Sanjay Subrahmanyam once wrote about Ashis Nandy as being 'dazzling clever as he is tiresomely repetitive and profoundly ill-informed… Armed with blissful innocence, he can then brilliantly develop paradox after paradox.' Subrahmanyam ended his piece with calling Nandy as 'our only true colonial thinker'. In a different time and in an absolutely different context, Nandy has again shown his ignorance and his 'colonial mentality' by picking up his pen to think and write about the current assertion of Kashmiris for Azaadi. His ideas and assertions I will highlight below are deeply flawed as they were when he discussed 'Secularism' in Indian context.
Nandy, in his recent article on Kashmir in Outlook starts his analysis by comparing current Kashmir situation, with that of Palestine. In both cases he asserts teenagers pelt stones and state and its machinery is busy dubbing these protestors as 'terrorists'. So far so good. Nothing objectionable here. Later he goes on to assert that Kashmiri elite which doesn't support 'terrorism' is saddened by the 'cruelty and the surplus violence that our politicians and army have produced.'
Oxford dictionary defines 'surplus' as 'an amount of something left over when requirements have been met; an excess of production or supply'. That way 'surplus violence' will mean something more than required or violence which is 'in excess'. So is this great Indian scholar saying that a certain amount of 'violence' is necessary and its problematic only when it's in 'excess' or when the requirement of the Indian nation-state is met i.e. when a Kashmiri is finally maimed, raped, repressed to such an extent that he/she decides to join India?
After justifying 'just violence' of the state, Nandy creates another dichotomy of militants on one sides and Army-police on another side. For him Kashmiri community is caught in between the two warring factions. What a tribute to the 'agency of subalterns'! Reminds me of that old imperial school of thought which systematically denied 'agency' to the 'colonial subjects', and always portrayed them as voiceless, immobile subjects manipulated by the bourgeois nationalist leadership.
To then further stretch argument of Sanjay Subrahmanyam the question becomes- Is Kashmir an Indian colony and Ashis Nandy the 'imperial ideologue' defending the Indian empire by rendering Kashmiri assertion of Azaadi as manipulation of few indigenous elites. If it is so, Nandy should not feel alone, there are many from the great Indian elite circus from Tavleen Singh to Swapan Dasgupta doing the same.
Nandy also is at pains for what Indian army is doing in Kashmir. Don't get me wrong, he isn't worried much about the death toll in Kashmir, or about those who are blinded forever by the pellet injurious. (He makes a fleeting reference to the pellet bullets that have blinded more than fifty teenagers in Kashmir). Rather his heart bleeds for the 'credibility and image of Indian army' and it irks him so much that Indian army is finally 'apologetic'. He is sincerely worried about all this and very innocently argues, 'we shall soon find out that we have paid a heavy price, internationally and in India itself, by trying to emulate Israel.