Funeral of Pattan Martyrs

What is the Indian state hoping to achieve? One, that Kashmiris would submit to domination, forsaking their claim to separation from India (to be an independent state or, for some, to be assimilated with Pakistan), or their demand for full autonomy. Or, that provoked, grief-stricken and weary, Kashmiris would take up arms once again, giving India the opportunity to fortify its propaganda that Kashmiri civil society dissent against Indian rule is nurtured and endorsed today by external forces and groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

If the latter transpires, India will manipulate this to neutralize Kashmiri demands for de-militarization and conflict resolution, to extend its annexation of Kashmir, and further normalize civic and legal “states of exception” (i.e. repression). If India succeeds in both provoking local armed struggle and linking Kashmiri resistance to foreign terror, it will acquire international sanction to continue its government of Kashmir on grounds of “national security,” and “have proof” that Kashmiris are not authentically debating India’s government of them, but are pressured into it by external forces.

India can then reinforce its armed forces in Kashmir, presently 671,000 strong, to prolong the killing spree. Such provocation as policy is a mistake. Such legitimation of military rule will produce intractable conflict and violence. All indications are that Kashmiri civil society dissent will not abate: It is not externally motivated, but historically compelled.

Dominant nation-states overlook that freedom struggles are not adherent to the moralities of violence versus nonviolence, but reflect a desire to be free. Dominant nation-states forget that the greater the oppression, the more fervent is resistance. The greater the violence, the more likely is the provocation to counter-violence.

Whether dissent in Kashmir turns into organized armed struggle or continues as mass-based peaceful resistance is dependent upon India’s political decisions. If India’s subjugation persists, it is conceivable that the movement for nonviolent dissent, mobilized since 2004, will erode. Signs indicate that it is already slightly threadbare. It is conceivable that India’s brutality will induce Kashmiri youth to close the distance between stones and petrol bombs, or more.

If India fails to act, if Pakistan acts only in its self-interest, and if the international community does not insist on an equitable resolution to the Kashmir dispute, it is conceivable, that, forsaken by the world, Kashmiris will be compelled to take up arms again.

Misogynist groups such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba [fundamentalist Pakistani group — ed.], al-Qaeda or the Taliban are mercenaries looking for takers in Kashmir. By the Indian state’s record, there are between 500-700 militants in the Kashmir Valley today. These groups have not been successful because Kashmiris have been disinterested in alliances with them, not because the Indian army is successful in controlling them. This time, an armed mobilization by Kashmiris would include an even stronger mass movement than that which occurred between 1990 and 2004/2007, led by youth whose lives have been shaped by the two-decade long violence of militarization.

Who wants that? Can the South Asian Subcontinent, already nuclearized, survive that? India is accountable to keep this from happening — not through the use of unmitigated force, but through listening to the demands for change made by Kashmiris.

Will to Power This summer, India’s violence on Kashmir was threaded through with strategic calculation. The police, military and paramilitary, without provocation, brutalized widespread peaceable protests across Kashmir that were opposing the suppression of civil society. Hostile Indian forces acted with the knowledge and sanction of the government of India and the government of Jammu and Kashmir.

The repeated repression by state forces provoked civilians, whose political means of expression and demands have been systematically denied, to engage in stone pelting. The conditions of militarization prompted them to be in non-compliance with declared, undeclared, and unremitting curfews. In instances, civilians engaged in acts of violence, including arson.

Each instance of civilian violence was provoked by the unmitigated and first use of force on civilians and/or extrajudicial killings on the part of Indian forces. Peaceable civilian demonstrations by women and men protested the actions of Indian forces. Individuals caught in the midst of the unrest, or mourning the death of a civilian, were fired upon by Indian forces, leading to other killings by Indian forces, more civilian protests, greater use of force by the police and paramilitary, use of torture in certain instances by Indian forces, more killings by Indian forces, larger, even violent, civilian protests, and further state repression.

