Escolar Documentos
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E DITOR
D R N OOR UL H AQ
A SSISTANT E DITOR
M UHAMMAD N AWAZ K HAN
2 IPRI Factfile
C ONTENT
Preface v
1. Kashmir Communique in the Washington Times 1
2. Killing Fields of Kashmir 2
3. Amnesty International Takes Suo Motu Notice of Indian
Occupied Kashmir Killings 3
4. Kashmir Burns 4
5. The Killing Fields of Kashmir 5
6. Kashmir: the New Wave of Uprising 6
7. Kashmiri Intifada 10
8. India Faces Full-blown Uprising in Indian Occupied Kashmir 10
9. Fumbling for Solution 11
10. Kashmiris Want to Join Pakistan 12
11. How to Talk Kashmir 20
12. Why Silence over Kashmir Speaks Volumes? 22
13. Pakistan-Kashmir Correlation 25
14. Vigil before White House 27
15. The People of Kashmir Must be Allowed to Vote on their
Own Future 28
16. Sino-Indian Tensions over Kashmir 30
17. Indian Occupied Kashmir – An Open Prison 31
18. Indian Occupied Kashmir: Human Rights Violations 33
19. Kashmiri Carnage 34
20. New Turn of Events in Kashmir 36
21. India’s Festering Wound in Kashmir 39
22. Indian Occupied Kashmir: Pakistan Must Act 42
23. Go India Go 43
24. Kashmiri Intifada 44
25. Indian Occupied Kashmir Leaders Shun Indian Lawmakers’
Delegation 46
26. Kashmir is Burning, World is Silent 47
27. The Geopolitical Threat of Kashmir 51
28. OIC May Show Deeper Interest in Indian Occupied Kashmir 52
29. Indian Occupied Kashmir: Attique Sensitises Americans 53
30. No Dialogue with India Sans Kashmir 54
Kashmir Struggle Enters New Phase 3
P REFACE
On October 27, 1947, after the independence of South Asia from British
colonial occupation on August14/15, 1947, the British Governor-General of
India, Lord Mountatten ordered the British Commander of the Indian armed
forces on the basis of a hastily concluded controversial Accession Instrument,
to airlift Indian troops to Srinagar. As a counter measure, when the Governor-
General of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah issued similar instructions to the
British Commander of Pakistan’s armed forces, on the basis of an existing
non-controversial Stand-still Agreement, he declined to obey the orders.
On October 31, 1947, Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister of
India telegrammed to Liaquat Ali Khan, the Prime Minister of Pakistan: “Our
assurance that we shall withdraw our troops from Kashmir as soon as peace
and order is restored and leave the decision regarding the future of the state to
the people of the state is not merely a promise to your government but also to
the people of Kashmir but to the world. We will not and cannot back out of
it.”
The UN Security Council discussed the question from January 1948
onwards and decided that the question of accession of the state of Jammu and
Kashmir will be decided through the democratic method of a free and
impartial plebiscite under UN auspices1
It is now more than six decades that the promises made to the people
of Jammu and Kashmir have not been honoured. The recurrent elections held
in the state by the Indian government cannot be a substitute for the “free and
impartial plebiscite”. The people of the state have been demanding their birth
right since 1947. Since 2004, Pakistan and India have been grappling with the
Kashmir issue, but in vain. The main drawback is that neither the UN nor the
people of Kashmir are being included in the dialogue for resolution of the
dispute. Currently, since June last, the uprising which has entered a new phase
of peaceful defiance by the people is, as usual, being suppressed by the
overwhelming might of the Indian armed forces.
India, however, cannot continue to hoodwink the international
community by branding the Kashmiris’ just struggle for freedom as
“terrorism”. Pakistan, being a party to the dispute, will always extend its moral,
1 See UN Security resolutions of adopted on January 17, 1948 (S/651), January 20,
1948 (S/654), April 21, 1948 (S/726), June 3, 1948 (S/819), UNCIP resolution of
January 5, 1949 (S/1196, para 51), and UN SC resolutions of March 14, 1950
(S/1469), January 24, 1957 (S/3779), November 10, 1951 (S/2392), and December
23, 1952 (S/2883).
Kashmir Struggle Enters New Phase 5
diplomatic and political support to Kashmiris’ fight for their right to self-
determination enshrined in the UN resolutions. Accordingly, the National
Assembly and the Senate of Pakistan have unanimously adopted resolutions
condemning Indian “state terrorism” and demanding India to “stop murder
and plunder”, withdraw the armed forces from the “state/urban population,
cancel black laws, lift curfew, end media blackout, release Kashmiri leaders and
thousands of imprisoned youth, refrain from obstructing the performance of
religious duties and locking mosques and allow international human rights
organizations to come to occupied Kashmir”. It said that the people of
Kashmir were engaged in a “peaceful struggle for their right of self
determination in accordance with the United Nations Charter, UN resolutions,
the Universal Declaration for Human Rights and resolutions of the Non
Aligned Movement as their basic right” and appealed to the international
community “not to remain silent spectators of the Kashmir situation and
compel India to stop injustice and repression on Kashmiris and resolve the
Kashmir issue, and take practical steps for the implementation of UN Security
Council resolutions.”2
The IPRI Factfile includes selected articles, appearing in the national
and international media, during July-November, 2010, after the recent uprising
in Kashmir.
Washington, D.C. Nov 25: Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai, Executive Director,
Kashmiri American Council referred to a communique that was published in
the Washington Times on page 3 yesterday [November 24, 2009] that says “that
the United States paved the way for freedom around the world and the United
States can help the people of Kashmir achieve peace, freedom and self-
determination.
“That the Kashmir is recognized by the United Nations as a disputed
territory whose status is yet to be determined by its people.” “That Kashmir is
the most dangerous place in the world. (President Bill Clinton)” “That
Kashmir is the world’s most beautiful prison. (European Parliamentary
delegation)” “That Kashmir is the largest military concentration anywhere in
the world. (International Educational Development)”
The communiqu also reads, “Now is the time for President Obama to
listen to Candidate Obama who said on: September 25, 2008, “I will continue
support of ongoing Indian Pakistani efforts to resolve Kashmir problem in
order to address the political roots of the arms race between India and
Pakistan.” October 23, 2008, “Working with Pakistan and India to try to
resolve, and Kashmir, crisis in a serious way. Those are all critical tasks for the
next administration. Kashmir in particular is an interesting situation where that
is obviously a potential tar pit diplomatically. But, for us to devote serious
diplomatic resources to get a special envoy in there, to figure out a plausible
approach, and essentially make the argument to the Indians, you guys are on
the brink of being an economic superpower, why do you want to keep on
messing with this?” October 30, 2008, “We should probably try to facilitate a
better understanding between Pakistan and India and try to resolve the
Kashmir crisis.”
The communiqu emphasized, “That the unresolved Kashmir dispute is
a rebuke to the international community for its inaction.”
The communiqu concluded “that the people of Kashmir demand what
was pledged to them by both India and Pakistan and guaranteed by the
Security Council, with the unequivocal endorsement of the United States,
namely demilitarization of Kashmir and a free vote organized impartially to
ascertain popular will.”
Dr. Fai said that no international dispute is ever free from complexities
and Kashmir dispute is no exception. But conscience does not let itself be
distracted by them and statesmanship devoted to peace reaches and grasps the
human core of s dispute.
C:\Documents and Settings\ipri\Local Settings\Temporary Internet
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struggle to achieve freedom from the yoke of Indian tyranny. The forces of
evil let loose by India to crush the freedom movement have taken a toll of
more than 93,241 Kashmiris martyred to date from January 1989. The wanton
killing began a fresh spate of bloodletting after the Valley was hit by regular
protests over the past two weeks following the deaths of three Kashmiri
protesters allegedly at the hands of Indian security forces. In response to the
killings, Kashmiri leaders have been calling for demonstrations and general
strikes that have crippled Srinagar and other areas in the Muslim-majority
region. The Daily Mail notes that General V.K. Singh the Chief of Indian
Army, during an interview to the Times of India has called for a political
solution to unrest in Indian-administered Kashmir, saying the military should
step back from its security role in the region.The Daily Mail would like to
inform the Indian Military Chief and its political leaders that India has no
option but to grant Kashmiris their right guaranteed by the UN but usurped
by India.
Editorial, Daily Mail (Islamabad), July 2, 2010,
http://dailymailnews.com/0710/02/Editorial_Column/DMEditorial.php#1
massive deployment of troops and killings. It is time that India must realize
that it has failed to crush the Kashmiris’ spirit of freedom, respect aspirations
of the people, stop committing gross human rights violations in the territory
and adopt the path of genuine negotiations to find a lasting solution in line
with the aspiration of people of the State.
Editorial, Pakistan Observer (Islamabad), July 5, 2010,
http://www.pakobserver.net/201007/05/detailnews.asp?id=39791
K ASHMIR B URNS
The firing of Indian security forces on protesting mobs in Indian Held
Kashmir (IHK) has now become a pattern. Even if the crowds pelted stones
on the police and paramilitary troops, firing back in response can hardly be
justified. It is this tendency of the Indian security forces that has worsened the
situation in the Kashmir valley. On Tuesday, three Kashmiris, including a
woman, were shot dead by India security personnel while they were protesting
the death of a Kashmiri boy. Killing of innocent Kashmiris at the hands of
police, paramilitary forces and the army has seen a steep rise since the
mysterious murder of two women in Shopian. Last month, the Indian Army
claimed killing three militants. However, investigations by the local police
proved they were ordinary citizens and were not involved in any unlawful
activity. The current wave of protests has engulfed almost the entire valley.
Failing to control the inflamed situation, the state requested the army to assist
the police and clamped restrictions on the media. Curfew passes of local and
non-local media teams have been cancelled, limiting their mobility in the
valley, while the duration of one-hour news bulletins of local media outlets has
been slashed to 10 minutes. Short messaging service (SMS) has also been
restricted because several media organisations used this service to relay the
latest news. All this depicts that the state government expected a severe
backlash from the people. Protesters and security forces are engaging in
skirmishes in areas where curfew has not been imposed. However, this issue
cannot be resolved through repressive measures.
In addition to putting a check on the excesses of the security forces, the
state government of Kashmir and central Indian government would have to
make peace with local groups actively engaged in the freedom struggle for the
last two decades. We keep hearing renewed calls for freedom from Indian rule
whenever there is a new incident. Without resolving the issue internally, India
cannot hope to settle this matter with Pakistan. Meanwhile, IHK Chief
Minister Omar Abdullah has accused Pakistan of sabotaging the state
government’s negotiations with the All Parties Hurriyat Conference. At the
same time he admitted that such negotiations could not succeed without the
involvement of Pakistan. Such statements only reveal the failure of the state
Kashmir Struggle Enters New Phase 5
Relations with India are icy at best. Playing a blame game on terrorism,
India has forced Pakistan to play on the back foot through its offensive on the
Mumbai issue.
For the US, which has a vested interest in South Asia and now enjoys
greater leverage over India through which to pressure it to negotiate a
settlement, Kashmir would be a distraction at this point. It fears alienating
India if it pressurises it or chastises it over human rights issue. And it has other
woes to worry about. Indian atrocities in Kashmir and tensions between India
and Pakistan do not bother it much, as long as the two do not go to war.
The United Nations is now impotent having increasingly turned into an
American mouthpiece after the demise of the Soviet Union and continued low
profile of both Russia and China on the international scene. It has failed to
provide any specific, actionable proposals for a permanent solution, which has
allowed the conflict to develop into one of the most intractable problems of
international politics.
All it has done so far is to extend diplomatic courtesies and suggest
vague formulas and generalities that are open to multiple interpretations and
lead nowhere.
The West, the US included, which shouts from the housetops in
support of human rights in other countries, shies away from applying same
standards to India. One sees alarm being raised over minor incidents of human
rights violation in China, a high profile campaign of condemnation against the
Iranian government in the aftermath of presidential elections, President
Mugabe being run down over his policies, but one sees the same West turning
a blind eye to much more serious violations of human rights that have kept
Kashmir and the region in a state of turmoil.
The plight of the Kashmiris has therefore been consigned to cold
storage at the international level, at least for the time being. And because the
issue has gone cold, with successive Pakistani political governments showing
only sporadic interest in it, it no more makes it to the list of disputes that need
most urgent attention.
A cartoon published in an American newspaper in 2002 showed former
president George Bush sitting behind his desk in the Oval Office, utterly
confused by a news report he was reading about India and Pakistan going to
war over Kashmir. “But why are the two countries fighting over a sweater,” he
asks Dick Cheney who stood by with his trademark sly smile on his face.
Apart from reflecting the intellectual capacity of the American president
of the time, the cartoon was a realistic portrayal of the understanding that the
new crop of international political leadership has generally shown of this
dispute.
This has encouraged India to come down heavily on the Kashmiris who
agitate for freedom. The murky cycle of violence is picking up speed. The
killing of innocent civilians at the hands of the army, para-military forces and
8 IPRI Factfile
police draws protests in all nooks and corners of the state by enraged people
which in turn provoke the security forces into letting lose a reign of terror.
Men and women — young and old, and even children are indiscriminately
killed, injured and maimed and women raped with impunity.
A recent report on Human Rights violations states that between 1989
and June 30, 2010 the number of Kashmiris killed at the hands of Indian
security forces stands at 93,274. Additionally, there have been 6,969 custodial
killings, over 107,351 children have been orphaned, 22,728 women widowed
and 9,920 women gang raped. In June 2010 alone, 33 people were killed
including four children, 572 people were tortured and injured and eight
women were molested, 117,345 people were arrested and 105,861 houses or
structures in the use of the communities were razed or destroyed.
This happens because the state or the central governments neither
explain their actions nor carry out investigations to punish those who use
excessive force. Human rights groups blame the culture of impunity among
security forces in Kashmir on a controversial 1990 national law granting
soldiers the right to detain or eliminate all suspected terrorists and destroy
their property without fear of prosecution. Critics call this provision a licence
to kill as it does not clearly define "terrorists".
India continues to treat the Kashmiri people as if they were not human
beings and as if they have no rights. It refuses to acknowledge the uprising to
be a home grown insurgency. Instead, it finds it easy to blame it all on groups
that it says Pakistan sponsors.
After six decades of bloodshed and armed confrontation, Indian leaders
should realise the impossibility of sweeping the issue under the carpet or
keeping the Kashmiris subjugated indefinitely through force, an option which
has acquired an entirely new dimension due to India and Pakistan having
become nuclear powers. It is now time that India should move with sincerity
towards resolving the dispute with the following in mind:
(a) A solution must be found on the basis of tripartite approach that
takes into account the wishes of the people of Kashmir, besides
India and Pakistan.
(b) India should consider with an open mind Pakistan’s proposals to
move away from old paradigms in search of a mutually acceptable
solution. Proposals such as an ‘independent state of Kashmir’
deserve consideration.
(c) Kashmir must be treated as an issue of basic human rights, which
forms part of the jus cogens of general international law. Kashmir
is also an issue of religious rights and identity where the majority
Muslim community has been adversely affected by the partition
along the “Line of Control”.
Kashmir Struggle Enters New Phase 9
K ASHMIRI I NTIFADA
Has New Delhi learnt any lessons from all that has been going on in Indian-
held Kashmir — especially since June 11, when the current intifada began? On
Tuesday, India obliged Chief Minister Omar Abdullah by rushing more troops
to the valley. Does the Indian government really think that 1,500 more troops
will succeed where an army of over half a million men has failed? If the Indian
troops’ job is to crush the Kashmiri yearnings for freedom, then history says
brute force has never succeeded in denying freedom to a people for long.
