Tag Archives: Kashmir

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Government, Law, Violence/Conflict

Why the Delhi Police Special Cell will continue to manufacture terrorists: JTSA

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This release was put out yesterday by the JAMIA TEACHERS’ SOLIDARITY ASSOCIATION

Last year, JTSA compiled and released a report documenting 16 cases where the Delhi Police, especially its Special Cell, had framed innocents as terrorists. An overwhelming number of these unfortunate men were from Kashmir. Despite the fact that we cited court judgements which reprimanded the Cell for refusing to join independent witnesses, for willfully violating established procedures, for illegally detaining accused and showing their arrests on later dates; for fabricating evidence and failing to provide an iota of evidence in support of their charges – neither the leadership of the Delhi Police nor the Home Ministry felt the need for any enquiry. Continue reading Why the Delhi Police Special Cell will continue to manufacture terrorists: JTSA →

Culture, Frontiers, Identities, Mirror Worlds

Carpets and kebabs in Isfahan: Marryam H Reshii

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Guest post by MARRYAM H RESHII

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I could write a book about my week in Iran, but will restrict myself to captioning these photographs I took.

The only two cities I visited were Mashad and Isfahan. Mashad is famous for two things. The shrine of the Eighth Imam of the Shia sect of Islam, Imam Reza, the only one out of all twelve Imams to actually be buried in Iran (all the others are buried in Saudi Arabia and Iraq) and saffron that grows far, far more plentifully than it does in Kashmir.

Mashad sells carpets woven/produced elsewhere. While the large carpets are traditionally Iranian, the small ones in frames are too suspiciously perfect to be made with human hand. Most of them have a plethora of shades of white in them, making the weaver something of a genius! Continue reading Carpets and kebabs in Isfahan: Marryam H Reshii →

Bad ideas, Empire/ Imperialism, Frontiers, Identities, Violence/Conflict

A Curfew in Spring: Rich Autumns

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Photograph by Rich Autumns

RICH AUTUMNS writes from Srinagar: The capital of Kashmir is under tight curfew. Tight does not qualify curfew. It qualifies Srinagar. Srinagar is tight under curfew. The city has stopped breathing. It is an enforced exercise that the Valley undergoes regularly for the sake of law and order. On the deserted streets of Srinagar, Indian Army men stand in army issued jackets nursing rifles under the fresh green leaves of the Chinar. Occasionally a milk man cycles by. Sometimes, he is stopped and turned back. Sometimes he is allowed to pass, after an identity check. Continue reading A Curfew in Spring: Rich Autumns →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Empire/ Imperialism, Frontiers, Language, Mirror Worlds, Violence/Conflict

Kindly Deliver My Letter to the PM of India: Mahum Shabir

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Guest Post by Mahum Shabir

Dear Mr. Prime Minister,

Maybe it is silly to think that the Prime Minister of the world’s largest democracy will listen to the sorrows of a young Kashmiri woman-you have a billion more people to worry about. Maybe your interest in this letter would be piqued if I began by telling you that we have something in common-an education from two of the world’s best universities, yours from Oxford, mine from Harvard. Maybe it shouldn’t take a reference to where one went to school to get attention on a serious ethical issue at the center of democratic governance in India but nothing else has worked so far. I hope jaan pehchaan will work its wonders this once too. Continue reading Kindly Deliver My Letter to the PM of India: Mahum Shabir →

Bad ideas, Everyday Life, Frontiers, Movements, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Mayhem in March: Sameer Bhat

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Guest post by SAMEER BHAT: The completeness of night’s silence is absolute in Kashmir. Earlier today another boy was put six feet under. Killed in cold blood in Baramulla by the Indian army. Apparently a small crowd was protesting against the hanging of Afzal Guru and driven by pure emotion, pelted a passing army truck with stones. Since Kashmiri blood costs next to nothing, the armymen quickly got down, cocked their machine guns and sprayed the protesting kids with bullets, instantly killing a kid – Tahir — in his 20s. Nothing much. His friends, too shocked to react, smeared his blood on their faces. Grown-ups wept. The army later issued a statement that they didn’t shoot the boy. Period. Continue reading Mayhem in March: Sameer Bhat →

Bad ideas

What does Afzal’s death mean? : Inshah Malik

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Guest post by INSHAH MALIK:

