Kashmir Here, Kashmir There

Nobody knew where the place was. The best answer I got was at a littleconvenience store, where I bought a paper and asked my question. The man lookedpuzzled, then pointed vaguely across the road. "Think it's downthere," he said, "but I'm not sure. Take that street and ask." SoI did. As I walked, odd stares pursued me from behind fences, behind lacycurtains. I thoroughly baffled two schoolgirls with my question. Somewhere alongthe way, a muscular young man strode up and asked in that lilting brogue,"Where's you for, then?"  I told him. "Just cruisin' the`hood, eh?" he observed, and walked off.

I still had no idea.

My quest really started some days earlier, when I read these lines in a book:

[H]eavy military searches in the Kashmir area in February provoked a bitterreaction from local women. The escalated into serious rioting.

Sort of routine, maybe? Well, yes, if you're an Indian. I might have readthese lines in any of hundreds of reports over the last decade or so, and thesad thing is that I wouldn't have thought twice about it. Where I did not expectto read it was in this book: a history of the troubles - of course I should sayTroubles, must give the proper noun it has become the respect it deserves - inNorthern Ireland. Over the years, some serious troubles of the Troubles inBelfast have been in the "Kashmir area" of the city, somewhere in thealmost entirely Catholic quarter of Falls Road.

Now there's irony, I thought. I began reading about the Irish Troublesbecause it seemed to me there were parallels there, links, to our own Kashmir. Iwas in search of those weighty, pregnant parallels: religious hatreds, thepartition - or Partition, that other proper noun - of countries, the idea ofself-determination, the use of terrorism. Who would have thought that whilelooking for those esoteric sociological concepts, a mere name would stop meshort? Who would have thought that the parallels begin with the word"Kashmir" itself?

And why that involuntary shudder as I read the word? Probably because it wassomething as trivial as a name, and that very triviality carried a lesson: muchas we like to believe our particular problems are unique, they are not. Soperhaps there are more lessons to be learned.

Nothing remarkable about those lines that describe a 1971 Belfast episode,really, not even the mildly curious idea that there are Indian names to be foundin the city. After all, there are also roads there by name Cawnpore and Bombay,also reasons for mild curiosity. But "Kashmir" hit the really loudnote. For the two sentences might have been written about our Kashmir, and theywould be just as true. And something is indefinably unsettling there: that twoKashmirs have seen such similar misery; that the language used to describemisery is so easily interchangeable.

In broad brush strokes, the Troubles have roots in the religious divide:Protestant vs Catholic. Britain is largely Protestant; the Republic of Irelandis largely Catholic; Northern Ireland is mix of the two, though Catholics are ina definite minority. With some substituted words, much the same can be saidabout where we live: India is largely Hindu; Pakistan largely Muslim; Kashmir isa mix of the two, though Hindus have always been a definite minority. As inIreland, the tension in our Kashmir has its roots in religion, in the ancienthostility between Hindu and Muslim.

Even the ways all this came about run parallel. In the 1920s, Ireland had aBoundary Committee that drew the border between North and South. In its cynicalarbitrariness, it had echoes in Radcliffe's similar efforts with a pen in thesubcontinent before 1947. The calculation was purely numerical: from thislargely Catholic island, how do you carve out a viable country that's stilldominated by Protestants loyal to the Crown? Nine countries was a reasonablechunk, but that would have given the new state a nearly even balance betweenProtestants and Catholics. Goodbye, domination. Take just the Protestant areas?That would be just three countries small, with non-countiguous pockets as well.Goodbye, viability.

Thus the six-country compromise: generally Protestant areas in the northeast,plus Catholic areas reaching out to Derry to the west and Fermanagh to thesouth. Two-thirds Protestant, enough to leave them with the memory of theCrown-bolstered domination they had over the entire island for centuries andknew they would lose in independent Ireland. Large enough to sustain statehood.

That was Ireland's own Partition in 1921. How similar a process must we haveseen a quarter-century later? There was the same fear of non-contiguous regions:a fear that the bloody birth of Bangladesh proved right in 1971. There was theproblem of ensuring Muslim dominance in Pakistan, thus allowing some the easyassumption that Hindus - by default, if not officially - must dominate in India.There was the unthinking way that the line cut through villages, even houses.

And in our part of the world, there was no way to draw that line so thatpeople would not need to cross it as the two countries were born. The migrationthat followed spiralled into the worst bloodshed the subcontinent ever saw.There is no need to remind any Indian of the place that word"Partition" has in our history and imagination, the hatreds it set inmotion and yet in stone. Figuratively but also literally, its wounds haunt us tothis day. Just as they do in Ireland.

Most of these thoughts hummed in my mind as I arrived in Belfast to searchfor Kashmir. From the airport into the centre of town and to my B&B, itseems much like any other European city. The same shops, the same restaurants,the same relative - for a visitor from India - sense of order. Who would guesswhat lay beneath that surface? And yet I knew from my reading about the Troublesthat a monster of sorts lurked here. I wanted to glimpse it, there below thesurface. I wanted to explore the things here that would remind me of thesituation of my own country.

Shankill Road - or just "the Shankill" - is the Protestant area("one hundred per cent Protestant," said Norman, my taxi-driver, withmore than a tinge of pride), and nothing comes subtle here. British flags hangeverywhere. The edges of pavements are Union Jack red, white and blue. So aremajor traffic signs and lamp-posts. But obvious and eye-catching as these are,they are not the dominant sights in the `hood. That distinction goes to the wallmurals. And the wall murals speak most directly of all that has happened here.

For it is no normal thing, certainly no work of art, when an entire side of abuilding is painted with a man in a black mask, holding a long and deadly rifle.Sometimes two men. These re images that come to mind when you hear the word"terrorist." Yet here they are, ten times larger than life, up onthese walls and in your face, examples to a generation.

Someone likes terrorists, always. In these post-WTC days, a useful thing toremember.

In this corner, a mural dedicated to Billy "King Rat" Wright,"Loyalist Martyr, 1960-1997." Complete with wreathed portrait of theman, tatooed, goateed and positively benign. The Rat was "Martyred"while in jail, shot to death by Catholic prisoners who managed to smuggle in agun. From the looks of this memorial to him, the Rat was a huge hero to theShankill.
But why jail? Writing in the Guardian  in December 2000, RosieCowan noted:

Billy Wright was shot dead by the Irish National Liberation Army in [jail]on December 27, 1997, where he was serving an eight-year sentence forthreatening to kill a woman. Security sources claim that Wright, 37, once thelocal Ulster Volunteer Force leader and later boss of the breakaway LoyalistVolunteer faction, was behind up to 20 brutal murders, although he was neverconvicted of any.

"He put the fear of God into people," said one man. "Thereis no doubt that as a UVF leader he was blooded in violence but it is difficultto separate the myth from the reality. A King Rat lookalike only had to bespotted somewhere for [Catholics] to go to ground for three weeks."

People also remember the mysterious killing of a Protestant woman married toa Catholic, and the blood-spattered murder of three Catholics in a shop inLurgan. King Rat was rumoured to have choreographed those as well.

What manner of martyr, of hero, was this? What manner of man?

And in posing those questions from his mural, King Rat neatly mirrors thedilemma of a thousand civil wars, freedom struggles, insurgencies, all over theworld; not least our own battle for Independence, or the birth of Bangladesh, orthe daily toll in Kashmir. Your terrorist, my freedom fighter. Your martyr, myblood-spattering brute. