For the past 100 days, Kashmir has been burning almost uncontrollably. Most tragically, 107 Kashmiri civilians of all ages have lost their lives and several hundred security personnel have been seriously wounded as the valley has remained engulfed in a fog of violence these past few months. All statements coming out of Kashmir seem like a massive smoke and mirrors charade. It’s not clear where the authenticity lies anymore. The separatist motives seem dubious, many Kashmiri youth angry and a few misguided, the Kashmiri political leadership self-serving and hapless at the same time, and New Delhi somewhat insincere and equally clueless, as it characteristically buys time to find a favourable way out of the impasse. The only way to make sense of life and intransient sentiment in Kashmir is to flashback to a period of relative calm for everything takes on a perverse shade with violence. It is in its very nature.
In the winter of 2008, I was on a freelance reporting assignment in Kashmir during the state elections. It was the first time I was in the valley. Predictably, it was love at first sight. As I stood at a point in Baramullah district, not too far from the Line of Control, I was surrounded by a 360-degree view of snow-capped, mist-settled Himalayan ranges and lush green terraces below. In that moment, it really did feel like heaven on earth.
When I drove through Srinagar, the other striking sight was the substantial number of security forces, standing out all the more in the empty, deserted streets. There was an “unofficial” curfew because an official curfew cannot be announced during elections. Until then, I had only heard and read about Kashmir being “the highest militarised zone in the world.” Now, I was witness to it. The mere presence of many thousands of security troops concentrated in an area is menacing. Inevitably, it will and has led to aggression and transgression in much the same way any person who dons a uniform or carries arms automatically creates an asymmetry of power and assumes an advantage over the civilian population, whether it is an Indian army officer or a Kashmiri militant or over the tribal population, whether it is a CRPF jawan or a Naxalite.
As I drove past men in green fatigues on polling day in Srinagar and had to furnish my own credentials to them more than once, I tried to envision what it would be like to have security troops watching over me and my family outside my house, at every road corner in Delhi; to have to show my identification card at every other traffic light; to be glared at in my own hometown by men in uniform; to hear my heart beat rise every time I heard a knock on my door. What would it be like to wait till curfew lifted to buy groceries or medicines, to nervously pack kids off to school or whisk them away from a park, to think several times before meeting friends at a market to share life and laughs and to live in a city where darkness and pin drop silence creep in soon after the last azaan sounds at sunset?
Only after going inside the homes of ordinary Kashmiris and stepping into their shoes for some time does it become clear that the choices ordinary Kashmiris face are far more extreme; the questions they ask themselves far more profound and unimaginable than those most ordinary Indians might ask themselves on a daily basis. Like thousands of parents wondering how to lower their own children into graves and orphans wondering why they are in a cold, wet place amongst strangers instead of at home in their parents' warm embrace, like hundreds of raped and molested Kashmiri women silently wondering if they’ll ever win their dignity back and elsewhere widowed women wondering how they will bring up their children alone.
And yet, everyday, the ordinary Kashmiri endures. Even in the midst of a severely altered and oppressive way of life thrust upon them, they try to salvage little tiny bits of life as it ought to be lived. I saw kids catching a mini-Cricket game in-between a three-feet narrow house lane. I was welcomed into a household full of smiles and laughter even though the main breadwinner had gone missing 20 years ago. I had tea with a former militant who reverted to non-violence to earn a normal living and secure the future of his children. I met a half-widow [a woman whose husband is missing but not known to be dead] who works day and night to feed her children, even as she constantly looks over her shoulder all too aware of the predatory danger her single status can invite. I met an eager Kashmiri tourist guide trying to earn a livelihood after a slump season with amusing, if cheesy, sales lines like, “Madam, if Kashmir is India’s crown, Gulmarg is Kashmir’s crown and you are Gulmarg’s crown.”
For the thousands of Indian security forces stationed in Kashmir, life is no bed of roses either. I visited the government-run city police hospital in Srinagar while profiling a Kashmiri mortician, Mohammad Maqbool Bhat, who claimed he had conducted several thousand post-mortems including of Kashmiri civilians, militants and Indian security personnel. The morning I visited, he was attending to two BSF soldiers, one who had died of a heart attack and the other who overdosed on alcohol. Outside, a fleet of soldiers were preparing for a respectful send off. During a quick side conversation with a BSF soldier, I asked what were the challenges they faced. In a low tone and on condition of anonymity, he said, "Madam, the suicide rate is very high here among soldiers. We don't get leave to meet our families all year around.” I once asked a former Indian Army officer what he thought Indian soldiers were fighting for in Kashmir? He replied, "By the end, it's not about Kashmir or India and Pakistan. It becomes about fighting for each other, to save as many of your own boys and friends."
In every seemingly "intractable" conflict, windows of opportunity organically present themselves, which ought to be seized; when a little creativity, a good dose of statesmanship and a lot of will can help usher in meaningful change and inch an entire people closer to peace and dignity, the positive ripples of which can be felt throughout humanity. In Kashmir, 2008 was such a window.
