why kashmir' s struggle for freedom- guest column

By D.N ZARGAR

While growing up in Kashmir through the 90’s, the question of Kashmir’s struggle would always put my childish brain to scrutiny. Those slogans of ‘Indian dogs go back’ and ‘jive jive Pakistan (Long live Pakistan)’ made me think and rethink why the people raised such slogans? Why were the people sacrificing their peace and harmony to struggle against India? Everyday I would see mobs taking to streets against armed forces. Everyday the news of scores being killed across valley had become a norm. People were being treated like inhuman beings. No respect. No human values. Rights of people were taken to task everyday if at all they had any rights. The question kept lingering in my mind every day from dawn to dusk. And if I ask someone they would tell me “We are fighting against the accession of India who had forcefully occupied our land.”

But seeing the harmonious other states of India the justification looked vague. What was wrong in being with India? Being part of a fast developing nation. A democratic nation that bragged of its secularism. Where the songs and slogans “ Mazhab Nahi sikhata aapas mai baere rakhna” and “hindu, muslim, sikh, eesai sab aapas mai hai bhai bhai” were enchanted by people of all ages and all religions with shear enthusiasm.

The threat of bomb blasts and the potential risk to life that waited at everybody’s doorsteps had made the struggle murkier enough for me to hate it at its face value. It had snatched my childhood. The luxury of playing in free air with my fellow growing ups.

It was a ‘childhood’ where guardians would never let us step outside. Not into the lawns of our houses even, fearing that a bullet or a bomb shell might hit us there. Strikes and curfews would punctuate the schedule more often than not. So much that every morning people would ask “isn’t it hartal today! Rather than asking is it hartal today?”

Whatever, nothing could keep time from marching ahead. In that chorus of gun fire and screaming families of deceased youth, years passed-by leading me into an age where I may still have the same childish brain but the experience has added one more dimension to its thinking. Time answered my questions and experience taught me, “I am the best teacher”.

Time and again India proved people of Kashmir right and justified their struggle to end Indian accession. It has not to do with the human rights violation only but on a bigger canvas India showed Kashmir is no better than a colony to India.

Subjects of the Valley have been subjected to genocide for more than sixty years now and the death toll is in lakhs but hardly did any one from ‘secular India’ raise its voice against the atrocities. Rather Kashmir over the years became a storehouse of suspects for India which they use to pick out one to levy allegations of any bomb blast in India to show the brilliance of their judicial agencies.

The number of women raped by the ‘security forces’ here might be in thousands but never did I see any women activists and human rights agencies from India even commenting upon the issue. Where so much is being said and done for the empowerment of Indian women, the chastity of our mothers and sisters have always been slaughtered at the hands of Indian agencies but the issue could never be a mere topic of discussion even anywhere in the Indian society.

However, when Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC) decided to poison thousands of stray dogs across the city to free it of the dog menace, the animal activist in Mainka Gandhi sprayed its love for the dogs and SMC had to stop its drive against dogs.

Recent History of Kashmir’s struggle has examples like kunanposhpora where the whole community was mass raped but all we got from India was once in a while condemnation by the culprits themselves.

A huge chunk of our youth is missing from decades and their families still peer at the doors envisaging the return of their beloveds who may never return. No body in India ever bothered about it but on the contrary if a kid falls in a pit somewhere in India it gets the attention of the Prime minister even.

India’s claims about Kashmir being an integral part of it have always proven hollow and baseless. Had Kashmir been anything more than a colony to India the struggle over the years would have jolted whole of India as the issues in rest of India does. But they never make any mention of what is being done with the Kashmiri people.

Kashmir has inhuman laws like Armed forces special Powers Act (AFSPA) and POTA used to crush the people but the laws were never challenged positively by any political party anywhere in India.

Indian media strangulates the professionalism of Journalism not to report the situation in Kashmir. In fact, all Kashmiri’s are terrorists in their view and they present us in that way only.

However, once in a while criminal act anywhere here has been highlighted to devastating heights that has marred the image of people of Kashmir all over world. No matter what has been the role of India in exploiting the people in committing such crime? Or the very fact that Indian forces and officials have been the criminals themselves.

You name it and India has committed the atrocity over the innocent people here and their emasculation as terrorists is being used to hide the ugly face of India’s attitude towards the people of Kashmir.

From human rights violation to cultural imperialism; from fake encounters to custodial killings India showed that the struggle of the people has a firm grounding. It showed that India always wanted Kashmir but never its people.

Recent Shree Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB) controversy was no different. When the Valley was reeling under protest against the transfer of forest land to SASB, ruthless baton charges and bullets were used to disengage the protestors. The protests were never on the communal lines but it had to 1do with the change in the demography of the state and the support provided to yatris by the locals in those testing times even reflected non-communal intentions of Kashmiri people. Though Muslims in Kashmir have always been front runners in making Amarnath yatra a success year after year for more than 100 years now yet their protests where hard dealt with and as many as seven people were killed during the protests.

But when it came to the protests in Jammu not even a single bullet was fired even when it was a clear attempt to divide otherwise communally harmonious state of J&K on religious lines. Jammu and Kashmir belong to the same state but the step motherly approach of India here tells the story of its ‘secularism’.

Not only was the strategy different during the protests but whole of India took the side of Jammu in making the issue Kashmir V/s rest of India.

Indian media blindfolded themselves during the protests in the Valley but when the communal forces in Jammu came to streets all media was itching to report it in the exaggerated manner. Media did its best to establish that Kashmir is against Amaranth yatra which is never true.

Protestors in Jammu starved the Valley for all commodities of life by blocking the Highway and all that government of India did is they kept asking “where is the blockade.” Petrol pumps dried out, fruit and other industries in the Valley lost produce worth crores of rupees for want of transportation to markets outside but authorities could see none of it. In fact, had there been no threat of alternate Jhelum valley road to India they might never have bothered to take the issue seriously.

Now decades have passed but the people in the valley still have same struggle left in them. All these years all atrocities by India have failed to crush the longing of people for liberty.

People still come on to the streets facing the bullets. They protest tirelessly hoping that they will succeed one day. People get killed but the slogans never die down.

Harmony has not returned to this land nor have the atrocities died down but the people never bother about it. Their longing for freedom keeps longing, whatsoever.

Now the question that scrutinized my mind has long been answered. Having experienced India and its ‘secularism’ over the years I better understand the struggle now. I understand the cause of it now. Right here right now I might not say “jive jive Pakistan” but my even my every breath shouts ‘jis Kashmir ko khoon se seencha woh Kashmir hamara hai’ (We have irrigated this land with our blood it is ours)