Five more Kashmiris were shot dead on Tuesday as fresh protests
broke out in Srinagar, with a crowd of urban youths shouting anti-India
slogans. The extent of Kashmiri anger is obvious, for the demonstrators defied
curfew despite police warnings on loudspeakers that violators would be shot
dead. Some officials deny that any ‘shoot on sight’ order had been given. But
the way the troops have been behaving and given the rising number of
Kashmiri deaths make it clear the order exists for all practical purposes.
The second Kashmiri intifada is home-grown. There are no two
opinions about it. Even India’s rights bodies and sections of the media
acknowledge this truth, and barring those toeing the government line, no
responsible Indian sees a foreign hand in what undeniably is a spontaneous
reaction — mostly from urban youths — to India’s repressive policies that aim
at keeping the Kashmiris in bondage by force. One wishes India realised that
the stifling atmosphere in the valley and the violations of human rights by its
troops cause more violence and deaths, inviting censure from the world and
putting strains on the already tense relations with Islamabad.
The only choice New Delhi has is to talk — both to Kashmiris of all
shades of opinion and to Islamabad, for only that solution will be long-lasting
and acceptable to the people of Kashmir. Let us hope India doesn’t consider it
a provocation when Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi expresses
Pakistan’s concern over the “escalation of violence against the Kashmiri
people” and asks New Delhi to “exercise restraint”.
Editorial, Dawn (Islamabad), August 5, 2010,
http://news.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-
newspaper/editorial/21-kashmiri-intifada-580-sk-05
forces firing into the unarmed crowd of civilian protestors. This review article
examines the recent unrest and the historical roots of the present turmoil and
argues that there is a genuine freedom struggle going on against the repressive
Indian State by the Kashmiris who are alienated equally with India, Pakistan
and the militants and whose grievances have their historical roots in the events
of 1947.
Introduction
Kashmir Valley has been under brutal military occupation since a popular
insurgency erupted against the Indian Rule in 1989. The once serene and
lovely Kashmir Valley with its gorgeous mountains and rivers, which inspired
generations of poets to eulogize its beauty, has now become a Valley of Blood.
At least 40,000 people have been killed since insurgency began in 1989,
according to conservative official estimates. Unofficial estimates are well over
80,000-half of them are civilians. Thousands of Indian soldiers have been
killed and it costs billions of dollars to keep the security forces in Kashmir.
Since June 2010, a fresh round of protests has erupted in the Valley
since the killing of an innocent boy Tufail Ahmed by the Indian ‘security’
forces. These popular protests have been met with brutal repression by the
Indian State leading to a cycle of violence with more unarmed protesters killed
and some protesters engaging in arson and stone throwing as an expression of
their anger at the repression. Predictably, the Indian State authorities have
chosen to blame the unrest on Pakistan and project this popular anger out of
context and blame these victims of repression to justify more killings by the
State.
A young Kashmiri I had met in Srinagar some years ago made a sharp
remark which hit me hard: “We look upon your Indian State exactly as you
Indians used to regard British Raj before 1947: as Imperialist Occupiers.” The
heavy Indian military presence around every city block was menacing. She
narrated in chilling detail the humiliations Kashmiris had to endure on a daily
basis from the Indian presence: arbitrary cordone and search, arrests, torture,
rape, custodial and “encounter killings”. There is one soldier for every 10
Kashmiris in the Valley and daily life is a nightmare for the ordinary Kashmiri.
No wonder there is little love for the Indian State in the hearts of many
Kashmiris. The total alienation and hatred of the population is best summed
up by the graffiti on the walls of Srinagar alleys: “Indian Dogs Go Home”.
Kashmiri activists claim that India and Pakistan have historically treated
Kashmir conflict as a mere land dispute completely ignoring their legitimate
grievances. Ever since May 1998 nuclear tests by both countries, Kashmir has
become a nuclear flashpoint, besides bleeding the economy of the two
impoverished countries. Pakistan for its part claims that it is merely giving
“moral and diplomatic” support for an indigenous freedom struggle in
14 IPRI Factfile
Kashmir despite the fact that Pakistan-backed militants have killed numerous
Kashmiri civilians. The Indian State continues to insist that all would be well in
Kashmir but for Pakistan’s cross-border terrorism and the mainstream Indian
opinion continues to be along these lines which indirectly sanctions the Indian
State’s hardline repressive rule in Kashmir which has ravaged the lives of
millions of people. Who is right and how did we get here and can we
understand this tragedy amidst the nationalistic rhetoric on either side?
The Promise
Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Indian Prime Minister hailed from a Kashmiri
Hindu(Pandit) family whose ancestors had lived in the lush-green Kashmir
Valley(Vale) and hence had a great deal of emotional attachment towards the
Vale(as can be inferred from the beautiful poems he had written comparing
the Vale to a beautiful woman). Besides, he was a great friend of Sheikh
Abdullah to the extent that when the Lion of Kashmir was arrested by Hari
Singh for his Quit Kashmir movement in 1946, Jawaharlal had rushed to his
rescue braving imprisonment.
Kashmir Struggle Enters New Phase 15
which would later become JKLF and would play a major role in the 1989
insurgency.
1994 and remains a political group. Militant groups with Islamic agenda would
proliferate through the nineties and have eventually hijacked the indigenous
Kashmiri movement. Today, roughly the indigenous Kashmiri fighters account
for only one-third of the total number of militants.
the killings of prominent Pandits were not communal but merely for political
reasons like media bias and sentencing of Maqbool Butt. Kashmiris came out
in large numbers and demonstrated in support of their Pandit brethren as they
still do every time innocent Hindus are killed, as witnessed in the 2003
massacre at Nadimarg. There have been instances of Muslims helping build
temples for Hindus- an example being the village of Ichhigam in Budgam.
What is clear is that Kashmiri civilians are not communal by and large
and Kashmiriyat continues to flourish. What is not clear is: who are these
communal forces which target minority Hindus periodically? It could be jihadi
militants with an Islamic agenda; It could be Indian sponsored renegade
militants to communalize the conflict. Opinion remains divided. Only an
independent investigation by an impartial agency can reveal the true identity of
these killers. Kashmiris have repeatedly demanded inquiry into these killings
by unidentified gunmen and it continues to be ignored.
Is There a Solution?
India continues to insist that the accession of Kashmir to India is final and
complete; Till recently, Pakistan had insisted on the implementation of UN
resolutions- a unitary plebiscite for the whole of J&K; Kashmiris are alienated
from both countries given brutal repression by India and violence by pro-
Pakistan militants. Is there a solution to this seemingly intractable issue?
One reason why previous efforts to solve the problem have failed is
this: India and Pakistan have not included Kashmiris as a legitimate party in
tripartite unconditional dialogues. Many observers think that UN resolutions
are out-dated, since the dispute has evolved into tripartite. That other regional
solutions should be considered given that various regions in Kashmir have
evolved independently since 1947 and that the conflict is restricted to the
Kashmir Valley whose area is less than 16% of the total area of Indian
controlled J&K.
One compromise regional solution which could potentially work was
proposed by eminent historian Alastair Lamb in 1998 called Andorran
Solution and a similar variant was proposed by the Kashmir Study Group.
Following the well established precedent of Andorra on the border between
France and Spain, both Azad Kashmir and the Kashmir Valley could be
declared as autonomous regions with its internal self-government but with its
external defence and foreign affairs controlled jointly by India and Pakistan.
Major advantage of this Andorran solution: No territory under Indian control
would be transferred to Pakistan and no territory under Pakistani control
would be transferred to India. Existing LoC will become the border. India
retains Jammu and Ladakh, Pakistan retains Northern Territories.
20 IPRI Factfile
H OW TO ‘T ALK ’ K ASHMIR
We have travelled so far along the road to a settlement of the Kashmir dispute
that the slogans and mantras of old have become utterly irrelevant.
Those days are behind us when successive governments in India said
that the Shimla Agreement bound the parties to a bilateral approach; only to
contend that there was nothing to discuss. It was an internal affair.
As late as on July 16, 2001 at Agra the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
regime wrecked a summit because it would not accept even this procedural
formulation in Article 1 of the draft declaration though its foreign minister,
Jaswant Singh, had accepted it in writing, jointly with Pakistan’s foreign
minister, Abdul Sattar: “Progress towards settlement of J&K issue would be
conducive towards normalisation and will further the establishment of a
cooperative relationship in a mutually reinforcing manner”.
In sharp contrast, since 2004, for the first time in decades, Pakistan and
India have been grappling with the substance, not mere procedures, of the
Kashmir dispute. By 2007 they had reached the gates of an accord. Domestic
developments in India had slowed the process somewhat, earlier. Similar
development in Pakistan, of a seismic character, brought it to a halt.It was
statesmanlike of Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi to declare in
Islamabad on July 15 that progress made in the talks in the past will not be set
Kashmir Struggle Enters New Phase 21
at naught. This was widely hailed in India. It would be unhelpful to dismiss the
significant shift in India’s position.
Idealism, doubtless, motivated it. So did a sensible mature appraisal of
the nation’s interest in settling the Kashmir dispute. Here we come up, again
and again, with a virus that attacks the parties whenever either of them makes
a concession. It produces the delusion that “external factors” (read the US) or
“internal compulsions” or both inspired change; ergo, it is insincere and not to
be taken seriously.
In all these years India had prime ministers who were products of its
political process. Dr Manmohan Singh broke the pattern. An economist of
repute, with friends in Pakistan’s academia and other figures, he decided
consciously to break from the past and proclaimed the resolve publicly before
taking the oath of office.
On May 20, 2004 an Indian daily published his interview at breakfast to
a foreign correspondent Jonathan Power “a few months ago”. Neither the
guest nor the host imagined that the host would become India’s prime
minister before long. In the tour d’ horizon Pakistan loomed very prominently.
His remarks bear quotation in extenso for they reveal a sound blend of
enlightened self-interest and idealism. “Then, we have to find a way to stop
talking of war with Pakistan. This is stopping us realising our potential. Two
nuclear-armed powers living in such close proximity is a big problem. We have
an obligation to ourselves to solve this problem.”
Jonathan Power reported: “I pushed him on how far he himself would
accept compromise with Pakistan over Kashmir.” This is crucial. Dr
Manmohan Singh’s reply was candid and positive. “Short of secession, short
of redrawing boundaries, the Indian establishment can live with anything.
Meanwhile, we need soft borders — then borders are not so important.” A
year later he said they would become “irrelevant”.
What of a plebiscite? “No government in India could survive that.
Autonomy we are prepared to consider. All these things are negotiable.” In the
negotiations in the back-channel India accepted grant of self-rule to both parts
of Kashmir, demilitarisation, redundance of the Line of Control, and — a joint
mechanism. No previous government had gone so far.
Dr Manmohan Singh became a symbol of the peace process. In the
2009 general election, the BJP leader, L.K. Advani, bitter at the collapse of his
prime ministerial ambitions in 2004, launched a sustained personal attack on
the prime minister in language that revealed his true colours. The attack was
renewed in the wake of the Sharm-el-Sheikh joint statement last year and last
month after the fiasco at Islamabad. Imagine the furore if there had been an
explicit commitment to ‘talk’ Kashmir on a fixed date.
One can only wonder why such issues are not resolved in private
understandings. Be that as it may, if Pakistan must understand India’s
compulsions India must respect Pakistan’s compulsions. We have reached a
22 IPRI Factfile
Why then does the immense human suffering of Kashmir occupy such
an imperceptible place in our moral imagination? After all, the Kashmiris
demanding release from the degradations of military rule couldn't be louder
and clearer. India has contained the insurgency provoked in 1989 by its rigged
elections and massacres of protestors. The hundreds of thousands of
demonstrators that fill the streets of Kashmir's cities today are overwhelmingly
young, many in their teens, and armed with nothing more lethal than stones.
Yet the Indian state seems determined to strangle their voices as it did of the
old one. Already this summer, soldiers have shot dead more than 50
protestors, most of them teenagers.
The New York Times this week described the protests as a
comprehensive"intifada-like popular revolt". They indeed have a broader mass
base than the Green Movement does in Iran. But no colour-coded revolution
is heralded in Kashmir by western commentators. The BBC and CNN don't
endlessly loop clips of little children being shot in the head by Indian soldiers.
Bloggers and tweeters in the west fail to keep a virtual vigil by the side of the
dead and the wounded. No sooner than his office issued it last week, the UN
secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, hastened to retract a feeble statement
expressing concern over the situation in Kashmir.
Kashmiri Muslims are understandably bitter. As Parvaiz Bukhari, a
journalist, said early this week the stones flung randomly by protestors have
become "the voice of a neglected people" convinced that the world
deliberately ignores their plight. The veteran Kashmiri journalist Masood
Hussain confessed to the near-total futility of his painstaking auditing of
atrocity over two decades. For Kashmir has turned out to be a "great
suppression story".
The cautiousness – or timidity – of western politicians is easy to
understand. Apart from appearing as a lifeline to flailing western economies,
India is a counterweight, at least in the fantasies of western strategists, to
China. A month before his election, Barack Obama declared that resolving the
"Kashmir crisis" was among his "critical tasks". Since then, the US president
hasn't uttered a word about this ur-crisis that has seeded all major conflicts in
south Asia. David Cameron was advised a similar strategic public silence on
his visit to India last fortnight.
Those western pundits who are always ready to assault illiberal regimes
worldwide on behalf of democracy ought not to be so tongue-tied. Here is a
well-educated Muslim population, heterodox and pluralist by tradition and
temperament, and desperate for genuine democracy. However, intellectuals
preoccupied by transcendent, nearly mystical, battles between civilization and
barbarism tend to assume that "democratic" India, a natural ally of the
"liberal" west, must be doing the right thing in Kashmir, ie fighting
"Islamofascism". Thus Christopher Hitchens could call upon the Bush
administration to establish a military alliance with "the other great multi-ethnic
24 IPRI Factfile
men on the streets of Kashmir today seem simply to want to express their
hatred of the state's impersonal brutality, and to commemorate lives freshly
ruined by it. As the Kashmiri writer Basharat Peer wrote this week in a moving
Letter to an Unknown Indian, Indian journalists might edit out the "faces of
the murdered boys", and "their grieving fathers"; they may not show "the
video of a woman in Anantnag, washing the blood of the boys who were killed
outside her house". But "Kashmir sees the unedited Kashmir."
And it remembers. "Like many other Kashmiris," Peer writes, "I have
been in silence, committing to memory the deed, the date." Apart from the
youth on the streets, there are also those with their noses in books, or pressed
against window bars. Soon this generation will make its way into the world
with its private traumas. Life under political oppression has begun to yield, in
the slow bitter way it does, a rich intellectual and artistic harvest: Peer's
memoir Curfewed Night will be followed early next year by a novel by Waheed
Mirza. There are more works to come; Kashmiris will increasingly speak for
themselves. One can only hope that their voices will finally penetrate our
indifference and even occasionally prick our conscience.
Pankaj Mishra, Guardian, August 14, 2010,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/aug/14/silence-over-kashmir-conflict
security. Nevertheless, even this aspect would call for a sound economy for its
sustenance as well as victuals for other aspects. Out of many facets of the
economic power, self-sustenance of the state is the basic aspect. Pakistan is
such a state whose principal economy is agrarian based. This agrarian based
economy needs a constant availability of water. Traditionally, the water
catchment areas (water heads) are located somewhere in the mountainous
region of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. For centuries, water flows down to
irrigate the agricultural lands of Punjab, Sindh and other parts of the Indus
Valley and the locals as well as the people of Kashmir consumed its product,
food grains. Indeed, there existed a historical mutuality between the Kashmir
and the areas forming part of Pakistan. This relationship of interdependence is
pre-partition of the sub-continent and even pre-canal system, hence everlasting
in nature. It was indeed, in the same context that six decades earlier, the father
of the nation, Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah through his visionary
statement declared Kashmir as the “jugular vein of Pakistan.”
Unfortunately, because of the conspiracies between British
Government, then a colonial power in the sub-continent and the Hindu
leadership, the fate of Kashmiris was kept indecisive by denying them to
become part of Pakistan. Later India invaded Kashmir once Kashmiris tried to
make their way for the accession with Pakistan in October 1947. A part of the
state was liberated by Kashmiri people from the Indian yoke, whereas, the
bulk remained under the forceful Indian occupation. In the subsequent years,
India fully exploited the situation and successfully planned desertification of
Pakistan by stopping the water of all rivers flowing from the areas of Kashmir
under its occupation. So much so, India did not abide by the Indus Basin
Water Treaty, concluded through the arbitration of World Bank in 1960. Over
the year, India has constructed a number dams and water reservoirs on the
Western rivers, whose water is exclusively dedicated for Pakistan through the
Indus Basin Water Treaty. In this way, India gained total control over the
water sources of Pakistan. This control has enabled her to stop the Pakistani
water once it is required for irrigation and power generation and release it to
cause the floods in Pakistan once there is enough of it during monsoon or
during the rainy season.
Apart from the economic interdependence and unbreakable linkages
between Pakistan and Kashmir, the security of Pakistan and Kashmir is
synonymous and interlinked. Historically, all natural routes to and from
Kashmir are through Pakistan. This holds good to all parts of the state, viz;
Jammu, Vale of Kashmir, or the Gilgit-Baltistan. Historically all armed
invasion in Kashmir (except Indian invasion of 27 October 1947) took place
through the areas currently forming part of Pakistan. Major invasions and
foreign rules on Kashmir include; Mughals; from 1586 to 1752, Afghans; from
1752 to 1819, Sikhs; from 1819 to 1846, and Dogra rule; from 1846 to 1947.
Similarly, Indian aggressions on Pakistan in the form of three wars have been
Kashmir Struggle Enters New Phase 27
No sooner these tall claims were made the whole Kashmir valley
resounded with chants of ‘Azadi’, following Amarnath Shrine Board dispute in
summer of 2008 which coalesced into a massive non-violent uprising. Tens of
thousands of unarmed protestors from all walks of life with placards in their
hands defied gun totting security forces and marched through the streets of
Srinagar protesting against state atrocities and injustices. Instead of redressing
their grievances, Indian forces fired indiscriminately at the crowds. Volleys
were fired not to scare and disperse the crowds but to kill innocent people
since value of a Muslim Kashmiri is no better than a sewer rat. One of the
reasons behind enacting Mumbai drama on 26/11 was to deflect the attention
of the world from Kashmir and to exert pressure on Pakistan to stay out of it.
Another round of protest marches led by young people triggered in
summer of 2009. This flare up coincided with unfolding of vicious propaganda
war against Pakistan Army from August 2009 onwards. It was alleged that Pak
Army had committed large-scale human rights violations in Swat. Stories about
unearthing of mass graves, bodies found dumped along roadsides carrying
marks of torture, corpses found with hands tied behind backs, and some
corpses beheaded were splashed. Western media and RAW cultivated writers
in Pakistan backed up the theme and series of articles appeared in local and
international print media. Idea of this false projection was to cover up brutality
of Indian forces against unarmed adolescent Kashmiris.
Making good use of their draconian laws they pickup slogan chanting
young men on charges of arson, torture them in Kashmir under siege secret
dens and later kill them in fake encounters. This gory practice of missing
persons and fake encounters has been going on since triggering of armed
resistance in late 1989. Since then, Indian forces have been killing Kashmiris
like flies. Figure of missing persons run in thousands, while number of killed
persons has overshot 100,000. Hardly any missing person has rejoined his
family. Each fake encounter is presented as a clash with armed militants and
those shooting the handcuffed prisoners are rewarded for bravery. Huge
numbers of unmarked mass graves and marked graves stand witness to the
atrocities of Indian security forces.
Besides killing every able bodied person or maiming them for life
through torture, rape is being used as a weapon to break the will of the
Kashmiris. Thousands of women and young girls have been raped. There have
been numerous incidents of gang rape reported by Amnesty International (AI)
and NGOs. AI has reported criminal activities of police and Indian security
forces and has also reported that almost every house in Kashmir has been
traumatized. They are living in a prison house and are being constantly
punished on account of asking for right of self determination.
Their miseries are never ending since they can neither escape from the
open prison nor their cries can be heard by the world. Biased US and Western
media, think tanks and NGOs have remained mum over massive abuses of
Kashmir Struggle Enters New Phase 33
but they feel no qualms in suppressing those who are totally docile. The
Indians indulge in violence for the sheer sake of deriving pleasure out of it. In
other words, it is violence for violence’s sake and years of Occupation have
virtually predisposed the Indian forces towards barbarism.
On the other side of the spectrum, where the world community
continues to maintain a guilty silence over illegal Indian Occupation, and
western capitals have given preference to courting India over listening to the
cries of help by the suppressed Kashmiris, the adjournment motion submitted
by PML-N leader Mian Nawaz Sharif in the National Assembly in order to
check Indian human rights violations is a ray of hope in that at least it would
send a strong message to New Delhi that it was not a free for all in Kashmir.
The house arrest of a notable freedom fighter and the fact that the Indian
forces unleashed their fury on everyone who came out on the streets to
protest, was among the factors that prompted the PML-N to swing into
action. This would also serve to remind the Indians that patriotic Pakistanis
have rejected Musharraf’s Kashmir policy and would under no circumstances
abandon their Kashmiri brethren.
At the same time, greater stress needs to be put on the UNSC
resolutions, which have been wickedly thrown into cold storage on account of
India’s clout in the Western world. Besides, the world community cannot
afford to ignore the issue so casually, as its very own peace and security
indirectly depends on the Kashmiri conundrum, which has to all intents and
purposes become a nuclear flashpoint and threatens a global conflation of
horrific proportions. It is high time that all that is happening in Kashmir was
recognised not just as a writing on the wall but also a slur on India’s claims
about democracy.
Editorial, Nation (Islamabad), September 11, 2010,
http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-
online/Opinions/Editorials/11-Sep-2010/IHK-HR-violations#
K ASHMIRI C ARNAGE
Does Kashmiri blood come cheap? It is now for more than three months that
a trigger-happy Indian military is playing holi with the blood of Kashmiri
teenaged boys in the occupied Kashmir. Just on Monday, it slaughtered 15
youths on the streets of the Kashmir valley. With impunity, it indeed has
murdered 86 teenagers with firing and tear-gas shelling since June 11 blithely.
Yet not even a whimper has been heard over this bloodbath of the Kashmiris
from any of the western capitals that tire not in flaunting their postures of
being the champions of human rights worldwide. Only UN secretary general
Ban Ki-moon had statedly expressed shock. But he too backed out quickly.
The UN chief was misreported, said his spokesman. So he too was not
Kashmir Struggle Enters New Phase 35
more to the point, the Indian State arguably cannot keep the risen Kashmiris
perpetually corralled under its stranglehold, which in spite of all its use of
brute force is already becoming feebler and thinner. And stray voices in India
itself are now coming out that if the Kashmiris do not want to stay with India
they better be let go. The contrivances of autonomy and more economic
progress surely can no longer work now. Nothing short of freedom would
satisfy the Kashmiris. The Indian government hence would do well to sit
down with the Kashmiris and Pakistan, which too by the UN decree is a
legitimate party to the Kashmir dispute, and seek a political way out in
consonance of the Kashmiris’ will and wishes.
Editorial, Frontier Post (Peshawar), September 15, 2010,
http://thefrontierpost.com.pk/News.aspx?ncat=ed&nid=56
problem with that. The sentiment, in fact, dates back to the late 1920s when all
Kashmiris - Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists - rose against the Dogra Raja to
demand independence.
A pro-independence strain, opposed to merger, either with Pakistan or
India, has also been a part of the freedom movement, which erupted 21 years
ago and remained embattled with the Indian state under the umbrella of All
Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), until the stone throwing youth overtook
the Hurriyat and turned the resistance into a peaceful yet formidably powerful
movement.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reiterated the other day that his
government is willing to talk to the Kashmiris, but within the framework of
the Indian constitution. The events on the ground suggest the offer is
irrelevant. In any case, Kashmir is unlike any other part of India even within
the constitutional confines.
Article 370 of the constitution gives it a special status, limiting
parliament's powers to matters "which, in consultation with the government of
the state are declared by the President to correspond to matters specified in
the Instrument of Accession governing the accession of the state to the
dominion of India."
Needless to say, the Kashmiris and Pakistan challenge the validity of the
Instrument of Accession as well. Besides, as per a 1948 UN resolution,
Kashmir is a subject of dispute between India and Pakistan, which needs to be
resolved through a plebiscite to determine whether the Kashmiris wish merger
with Pakistan or India. No other state within the Indian Union has a similar
status; hence any concessions for Kashmir cannot serve as a precedent for
others seeking to break away from India.
Nonetheless, it needs to be recognised that India is in a difficult
position, given its long adversarial relationship with Pakistan, and the fact that
it is expected to cede territorial control. Also, morality is seldom a factor in
decisions nations make, particularly powerful ones like India, is in the present
context.
But unending strife within and conflict with a neighbour can drag it
down in a changing world wherein its chief competitor, China, as Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh noted at a recent meeting with editors, has become
increasing assertive, and that it could use the "soft underbelly" of Kashmir " to
keep India in a low level equilibrium." It is a decisive moment for New Delhi
to either resolve Kashmir or to remain embroiled in an unending conflict that
could dent its dreams of becoming a big global power.
Saida Fazal, Business Recorder (Islamabad), September 16, 2010,
http://www.brecorder.com/news/articles-and-letters/articles/1102728:new-turn-of-
events-in-kashmir.html
Kashmir Struggle Enters New Phase 39
Indian policy, partly by the connivance of others and partly by the passivity of
the media, a haze has been made to spread over Kashmir. How many people
realise the extent to which Kashmir under Indian occupation is densely
militarised? India stations more troops in Kashmir than the United States did
or does in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Can this situation be dismissed as
‘historical’ and ‘long-standing’?
If it is being so dismissed at present, the dismissal is aided by the
language employed. We are being told of an ‘insurgency’ in Kashmir. The term
may not be inaccurate but it promotes a misperception. What is going on in
Kashmir is not an insurgency against an authority that was once regarded as
legitimate; it is a resistance to alien military occupation.
In the same way, those who are staging this Resistance are being falsely
described as ‘separatists.’ How can we separate, they say, from what we never
joined? Indeed, to class them with separatists in other lands is to betray stark
ignorance of the character and inception of the dispute in which their lives and
future are involved. As soon as the dispute arose, an overarching promise was
made by India to Kashmir in all available forms — in solemn public
declarations, in submissions to the United Nations, in communications to
Pakistan and even to other governments. This was done in 1947 when India
first marched its troops into Kashmir and it was repeated a number of times in
the following five years.
Yes, this promise is now sixty-three years old. But does its age diminish
its relevance or reduce is applicability? To assert so is to concede primacy to
the law of the jungle. Promises may be forgotten, dishonourably or otherwise,
by those who make them but they are never forgotten or lost sight of by those
to whom or for whose benefit they are made. The tone and content of the
promise is apparent in numerous statements. For the sake of brevity we may
here just sample three.
In a telegram on October 31, 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru, the prime
minister of India and the chief originator of India’s Kashmir policy, conveyed
to the prime minister of Pakistan: “Our assurance that we shall withdraw our
troops from Kashmir as soon as peace and order is restored and leave the
decision regarding the future of the state to the people of the state is not
merely a promise to your government but also to the people of Kashmir and
to the world.”
In a broadcast to the nation on November 3, 1947, Mr Nehru said “we
have declared that the fate of Kashmir is ultimately to be decided by the
people. That pledge we have given not only to the people of Kashmir but to
the world. We will not and cannot back out of it.”
One of the points on which primary emphasis is laid in current
statements of the Indian official position is the inalterability of the Indian
constitution and hence of Kashmir being an integral part of India.
Kashmir Struggle Enters New Phase 41
The late Mr Nehru had this to say about it in the statement he made to
the Indian parliament on June 26, 1952: “If, after a proper plebiscite, the
people of Kashmir said, ‘we do not want to be with India’, we are committed
to accept it though it might pain us. We will not send an army against them.
We will accept that however we might feel about it. We will change the
constitution, if necessary.”
For us, this may be matter which exists only in the archives we seldom
open. For the Kashmiri, however, it is a matter which continues to reverberate
in his consciousness. While visiting Indian-occupied Kashmir, I have
witnessed different Kashmiri-speaking people, some educated, others barely
literate, none of them political activists, making references to Kashmir’s
accession to India being only ‘arzi (in Urdu: ‘provisional’) and subject to “rai-
shumari” (popular vote). Nowhere does the Kashmiri who is not an
opportunist (first and foremost) evince the natural belongingness to India. The
most he will show is a coerced attachment.
One of the reasons the Kashmiri’s resistance to Indian occupation is not
being taken abroad as a decisive phenomenon is that it does not stay at the
same level of intensity over a period of time. But only stark ignorance of the
living conditions of a poor society would expect its members to sustain a
movement for freedom with the same force and as steadily over a period of
time as people in a developed environment can. Such a movement requires a
stamina and sophisticated organization which a poor people can certainly
throw up but only in spurts. In a poor society, movements for liberation are
bound to ebb and flow. To take a periodic exhaustion of the insurrectionary
activity as reconciliation can be a colossal misjudgement. The crucial factor is
not the physical eruptions but the extent and depth of the movement and its
rooted-ness in the popular psyche.
How does one gauge this? The uprising in Kashmir has been marked
more than once by the entire male population of the cities (excepting only the
aged, the sick and children) coming out together in the streets to demonstrate
peacefully against India’s military presence in their homeland. Could such a
pointer have been mistaken, or would it have been allowed to be mistaken, far
less ignored, if it had happened in a Western country?
The proponents of a just and peaceful solution of the Kashmir conflict
have to contend not only with the bigotry and obduracy that have combined
to sustain the policy India has pursued so far, but also with certain settled
notions that exist in the outside world and inhibit support for a constructive
course in India-Pakistan relations. One emanates from the malign thesis that
there is an innate hostility between India and Pakistan which can never be
eradicated and which will outlast even the settlement of the Kashmir dispute.
It is astonishing that such a belief should be so tenaciously held which has no
empirical support. There have been occasions recently, some relating to sports,
when the people of both countries have demonstrated warm sentiments
42 IPRI Factfile
towards each other. There is a vast reserve of cordiality which will be tapped
once a major political dispute is removed.
Related to this baseless belief is the view that India’s policy is
unchangeable because it rests on the unanimous support of the whole nation.
This bubble has been pricked in India by prominent Indian publicists who
belong to the mainstream and none of whom can be called a maverick. One of
them has spoken of the mass killings in Kashmir by Indian forces being a stain
“on our honour as a nation.” The notion that the present Indian policy is
unshakeable, and will remain so, betrays a very shallow and, indeed an
unrealistic and unfair view of India itself.
Is it imaginable that a society as large and resourceful in thought and
intelligence as India’s would remain locked forever in a destructive and, at
best, a sterile course? Were the world powers to summon a little moral courage
and beckon India to a rational settlement of the Kashmir dispute, they would
be surprised to se the volume of support that would well up from patriotic and
thoughtful sources within India itself.
Lastly, the attitude that needs to be fought in the context not only of
Kashmir but of every major international problem is that of turning our backs
to the Charter of the United Nations. The Charter is not scripture or a book of
morals but, let us not forget, a multilateral treaty as binding on the largest or
most powerful member state of the world organisation as on the smallest or
weakest. The sanctity of international agreements must remain one of the
bases of a sane and stable international order. The Kashmir issue involves that
principle most pointedly.
M Yusuf Buch, Dawn (Islamabad), September 17, 2010,
http://thedawn.com.pk/2010/09/17/indias-festering-wound-in-kashmir/
independence. Geelani was clear that the Kashmiris would struggle for their
independence till their last breath.
It is this determination of the Kashmiris that has sustained the freedom
struggle against the barbarity of India and its Occupation forces in the face of
the appeasing silence of the international community - especially the UN. Its
Secretary General has a legal duty to speak against Indian barbarism in
Occupied Kashmir since the Kashmir dispute is in the UN Security Council.
While other states may have vested interests with India and so are
unashamedly bolstering India's human rights abuses in Occupied Kashmir, the
UNSG needs to fulfil the legal obligations of his office, and if the Indian
nationals on his staff are so able to dominate his thinking and statements then
it is time these personnel were removed. Now that Foreign Minister Qureshi is
in New York for the UNGA session, he should raise these issues not just with
the UNSG, but also with Pakistan's allies and within the OIC representatives.
Pakistan should also seek China's support on Kashmir since India has war-like
intentions towards both these countries. The Indian strategists have admitted
to formulating two-front war strategies. Given the history of Indian aggression
towards both China and Pakistan, such strategising should not only be viewed
with concern but Pakistan and China should form joint responses to the new
Indian threats.
It is also hoped that Pakistan will not maintain a silence on Kashmir in
the UNGA. It is truly tragic that we have driven the Kashmiris away from us
by our servitude before the US and its demands vis a vis India. It is time to
reassert our commitment to the Kashmiris and their struggle for independence
from Indian Occupation. How the Kashmiris really envisage their future can
only truly be assessed by giving them their right to self-determination as
committed to by the UN and India. But one fact is clear: Generation after
generation of Kashmiris have rejected, and are still rejecting, living under
Indian Occupation and any form of union with India.
Editorial, Nation (Islamabad), September 20, 2010,
http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-
online/Opinions/Editorials/20-Sep-2010/IHK-Pak-must-act
‘G O I NDIA G O ’
The Kashmiri leadership deserves a pat on the back for standing its ground
against Indian demands for negotiations. The assumption in Indian foreign
policy circles and the government was that the ongoing wave of protests and
popular anger in Held Kashmir could be quelled by striking some sort of a
deal with the leaders. They were gravely mistaken. The all-party delegation led
by Home Minister Chidambaram was cut to size when it realised that no
Kashmiri leader was willing to meet them and soon after the Indian security
forces came along to pronounce the house arrest of notable freedom fighters.
44 IPRI Factfile
But even then, the talks did not take place. Instead, the APHC and the JKLF
made the withdrawal of troops a prerequisite for talks. Chairman of the All
Parties Hurriyet Conference Mirwaiz Umar Farooq got it right that India was
talking through the barrel of a gun.
However, an even bigger insult to the Indian delegation was the slogan
of ‘go India go’ reverberating throughout the valley. This should provide a
reality check for India’s rulers who are constantly harping on the theme of
atoot ang. The recent intifada must underline the fact that the only viable
solution to the conflict is to give Kashmris the right to decide their fate
through a plebiscite guaranteed by the UNSC Resolutions. Every other option
that has been tried has miserably failed. Despite 80,000 deaths since partition,
the Kashmiris remain unfazed in their determination to offer the ultimate
sacrifice. During the past week, the Indian army has shot dead over 100 people
and made arrests of hundreds of people. Recent events have once again shown
that Kashmiris can never be subdued with the use of force, however intense.
Rather, the flames of conflagration in the valley have invariably harmed the
prospect of peace. It would be childish to assume that India and Pakistan both
nuclear powers would ever be able to coexist peacefully without a just
settlement of Kashmir.
India must realise that it is only reaping the whirlwind of the atrocities it
is committing in Kashmir. Not surprisingly, a number of Indians are beginning
to frankly admit the fact that violence in India for instance, the Mumbai
attacks, is directly linked with the Kashmir issue. The Indian ruling circles
would be further endangering the lives of their countrymen as well as the
people of the region by sticking to their stand that Kashmir is India’s integral
part. A solution in line with the UNSC Resolutions must be found before it is
too late.
Editorial, Nation (Islamabad), September 22, 2010,
http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-
online/Opinions/Editorials/22-Sep-2010/Go-India-go
K ASHMIRI I NTIFADA
Intifada, means “a shaking off” in Arabic, is a term commonly used for the
Palestinian revolt, especially by the youth, against the Israeli occupation of the
West Bank and Gaza. It was basically a spontaneous reaction to the 20 years of
occupation and worsening economic conditions. According to the
International Red Cross estimates, some 800 Palestinians, more than 200
under the age of 16, had been killed by the Israeli forces till 1990. Anyway, the
intifada pressure helped in making the 1993 Israeli-PLO Agreement on
Palestinian self-rule possible. But a breakdown in further negotiations in late
2000 led to another outburst of violence that still continues.
Kashmir Struggle Enters New Phase 45
miris. It was not for naught that the Quaid had declared Kashmir as “the
jugular vein of Pakistan”, since its entire waters route through Kashmir, which
the Indians are trying to choke or control, to the detriment of Pakistan.
Furthermore, President Bar-ack Obama is due to visit India in November and
the Indians are hoping to secure full US support for a permanent seat in the
UNSC. However, India should pay heed to the clarion call of the Kashmiri
intifada or its inability to heed to its UN obligations will cost it dearly.
S.M. Hali, Nation (Islamabad), September 22, 2010,
http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-
online/Opinions/Columns/22-Sep-2010/Kashmiri-intifada
to restore normalcy unless India accepts this proposal. We will not surrender,”
he said.
Some black sheep including pro-India politicians in the Muslim-majority
region asked the delegation for political concessions, including autonomy for
the region and for the repeal of a widely hated law that gives security forces
immunity in cases of civilian deaths. But Syed Ali Geelani spurned New
Delhi’s offers of economic assistance for the region, saying “we want
independence,” while Indian communist lawmaker Gurudas Dasgupta retorted
that: “We do not agree with the Hurriyat demand for Azadi (freedom). You
must help in restoring the peace.” Heavily armed security forces patrolled
deserted streets and loudspeakers mounted on police vehicles asked residents
to stay indoors in a bid to head off more protests, witnesses said. Seven people
were injured when police fired at stone-pelting protesters in north Kashmir.
The Kashmiri leaders declared that Indian security forces had converted the
entire Kashmir region into a prison and now a delegation had been sent to
meet the besieged people, which was a cruel joke on the Kashmiris. India must
get the bigger message that Kashmir is not an integral part of India, never was
and never will be. The sooner it realizes that it needs to make positive efforts
for providing the people of Kashmir the facility of the plebiscite assured to
them by the UN, and engages in peace talks involving both Pakistan and the
Kashmiri leaders, there will be no solution. However continued brutality and
cruelty on the part of the Indian Security forces and the reign of terror
unleashed on the hapless Kashmiris is going to backfire and India will have to
suffer the consequences. The rot that has set in the system, with the Naxalites
pulling it apart, the Kashmiris demanding their rights and 23 other freedom
movements, India is bound to implode and shatter into smithereens.
Editorial, Daily Mail (Islamabad), September 24, 2010,
http://dailymailnews.com/0910/24/Editorial_Column/DMEditorial.php#1
agendas. Networks among civil society and human rights groups are being
forged across India for intervening in Kashmir.
In Bombay, after returning from Kashmir that continues to reel in state
imposed curfews and killing (69 people, mostly teenagers, killed till date by
CRPF and Police), I felt the urgent need to speak out in whatever forums were
made available by the conscious citizens and civil rights groups of India. What
prompted me to address Kashmir in these platforms was an occasional talk
with a common Indian citizen on the train, who casually asked: ‘do we need a
passport to go to Kashmir?
Unawareness about ‘Kashmir Issue’ in the civil society of India, as
Swami Agniwesh said in his interview to a local newspaper in Kashmir, is a
huge concern. This concern is not restricted to civil society alone, but is in fact
manifold. A common man who spends half of his day moving to and fro on a
train for earning a living is understandably ignorant about Kashmir, while elite
intellectuals and an AC office dweller in metropolitan city seem to be arrogant
and reluctant to accept the ground realities of Kashmir. Can it be dismissed as
a simple unawareness about Kashmir among the civil society in India, or is it
“forced ignorance” which of course benefits the state?
A friend, who returned from Scotland to India, was disturbed by the
question a Scottish woman asked her there in a conference, “Do Indians have
access to internet as some year’s back even toilets were missing in India? My
friend labelled this as jealously, but I interrupted, “It comes from the
knowledge that their country allowed to be disseminated among their citizens
about India”.
It’s true about India that it’s a country where there is access to internet
and at the same time no toilets are available in almost half of India. But why is
it that people there would know about the darker side of the ‘other’ which is a
bit exaggerated? The state chooses carefully what its population must know
and keeps other information inaccessible. The same friend talks about the
‘beauty of Kashmir’ for hours and is equally ignorant about what has been
happening in Kashmir ever since 1947.
When you ask a common Indian about the Arab world, the immediate
reaction is wealthy sheikhs, multiple wives, women’s subjugation etc. Most of
it may be true, but India also has mutually beneficial relationship with the
Middle East. Arab world provides employment to a huge section of southern
states but this fact is not bought upon a common Indian’s consciousness
because these stereotypes feed into the existent myth of ‘Islam as an enemy’.
The result is that the State is the beneficiary of this forced ignorance. The
jingoistic nationalism blossoms from the ‘Us against them’ discourse which
leads to acceptance of state as a sovereign entity which is unquestionable and
cannot be contested.
The awareness about Kashmir in the civil society of India can be
summed up in a single sentence: “It is a beautiful place and a hub of
Kashmir Struggle Enters New Phase 49
own homeland by an outsider. In Kashmir this has been a social reality for
decades now. The young in Kashmir can’t make the difference between Indian
state and the civil society because the everyday reality of Indian army is his or
her only awareness. The youth has grown under the shadow of gun. Every
death is counted as a contribution to achieve this ultimate ‘state of mind’,
which they call Azadi or Freedom.
In Kashmir the blame of brutality suffered by the youth and the shame
of the denial of justice does not only end at the door of the Indian state alone.
The responsibility of the crimes against humanity committed by the Indian
sate in Kashmir also lies equally on the Indian intelligentsia, which is part of
the ruling party politics in India and is a beneficiary of the state.
reiterated its support to the legitimate struggle of the Kashmiri people for their
right to self-determination.
For the past several months entire Kashmiri population has risen up
against the State sponsored terrorism and flagrant violation of human rights at
the hands of Indian occupation forces. Innocent youths are being killed and
incidents of rape, abuse of human rights, arrests, detentions and curfews have
become order of the day in Kashmir. The Indian Government did not allow
the APHC Chairman Mirwaiz Umer Farooq to attend the OIC Contact Group
meeting despite an invitation from the Secretary General. That is a proof of
the high-handedness of Government in New Delhi which is bent upon
suppressing the indigenous movement. AJK Prime Minister Sardar Attique
Ahmad Khan and other Kashmiri leadership presented a memorandum to the
OIC Secretary General highlighting the gravity of the situation and rightly
urged the Muslims Representative Body to take up the issue with the UN,
permanent members of the Security Council and EU Parliament. We are of the
firm opinion that mere showing of concern at the worsening situation in
Kashmir by the OIC is not sufficient and falls short of the purpose for which
it was formed. Muslims around the world are facing problems of enormous
proportions like those in Palestine and Kashmir. The OIC is a big forum and
many of its member countries enjoy clout the world over. If the OIC and its
major members show interest and emphasise upon the world powers for the
resolutions of the ticklish issues, we believe it will have desired impact. We
would therefore impress upon the OIC to show a deeper interest to the
situation in IHK, adopt a pro active role and utilize all the options available to
get the Kashmir problem resolved in line with the aspirations of the oppressed
people.
Editorial, Pakistan Observer (Islamabad), September 24, 2010,
http://www.pakobserver.net/201009/24/detailnews.asp?id=53746
violations and brutal killings were the order of the day and the State had been
turned into a jail with continued curfews and deployment of more than seven
lac troops. In addition to leading the protest, Sardar Attique availed the
opportunity by attending the meeting of OIC contact group on Kashmir and
several other functions which were pre-planned and briefed the participants
about the consequences of the new indigenous surge. Supporters of the
Sangbaaz Tehreek (stone-pelters movement) that is spearheading the agitation
in the Valley are passionate about the struggle to get freedom from Indian
occupation. According to reports, the latest Indian offer has cut little ice with
them which they say is way off the mark. The only thing that will calm
emotions whipped up by months of street agitations is a serious negotiation
with Azadi (Freedom from India) as the benchmark, they insist. New Delhi
must understand that secession from India is the widespread sentiment in
Kashmir and that has to be the starting point of any dialogue. There is no
other option except that India must put Azadi on the table for discussion and
negotiate with the separatist leaders with a clear time frame. In view of the
prevailing situation the American media too has started taking notice of the
developments and we think the AJK Prime Minister should start similar inter
action with various groups, think-tanks and media in Britain and France to
sensitise the people and leadership there about Intefada in Kashmir.
Editorial, Pakistan Observer (Islamabad) September 28, 2010,
http://www.pakobserver.net/201009/28/detailnews.asp?id=54481
they are conveying their desire to discuss all issues including Kashmir but still
insist that Jammu and Kashmir is their ‘Atoot Ang” (inseparable part), which
effectively means rejection of any substantial talks on the real dispute. In this
backdrop, there is no point in discussing even Kashmir if Indians are not ready
to acknowledge it as an unresolved dispute and, therefore any engagement
sans meaningful discussions on Kashmir issue would be mere an eye-wash and
a ploy to hoodwink the international public opinion. Therefore, our policy-
makers should not fall in the Indian trap and insist on dialogue on the dispute
itself and not the peripheries as we did in the past and ended up in agreeing to
some so-called Kashmir related CBMs that have served only Indian purpose.
The right course would be to continue to raise the issue and expose Indian
brutalities against Kashmiri people at all available forums as did the Foreign
Minister during his address to the UN General Assembly session in New York
where he forcefully made a case for Kashmir. Effective lobbying with
parliamentarians of influential countries should also be done to mould
international public opinion in favour of the legitimate struggle of the
Kashmiri people, forcing India to agree to a permanent solution of the
problem in line with the UN resolutions and aspirations of Kashmiris.
Editorial, Pakistan Observer (Islamabad), September 30, 2010,
http://www.pakobserver.net/201009/30/detailnews.asp?id=54780
President Asif Zardari probably would embrace them eagerly, but he is too
weak to go alone. He needs the Pakistani army on board, and it is unclear if
the army chief, General Kayani, Musharraf’s intelligence chief during the old
talks, is on board.” It will take strong and brave leadership to seal a deal, he
added. It is noteworthy that during the presidential election campaign for
Obama, Bruce Riedel’s book “The Search for al-Qaeda” came out in the
market as a best seller, which primarily provided the Obama administration
policy guidelines as to how to get out of the political and military morass they
have inherited. But most importantly he links the victory against al-Qaeda and
Taliban threat with the resolving of Kashmir imbroglio. “President Obama’s
strategy for dealing with Afghanistan and Pakistan always needed a Kashmir
component to succeed; that need is becoming more urgent and obvious now.
His trip to India in November will be a key to addressing it.” Here are some
excerpts from his book that underline the importance of Kashmir: In a best-
case scenario, the international community should seek to allay Pakistan’s
anxiety about India by resolving the underlying dispute between the two
countries, which is centered in Kashmir. This would reduce the need for a
nuclear arsenal or jihadist backup to compel India to withdraw from the valley.
(p.141) (Since) India has no intention of withdrawing from Kashmir, the US
quiet diplomacy initiative can bring both the countries to resolve the issue
through dialogue process. Washington should be more prepared to press New
Delhi to be more flexible on Kashmir. It is clearly in the US interest and also
in India’s interest. (142-143) A Kashmir solution would have to be based on a
formula that would make the LoC both a permanent border (perhaps with
some minor modifications). The solution would free Pakistan of the need to
fight an asymmetrical war against India with allies like the Taliban, LeT, and al-
Qaeda. (p.143) It would also help prevent nuclear war between Pakistan and
India. (p.144) Commenting on the recent developments, homegrown upsurge
and indigenous movement for independence, he observes that the young
Kashmiris are protesting against what they allege are Indian occupation forces’
human rights abuses. Up to 700,000 Indian army and police garrison the
province with a very heavy hand. Stone-throwing produced clashes with the
Indian army. Over a hundred have died in what is becoming a Kashmiri
version of the first Palestinian intifada of the late 1980s. Polling shows that
majority of the Muslim population wants independence. Bruce Riedel urges
the Obama administration to quietly help Islamabad and New Delhi work
behind the scenes to get back to the deal Musharraf and Singh negotiated.
Obama will have a chance to work this subtly when he visits India in
November. “The new Kashmiri intifada has put the issue back on the front
burner. A deal is good for America, India, Pakistan, and especially the
Kashmiris, who have suffered enough.” He also warns that “if left to itself,
Pakistan will be tempted to intervene in IHK again to help the until now
largely indigenous revolt, running the risk of another Indo-Pakistani
Kashmir Struggle Enters New Phase 57
confrontation.” But the question is whether the Pakistani nation and the
people of Kashmir are willing to surrender their principled stand i.e. the
solution under the UNSC Resolutions, which means giving right of self-
determination to Kashmiris to decide whether to annex to Pakistan or remain
with India, particularly when the Musharraf-Manmohan ‘secret deal’ has now
been unfolded. It is, however, understood that the Zardari-led Gilani
government in Islamabad would be, in words of Bruce Riedel, willing to such a
settlement, if takes place. If so then I think the government would fulfill
another part of the US agenda, which it has pledged to undertake before riding
the bus to Islamabad. The question remains to be answered whether or not the
military chief, who witnessed Musharraf-Singh back channel talks as
intelligence chief, will follow the same policy in the coming parleys. The past
experience does not conform to the notion because the military command and
control structure teaches the officers and jawans to follow when commanded
and take decisions independently when command. The COAS has taken a
number of initiatives, bypassing the legacy of his predecessor, which has led to
the rise in the military’s popularity both at home and abroad. Islamabad needs
to brainstorm, deliberate upon the issue threadbare and wholesome, evolve a
strategy with complete national consensus, and then should stick to the
principled stand on Kashmir, the jugular vein for Pakistan is not only atoot
ang for India but also now the unavoidable part of the US interests in the
region. The government and the state must be aware that the question which
way they opt for resolving the Kashmir issue would determine the future of
Pakistan.
Eschmall Sardar, Frontier Post (Peshawar), October 1, 2010,
http://thefrontierpost.com.pk/News.aspx?ncat=ar&nid=303
Singh held an emergency APC in New Delhi, which decided to send a 37-
member delegation to occupied Kashmir to talk to local politicians and
business groups in an effort to ease tensions. Though it was a lacklustre ‘All
Parties Conference’, it has kick-started a fresh political initiative by the Indian
bi-partisan political leadership. While at the same time, erratic statement of
Indian foreign minister in New York UN has demonstrated Indian’s
Machiavellian approach to the issue.
Indian initiative may however be a non-starter due to the condition that
talks should be held within the framework of the Indian constitution, whereas
first assertion of the Kashmiri leadership is that Jammu and Kashmir is a
disputed territory as such Indian Constitution does not apply here; and that
India has made several promises at the international level, which ought to be
fulfilled.
To coincide with the arrival of the Indian fact-finding mission in
Srinagar, identical resolutions were adopted unanimously by the National
Assembly and the Senate of Pakistan, condemning “state terrorism” in the
region and reaffirming Pakistan’s “diplomatic, political and moral support” for
Kashmiris in their struggle.
Resolution adopted by the assembly expressed “grave concern on the
situation in occupied Kashmir”, condemned “India’s state terrorism” and
demanded that India “stop murder and plunder”, withdraw occupying forces
from the “state/urban population, cancel black laws, lift curfew, end media
blackout, release Kashmiri leaders and thousands of imprisoned youth, refrain
from obstructing the performance of religious duties and locking mosques and
allow international human rights organisations to come to occupied Kashmir”.
It emphasized that Kashmiris were engaged in a “peaceful struggle for their
right of self-determination in accordance with the United Nations Charter, UN
resolutions, the Universal Declaration for Human Rights and resolutions of
the Non-Aligned Movement as their basic right”. It appealed to world nations
“not to remain silent spectators of the Kashmir situation and compel India to
stop injustice and repression on Kashmiris and resolve the Kashmir issue, and
take practical steps for the implementation of (relevant) UN Security Council
resolutions.”
Kashmiri peoples’ and political leadership’s response to Indian
parliamentary delegation clearly indicates that its not just a huge trust deficit
between New Delhi and freedom fighters but a complete rejection of Indian
hegemony over Kashmir. Main stream political leadership of IOK decided to
abstain from directly interacting with the parliamentary delegation because
they are now wary of such visits as these represent only an effort at short-term
crisis management and that there is neither any clear commitment towards
effective resolution of the issue nor any path finding effort for addressing the
aspirations and interests of the IOK masses. However, a memorandum was
Kashmir Struggle Enters New Phase 59
Political Issue
Mr. Abdullah said Kashmir was a political issue and needed a political solution.
Jammu and Kashmir, he said, had not merged with the Union but acceded to
it under an agreement.
Winding up a debate on the crisis in the Valley, Mr. Abdullah said the
Kashmir issue could not be resolved by addressing development alone. The
issue could not be put on the back burner once again and hoped that the
interlocutors to be appointed by the Centre would “initiate a sustained political
dialogue” covering all shades of opinion.
‘Between Neighbours’
“Kashmir is an issue between two neighbours. It is not an issue about
development, employment or ration. Even if we provide all these things to the
people of Jammu and Kashmir, the issue will remain,” he said.
“New Delhi has accepted Kashmir as an issue. Had that not been the
case, why did the former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, go to Lahore?
Why was Kashmir discussed in Agra and Delhi?”
In the Shimla agreement, both countries had agreed to talk about “all
outstanding issues, including Kashmir.
“This is an outstanding issue. If somebody assures me that the Kashmir
issue would be resolved with my exit, I will step down. Not only will I quit, I
will leave politics forever.”
He said the crisis was not related to governance alone. How long could
we see graveyards being filled and how long do “we have to salute the graves
of our brave soldiers?”
Dawn, (Islamabad), October 9, 2010,
http://thedawn.com.pk/2010/10/09/kashmir-is-an-issue-between-two-neighbours-
omar-abdullah/
Indian Occupied part of Jammu and Kashmir and India’s occupied Chinese
state Arunachal Pradesh have been finally listed as "independent entities" and
not being part of India by the United Nations as it has finally stated that this
was its approach towards "disputed" areas.
62 IPRI Factfile
the development trends that are fast changing the face of Egypt, Libya, Jordan,
Iran, and even Iraq till the Americans set the clock back a few decades. Will
America discontinue support for this militaristic cabal now that they have
experienced the result of their policies in 9/11?
Unlikely, for they are too Micawberish to change course. They will keep
hoping that by supporting the Pakistan military, its ISI, and through it the
Taliban, while at the same time giving alms to the unhappy Karzai, somehow
something will turn up. They are dead wrong as they always have been.
Nothing awaits them or India but sorrow. The Pakistan military has propped
up its power over people by rattling the bogey of Indian threat. If Indians end
the Kashmir siege unilaterally, the Pakistani military will lose currency with
their oppressed people. Yes, but India should not do it stupidly, or in a
shamefaced manner.
Since everyone else in reality has been fishing in Kashmir’s troubled
waters, let India make the security of the Valley an international issue, which
requires international guarantees from everyone else, the US and NATO,
China, Pakistan, Russia, and all other nearby neighbours. Let India insist on a
UN Peace Keeping Force and annual subventions from Pakistan and others,
including India, to help the Kashmiris. India could insist that South Asia
should be made a nuclear weapons-free zone, retaining crushing military
superiority. Let it ask for Pakistan-occupied Kashmir to be simultaneously
liberated, and since the Pakistani military cannot possibly accept that demand
without immediately abdicating all power, India might have to redraw the
frontiers, absorbing Jammu and Ladakh into India without any special status.
Whatever the final shape of the outcome, India must be proactive in
demanding an immediate international settlement of a problem created by
Nehru.
Dr Vithal Rajan, Pakistan Observer (Islamabad), October 13, 2010,
http://www.pakobserver.net/201010/13/detailnews.asp?id=56808
voices in support of the people in East Timor to stand up and pressurize their
governments for implementation of UN resolutions for the sake of Kashmiris
and peace and stability in the region.
Editorial, Pakistan Observer (Islamabad), October 20, 2010,
http://www.pakobserver.net/201010/20/detailnews.asp?id=57752
Dantewada. Mothers in Nagaland recalled their kins who were posted in army
and other security agencies. I urge Kashmiris to ensure that they are not used
to as tools of suppression,” she said.
Hailing the role of Kashmiri women in the ongoing movement, Roy
asked them to contribute to the struggle in one way or the other. “Kashmiris
have been breathing and inhaling through the barrel of AK 47.” Terming India
as a prison with many nationalities, Roy said attempts are being made to
implement the policy of divide and rule. “After attaining freedom from the
British, India itself has become a colonial power. It has left the legacy of
partition in the shape of Kashmir. India opened the locks of two issues
including Babri Masjid and tried to give it Islamist colour to act like a victim.
The Home Minister, P Chidambaram has been maintaining that he wants to
see 80 percent people of India who live in villages to shift to cities. They want
to divide and rule. It can only happen with the help of Army,” she said.
Roy said during her visit to southern India state, she asked her a friend to
show her the grave of a Dalit who was killed in Kashmir. “An SP accompanied
us and showed the grave in a garbage dump. He said the people did not allow
the body to be carried in front of their homes saying it will pollute them. One
should not have any expectation from a country whose Prime Minister (Dr
Manmohan Singh) has not been ever elected,” she said.
She said India has been using the façade of democracy to cover up the
rights violations. In New Delhi she said 3000 bodies were recovered in recent
past besides 20,000 children disappeared. “But nobody asks the questions as
people in Delhi are not fighting for freedom. Democracy has become another
form off tyranny,” she said.
Prominent human rights activist Gautam Navlakha said the gun has
played an important role in highlighting the Kashmir dispute. “Gun kept the
Kashmir issue alive. Now the stone pelters have taken over the mantle. Now
the stones have the power and there is no need of guns. Azadi is not round the
corner but you have fight for it. Whether all party delegations and
interlocutors will visit Valley, talk and go back. But it is the Kashmiris who
have to decide their future,”
Navlakha said there has been criminalization of dissent as all voice in
Kashmir have been suppressed.
Navlakha impressed upon the civil society to establish its own
institutions. “Their foundations have been laid in past four month and it is
high time to give it a practical shape. The students should start exhibitions like
draw paintings on what their concept of Azadi is,” he said. Criticizing the
Kashmiris who give vent to feeling through Facebook, Navlakha said battles
are not fought from drawing rooms. “I am not against the face bookers but it
is a shame on them. They have to openly support their fellow Kashmiris.
Mere slogans can’t fetch us freedom. But if we maintain unity, steadfastness
we will achieve Azadi and sacrifices will not go waste,” she said.
Kashmir Struggle Enters New Phase 69
to this day, in this context, is the appeal made by the people of Jammu and
Kashmir to members of the British Parliament 21 years back.
The appeal, inter alia, said: “The wave of independence and right of self-
determination against colonialism in various parts of the world was honoured
by the British Empire and the British people, who believe in democracy and
rule of law, granted independence to the people of Indo-Pakistan sub-
continent in 1947 with an option and liberty to at least 561states, either to join
Indian dominion or Pakistan, or to remain independent. The state of Jammu
and Kashmir wanted to exercise that right, but the Indian Armed Forces
committed naked aggression on the state…We, the people of Kashmir hereby
appeal to the honourable members of the Parliament to raise our voice and
help the 12 million Kashmiris in their struggle for freedom by compelling the
Indian Government to honour her pledges.”
The memorandum annexed to the appeal mentioned the people’s
struggle against the oppressive and tyrannical Dogra rule and establishment of
a de jure revolutionary government in liberated part of the state on October
24, 1947. The notable part thereof was the bitter fact that the fleeing Maharaja
Hari Singh secretly entered into an unholy treaty with the Indian government
on October 27, 1947, and a provisional treaty of accession was executed on
the basis of which the Indian Army troops were dropped and pushed into the
state to fight against the Kashmiri freedom fighters. That so-called treaty
provided that the people of Jammu and Kashmir would have the right of self-
determination as soon as normal life is restored. India has not fulfilled its
commitment to the UN yet. The day of Indian army attack has come to be
known as the Black Day in Kashmir and is observed as such by Kashmiris and
advocates of human rights everywhere.
Recently, Indian Foreign Minister S.M.Krishna trumpeted that the
disputed territory was an integral part of India, but soon came the rebuttal
from Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah who claimed on
October 7 that his state had acceded to India not merged with India. Mr.
Abdullah told the state assembly in Srinagar that J and K “cannot be placed at
par with Hyderabad and Junagarh,” which were forcefully occupied by India.
He said “it is still a fact that Jammu and Kashmir’s accession to India is under
an agreement and it’s not the merger.” Former chief minister Farooq Abdullah
had adopted the same stance in his public speech in Srinagar on July 13, 2004.
That’ how India’s brazen lie gets exposed in occupied valley also.