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Perhaps, beyond angry outbursts and slogans nothing was left of Kashmiri intellectuals engaged in understanding problems of home land. Afzal Guru was hanged and pens were strangulated. I was one of the people who protested at Jantar Mantar, with no strategy, no political statement, I bundled myself with others to the station, to enter a site of ‘mourning’. Kashmir has a rich culture and cultured production of ‘grieving’, when someone dies, everyone assembles and expresses grief verbally and through wailing. That is what I found myself doing. Continue reading What does Afzal’s death mean? : Inshah Malik →

Bad ideas, Identities, Law, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

On the Death of Mudasir Kamran: Achuth Ajit and Ria De

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This is a guest post by RIA DE and ACHUTH AJIT: English, the language of a united collective; but also a language that found itself wanting today, as if unable to express the most basic of needs, the most just of demands. Of all days today English was at its banal best.  As if clichés had eaten into it, gnawed the life out of it, bent it into prosaicness. Like “We Want Justice.” As we gather here today, at the English and Foreign Languages University – an institution that is just 5 years old with already four student deaths to its tally – to protest the high-handed and insensitive treatment of Mudasir Kamran, to honor his memory, and most of all to claim on his behalf, and on the behalf of all of us, the students at this University demand and urge “We Want Justice”. The prosaic cliché of this oft-repeated slogan was unable to state on our behalf the bare life of it as well as the spontaneity and the enormity of it. Continue reading On the Death of Mudasir Kamran: Achuth Ajit and Ria De →

Frontiers, Bad ideas, Law, Violence/Conflict, Empire/ Imperialism

Kashmir: Civil society objections to proposed Police Bill

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List of signatories at the end; statement put out on 25 February
Following a preliminary reading of the Draft Jammu and Kashmir Police Bill, 2013, made public on 15 February 2013, the undersigned condemn the attempt of the Government to formally put in place powers and structures that the Jammu and Kashmir Police have for long enjoyed and employed to carry out systematic human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir. Further, specific sections of the Draft Bill that are seriously objectionable are listed. As an immediate step, the Government must extend the time allotted for feedback from people.  Continue reading Kashmir: Civil society objections to proposed Police Bill →
Bad ideas, Centre watch, Debates, Empire/ Imperialism, Frontiers, Identities, Law, Violence/Conflict

The colonial legacy of capital punishment

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G Mohan Gopal writes:

The British and their collaborators had made a similar mistake. They thought that the common people of India would be deterred and cowed down by the violence of the state. A young scholar from Columbia recently shared with me data collected from the National Archives showing that the British were hanging on average three people daily in the 1920s in a desperate bid to frighten Indians into obeying British rule. We know how that ended. The government should know how this will end too. [Frontline]

And Fahad Shah meets Maqbool Butt’s mother:

“Both Maqbool sahib and Guru sahib were innocent and on the right path. India thinks that this freedom movement will stop but it won’t stop. It will continue. There are so many Maqbools in Kashmir” [The Kashmir Walla]

 

Empire/ Imperialism, Excavation, Frontiers, Identities, Violence/Conflict

22 Years after Kunan and Poshpora, Rethinking Kashmir: Abhijit Dutta

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Guest post by ABHIJIT DUTTA; all photographs by the author unless otherwise mentioned

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It looks like any other village in Kashmir.

You go past a wooden bridge, past open fields winter-barren and wet with rain. Past mountains with snow on their chin. Past wistful looking poplars. Past a brook with clear water. Past grumpy apple trees gnarled like a grinch.

Then the road narrows, and homes – of timber and brick – come into view. Some have fences, unpainted wood. Heaps of hay, dung cakes, piles of dried leaves left to smoke. Ditches and dykes choked with snowmelt. Leafless walnut trees and brunette willows. The chinars, wild redheads just months ago, now old and arthritic. There is a government school on the right, a madrassa on the left. A few houses of stone, fewer of concrete, tin roofs over all.

Before you walk any further, the village ends. The next village is Poshpora. Like Kunan before it, it looks like any other village in the valley. The two villages are so close that people no longer call them by their individual names. Everyone knows this two-in-one village as Kunan Poshpora. Continue reading 22 Years after Kunan and Poshpora, Rethinking Kashmir: Abhijit Dutta →

Bad ideas, Excavation, Frontiers, Identities, Mirror Worlds, Violence/Conflict

Footprints on a Timeline: Gayatri Ugra

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Guest post by GAYATRI UGRA; photographs by JAYANT UGRA

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“I travel so that people will lose track of me. Then I write, so they can find me again.”