In Summer 2010, dominant discourse focused on the use of stone pelting and on the instances of violence by youth in Kashmir as the reason for armed action on the part of the state. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh focused on the need for efficient tactics in “crowd control.” India’s elite intelligentsia, inculcated into “rational” conduct, and no longer outraged by suffering, assessed the costs and benefits of militaristic violence.

Civil society demonstrations in Kashmir are not a law-and- order problem, as they have been reported. Stone pelting, and incidents of arson and violence, are not causal to the violence that is routine in Kashmir today. Stone pelting does not seek to kill, and has not resulted in death. Pro-freedom leaders (termed “separatists” by the Indian state) have emphasized nonviolent civil disobedience, and have appealed to civil society not to engage in violent protests in reaction to the violence and killings by Indian forces.

Indian rulers disregard that suppression acts to catalyze the resistance movement in Kashmir. The Government of India continues to monitor the resistance movement, shifting the boundaries of acceptable practice of civil liberties. Kashmiris are allowed to protest in New Delhi, while in Kashmir sloganeering (“Go, India, Go Back,” “Indian Dogs Go Home,” “Quit Kashmir”) is met with force. When Masarat Alam Bhat, a rising pro-freedom leader, issued an appeal to Indian soldiers in July to “Quit Kashmir,” Indian authorities banned its circulation.

Acts of violence by protesting civilians increased as military violence continued into September. On September 13, crowds in Kashmir torched a Christian missionary school and some government offices while protesting the call to desecrate the Qur’an by Florida Pastor Terry Jones. On September 13, 18 civilians were killed by the Indian forces in Kashmir (a police officer also died).

Provocation is easy in a context of sustained brutality. Provoking Kashmiri dissenters to violence serves to confirm the dominant story of Muslims as “violent.” Yet again, several pro-freedom leaders condemned the attack on the Christian school and renewed their call for nonviolent dissent.

On September 13, the Government of India stated its willingness to engage with Kashmiri groups that reject violence. New Delhi did not apply the same precondition to itself. Nor did it acknowledge that pro-freedom groups have repeatedly opposed the use of violence in recent years.

The Kashmiri Muslim is caricatured as violent by India’s dominant political and media apparatus. There is a refusal to recognize the inequitable historical-political power relations at play between Muslim-prevalent Kashmir’s governance by Hindu-dominant India. The racialization of the Muslim, as “Other” and barbaric, reveals the xenophobia of the Indian state. Distinctions in method and power, between stone pelter and armed soldier, between “terrorist” and “freedom fighter,” are inconvenient.

The Indian state’s discourse is animated by the prejudice that Kashmiri inclinations to violence are subsidized by Pakistan. Such misconceptions ignore that while Kashmiris did travel to Pakistan to seek arms training, such activity was largely confined to the early days of the armed militancy, circa late 1980s through the mid-1990s. Pathologies of “violent Muslims” legitimate the discursive and physical violence of the Indian “security” forces, which is presented as necessary protection for the maintenance of the Hindu majoritarian Indian nation.

Witnessing I have spent considerable time between July 2006 and July 2010 learning about Kashmir, working in Kashmir. In undertaking the work of the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian-administered Kashmir, I have travelled across Kashmir’s cities and countryside, from Srinagar to Kupwara, through Shopian and Islamabad (Anantnag), with Parvez Imroz, Zahir-Ud-Din, and Khurram Parvez.

I have witnessed the violence that is perpetrated on Kashmiris by India’s military, paramilitary and police. I have walked through the graveyards that hold Kashmir’s dead, and have met with grieving families. I have sat with witnesses, young men, who described how Indian forces chased down and executed their friends for participating in civil disobedience. I have met women whose sons were disappeared. I have met with “half-widows” [women whose husbands have been “disappeared” — ed.]

A Kashmiri Muslim girl during a demonstration displays a photograph of her elder brother who was subjected to enforced disappearance by Indian troops

I have spoken with youth, women and men, who are enraged. I have also spoken with persons who were violated by militants in the 1990s. People’s experiences with the reprehensible atrocities of militancy do not imply the abdication of their desires for self-determination. The Indian state deliberately conflates militancy with the people’s mass movement for liberation.