Kashmiris say Pak stand on the dispute has always been principled and
in accordance with the UN Charter: there has to be a free and fair plebiscite in
the occupied Valley under the auspices of the world body as envisaged in its
resolutions of August 13, 1948, and January 5, 1949. Pakistan rightly drew the
world attention to the new unprecedented wave of protests against occupation
of Jammu and Kashmir and suppression of the voice of the youths who are
demanding right to self-determination. In fact, they seem determined to
72 IPRI Factfile
achieve their object and political volcano has started erupting. The occupied
valley has been racked by street protests since June 11 when a 17-year-old
student hit by a tear-gas shell lost his life. Reportedly, as many as 145 youths
have been gunned down by Indian security forces during the past four
months. The widespread protest against state terror is indigenous. Before the
situation gets worsened and is more dangerous than ever before, the world
community should persuade India to learn that the peace of the region hinges
upon a quick end to repression in the disputed territory.
People have taken note of Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi’s
September 28 speech to the UN General Assembly, which emphasised the fact
that Jammu and Kashmir forms the central part of all the outstanding issues
between the two neighbouring countries. The human rights of the people of
Kashmir have to be respected and their voice heard to establish an
environment suitable for peaceful solution to the long-standing dispute. The
Pak call for solving the question cannot be overlooked by any sane person in
any peace-loving country of the world in the backdrop of the situation which
has deteriorated swiftly following violent response to the young and old
Kashmiris’ demand for right to self-determination. A peaceful resolution of
Kashmir dispute in accordance with the UN resolutions and taking into
account the aspirations of the Kashmiri people, as pointed by the minister,
would surely create an atmosphere conducive to durable peace and stability in
South Asia where millions are haunted by poverty, hunger and disease.
The commitment of Pakistan and its masses to the cause of the
oppressed people is known to the world, according to which they have always
extended their unswerving moral, diplomatic and political support to
Kashmiris fighting for their right to self-determination acknowledged by the
UNO. The oppressed people are at the heart of the issue, and their fate and
future are at stake. The UN Resolution of January 5, 1949, clearly states that
“the question of the accession of the State of Jammu and Kashmir to India or
Pakistan will be decided through the democratic method of a free and
impartial plebiscite.” But, as former chief minister of the state Dr. Farooq
Abdullah told a public meeting in Srinagar on July 13, 2004, the government of
India has “illegally taken over control of the whole state of Jammu and
Kashmir.”
The matter of the fact is that India’s state terrorism has not relented in
anyway until now, members of a migrant family disclosed to this scribe the
other day. According to them, “life and honour of a Kashmiri woman is not
secure.” The farewell greeting has changed from “Khuda hafiz” (God be with
you) to “sahi salamat lot aana” (return safe). “A youth walks in fear—-fear of
being named a suspect or militant, picked up, interrogated, tortured, and killed.
And that’s not the end of Indian way of terrorism, the Kashmiri women live in
fear of humiliation, harassment, molestation, gang-rape by Indian troops.”
Five years back, violence figures were: killings 89,008; houses/shops destroyed
Kashmir Struggle Enters New Phase 73
P ITY T HE N ATION
I write this from Srinagar, Kashmir. This morning’s papers say that I may be
arrested on charges of sedition for what I have said at recent public meetings
on Kashmir. I said what millions of people here say every day. I said what I, as
well as other commentators have written and said for years. Anybody who
cares to read the transcripts of my speeches will see that they were
fundamentally a call for justice. I spoke about justice for the people of
Kashmir who live under one of the most brutal military occupations in the
world; for Kashmiri Pandits who live out the tragedy of having been driven
out of their homeland; for Dalit soldiers killed in Kashmir whose graves I
visited on garbage heaps in their villages in Cuddalore; for the Indian poor
who pay the price of this occupation in material ways and who are now
learning to live in the terror of what is becoming a police state.
Yesterday I traveled to Shopian, the apple-town in South Kashmir
which had remained closed for 47 days last year in protest against the brutal
rape and murder of Asiya and Nilofer, the young women whose bodies were
found in a shallow stream near their homes and whose murderers have still not
been brought to justice. I met Shakeel, who is Nilofer’s husband and Asiya’s
brother. We sat in a circle of people crazed with grief and anger who had lost
hope that they would ever get ‘insaf’—justice—from India, and now believed
that Azadi—freedom— was their only hope. I met young stone pelters who
had been shot through their eyes. I traveled with a young man who told me
how three of his friends, teenagers in Anantnag district, had been taken into
custody and had their finger-nails pulled out as punishment for throwing
stones.
In the papers some have accused me of giving ‘hate-speeches’, of
wanting India to break up. On the contrary, what I say comes from love and
pride. It comes from not wanting people to be killed, raped, imprisoned or
have their finger-nails pulled out in order to force them to say they are Indians.
It comes from wanting to live in a society that is striving to be a just one. Pity
the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds. Pity the
nation that needs to jail those who ask for justice, while communal killers,
mass murderers, corporate scamsters, looters, rapists, and those who prey on
74 IPRI Factfile
Indian writer and activist Arundhati Roy who has been canvassing for
freedom of Jammu and Kashmir from years of military occupation said
on Tuesday that far from seeking a break up of India, as alleged by her
rightwing detractors, she fights for the love and pride of the people of
India.
Amid reports that the Indian government had given permission for her
arrest for alleged sedition following her recent call for justice for all Kashmiris,
Ms Roy, who is currently on a visit to the Valley said in a statement to the
Indian media that it would be a sad day for her country if its writers were jailed
for expressing their ideas while “communal killers, mass murderers, corporate
scamsters” roamed free.
Some rightwing newspapers and TV channels close to the opposition
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have been campaigning for her arrest after she
addressed a meeting on Kashmir in New Delhi last week at which Kashmiri
leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani reiterated his call for azadi.
Ms Roy reminded the Kashmiris at the meeting that she was hurt by
their slogan – bhooka nanga Hindustan, jaan se pyara Pakistan – saying that
the slogan insulted the poor masses of India. But some reports distorted this,
and the headlines screamed that she had asked for secession from poverty-
stricken India.
Analysts recalled that senior Indian leader Jaiprakash Narayan had once
called for the Indian army to revolt against the autocratic government of then
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The BJP had supported him then. Mr Narayan
was subsequently celebrated as Lok Nayak, or people’s leader. “There is
nothing rigid about the law on sedition. It is always a political choice on who
you want to target,” said a senior lawyer. “Right now Arundhati Roy is in
everyone’s crosshairs. She has dared to take on powerful corporate interests
and has even exposed their link with the powerful home minister.”
Following is the text of the statement emailed by Ms Roy to Indian
newspapers and TV channels.
“I write this from Srinagar, Kashmir. This morning’s papers say that I
may be arrested on charges of sedition for what I have said at recent public
meetings on Kashmir. I said what millions of people here say every day. I said
what I, as well as other commentators have written and said for years.
Kashmir Struggle Enters New Phase 75
Anybody who cares to read the transcripts of my speeches will see that they
were fundamentally a call for justice. I spoke about justice for the people of
Kashmir who live under one of the most brutal military occupations in the
world; for Kashmiri Pandits who live out the tragedy of having been driven
out of their homeland; for Dalit soldiers killed in Kashmir whose graves I
visited on garbage heaps in their villages in Cuddalore; for the Indian poor
who pay the price of this occupation in material ways and who are now
learning to live in the terror of what is becoming a police state.
“Yesterday I traveled to Shopian, the apple-town in South Kashmir
which had remained closed for 47 days last year in protest against the brutal
rape and murder of Asiya and Nilofer, the young women whose bodies were
found in a shallow stream near their homes and whose murderers have still not
been brought to justice. I met Shakeel, who is Nilofer’s husband and Asiya’s
brother. We sat in a circle of people crazed with grief and anger who had lost
hope that they would ever get ‘insaaf’ —justice — from India, and now
believed that Azadi — freedom — was their only hope. I met young stone
pelters who had been shot through their eyes. I traveled with a young man
who told me how three of his friends, teenagers in Anantnag district, had been
taken into custody and had their finger-nails pulled out as punishment for
throwing stones.
“In the papers some have accused me of giving ‘hate-speeches’, of
wanting India to break up. On the contrary, what I say comes from love and
pride. It comes from not wanting people to be killed, raped, imprisoned or
have their finger-nails pulled out in order to force them to say they are Indians.
It comes from wanting to live in a society that is striving to be a just one. Pity
the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds. Pity the
nation that needs to jail those who ask for justice, while communal killers,
mass murderers, corporate scamsters, looters, rapists, and those who prey on
the poorest of the poor, roam free”.
Jawed Naqvi, Dawn (Islamabad), October 27, 2010,
http://public.dawn.com/2010/10/26/i-fight-for-the-love-and-pride-of-my-people-
arundhati-roy.html
murderers, corporate scamsters, looters, rapists, and those who prey on the
poorest of the poor, roam free," she said.
Her statement came against the backdrop of the government
contemplating taking action against her and hardline Hurriyat leader Syed Ali
Shah Geelani under charges of sedition and seeking legal opinion in this
regard. Roy has made two speeches in New Delhi and Srinagar in the past few
days in which she sought independence for Kashmir from India. The writer
said she has read in newspapers that she may be arrested on charges of
sedition for her remarks supporting 'Azadi' for Kashmir.
"I said what millions of people here say every day. I said what I as well
as other commentators have written and said for years. "Anybody who cares
to read the transcripts of my speeches will see that they were fundamentally a
call for justice," she said. Union Law Minister Veerappa Moily too has been
critical of Roy’s remarks while the BJP had sharply attacked her and Syed
Geelani for ther pro-separatists statements and suggesting Pakistan should be
made party to any Kashmir solution.
R. Vasudevan, Asian Tribune, October 27, 2010,
http://www.asiantribune.com/news/2010/10/27/activist-arundhati-roy-defends-her-
kashmir-statement
If that’s not enough, she also said, “No one should be killed, raped,
imprisoned or have their fingernails pulled out in order to force them to say
they are Indians.” This was a direct attack on the Indian military, whose half a
million soldiers occupy the tiny Kashmir valley near Pakistan’s border despite
daily protests by Kashmiris shouting, ‘We’re not Indian.’
This is big. So far no one in India had the courage to speak up against
Indian human rights violations in occupied Kashmir, which are otherwise well
documented by rights organizations outside India.
For those who don’t understand how big a deal this is, consider this: All
mainstream Indian newspapers and television networks strictly adhere to the
state policy on Kashmir. It is impossible to find a major Indian news outlet
breaking away from this unspoken consensus. [In other words, for India, this
is bigger than Commonwealth Games Delhi 2010.]
Now an environment is being created in New Delhi to arrest Roy, or at
least terrorize her enough to silence her and any other Indians who might be
having similarly dangerous thoughts. Unfortunately for Roy, she is a Christian,
coming from a minority group vulnerable to attacks by Hindu fundamentalists.
Indian Christians have been burned alive in acts of violence as recently as
winter 2008.
There are early signs of a whisper campaign and intimidation against Ms.
Roy inside India. Prominent Indian news outlets confirmed a sedition case was
being prepared against her. Normally the accused in Indian sedition cases
receives harsh treatment even before a trial and conviction.
More worrying is that her opponents – a motley crew of extremist
politicians, Hindu fanatics, Hindu terror groups, media affiliates of extremist
politicians, and sympathizers inside Indian security agencies – might get to her
in other ways without making it look like payback for her Kashmir remarks.
Already there are reports suggesting she might be dragged to court in other
cases. Funny how these reports suddenly appeared just in time to take her
down.
So no one should be surprised if there is a sudden news blackout on her
and she slips off the headlines any minute.
The mainstream India media has begun whipping up religious
sentiments against Roy. This is dangerous in a religious boiling pot like India
where rumors in 2002 resulted in Hindu mobs burning alive 2,000 Indian
Muslim men, women and children in the Indian state of Gujarat, in what was
21st century’s first incident of religious genocide.
Ironically, mainstream India media is at the forefront of inflaming
passions. For example, the Indian Express has dedicated a page on its internet
version of the newspaper to lynching Roy.
“If I were the prime minister I would stripped her citizenship and
deport her to Pakistan,” wrote one reader who signed his name as ‘Indian’.
78 IPRI Factfile
the prime minister) and Salman Khurshid to join/head the panel. They
refused. Hence the present "Team B" panel, without a proper chair of Cabinet
rank. Given this hostile reception, it will be extremely difficult to persuade a
senior politician to head the panel. His/her authority would already be dented
by the absence of a chance to choose the other members.
How did the hope of September dissipate into the disappointment of
October? None of the three nominees knows much about Kashmir, carries
much political weight in general, or a positive profile in the Valley, in
particular. Padgaonkar and Kumar have only had limited exposure to the
Valley. Kumar recently coordinated a European Union-delegation visit there
and also held conflict-resolution seminars. But she neither conveys gravitas
nor an incisive grasp of Kashmir's complex situation. Ansari is a non-entity,
without a nodding acquaintance with J&K.
Kumar ventured in 2006 into "Frameworks for a Kashmir Settlement",
co-authored with ultra-hawkish Pakistan-bashing former diplomat G
Parthasarathy. This contains some interesting suggestions for building
governance structures from the bottom-up. But they are all based on the
obviously unrealised presumption that India and Pakistan have already agreed
to "soft borders". Kumar carries ideological baggage from her involvement in
the former Yugoslavia and the Council on Foreign Relations (US). The
baggage, and her conservative pro-Western reputation, further weaken her
acceptability. She's regarded a political lightweight who wouldn't bother with
getting to know the nitty-gritty of Kashmiri society and politics. Nor is
Padgaonkar distinguished for his grasp of Kashmir, or imaginative out-of-the-
box solutions.
Several candidates, with superior understanding, experience,
acceptability and reach, come to mind, including Chief Information
Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah, an Indian Administrative Service officer of
the J&K cadre. He's so highly regarded in the Valley that when he had a near-
fatal accident some years ago, thousands prayed for him. There are also
eminent individuals from J&K, including educationist Agha Ashraf Ali,
economist Haseeb Drabu and vice-chancellor of the Islamic University of
Science and Technology Siddiq Wahid (originally from Ladakh).
Among the politicians from the all-parties team who visited Kashmir, two
made a particularly favourable public impression: the Communist Party
(Marxist)'s Sitaram Yechury and Ram Bilas Paswan. Yechury grasped the nettle
by knocking on hardline leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani's door. Paswan visited
the grieving family of Tufail Ahmad Mattoo, the 17-year-old, whose killing in
June sparked a wave of protests.
As for the Valley's politicians, it would have been eminently wise to
associate people like Yasin Malik and CPM MLA Yusuf Tarigami with the
panel. None of this was done. But let's not focus solely on individuals and
ignore the content of their mandate. A democratic government wrestling with
80 IPRI Factfile
injunction to correct course. But the state substituted the all-party delegation
visit - and now, the interlocutors' team - for strategy.
The interlocutors could spread yet more despair, cynicism and anger in
the Valley, obstructing a real solution. The Centre should go back to basics:
wide consultation, formulation of a broad-framework solution, exploration of
areas of agreement, and a clear mandate for a newly constituted interlocutors'
team which carries authority and political credibility.
Praful Bidwai, Bangladesh Today, October 27, 2010,
http://www.thebangladeshtoday.com/viewpoints.htm
effectively link up with the Kashmir Valley through a land route and be able to
support large-scale operations in the State of Jammu and Kashmir.
Nehru now sought two politico-military objectives: First, to force the Maharaja
to sign an instrument of accession and secondly to wrest Kashmir by force.
