Resisting Occupation in Kashmir
The saga Kashmir is the one to withstand an occupation that has gone on for several decades. It is also the tale of how the language of anti-terrorism and development is utilized to mask violence and governance. To make sense of Kashmir now, we must grapple with the hypocrisy of India as the largest democracy in the world and how it treats the only Muslim-majority region that is under its control.
Since 1947, Kashmir has remained in a political no man, no man status. India and Pakistan engaged in wars on the issue of Kashmir but the dream of a free and fair plebiscite among Kashmiris never came to be fulfilled. Rather, Kashmiris were provided with elections that were regarded to be rigged, and leaders were regarded as the puppets of New Delhi. Acts such as the Armed Forces Special Powers Act gave Indian forces an unrestricted license. Ultimately, what came about was the militarization of the countryside that mangled normal life into a field of fear, surveillance, and violence.
Armed rebellion against Indian rule had not been sudden in 1989. It was the culmination of many years of oppression and unfulfilled hopes. India then sent in large masses of troops, reacting in a crushing manner. Over the decades that followed, Kashmir has emerged as one of the most military dotted regions in the whole world. Extra judicial killings, disappearances, and torture became a reality. Militarization also increased the scale at which homes, schools and even fields were ruled as disputed territories where freedom was not complete.
However, the gun has never been the only first form of resistance in Kashmir. Major changes of protesting in the 2000s occurred. The street-demonstration, stone-pelting, vigil and sit-ins were used as good weapons of defiance. There comes a point in the summer of 2010 when over a hundred of Kashmiri youth were killed during mass protests. To people, that year became the symbol of the emergence of a new generation of rebels, young people who declared their freedom not only by fighting with weapons, but through civic acts of civil defiance. Their resistance worked to reveal the dud that Kashmir was a mere issue of transnational terrorism. It was and continues as an internally generated struggle.
The cultural resistance remodelled the movement as well Music, poetry and film were used as the weapons of remembrance and inducement. Kashmiri rapper MC Kash addressed the angst and frustration of his generation, casting it within a global context along with Palestine and other places occupied. Protest art and literature produced a counter history that criticised official histories.
These cultural productions demonstrated that such a struggle of azadi is not merely about geography or politicking but also about a sense of dignity, memory, and the right to tell one story.
Gender is a critical element in such a resistance scenery. Kashmiri women have been exposed to systematic violence including rampant rape being used as an instrument of war. The mass rape in Kunan and Poshpora has been remembered as the rape with impunity by the state. However, women also form the core in the fight. They have taken to the limelight by leading protests and demanding justice even in courts. Such campaigns as Do You Remember Kunan Poshpora capture how women turn experiences of personal tragedy into a political awakening. Their behaviour is problematic in the sense that they question not only violence by the state but also stereotypes according to which they are left powerless victims.
India has the habit of citing development as the remedy of Kashmir alienation. Democracy is depicted as gifts, i.e. roads, jobs and other new infrastructure. Such projects are often really instruments of control, bringing communities into harness to the state, but leaving the more fundamental political issue unsettled.
What is the point of a new road when that road is filled with checkpoints and bunkers?
What is it that is the benefit of development when the cry to have any kind of freedom is labelled as sedition? Policies like that cannot heal the wounds of occupation but on the contrary worsen as they disregard the Kashmiri aspirations.
Meanwhile, the problem has been exacerbated because Hindu nationalist politics has entered the scene. Pilgrimage tourism and the construction of temples are encouraged to become a means of imposing Hindu identity on the Kashmir Place of Being. The narrative of displacement of Kashmiri Pandits, a Hindu minority that fled in the 1990s is utilized in nationalist discourse to secure nationalistic turns in the state of securitization and Hinduization of that land. Although the suffering of the affected community is true, the misuse of this fact by the majoritarian politics has instead divided people instead of reconciling with each other. To most Kashmiris, such initiatives have less to do with coexistence and more with disappearance.
Freedom, or azadi, is a struggle worth fighting against even despite the burden of militarism and propaganda of the state. Martyrs’ graveyards spread all over Kashmir are the testimony to the cost of resistance.
These people are not only burial places but are also memory spaces in which the dead get incorporated into the living struggle. According to the relatives of the kidnapped, loss of memory of the kidnapped would be like victory over them by the state as a way of proving that they do not exist. This is how these habits enable resistance not only on the political scene but also at the cultural level, in memory and in our day to day lives.
The case of Kashmir compels us to raise troubling questions regarding democracy.
Is a state which governs by curbing, censorship, and worst yet militarizing citizens democratic?
India purports as an emergent world power but its reputation is marred by violence it takes on in Kashmir. Occupation cannot exist with true democracy. In place of freedom, development is not an alternative. And whatever control there is with narrative delivery could not negate the force of the need to self-identify.
The future of Kashmir lies in the determination of the identity of the people based on being political agents as opposed to subjects to manage. It involves not silent their voices. Long, long ago Kashmiri people have been making their voice heard: we want to decide about our own destiny. Until that demand is met, not anything as hearts-and-minds, no promise of job or new highway, nor show of military force, will bring peace. Kashmiri resistance persists since it is a movement motivated by fundamental demands of freedom, dignity and justice.
Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed in this article are exclusively those of the author and do not reflect the official stance, policies, or perspectives of the Platform.