I have met with torture survivors, non-militants and former militants, who testified to the sadism of the forces. Men who had petrol injected through the anus. Water-boarding, mutilation, being paraded naked; rape of women, children and men; starvation, humiliation, psychological torture. An eagle tattoo on the arm of a man was reportedly identified by an army officer as a symbol of Pakistan-held Azad Kashmir, even as the man clarified the tattoo was from his childhood. The skin containing it was burned. The officer said, the man recalled: “When you look at this, think of Azaadi.”

Eyes Speak Louder Than Words. Mother of a Disappeared Son

A mother, reportedly asked to watch her daughter’s rape by army personnel, pleaded for her release. They refused. She then pleaded that she could not watch, asking to be sent out of the room or be killed. The soldier pointed a gun to her forehead, stating he would grant her wish, and shot her dead before they proceeded to rape the daughter.

Who are the Indian forces? Disenfranchised caste and other groups, Assamese, Nagas, Sikhs, Dalits (erstwhile “untouchable” peoples), and Muslims from Kashmir, are being used to combat Kashmiris. Why did 34 soldiers commit suicide in Kashmir in 2008, and 52 fratricidal killings take place between January 21, 2004 and July 14, 2009? Why did 16 soldiers commit suicide and two die in fratricidal killings between January and early August in 2010?

Laws authorize soldiers to question, raid houses, detain and arrest without bringing charges, and to prolong incarceration without due process. They blur distinctions between military/paramilitary, “legality”/“illegality.” Citing “national security,” Indian forces in Kashmir shoot and kill on uncorroborated suspicion, with impunity from prosecution.

Yet revoking the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, for example, will not stop the horror in Kashmir. India’s laws are not the primary contention. India’s political and military existence in Kashmir is the issue. Legal impunity is the cover for the moral impunity of Indian rule. Human rights violations in Kashmir will not stop without removing the military. The military cannot be removed without surgically rupturing India’s will to power over Kashmir.

Is the military willing to withdraw from Kashmir? Since 2002, the Government of India has procured five billion U.S. dollars in weaponry from the Israeli state — a colossal sum for India, where 38% of the world’s poor reside and where eight of the country’s poorest states are more impoverished than the 26 poorest countries of the African continent. Five billion dollars, in addition to the other monies and resources invested in the militarization of Kashmir, do not evidence an intent to withdraw.

Inflexible Diplomacy Yet India needs to make the “Kashmir problem” disappear. India’s diplomacy is directed toward assuming a role as a world power, a world market, and a world negotiator in global politics. India is also seeking a seat on the United Nations Security Council.

What constitutes India’s dialogue with Kashmiris in conditions of extreme subjugation? The Government of India has scheduled a hurried time frame in propelling Track II diplomacy into success, to secure a proposal for resolution that is acceptable to India and Pakistan and, ostensibly, to Kashmiris. The terms of reference set by New Delhi exclude discussions of self-determination or heightened autonomy, boundary negotiations, the Siachen glacier and critical water resources, and renegotiations of the Line of Control.

New Delhi and Islamabad appear to be in collusion. If Pakistan overlooks India’s annexation of Jammu and Kashmir, India would be willing to forget Pakistan’s occupation of another fragment of Kashmir. For the Government of Pakistan, however, Afghanistan is the current priority, not Kashmir. Conversations on the phased withdrawal of troops by India and Pakistan at the border, local self-government, and the creation of a joint supervision mechanism in Jammu and Kashmir, involving India, Pakistan and Kashmir, are at an impasse.

The Government in New Delhi is looking to neutralize Kashmir’s demand for self-determination or unabridged autonomy, pushing forward a diluted “autonomy,” seeking to assimilate Kashmir with finality into the Indian nation-state. New Delhi is seeking buy-in, which it hopes to push through using the collaborator coterie in Srinagar. Local self-government would be New Delhi’s compromise — a weak autonomy — with a joint supervisory apparatus constituted of India, Pakistan, and Kashmir.

New Delhi hopes that the Kashmiri leadership, including pro-freedom groups, can be restrained for a price, and weakened through infighting. Certain segments of the pro-freedom leadership, throughout history, have lacked vision, honesty, and the ability to prioritize collaboration for justice and peace in Kashmir. Certain segments of the religious and political leadership have been unable to collaborate meaningfully with civil society, with observant Muslims and those irreligious, and with non-Muslims.

The spiritual commitment to justice in Islamic tradition has receded as religious determinations embrace instrumental political rationality. The determination of what “freedom” is has been deferred since 1931; instead there has been a focus on immediate and small political gains. This has plagued and rendered ineffectual segments of the complex Hurriyat (Freedom) alliance in the present, which is often unable to capitalize on the exuberant people’s movement on the streets and pathways of Kashmir.

Segments of the pro-freedom leadership have focused on New Delhi rather than Kashmir civil society. New Delhi has fixated on enabling this dynamic, using vast resources to create a collaborator class in Srinagar that undermines the will of the Kashmiri people. And while Pakistan’s politicians have pointed to India’s injustices, they have not reciprocally addressed issues in the management of Pakistan-held Kashmir, including the deflation of movements for the unification of Kashmir.

The crisis of state in Pakistan, and the role of its ruling elite in vitiating people’s democratic processes, remains a pitfall for regional security. The logic that Muslim-prevalent Kashmir must either stay with secular India or join Muslim-dominated Pakistan is configured by India’s and Pakistan’s internal ideological needs and identitarian politics. Neither is inevitable. Neither speak to the foremost aspiration of Kashmiris.

The Government of India’s “inclusive dialogue” this summer has systematically disregarded Kashmiri civil society demands, thrusting a violent peace brokered by New Delhi’s agents of change. New Delhi has invited various Kashmiri stakeholders from civil society as well. Their articulations, however, have not shifted the agenda, even as bringing people to the table is used to legitimate India’s visage of inclusivity.

What Kashmiris Want What do a majority of Kashmiris want? First, to secure a good-faith agreement with New Delhi and Islamabad regarding the right of Kashmiris to determine the course of their future, set a time frame, and define the interim conditions necessary to proceed.

Following this, civil society and political leaders would put in motion processes to educate, debate and consult with society, including minority groups, in sketching the terms of reference for a resolution, prior to negotiations with India and Pakistan.

Significantly, pro-freedom leader Syeed Ali Geelani’s statement of August 31 sought to shift the terms of engagement, not requiring the precondition of self-determination or the engagement of Pakistan. Unless New Delhi responds, the protests in Kashmir will continue. Geelani’s statement, supported by the All Parties Hurriyat Conference leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, testifies to this. The mood in the streets testifies to this.

New Delhi’s current approach repudiates what Kashmiris want. The Government of India’s “inclusive dialogue” this summer does not recognize Kashmir as an international dispute. Nor does it include: an immediate halt to, and moratorium on, extrajudicial killings by the Indian military, paramilitary and police; an immediate halt to, and moratorium on, the use of torture, kidnapping, enforced disappearance and gendered violence by the Indian military, paramilitary, and police; a plan for the release of political prisoners, the return of those exiled, and contending with the issue of displacement; agreements on an immediate “soft border” policy between Kashmir, India and Pakistan, to enable the resurgence of Kashmir’s economy; agreements to non-interference in the exercise of civil liberties of Kashmiris, including the right to civil disobedience, and freedom of speech, assembly, religion, movement and travel.

New Delhi has refused to acknowledge the extent of human rights violations, and how they are integral to maintaining dominion. New Delhi has not explained why militarization in Kashmir has been disproportionately used to brutalize Kashmiris, when ostensibly the Indian forces are in Kashmir to secure the border zones.

India’s “inclusive dialogue” does not include a plan for the proactive demilitarization and the immediate revocation of all authoritarian laws. Nor does it include: a plan for the transparent identification and dismantling of detention and torture centers, including in army camps; a plan for installing a Truth and Justice Commission for calculating loss and for political and psychosocial reparation; a plan for international and transparent investigations into unknown and mass graves constituting crimes against humanity committed by the Indian military, paramilitary and police. Such omissions are a travesty of any process promising “resolution.”

Islamophobia and India’s Crisis Kashmir’s claims are historically unique and bona fide. But history — the United Nations Resolutions of 1948, the promise by India’s first Prime Minister Nehru for a plebiscite (to rethink the temporary Accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India by the Hindu-descent Maharaja, Hari Singh), Article 370 of the Indian Constitution [which gave Kashmir the right to live under its own laws — ed.] has been jettisoned by an amnesic India. Its official nationalism seeks to rewrite history, affixing Kashmir to India, to overwrite memory. Within the battlefields of knowledge/power, official “truth” becomes the contagion sustaining cultures of repression and mass atrocity, creating cultures of grief.

New Delhi has been the self-appointed arbitrator in determining the justifications of Kashmir’s claims to freedom. The Indian state is apprehensive that any change in the status quo in Kashmir would foster internal crises of gigantic proportion in India. Across the nation there is considerable discontent, as dreams and difference are mortgaged to the idea of India fabricated by the elite. Kashmir cannot remain India’s excuse to avoid dealing with its own internal matters.

Adivasis (indigenous peoples), Dalits, disenfranchised caste groups, women, religious, ethnic and gender minorities are fatigued by the nation’s deferred promises. Forty-four million Adivasis have been displaced since 1947. Central India is torn asunder, and as Maoists are designated as the latest “national threat,” national memory forgets the systematic brutalization of peoples in the tribal belt that led to a call to arms. Then there is the Northeast, Punjab, the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat, riots against Christians in Orissa, farmer suicides, the plight of peasants and Adivasis of the Narmada Valley where dams are not the “temples of India,” but its burial grounds.

Indian civil society decries that Kashmir is not deserving of autonomy or separation, as it, as an assumed Islamist state, would be a threat to India’s democracy. Dominant Indian (left-oriented) civil society must rethink its characterization of Kashmiri civil society as prevalently “Jamaati.” Jamaat is Arabic for assembly. “Jamaati” is used by Indian civil society to imply Islamist or fundamentalist. The reference can often be translated as Muslim = Jamaati, and Muslim-observant = fundamentalist.

To assume that a Muslim-majority state in Kashmir will be ruled by Islamist extremists in support of global terror reflects majoritarian India’s racism. Indians of Hindu descent too easily overlook that India’s democracy is infused with Hindu cultural dominance. Indian civil society assumes that Islam and democracy are incompatible, supported by the inflamed Islamophobia in the polities of the West. Importantly, India forgets that in its own history with the British, freedom fighters had noted that the oppressor cannot adjudge when a stateless people are “deserving” of freedom.

Freedom is fundamentally an experiment with risk that Kashmiris must be willing to take. The global community must support them in making such risk ethical. Jammu and Kashmir is a Muslim majority space. The population of India-held Kashmir was recorded at approximately 6,900,000 in 2008, of which Muslims are approximately 95%. Kashmir’s future as a democratic, inclusive and pro-secular space is linked to what happens within India and Pakistan.

Kashmiris who wish to be separate from India and Pakistan must assess the difficult alliances yet to be built among Kashmir, Jammu and Ladakh, and among Muslims and Hindu Pandits, Dogra Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Christians, indigenous groups and others. Then there is the question of what lies ahead between Indian-held Kashmir and Pakistan-held Kashmir. Minority groups, such as Kashmiri Pandits, must refuse the Indian state’s hyper-nationalist strategy in using the Pandit community to create opposition between Muslims and Hindus in Kashmir, as part of its strategy to religionize the issue and govern through communalization.