The plan envisaged that if the situation threatened to spiral out of control,
legal niceties could be set aside and troop landing could proceed regardless of
other factors. As it was, the landing of the Indian forces in Srinagar on
October 27, 1947, took place without the signing of any instrument of
accession. On that fateful day, the State of Jammu and Kashmir existed in the
same constitutional limbo of insecure independence that it had enjoyed since
the partition of India, following the lapse of the British paramountcy.
As October progressed, the public unrest and communal strife paralysed the
Maharaja’s administration. There was a rebellion in the state forces, which
revolted against Hari Singh’s authority. More so, they were also joined by some
pathan tribesmen voluntarily. The Indians started a propaganda campaign to
un-nerve the Maharaja by projecting this local threat as a systematic invasion
by the tribesmen from Pakistan along the Jhelum Valley Road.
As the situation in Jammu and Kashmir deteriorated, Lord Mountbatten, as
Governor General of India, called a meeting of the Defence Committee to
assess the situation on October 25. The committee, under his chairmanship
decided to immediately send V. P. Menon, along with senior army and air
force commanders to land in Srinagar the same day, reconnoitre the ground
situation and advise the Maharaja to abandon Srinagar for the safety of Jammu
across the Banihal pass.
Mountbatten also ordered the British Commander of the Indian forces
to assemble a fleet of 10 transport aircraft for an airlift operation after 48
hours for landing troops in Srinagar. Menon’s visit of October 25 so unnerved
the Maharaja that he packed all his valuables and left for Jammu by road in the
morning of October 26, without signing any instrument of accession.
Mountbatten chaired another meeting of the Defence Committee on October
26 and ordered the landing of the first battalion of the Sikh regiment in
Srinagar on October 27, even though no evidence exists of any instrument of
accession having been secured thus far. On the same day, at about 0900 hours,
the Sikh regiment was airlifted from Gurgaon and landed at the deserted
Srinagar Airport.
The State of Pakistan, struggling to find its feet in its infancy, was
stunned by the Indian aggression. So on October 27, Quaid-i-Azam asked
General Douglas Gracey, acting Commander in Chief, to send the Pakistani
troops to Kashmir. But the General refused, saying that he would need the
approval of Field Marshal Claude Auchinleck, who held supreme command
over the Indian and Pakistani forces.
Auchinleck flew to Lahore on October 28 with the line that sending the
Pakistan army into Kashmir would amount to a formal declaration of war and
Kashmir Struggle Enters New Phase 83
that if Pakistan went to war he would withdraw all the British officers serving
in the Pak Army. It was many months after that Pakistan was able to respond
militarily in Kashmir, and when the ceasefire occurred on January 1, 1949, the
Kashmir issue stood internationalised, by no one other than Nehru, who
himself sought to take the matter to the United Nations for resolution and
promised to hold a plebiscite in Kashmir.
Thus, in the context of the Indo Pak relations, October 27 truly stands
out as a ‘Black Day’, constituting the tragic benchmark that sealed all prospects
of peace and prosperity in the subcontinent. Such a monumental crime,
however, has extracted from India its price in flesh and blood. Sixty-three
years might have passed since the aggression, yet the Indian Held Kashmir has
known no peace and the demand for Azadi - loud and strong - is making it
impossible for the Indian leadership and its puppets in Kashmir to know any
peace.
Momin Iftikhar, Nation (Islamabad) October 27, 2010,
http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-
online/Opinions/Columns/27-Oct-2010/Recalling-the-Black-Day-of-Kashmir
Pakistan, but India over-ruled this decision, again on account of the state’s
Hindu majority, and annexed it. If India had adopted the same principle in the
case of Jammu and Kashmir, a Muslim-majority state with a Hindu ruler, there
would have been no conflict over Kashmir. After all, more than 85% of the
population of the state at that time were Muslims; the major rivers in the state
flowed into Pakistan; the state shared a border of over 750 kilometres with
Pakistan; the only motorable road connecting Kashmir with the outside world
throughout the year passed from Srinagar to Rawalpindi; and the majority of
the people of the state had cultural and historical ties with the people of
Pakistan.
However, over-ruling these factors, which would have made Jammu and
Kashmir a natural part of Pakistan, in October 1947 the Indian Army entered
the state in the guise of flushing out the Pathan tribesmen, who had crossed
into Kashmir in the wake of large-scale killings of Muslims in Rajouri and
Poonch. Using this incursion an excuse, Hari Singh, the ruler of Kashmir,
engineered the intrusion of Indian forces. The British scholar Alistair Lamb
says that the so-called Instrument of Accession that Haris Singh is said to have
signed to join India temporarily was itself fraudulent. He claims that Hari
Singh did not even sign it.
Thereafter, India itself took the issue of Kashmir to the United Nations.
The UN passed some eighteen resolutions related to Kashmir, recognizing the
status of the state as disputed and calling for a resolution of the conflict based
on the will of the people of the state, which the first Indian Prime Minister,
Jawaharlal Nehru, himself also publicly promised. Now, all that the people of
Jammu and Kashmir are saying is that India should live up to this promise that
it made of holding a plebiscite in accordance with the UN resolutions. So, this
is the basic issue.
Q: So, aren’t you here saying that the conflict is essentially political, and
not specifically religious?
A: For a Muslim, no action is permissible which is against Islam. How can we
say that the sacrifices that the Muslims of Kashmir make, the tortures that they
suffer, and the martyrdom that they meet have nothing to do with Islam, and
that they won’t be rewarded by God for this? In this sense, it is a religious
issue also. Islam teaches that Muslims must follow the guidance of Islam in
every action of theirs—not just in prayers but also in matters such as war and
peace, trade, international relations and so on, because Islam is a complete way
of life. If a true Muslim participates in any struggle, it is for the sake of Islam.
So, how can you say that the Kashmir conflict has nothing to do with religion?
Q: This might be true in theory, but surely many Kashmiris who are
involved in the movement for separation from India might be motivated
Kashmir Struggle Enters New Phase 85
Q: But do you really see Indian Hindus and Muslims as two separate
‘nations’? After all, they share so much in common.
A: They are totally separate nations. There is no doubt at all about this.
Muslims believe in just one God, but Hindus believe in crores of gods.
Q: But the Prophet Muhammad, in his treaty with the Jews and other
non-Muslims of Medina, described the denizens of Medina as members
of one nation. The leader of the Jamiat ul-Ulema-i Hind and a leading
Deobandi scholar, Maulana Husain Ahmad Madani, even wrote a book
to argue against the League’s ‘two nation’ theory, stressing a composite
Indian nationalism that embraced all the people of India. So, how can
the Muslims and Hindus of one country be considered separate
‘nations’, even by Islamic standards?
86 IPRI Factfile
Q: In the wake of the attacks of 11 September, 2001, how do you see the
impact of American pressure on Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia, to
change their position on Islamist movements?
A: The events of September 2001 have caused most Muslim states to change
their policies and to toe America’s line even more closely. You can see this
happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The only Muslim country that refuses
to cave under American pressure is Iran.
if the people of Jammu and Kashmir were given the right to decide between
India and Pakistan, the majority, I think, would prefer the former.
I admit that there are weaknesses in Pakistan, but these can be
addressed. India has a secular system, which we can under no condition
accept. Because of the oppression that we have been suffering under Indian
rule for the last sixty years, how can we opt for India? In just a few weeks, in
late 1947, some five lakh Muslims were killed by Dogra forces and Hindu
chauvinists in Jammu. In the last seventeen years, over one lakh Kashmiri
Muslims, mainly innocent civilians, have been killed. So many localities have
been burned down, women raped and men rendered missing. After such
brutal experiences, only a blind person would opt in favour of India.
Q: But the Taliban argued that their state was in accordance with the
Quran and the Sunnah.
A: To claim something is different from acting on that claim. For instance,
while Islam makes it a duty for every Muslim male and female to acquire
Kashmir Struggle Enters New Phase 89
education, as soon as the Taliban came to power they banned girls’ education.
What they should have done, instead, was to set up separate schools for girls.
So, like this, there are many issues on which we can differ. The Islamic state
that we would like to establish in Jammu and Kashmir would be one based on
the understanding that all of humanity are children of the same primal parents,
Adam and Eve. They will all be treated equally and justly. There shall be no
discrimination based on religion. After all, the Prophet once remarked that all
creatures are of the family of God and that the best is he who treats members
of God’s family—which obviously includes non-Muslims, too—in the best
way.
refuse to fight. But, then, Krishanji Maharaj said, ‘Arjun, this is a battle for
certain principles. In this, do not consider the fact that those who are opposed
to you are your relatives’. We Kashmiris, too, are engaging in such a battle for
certain principles with the Indian Government, for occupying us against our
will and for not acting on its promise to let us decide our own political future.
It is not a war against Hindus or the people of India. It is not a communal
conflict. In fact, there are many Indians who support our stand on the right to
self-determination.
Q: Then why is it that the Indian media, and large sections of the
Western media, too, present the movement as ‘Islamic extremism’ or
‘terrorism’?
A: The Indian media is bound to support India’s military occupation. How can
you expect it to support our cause? I’ve seen so many massacres by the Indian
Army here, but often the media describes them as ‘encounters’ with ‘militants’.
You know how the agents of the Indian Army engineered the massacre of so
many innocent Sikhs in Chhatisinghpora and falsely attributed this to
‘militants’, in order to convey the misleading message to the then American
President, Bill Clinton, at that time on a visit to India, that our struggle is a
‘communal’ one, and not a freedom movement. I can cite so many more such
cases to prove this point.
Q: But, if that is so, why is it that you and people like you have not
condemned killings by militants in the same way as you condemn
similar crimes by the Indian Army?
A: Wherever such incidents have happened, we have condemned them,
irrespective of the religion of the victims. The Quran clearly states that enmity
with a people should not make one stray from the path of justice, because
justice is closer to piety.
Q: Some radical groups active in Kashmir argue that all Hindus are
‘enemies’ of Islam. What do you feel?
A: No, this is erroneous. There should be no enmity or discrimination with
anyone simply because of his religion, caste, race, colour or country. We are
permitted to fight only those individuals who fight us or place hurdles in the
path of our faith. With others we should have good relations, and that applies
to our relations with ordinary Hindus as well. So, when some people argue that
as a community the Hindus are ‘enemies of Islam’, it is wrong. It is not an
Islamic way of thinking.
Kashmir Struggle Enters New Phase 91
Q: Certain militant groups active in Kashmir say that they will not stop
their war with India until India itself is ‘absorbed’ into Pakistan and the
Pakistani flag flies atop Delhi’s Red Fort. What is your opinion?
A: This is emotional talk and should not be paid attention to. We don’t agree
with this argument. Our fight with India is only to the extent that India has
taken away our right to self-determination. Once we win that right we will
have no problem with India. In fact, if by exercising this right the majority of
the people of Jammu and Kashmir say that they want to be with India, we will
also accept that.
Q: But don’t you feel certain radical groups active in Kashmir who
preach hatred against Hindus and call for India’s ‘absorption’ into
Pakistan are actually defaming the religion whose cause they claim to
champion?
A: Islam has been given a bad name more by Muslims themselves and less by
Hindus. Islam has been damaged less by open ‘disbelief’ (kufr) than by hidden
hypocrisy (munafiqat), by people who claim to be Muslims but are really not
so in practice.
Q: So, would you agree that these groups who condemn all Hindus as
‘enemies’ are actually misinterpreting Islam?
A: We cannot take responsibility for what others say. You can ask these people
yourself.
this the day, Indian troops illegally occupied the Valley of Kashmir,
commenced their massacre of the predominantly Muslim population of
Kashmir and tried to change the demographic dispensation of the Valley. The
Indian Independence Act as well as the Partition Plan of 1947 for the Indian
Subcontinent had declared that accession of the princely states with Hindu
rulers but Muslim subjects or Muslim Rulers with Hindu subjects, would be
decided by the people of the state. The Indians trampled this principle under
the boots of their military. They forcibly occupied Hyderabad, Junagadh and
Kashmir three princely states, to which the principle of accession was to be
applied. Indian government made Maharaja Hari Singh sign the letter of
accession to India at the point of a bayonet. The accession was totally
illegitimate because the Hindu Ruler did not have the authority to sign away
the future of the Kashmiris who were predominantly Muslim; moreover the
accession was obtained under coercion. Many neutral observers opine that
such a letter never even existed. Pakistan tried to upset the balance by sending
its troops to help the Kashmiris get liberated. Pakistan and India went to war
over Kashmir. Seeing the ill-equipped Pakistani forces advance towards
Srinagar, India cried foul and approached the United Nations, who instituted a
cease fire. After deliberations, the UN declared Kashmir as a disputed territory
and passed Resolutions calling for the people of Kashmir to decide their own
fate, whether they would opt to join Pakistan or India through a UN
sponsored plebiscite. India’s prime minister then was Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru,
himself a Kashmiri, who not only accepted the UN Resolutions but promised
to implement them at the earliest. However, he was speaking with a forked
tongue since he not only reneged on his promise but went to the extent of
constitutionally declaring Kashmir as an integral part of India. This act is not
only illegal but illegitimate, since it is in direct contravention of the UN
Resolutions. Pakistan and India went to war twice more in 1965 and 1971, but
the fate of the Kashmiris did not change and they continued to be suppressed
under Indian rule. In 1989, Kashmiris arose enmasse in a freedom struggle, to
throw away the yoke of Indian tyranny and slavery. India retaliated by sending
over seven hundred thousand troops to crush the just struggle. Over one
hundred thousand Kashmiris embraced shahadat, Kashmiri women were
raped, their houses and shops were looted and thousands were incarcerated.
India tried to hoodwink the world by labelling the freedom struggle as an act
of terrorism and falsely implicating Pakistan as harbouring, training and
arming the Kashmiris. Unfortunately the Kashmiris are no nearer the end of
their struggle than they were in 1989. Having sacrificed thousands of precious
lives, they still yearn to see the fruition of their dreams but even the world is
becoming oblivious to their plight. What the world needs to recognize that
Kashmir is the main bone of contention between India and Pakistan, who
since 1998 have declared themselves as nuclear weapons capable states.
Kashmir Struggle Enters New Phase 93
I NDIAN I NTRANSIGENCE
Pakistan has warned India that it must bring a positive attitude to the
negotiating table, and must pay attention to the current freedom movement in
Held Kashmir. While addressing a press briefing in Islamabad on Thursday, a
Foreign Office spokesman has said that India was in the habit of blaming
everything on Pakistan’s ISI, such as the Samjhota Express blast. He dared the
Indian authorities to bring forward the perpetrators of the blast and have them
punished. As the investigations into the 2007 blast have shown, the blast was
carried out by RSS extremists. If the RSS does not form the main opposition
in the shape of the BJP, as it does now, it forms the government, as it did
from 1998 to 2004. The RSS has a closer link to the BJP than the rest of what
is called the Sangh Parivar, the loose grouping of Hindu extremist
organisations which have provided the BJP its support base. The RSS, a pre-
Independence group, has always been marked by violence, with the Samjhota
blast being one example, the 2005 Godhra massacres another, not to mention
the recent assassination attempt on Syed Ali Geelani, of its violence. However,
the Indians have not brought to trial even the perpetrators of the Samjhota
Express blast, even though its investigations have been conducted time and
again, and have been most thorough in covering the ground. Though a
Congress-led coalition is in power, it has neither taken steps to bring the RSS
under control or to prosecute the perpetrators of the Samjhota blasts.