I read these lines by Pierre Foglia, and I know nothing else about him. I do know more about why I travel: to retrace lost tracks. And why I write: not for people to find me but for me to find my own self. The last journey I made was just that. A long walk back into my past, and from there to the present in Kashmir, a living, growing, tense reality that I had to visit.

Facebook never served a better cause than ours when we planned our trip last June. On the spur of a moment of nostalgia, I posted this message on my page: “A family holiday in Kashmir. Any takers? All we need now is a travel agent and a motivator.” I could not have anticipated the response: so many of us wanted to come, hoped to come. My brother Gopal took up the task of making travel plans, reservations, bookings for accommodation, and ultimately made it happen for the eight of us that finally went. Continue reading Footprints on a Timeline: Gayatri Ugra →

Empire/ Imperialism, Everyday Life, Frontiers, Identities, Violence/Conflict

I love the winter in your eyes: Uzma Falak

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Guest post by UZMA FALAK

Winter of my eyes
took flight
Did you see?
These are not the same eyes
colors of which you would patiently decipher
sitting under the sun
for hours
gray dreams refusing to dissolve
in waters of Lethe. Continue reading I love the winter in your eyes: Uzma Falak →

Centre watch, Frontiers, Bad ideas, Law, Violence/Conflict, Empire/ Imperialism

When the Indian nation’s ‘conscience’ was satisfied: Gazala Peer

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Guest post by GAZALA PEER

CRPF personnel stand guard at the martyrs' graveyard in Srinagar,preventing entry. The graveyard has a new empty grave, that of Afzal Guru. A similar empty grave waits for Maqbool Bhat, also buried in Tihar jail. Photo credit: Mukhtar Khan/Associated Press
CRPF personnel stand guard at the martyrs’ graveyard in Srinagar, preventing entry. The graveyard has a new empty grave, that of Afzal Guru. A similar empty grave waits for Maqbool Bhat, also buried in Tihar jail. Photo credit: Mukhtar Khan/Associated Press

People who mourn under siege are not supposed to write. We cry and beat our chests. Kashmiris have long faced such predicaments, always forced to find alternatives for everything. Anything that is normal and fair is denied to them! Like a fair trial, for instance. I am not sure if everybody knows Mohd. Afzal Guru’s story. I am not sure if I can be fair to him, but whatever I could gather from legal documents, commentaries and articles, is summarised here. Continue reading When the Indian nation’s ‘conscience’ was satisfied: Gazala Peer →

Debates, Everyday Life, Identities, Images, Mirror Worlds, Violence/Conflict

What Afzal Deserves: Chandan Gomes

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Guest post by CHANDAN GOMES

Ever since the news of Afzal Guru’s execution broke out on the 9th, I have witnessed my personal space descend into a state of chaos. I woke up that morning to a number of emails/facebook messages by friends requesting me to join them at Jantar Mantar to protest against Guru’s execution. Many called that particular protest farcical, some even going to the extent of labelling these young men and women as traitors. Battle lines were drawn and a country stood divided. The more I thought about the execution, the more it saddened me. I could see myself and people like me (the ordinary citizens of this great nation) as pawns in a game of ugly power play, waiting to be sacrificed at the altar of ‘opportune moment’. Continue reading What Afzal Deserves: Chandan Gomes →

Bad ideas, Culture, Debates, Government, Language, Violence/Conflict

राष्ट्रवादी न्याय से करुणा की विदाई

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“अगर हम ‘लोकतांत्रिक सरकारों के छिपे इरादों और गैरजवाबदेह खुफिया शक्ति संरचनाओं की जांच करने और उन पर सवाल उठाने से इनकार करते हैं तो हम लोकतंत्र और मानवता, दोनों को ही खो बैठते हैं.” पत्रकार जॉन पिल्जर का यह वाक्य आज हमारे लिए कितना प्रासंगिक हो उठा है! हमें नौ जनवरी को खुफिया तरीके से अफज़ल गुरु को दी गयी फांसी के अभिप्राय को समझना ही होगा. काम कठिन है क्योंकि इसे लाकर न सिर्फ़ प्रायः सभी संसदीय राजनीतिक दल एकमत हैं बल्कि आम तौर पर देश की जनता भी इसे देर से की गई सही कार्रवाई समझती है.