Where is the international community on the issue of Kashmir? In present history, Palestine, Ireland, Tibet and Kashmir share common features. In Tibet, 1.2 million died (1949-1979), and 320,000 were made refugees. In Ireland, 3,710 have died (1969-2010). For Israel, the occupation of Palestine has resulted in 10,193 dead (1987-2010), with 4.7 million refugees registered with the United Nations (1947-2010). In Kashmir, 70,000 are dead, over 8,000 have been disappeared, and 250,000 have been displaced (1989-2010).

During British Prime Minister David Cameron’s recent visit to India, he was asked to refrain from bringing up the “K” word. United States President Barack Obama’s proposed visit to New Delhi in November is already laden with prohibitions, India’s rule in Kashmir and its larger human rights record among them. As well, right-wing Hindu advocacy groups have been successful in securing the silence of many on Capitol Hill on the issue of Kashmir.

The Kashmiri diaspora has been partly effective in bringing visibility to the issue, even as the community remains ideologically and politically fragmented. International advocates have propagated an “economic” approach to “normalcy.” This avoids the fact that militarization impacts every facet of life, making economic development outside of political change impossible.

Kashmiris are caught amidst world events, regional machinations, and the unresolved histories of the Subcontinent. In 2010, as of September 23, 351 soldiers from the United States have died in Afghanistan, while the United Kingdom sustained 92 fatalities. Of paramount concern for both is bringing their forces home without compromising the principles of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) operations in the region. To accomplish this would require that Pakistan move sizeable forces from the Indo-Kashmir-Pak border to the Af-Pak frontier. This cannot be done, however, without cessation in Indo-Pak hostilities, which requires resolution of the Kashmir dispute.

Kashmir’s resolution, however, cannot mean a sanction to Pakistan’s encroachment on Afghanistan, which, given the political situation in the region, remains a highly likely possibility. For the United States and India, the containment of China is another issue, also linked to Kashmir.

The Indian state’s military governance penetrates every facet of life. The sounds of war haunt mohallas [neighborhoods —ed]. The hyper-presence of militarization forms a graphic shroud over Kashmir: Detention and interrogation centers, army cantonments, abandoned buildings, bullet holes, bunkers and watchtowers, detour signs, deserted public squares, armed personnel, counter-insurgents, and vehicular and electronic espionage. Armed control regulates and governs bodies.

It has been reported that, since 1990, Kashmir’s economy has incurred a loss of more than 1,880,000 million Indian Rupees ($40.4 billion U.S.). The immensity of psychosocial losses is impossible to calculate. The conditions of everyday life are in peril. They elicit suffocating anger and despair, telling a story of the web of violence in which civil society in Kashmir is interned.

For India, constituting a coherent national collective has required multiple wars on difference. National governance determines territory and belonging, disenfranchising subaltern claims. Local struggles for self-determination are brutalized to reproduce obedient national collectives. Systemic acts of oppression chart a history, as relations of power are choreographed by nation-states in the suppression of others. Massacre, gendercide, genocide, occupation, function within a continuum of tactics in negation/annihilation.

India’s relation to Kashmir is not about Kashmir. Kashmir’s aversion to being subsumed by the Indian state is not reducible to history. If violence breaks lives, Kashmir is quite broken. If oppression produces resistance, Kashmir is profusely resilient. From Michel Foucault to the African thinker Achille Mbembe [who coined the term “postcolony,” — ed.] and so much in between, we are reminded of the myriad techniques in governance that seek to subjugate, while naming subjugation as subject formation, as protection, “security,” law and order, and progress.

Realpolitik triumphs against a backdrop of persistent refusal. Through summer heat and winter snow, across interminable stretches of concertina wire, broken windowpanes, walls, barricades, and checkpoints, the dust settles to rise again. The agony of loss. The desecration of life. Kashmir’s spiritual fatalities are staggering. The dead are not forgotten. Remembrance and mourning are habitual practises of dissent.

“We are not free. But we know freedom,” KP tells me. “The movement is our freedom. Our dreams are our freedom. The Indian state cannot take that away. Our resistance will live.”

Originally Written on :The International View Point http://bit.ly/cnlNS4