So long as the Indian establishment continues to blame the ISI for its own sins
of omission and commission, it will not be able to clean up the mess that is in
that country, nor convince anyone of its claimed secular credentials. This is
94 IPRI Factfile
the occupation. There were other triggers attributed to Indian arrogance, like
gifting Kashmiri land to build Indian religious temples.
By summer 2010, this turned into what many now call the Kashmir
Intifada, likening it to the Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation.
I remember a time when Pakistanis used to be rebuffed when they tried
to make this comparison. Not anymore. Take a look at the 29 Oct. 2010
Foreign Policy magazine online cover [seen above]. The world is taking note
of the courage of unarmed Kashmiris, men, women and teenagers facing off a
large organized force.
Not just that. The world is also beginning to question why India is
persecuting fair-minded Indians like novelist Arundhati Roy who questions
India’s unnecessary occupation of a land and people who are not Indian and
do not want to be Indian.
See this slideshow prepared by Foreign Policy magazine. It doesn’t
roundly condemn Indian atrocities, not yet at least. But considering the past, it
is three-steps forward for the Am-Brit media, and hopefully the beginning of a
trend that might help reduce Pakistani hostility to American double standards
in the region.
Ahmed Quraishi, International Analyst Network, October 30, 2010,
http://www.analyst-network.com/article.php?art_id=3613
In London, Stop the War Coalition (STWC), a United Kingdom group has
passed a resolution on Kashmir in its general conference. The resolution,
which was moved by Khaja Aslam, a journalist from Indian occupied
Kashmir, on behalf of Britain/south Asia solidarity forum (BSASF),
condemned the recent killings of over 111 innocent and unarmed young men
and teenagers in the occupied territory.
It maintained that Kashmir was not a dispute of land between India and
Pakistan but was a core political issue concerning to the future of millions of
oppressed Kashmiris who had been deprived of justice since the partition of
Indian sub-content. “The issue of Kashmir is the issue of self-determination
which was guaranteed under successive United Nations Security Council
resolutions. The self-determination of peoples is a basic principle of the
United Nations Charter, which has been reaffirmed in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and applied countless times to the settlement of
many international conflicts,” it added.
“Presence of 700,000 Indian military and paramilitary forces without any
moral, political and legal code has made Jammu and Kashmir the heaviest
concentration in human history,” it added. It pointed out that India had put in
96 IPRI Factfile
force draconian laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act and the
Disturbed Areas Act in occupied Kashmir that gave Indian troops to act with
impunity.
The STWC resolution said that the lingering dispute needed the
immediate attention of the world powers. It emphasised that the time had
come when the world powers especially the US President, Barack Obama, who
is going to visit India next week, should play an effective role in helping to
secure a permanent settlement to the dispute in accordance with the
Kashmiris’ aspirations.
It is to mention here that the STWC was founded in October 2001, one
month after the then US President, George W Bush announced the ‘war on
terror’, and has since been dedicated to ending the wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq, bringing the troops home and forcing the British and US governments to
change their disastrous foreign policies.
It is for the first time that SWTC has included the Kashmir dispute in its
agenda. In the conference it was decided that in future there would be a full
day discussion on the Kashmir issue to highlight it on international forum.
Kashmir Media Service, October 31, 2010
http://kmsnews.org/news/resolution-kashmir-passed-stwc-conference-london
attention from the senior RSS activist Indresh Kumar who has recently been
named in the CBI charge-sheet for the bomb blast in Ajmer Sharif in which
several people were killed and many injured. But why are sections of the
mainstream media doing the same? Is a writer with unpopular views more
dangerous than a suspect in a bomb blast? Or is it a question of ideological
alignment?
Hindu, (Delhi), November 1, 2010,
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article861711.ece
processing Angana Chatterji’s passport. She has been stopped regularly since
the inception of IPTK in April 2008. As they paused over her passport, the
Immigration Officer again asked Richard Shapiro for his passport. Then, he
was informed that he may not enter India, and that the ban was indefinite. The
Immigration Authorities insisted that Richard return immediately. They
stamped “cancelled” on the entry stamp they had provided minutes ago. They
did not stamp “cancel” on his visa. However, Professor Shapiro was not
deported. His visa was not cancelled. The Immigration Authorities refused to
pay for his return airfare. He was made to leave at 11.50 am that same
morning. The Immigration Authorities refused to give any reason, while
stating that Professor Shapiro had not been charged with anything.
While no charges were framed against Professor Shapiro, the persons at
the airport were categorical in stating that he is not to return to India,
impinging on his academic freedom, freedom of movement, and rights to
travel with his legal partner, and visit his family in Kolkata.
The Government of India has initiated various “peace” processes and
confidence building measures without the consent of the Kashmiri people.
With friends like Richard Shapiro, we are able to think and learn together. This
is what is urgently required to build an atmosphere in which Kashmiris are not
isolated from new ideas, other worlds, from the friendship and hospitality
offered by those who seek out a place that has been forsaken by so many. The
ban on Professor Shapiro days before the visit of the US President speaks
volumes to the arrogance of the Indian State. It is ironic too because the
Government of India desires that the US Government grant more visas to
Indians, even as it just evicted a US Citizen without warning or due cause.
The ban on Richard Shapiro also further seeks to intimidate and target
Angana Chatterji and the work of IPTK with Parvez Imroz, Gautam
Navlakha, Zahir-Ud-Din, Mihir Desai, and Khurram Parvez. JKCCS
condemns this ban.
The ban on Richard Shapiro is also a ban on Kashmiris, condemning
them to isolation.
The Indian state has targeted those that have been outspoken on
injustices and military governance in Kashmir. Since 2008, Parvez Imroz and
his family have been attacked in their home. Angana Chatterji and Zahir-Ud-
Din have been charged under Section 505 of the Ranbir Penal Code, with
writing to incite against the Indian State. Last week, Arundhati Roy has been
threatened with charges of sedition. JKCCS condemns the attack on the home
of Arundhati Roy in New Delhi, and the continued targeting of her stand on
Kashmir, and the dangerous role being played by the mainstream Indian media
in inciting violence against her.
These actions speak to the intent of the Indian State as it continues it
impunity rule in Kashmir, with deliberate actions to isolate Kashmiris from the
world and the world from Kashmiris. In the past, several academics and
Kashmir Struggle Enters New Phase 101
journalists have been banned from entering India, and numerous Kashmiri
scholars, journalists, and activists have also been banned from leaving Kashmir
to travel abroad.
Kashmir Watch, November 2, 2010,
http://www.kashmirwatch.com/showhumanrights.php?subaction=showfull&id=1288
714276&archive=&start_from=&ucat=2&var0news=value0news
people took to the streets in Lal Chowk, Reshi Bazar, Achabal Adda,
Malakhnag, Dangerpora, Mattan Chowk and other areas of the town to protest
against the arrest of youths on fake charges.
Express Tribune (Islamabad), November 25, 2010
1931: Kashmir's first organized protest: The people of Kashmir hold their
first organized protest against Maharajah Hari Singh's cruelty. The 1931
protest led to the "Quit Kashmir" campaign against the Maharajah in 1946,
and eventually to the Azad Kashmir movement which gained momentum a
year later.
July 26, 1946: Azad Kashmir comes into being: The Muslim Conference
adopts the Azad Kashmir Resolution on July 26 1946 calling for the end of
autocratic rule in the region. The resolution also claims for Kashmiris the right
to elect their own constituent assembly.
August 14, 1947: Pakistan created: State of Pakistan comes into being with
Muhammad Ali Jinnah as Governor General.
August 15, 1947: India gains independence: State of India comes into being
with Lord Mountbatten as Governor General.
August 1947: Kashmir Ruler Did Not Join India: When the Indian
subcontinent became independent from Britain, all the rulers of the 565
princely states had to decide which of the two new dominions to join, India or
Pakistan. The ruler of Jammu and Kashmir, whose state was situated between
the two new countries, could not decide which country to join. He was Hindu,
his population was almost all Muslim. He therefore did nothing.
He signed a "standstill" agreement with Pakistan in order that services
such as trade, travel and communication would be uninterrupted. India did not
sign a similar agreement.
Secretary General. For negotiating the details of the plan, the council
constituted a five-member commission known as "United Nations
Commission for India and Pakistan," (UNCIP) to implement the resolution.
After the cease-fire, India began efforts to drag the issue down, and
under various pretexts tried to stop the UN resolution from being
implemented. To this day, India pursues the same plan, and the resolution of
1948 has yet to be realized.
1947 - 48: India, Pakistan at war over Kashmir: India and Pakistan went to
war over Kashmir from 1947-48. All early UN Security Council Resolutions
admonished both countries, demanded an immediate cease-fire, which would
be followed by a UN-directed plebiscite.
February 5, 1964: India fails to keep her promise: India reneges from her
pledge. The Indian representative tells the Security Council, "I wish to make it
clear on behalf of my government that in no circumstances we can agree to the
holding of a plebiscite in Kashmir." Defense Minister, Krishnan Menon, gives
the reason: "Kashmir would vote to join Pakistan and no Indian Government
responsible for agreeing to plebiscite would survive”.
March 1965: India claims Kashmir: The Indian Parliament passes a bill
declaring Kashmir a province of India.
April 1965: Pakistan Defeats India in the Rann of Kutch: A clash between
border patrols erupted into fighting in the Rann of Kutch, a region along the
south-western Indo-Pakistani border. When the Indians retreated after intense
fighting, Pakistan claimed victory.
September 23, 1965: calls for an end to hostilities: The United Nations
Security Council arranges a cease-fire.
Kashmir Struggle Enters New Phase 109
January 10, 1966: Tashkent agreement signed: The Soviet Union arranges
talks between Pakistan and India. The Tashkent Agreement is signed through
the mediating efforts of the Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin. The
agreement reaffirms that the dispute should be settled by peaceful means. The
armies are to withdraw to their original positions.
1987: a new Kashmiri resistance begins: The current uprising of the people
of Kashmir starts out as a protest against inefficiency, electoral fraud,
corruption and religious discrimination.
January 19, 1990: Kashmir brought under Indian control: The Indian
government brings Kashmir under its direct control. The state legislature is
suspended, the government is removed and the former Director General of
the Indian Secret Service, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), Mr. Jag Mohan
is appointed governor.
February 27, 1990: United Nations not allowed in Kashmir: India refuses
to allow any United Nations official to visit Kashmir.
March 2, 1990: Kashmiris shot during Srinagar march: Forty people are
killed when police open fire at a march of more than one million Kashmiris
through the streets of Srinagar. Police are ordered to shoot at sight.
March 28, 1990: Refugees flee to Pakistan: Refugees start pouring into
Pakistan from occupied Kashmir.
110 IPRI Factfile
July 1990: Jammu and Kashmir Disputed Areas Act passed: Under this
act, India's security forces personnel have extraordinary powers over anyone in
Kashmir.
May 18, 1995: APHC rejects offer for talks on Kashmir with India: The
APHC rejects an offer for talks on Kashmir by New Delhi. The organization
says it will not enter into any dialogue with New Delhi unless India admits
Kashmir is a disputed territory.
May 13, 1996: government employees boycott Indian elections: Over 1.5
million government workers assigned to election duty by Indian authorities
strike for 18 days to boycott the electoral process at the call of Jammu and
Kashmir Government Employees Confederation.
June 8, 1996: APHC rejects greater autonomy: The All Party Hurriyat
Conference (APHC), the representative alliance of all Kashmiris, rejects the
Kashmir Struggle Enters New Phase 111
September 14, 1996: APHC leadership arrested: Prior to elections for the
state assembly, Indian troops arrest the APHC's entire leadership.
May 12, 1997: India and Pakistan meet: Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz
Sharif and Indian Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral agree to establish joint
working groups to resolve all outstanding issues between the two countries
since 1947.
July 26, 1997: Indian Prime Minister Gujral warns army: At the beginning
of a two-day visit to Jammu and Kashmir, India's Prime Minister, Inder
Kumar Gujral, warns Indian soldiers in occupied Kashmir against committing
human rights abuses. He offers to hold unconditional talks with Kashmiri
groups to end seven long years of violence in the region.
July 27, 1997: Gujral does a turnaround: In a turnaround from the previous
day's statement, Indian Prime Minister, Inder Kumar Gujral, says that
Kashmir's freedom fighters would have to surrender their arms before peace
talks with the government could begin.
October 12, 1997: rioting after Jamey Mosque desecration: Angry anti-
India demonstrations are sparked by the desecration of the historic Jamia
Mosque in Srinagar by Indian troops. They besieged the mosque, entered it
wearing their boots and carried out an extensive search for three hours.
February 8, 1998: fear over "Kashaf commandos": The APHC's executive
committee expresses grave concern over the formation of a secret force, the
"Kashaf commandos," by Indian forces. The newly formed force creates
dissension among the Kashmiris and fans the flames of communal violence by
killing members of the Hindu minority in Muslim majority areas and then
blaming the Kashmiris for the actions.
March 19, 1998: Governor confesses India's human rights violations: The
governor of Jammu and Kashmir, KV Krishna Rao, confesses that Indian
112 IPRI Factfile
August 26, 1998: India bans Britannica CD-ROM: India bans importation
of Encyclopedia Britannica on CD-ROM because it shows Kashmir as a
disputed territory.
May 26, 1999: India launches air strikes against Kashmiri fighters in
Kargil: After three weeks of "intense skirmishes" between India and Pakistan,
India launches air strikes to "flush out" Kashmiri fighters on its side of a
Kashmir cease-fire line. India claims up to 680 "Afghan militants," backed by
Pakistan, have invaded high ridges. Pakistan calls the air strikes "very, very
Kashmir Struggle Enters New Phase 113
serious" and puts its troops on high alert. Under pressure from the US,
Pakistani Prime minister uses his influence to persuade Kashmiris to withdraw.
India admits loosing 520 soldiers, although the journalists speculate the real
numbers to be much higher.
July 1999: Clinton urges India-Pakistan talks: India announces it has taken
the key Tiger Hill peak following an all-out assault. Kashmiri fighters are
reported to be leaving the mountains of Indian-occupied Kashmir as both
Pakistan and India claim victory in the two-month conflict. As fighting in the
territory dies down, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif appeals for a
permanent settlement of the Kashmir dispute.
November 2000: call for Muslim nations to cut ties with India: A
Kashmiri leader, Syed Salahuddin, calls on Muslim nations to cut diplomatic
and economic ties with India. At the same time, Kashmiri leaders call on India
to recognize the territory as disputed and to hold talks with Pakistan and
Kashmiri leaders.
July 2001: Agra Summit a failure: Indian Prime Minister, Atal Bihari
Vajpayee, and Pakistani President, Pervez Musharraf, meet in Agra, India for a
summit on relations between the two nations. The summit ends with no
conclusive changes or progress. The talks fail to produce a joint statement on
Kashmir.
December 5 2001: India rejects talks: India rejects a demand from Pakistan
for tripartite talks about Kashmir.
May 4 2002: 490 killed in Indian occupied Kashmir: A senior Indian police
officer said that 490 people had been killed in the first four months of this year
in the Kashmir valley, a dramatic increase from 2001
May 14 2002: Attack on Indian army camp: Kashmiri fighters open fire on
an army camp in Indian Kashmir, killing at least 30 people and wounding 40.
Tension between India and Pakistan follows.
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/ipri/Local%20Settings/Temporary%20In
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