Non-violence was the pre-condition the Indian government has repeatedly laid down for any genuine attempt at resolution. By 2008, Kashmir had slowly come back full circle to its pre-1989, non-violent days after suffering the worst blowback effects of a violent, militant-driven insurgency. As Muzamil Jaleel, a veteran Kashmiri journalist put it, “We have reduced the daily count of dead in Kashmir from 20 to one or two. That itself is a big achievement.”
The Indian government should have welcomed this development. Yet, no attempt for resolution came from New Delhi. Then, in the summer of 2008, Kashmiris gave the Indian government an unprecedented reminder of unfinished business when lakhs of them marched non-violently in Srinagar’s streets, shouting slogans for Azadi. New Delhi, left clueless then, however, could not have bargained for a better way out than what the Kashmiri people offered up themselves, just a few months later.
In December 2008, Kashmir witnessed a 61 percent turnout in its state elections, higher even than India’s own national average in the 2009 general elections. Although the voter turnout was extremely low in the same areas that are now seeing protests, elsewhere nevertheless, Kashmiris did come out to vote in large numbers defying curfew like conditions and ignoring election boycott calls from separatist leaders. The fundamental message that went out was clear – if New Delhi has failed the Kashmiri people, so have the Kashmiri political and separatist leadership. Kashmiri separatist leader, Sajjad Gani Lone, candidly admitted, “There’s a message in it for us and for the Indian government. For us, it is that the Kashmiri people want to separate their daily, unmet needs of water, electricity and food from the larger question of Azadi. And for the Indian government, the message in the summer was that the grievances of the Kashmiri people are distinct from their aspirations.”
Post-election, even Kashmiri separatist leaders could not cry foul about an election that was widely viewed as fair, at least in that it was devoid of rigging. The National Conference-led government, voted in legitimately this time unlike 1987, was in good favour with New Delhi. The militants stayed away, as former JKLF leader, Yasin Malik pointed out, and so too did Pakistan. “They can also create trouble but have not,” he said, during an interview in Srinagar, a day after being released from arrest under the Public Safety Act.
The stage was perfectly set for the Indian government to initiate a sequenced but genuine dialogue and attempt at resolution in Kashmir. The high voter-turnout should have been the perfect, face-saving moment for the Indian government following a summer of unrest. Again, no attempt came from New Delhi. Leaders such as Lone and Malik cautioned a jubilant New Delhi not to consider the election turnout a mandate for India. Jingoistic sections of the Indian media did anyway and seemingly, so too did New Delhi, showing no signs of talking.
Two years later, Kashmir is back on the boil and Kashmiris back out on the streets, proving their aspirations might take any shade and even seem misleadingly dormant at times, but are in fact always alive, fuelled to great effect by state brutality. And just like people caught in conflict across the globe often display duality, so did the Kashmiri people back in 2008, not because the strong do what they must but because the weak (read oppressed) do what they can.
The Kashmiri separatist leadership’s endemic fractiousness and own lack of creativity hasn’t inspired confidence in the ordinary Kashmiri either. A former militant's wife was seething with anger. “Leaders give us orders from their homes,” she said. “But whose children die? Not their children. Their children are on high jobs, whether they deserve it or not. The people who die are the children of the poor.”
The 2008 organic window of opportunity in Kashmir has sadly been lost, leaving the onus now on the Indian government to create a window, which is far more difficult under the current environment. But status quo is not only understandably unacceptable to the Kashmiris but equally dangerous for everyone. As Muzamil Jaleel put it in 2008, “I’m afraid of the gun returning to Kashmir because it will be much bloodier than before,” he said. “Also, Al Qaeda is philosophically, ideologically and psychologically furthest from Kashmir. But geographically, it is the closest to us. Kashmiris, even the militants, have consciously kept them out but I wonder for how long.”
The initiative shown by the all party delegation to visit the separatist leaders in their homes is the kind of initiative that should have come months back. One can only hope that it was not just political posturing and will mark the beginning of a meaningful dialogue and change. In the meantime, there must be a way in Kashmiriyat to show the ordinary Kashmiri how to feel peace inside even when violence surrounds you, to quieten the mind when the noise of bullets, tanks and yes, even stones permeate everything and to forgive even if you can never forget.
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If there is a lesson to be learned for the Kashmiri people from 2008, it is that a mass, non-violent movement cannot be put down for eternity. It unsettles governments even more because there is no tactical response to it, unlike a violent movement, which can be quelled with brute force. Indians know this more than anyone else from their own past and, indeed, present. The greatest gains for India’s impoverished masses have been won by those committed to peace, not violence. Stone-pelting youth running amok and the kind of arson and violence seen on Eid day only helps to take away from the legitimacy of the protests in the eyes of society at large and undermines the very real pain, past and present, of the Kashmiri people. Only non-violence can lend clarity and show Kashmiris the way into a less painful future. It is in its very nature.
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Divya Gupta is a freelance journalist based in Delhi and can be contacted at divyagupta2 AT gmail DOT com
