As the body count of young Kashmiris killed by the bullets of security forces continues its sickening climb, it is becoming depressingly clear that no one – the state government, the Central government, mainstream political parties or the separatist politicians – retains any credibility with the people of the Valley. The people have lost faith in their so-called leaders and now trust no one but themselves. The Central government has to engage directly with the people of Kashmir in a more open and honest way. The political solution to the ‘Kashmir issue’ will be found with the common people of Kashmir and not with those politicians and leaders who claim to represent the people of Kashmir.
By Arif Bashir
The war is mine, not yours” cries an 11 year old masked protestor from Sopore in the Kashmir valley. This declaration is made to all the politicians, mainstream or separatist, of all political shades in the Kashmir valley. It is perhaps the most relevant benchmark to measure their relevance to the common people of the Valley. After years of political subterfuge that has blighted their past and tainted their future the people of Kashmir are in no mood to listen to politicians who call themselves ‘leaders’.
The people feel they have been cheated at each and every crucial juncture and have been brought to the threshold of a ‘do or die’ situation. The relentless killings and draconian laws have only reinforced this feeling. The often called for ‘dialogue’ and the admission of political failures are seen as nothing less then tokenism.
Despite all this, what is it that gives courage to the youth of the valley to challenge death, face to face, on the streets and take on armed security forces? How does a bullet-ridden body lying on the road encourage them to be the ‘next proud victim’? Why has this trend gone beyond the traditional trouble spots of downtown Srinagar and to the remote villages of Baramulla, Kupwara, Anantnag, Sopore?
The answer is, perhaps, somewhere among the common masses that seem to have been silenced under the weight of political arbitrariness which has been made to, craftily, occupy the bigger portion of the political canvas in the Kashmir Valley and painted, tragically, with the blood of innocent people. And that is precisely what today’s Kashmir looks like. The time had to come one day and it has arrived for better or for worse.
The current unrest, apart from being the bloodiest of all, draws a vivid picture of the mental canvas of the masses, particularly the youth, who this time seem to have taken it upon themselves to denounce all influences and carry on until they arrive at a point where from they can judge, for themselves, that a credible change has been made in the status quo.
For this, they have adopted a different form of expression. They have departed from the path of the previous generations who chose the path of the gun during the early 1990s and were armed and supported by Pakistan. This time the youth have chosen to keep Pakistan away form their struggle and have replaced alien guns with their ‘very own’ stones.
An analysis of the situation that has unfolded in the Valley since June 11 reveals the youth of Kashmir apart from being subjected to decades of remorseless subjugation, draconian laws, unremitting human rights violations, numerous probes that never saw the light of day, persistent denial of addressing actual issues, continuous political manoeuvring and the absence of political space, the youth are also victims of an unending political hollowness that lacks any specificity. In other words they are scared they will once again be left out somewhere, unnoticed, unannounced.
Today’s protestors are not uneducated youth who were caught in the situation and had no option but to be a part of the protest. They are in fact educated, tech-savvy young men. They are well informed about the various struggles going on in the world and are well versed with the history of their struggle. They are fully aware of the promises not kept by the establishment and are clear about the genesis of the various political shops, separatist and mainstream. They know that the various leaders have built their careers on the graves of the slain Kashmiri youth over the past two and a half decades. He knows who stands for what and questions every political design.
On one hand the youth of the valley dismiss mainstream political parties as nothing but the extended limbs of New Delhi in Kashmir and the state government as its outpost on the other hand there is no one amongst the separatist circles who can represent them. More importantly the youth protesting on the streets have rejected any slogan asking for Pakistan or praising Pakistan and have confined their demand to azadi.
Unfortunately for them there is no political party or ‘leader’ who they can identify with and
trust. They, ironically, have no political voice.
The state government fails its people
There is no doubt that the state government has been clueless about the handling of the situation from day one. After the initial protests and killings chief minister Omar Abdullah made several appeals for peace and calm asking protestors to stand down and allow a political solution to be found. However the protests continued and the security forces continued killing protestors. Then Abdullah made a crucial error and looked towards Delhi and sought help from the Centre. This is something that will never go down well with Kashmiris and in a way justifies their belief that the state governments are just extensions of the Centre.
Abdullah’s press conference in Delhi after his meeting with the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other ministers was beamed live into Kashmiri living rooms. The people of the state expected the CM to say a few gentle words to commiserate for those that had been killed and announce that he had worked out a political initiative to be launched by the state government along with Delhi. Instead he didn’t utter a single word about the victims and it was revealed that he had asked for more troops to control the protestors in the Valley.