नौ जनवरी के दिन के वृहत्तर आशय छह दिसम्बर जैसी तारीख से कम गंभीर नहीं क्योंकि इस रोज़ भारतीय राज्य ने गांधी और टैगोर की विरासत का हक खो दिया है.अगर अब तक यह साबित नहीं था तो अब हो गया है कि भारत की ‘संसदीय लोकतांत्रिक राजनीति’ का मुहावरा उग्र और कठोर राष्ट्रवाद का है. और राजनीतिक दलों में इस भाषा में महारत हासिल करने की होड़ सी लग गयी है.

Continue reading राष्ट्रवादी न्याय से करुणा की विदाई →

Debates, Empire/ Imperialism, Law, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

The Day Afzal Died: Nirmalangshu Mukherji

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Guest post by NIRMALANGSHU MUKHERJI

There are days in which streaks of hope shine through dark clouds of misery. The 9th of February, 2013, was such a day.

The day broke with the news that the noose of the Indian state had finally seized the throat of Mohammad Afzal Guru after years of careful conspiracy. With ill-concealed admiration, the television screens reported the military swiftness, the secrecy, and the perfection with which a nuclear-powered state with one of the largest armies in the world escorted an unarmed, hapless Kashmiri to the gallows, performed its rituals, and pulled the bolt. As the murder was officially videographed with full legal sanction, the body was kept dangling for thirty minutes before it was pulled down and immediately buried in an ‘unmarked’ grave, protected by layers and layers of impenetrable walls. The case of Afzal Guru was thus brought to a ‘closure’. So hoped the state. Continue reading The Day Afzal Died: Nirmalangshu Mukherji →

Government, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Two Encounters with the Right Wing: Anonymous

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Guest post by an ANONYMOUS student of DU who is afraid, not of the Right Wing, but of the university administration. We can be very proud of our democracy.
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I have never been so scared of being a minority before. Today I saw two Kashmiris (a girl and a boy) being chased by a mob in what was to be a silent protest. I don’t know when and what circumstances will bring me to running from a mob to save myself. No one deserves to live in fear. Not me, not the two Kashmiris, not even a fiend.
Said a friend who witnessed the saffron mob at Jantar Mantar.
Today, no one can tell me that India is democratic, that India is secular. Today no one can tell me that India is free. Today I saw a glimpse, just a glimpse of what Hindutva truly is, and it was terrifying.
I went to Jantar Mantar for a silent protest against the hanging of Afzal Guru and for the abolition of capital punishment. We reached a little late, and by the time I reached, the number of people had reduced considerably. Why? Because the police had rounded up and detained a bus-full of protesters, mostly Kashmiri, and taken them to the police station.
When we got out of the metro station, all I could hear was cries of Bharat Mata ki Jai interspersed with Pakistan Haye Haye.
Bharat Mata ki Jai, because a man has been hanged. Not for his crimes, if they even exist, but for his identity.
Bharat Mata ki Jai, as we murder Indian Muslims, because that is our idea of nationalism. Continue reading Two Encounters with the Right Wing: Anonymous →
Bad ideas, Centre watch, Everyday Life, Metropolis, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Peaceful Protest Against Afzal Guru’s Execution at Jantar Mantar Broken Up by Right Wing Goons and Delhi Police

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A small group of citizens, mainly young people from different universities in Delhi, and people associated with civil rights groups and initiatives, had gathered at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi this afternoon at 1:00 pm to express their protest against the execution by hanging of Afzal Guru at 8:00 am this morning in Tihar Prison.

The protest was dignified and entirely peaceful. It was interrupted suddenly when a large mob gathered and began heckling the protestors. I was present there, and I clearly heard this mob of young men hurl, unprintable abuses at the men and women who were peacefully protesting against the execution of Afzal Guru. Some of them wore saffron scarves that clearly identified them as being the storm troopers of the far right. They repeatedly chanted violent and incendiary slogans which included the following – “shoot them all”, “kill the traitors”. These alternated with patriotic chants. I have never seen a more nakedly bloodthirsty exhibition of the far right wing version of Indian nationalism on the streets of Delhi. The mob made threatening gestures and advanced towards the line of protestors. Continue reading Peaceful Protest Against Afzal Guru’s Execution at Jantar Mantar Broken Up by Right Wing Goons and Delhi Police →