The state government over the past two months has announced curfews, allowed the use of repressive force and has slapped action under the Public Safety Act against protestors. The security forces on their part have shown no restraint in targeting protestors and have shot to kill. The Army has been called in and the impression has been sent to the world that the government of Jammu and Kashmir is fighting a war with the people it claims to represent.
The actions of the state government only served to further alienate and anger the protestors and the number of protests, demonstrations and incidents of stone pelting only increased in Srinagar city and also began to spread to other places in the Valley.
At the end of two months 57 Kashmiris have been killed, scores more are in hospitals, gravely injured and fighting for their lives and hundreds more have been arrested and are languishing behind bars. The result is that the protestors have been numbed by the insensitivity of the state in tackling the issue and are only more alienated and frustrated.
The Central government fails its citizens
The Central government’s reaction to the protests was not to see them as a political act being carried out by estranged youth seeking to express their anger and despondency. The Centre took the age-old position of the wolf from across the border creating trouble in Kashmir. This had an adverse effect on the people’s protests.
The statements by home minister, P Chidambaram, claiming to have reliable information about the ‘hand of terrorist organisations’ in organising the protests only served to further alienate the protestors. Yet again they felt their genuine concerns had been marginalised and pushed to an insignificant corner by the set parameters of the Indian political discourse on the Kashmir ‘issue’. The protestors felt frustrated for not being able to achieve what they were expecting – an honest admission from the Central government that Kashmir was an issue that needed to be addressed. Secondly the statement of the home minister confused the armed forces patrolling the streets. They were now in two minds, as the statement clearly revealed the failure of the intelligence agencies on the ground and it also licensed them to shoot protestors without batting an eye knowing that the protestor with a stone in his hand could also be a Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist. At least Mr Chidambaram suspected so.
The assessment of the situation by the Central government was unmindful of the killings and was seen to uphold the same rhetoric New Delhi has used for the Kashmir issue since the beginning of militancy in the early 1990s. Despite the loss of the lives of young Kashmiri boys there had been no progress and it was back to square one. This led to a feeling of bitterness amongst the Kashmiri masses so much so that even the prime minister’s statement failed to evoke a healthy response.
Singh’s admission that a political process was necessary for settling Kashmir issue was taken seriously by the people of the valley along with other hints of revoking AFSPA, and troop withdrawal during his address that came later than expected. But the already set tone of the government lowered the significance of his statement to a large extent.
Mainstream political parties exposed
The National Conference-Congress coalition government issued orders asking their MLAs to involve the people in a dialogue to prevent further protests and bring life back to normal. But, as the situation continued to worsen, no MLA was seen taking up the initiative. They were probably dissuaded by the sight of angry youth torching government property worth crores of rupees, including half a dozen police stations, half a dozen Tehsil offices, more than 20 government vehicles, besides a few railway stations and the private property of one senior superintendent of police.
The other mainstream political party, which was considered an alternative to the NC in the Valley, the Peoples Democratic Party too lost credibility after the president of the party, for the
first four weeks of the trouble, termed the protests as merely a failure of the state government in maintaining law and order and failing the people of the valley on governance.
The position of the PDP was exposed as a distortion of the facts when protestors dared PDP members to show up at any public place. After trying to win over the protestors and reports of the PDP surreptitiously working with the underground leadership of the Hurriyat (G) to provoke and incite protests made the rounds the president of the PDP confessed on a television news show: “ Log hammai Hindustani kuttae kehtae hai (People call us Indian Dogs).”
The PDP was then seen to be more focused on winning over the confidence of the Indian intelligence agencies and New Delhi when it suspected that Omar Abdullah might tender his resignation. When that did not happen, the PDP, which had begun yelling itself hoarse lapsed into a mysterious silence.
Separatists lose credibility
It seems that for the first time since the beginning of the “Kashmir problem” the very people who first claimed that Kashmiris have a ‘problem’ with India have lost their credibility with the masses.
Chairman of his own faction of Hurriyat Conference, Syed Ali Geelani who was hailed for his uncompromising stand and consistency until now has lost his painstakingly preserved credibility with the protesting masses who have out rightly rejected the programmes announced by Geelani’s Hurriyat (G) faction. The young protestors observe that Geelani is bereft of any solid strategy and consistently depends upon hartals and marches to make it to the newspapers and news channels. Moreover, after his recent release from jail Geelani, the people say, has softened and the announcement he has made it sound like that of a moderate politician and not like those of the hardliner that he has portrayed himself to be.
The fact that protestors are not listening to Geelani anymore was clearly established when in his first statement after being released while releasing a week long protest calendar he asked the protestors to shun violence in any form. Just to show him where he stood the very next day the protestors in Geelani’s hometown of Sopore attacked a police station and set it ablaze. The shocks for Geelani did not stop there, as the entire week was witness to violent protests across the Valley.
In an exclusive interview with Current, a group of stone-pelters from Sopore, rejected Syed Ali Geelani’s calendar and said the protests would go according to the protestors and not any “self-defined leaders”. The situation continues to remain out of the control of the Hurriyat (G) as on August 14, violent clashes were reported from almost all corners of the valley.
Compounding his loss of credibility is the loss of authority that Geelani faces in his own party from general secretary Masarat Alam who is underground and had announced his own calendar of protests for the next 21 days. Geelani had to publicly reject the calendar issued by his own party member and had to clarify that that no fresh calendar of protests should be treated as a Hurriyat (G) calendar until a meeting of its members had been held.
Masarat Alam and Asiya Andrabi tried to project themselves as leaders of the protest by going underground while Geelani was imprisoned and issued their own protest calendars. But an analysis of the programmes announced by Alam and Andrabi reveals that their efforts were more to position themselves within the prevailing situation rather than spelling out a clear-cut-political-strategy.
Most separatist leaders in Kashmir have lost credibility with the people of Kashmir because of the efforts they make from time to time to talk to the Central government even though they know that the Central government is not serious about resolving the issue. Until lately Geelani has been exempt from this sentiment. The turning point came for Geelani in 2008 during the Amarnath land row agitations. Thousands of people had responded to the joint call of both factions of the Hurriyat Conference and had assembled to hear them. Geelani miscalculated the moment and asked the crowds to raise their hands to declare him as the sole leader of the Kashmiri people. The people immediately understood that they were once again being exploited by a self-serving politician and his credibility began to dive. Matters worsened when the supporters of the two factions started thrashing each other.
Last Friday, the Hurriyat (G) protest calendar asked people to offer prayers at central mosques in their specific areas and hold peaceful demonstrations. The situation on the ground however was something else. In Bomai, Sopore, Geelani’s home constituency, thousands of people attacked a CRPF picket and tried to set it ablaze and two protestors were killed when troops opened fire on them. Again, in the vicinity of Geelani’s Sopore, thousands of protestors assembled at Pattan and attacked another CRPF post and another protestor was killed. A similar incident occurred in north Kashmir’s Kupwara district.
That Geelani’s credibility is at an all time low is can be plainly seen from the fact that in a span of 10 days he has appeared on local news channels and spoken to local newspapers asking the youth of the Valley to desist from violence including stone pelting, torching police and administration buildings, targeting the CRPF camps and has appealed to the people to organize peaceful demonstrations. The situation on the ground continues to be anything but peaceful and is clearly out of his control.
Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, chairman of the moderate faction of Hurriyat Conference who enjoys a degree of support in downtown Srinagar had kept silent for a large part of the turmoil until a few days ago when he announced a march to Srinagar’s Jamia Masjid. It was after six weeks that restrictions were lifted from the Jama Masjid area and people could offer prayers. But a helpless Mirwaiz appeared on television news channels two weeks ago and was seen making a meek submission that the Central government had played dirty with each and every moderate faction of separatists in the Valley. Mirwaiz said that the Centre, at first invites them to talks, keeps the talk button pushed and then does not take any measures towards achieving the discussed solutions.
Mirwaiz thus associates his failures with the tricky politics played on him and others. However, he too struggles for credibility when it comes to the common masses. This is clearly established by the ‘strategy of silence’ he wore over his face and remained, to a large extent, cut off from the situation.
The other groups including that of Yasin Malik, Javed Mir and others too have remained silent except for blaming the state and Central governments of human rights violations.
The solution is with the people not the politicians
The current situation, therefore, clearly suggests that the leaders in today’s Kashmir have lost credibility among the masses, and the masses this time have taken it on themselves to push forward with their cause and struggle. They have ignored protest calendars, rubbished peace appeals and closed their eyes to the same old promises from New Delhi.
Having said this, it is necessary to mention here that each political party in Kashmir valley has its supporters and workers spread across the state. Be it the mainstream political parties or the separatists, everyone in Kashmir has his pocket of influence. But the emerging scenario has shown all of them to be quite irrelevant when it comes to the ‘movement’ for freedom. The youth do not trust anyone anymore and have taken over the movement. The protesting crowds do not have a political strategy and lack a plan to reach a specific destination. In this present scenario the challenge for the community is to present a credible and cohesive voice.
Therefore any effort for a political solution to begin successfully the Central government has to find the right person, the right party to talk to. And at this time in the history of the state, it is
none other than the common masses who seem to be the party themselves.