Bad ideas, Frontiers, Genders, Identities, Mirror Worlds

Azaadi (Freedom) for ‘Pragaash’, an All Female Band from Kashmir

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In the last month the streets of Delhi have echoed with a slogan familiar to many in Kashmir – ‘Hum Kya Chahtey ? – Azaadi !’ (‘What do we want ? – Freedom !’). Thousands of young women and men have chanted this slogan in Delhi while protesting against rape and sexual violence, and while doing so, they have also spoken out, with great courage and integrity, and carried explicit banners and signs about the fact that women in Kashmir have had to face rape and sexual assault by the AFSPA protected armed forces (the army, police, irregular counter-insurgents and paramilitary forces) of the Indian state. And no, the young people carrying these signs, and chanting these slogans, that talk about Nilofar and Aasiya Jaan, that name the atrocities and rapes that took place in Shopian and Kunan Poshpora have not been all Kashmiris. Some of them are Kashmiri students studying in Delhi University, JNU and Jamia Millia Islamia. But along with them, several of the young people who have been weaving the reality of Kashmir into the fabric of the protests in Delhi are not from Kashmir. Each time that they have walked with these signs and chanted these slogans – (and I have seen them in every gathering and every demonstration – their numbers are growing – as more young people in Delhi use the protests as sites of learning about the many complex realities of power and oppression) – they risk being branded as ‘traitors’ by the mainstream of Indian nationalist opinion, which can never question the Indian state’s conduct in Kashmir. They have tempered their sense of justice and deepened it with the substance of solidarity. Continue reading Azaadi (Freedom) for ‘Pragaash’, an All Female Band from Kashmir →

Genders, Identities, Mirror Worlds, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

A petition demanding the ‘Grand Mufti’ of Kashmir to step down

This petition has been put out by OMAR BASHIR

This is in context with your recent fatwa against the girl band Pragaash. This is less a fatwa and more a direct threat to silence young girls who have chosen for themselves a career path untrodden by women of Kashmir because of your misogynist approach. Your nefarious and illogical fatwas have caused more harm than they have done any good.

Mr Grand Mufti you have forgotten that Kashmir has a long tradition of Kashmiriyat and Kashmiriyat is an expression of solidarity and resilience regardless of religious differences. It embodies an ethos of harmony and a determination of survival of the people and their heritage. Women in music industry is nothing new in Kashmir, we have stalwarts like Raj Begum, Shameema Azad, Kailash Mehra and Mehmeet Syed singing for the past so many years. You must be aware that Raj Begum has been awarded the Padma Shri award in 2002. Continue reading A petition demanding the ‘Grand Mufti’ of Kashmir to step down →

Debates, Empire/ Imperialism, Frontiers, Identities, Movements, Violence/Conflict

Our memories come in the way of our histories: Gowhar Fazili

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Guest post by GOWHAR FAZILI

Our Moon Has Blood Clots by Rahul Pandita; Pages: 258; Vintage Books, Random House, India; Price: Rs 499

Rahul Pandita’s book Our Moon Has Blood Clots must be looked at both as a personal account of suffering as well as a political project that implicitly and explicitly makes use of that suffering towards a particular end. The undertaking is a legitimate one on both counts.  What the book manages to achieve on each, warrants a fair and dispassionate assessment.

His narration of events experienced by the Pandits is a welcome exposition of subjectivity around a range of traumatic events, humiliations, killings and betrayals undergone prior to and after the outbreak of mass political rebellion in Kashmir in 1989. The events thus narrated, especially the account of the personal experiences of trauma do make one strongly identify with the suffering of the families involved and agree with the wide swathes of subjective anger and hurt shared by the community.  The chilling accounts of individual and mass killings and the circumstances that made them possible, call for collective self-reflection, remorse and atonement. This account also calls for serious reflection on the fragility of human associations and trust in exceptional circumstances that we normally take for granted.

The book as well as the promotional interviews around the book push the claim that not only certain militants but also many ordinary people, including those personally known to the victims, were responsible for the exodus through their acts of omission and commission.  This claim is substantiated through a range of indictments based on personal encounters with individuals, shared nuggets of information, as well as the interpretation of the larger political symbolism and slogans which were seen as a deliberate attempt to intimidate Pandits, and Pandits alone.  While it is difficult to deny that a number of individuals took advantage of those anarchic times to gratify personal hate and lust for loot, it makes for an overstatement to underplay the equally frequent narrative of mutual support between individuals that one gets to hear during conversations between the members of the two communities privately. Such underplay does violence to those aspects of shared memory.  Continue reading Our memories come in the way of our histories: Gowhar Fazili →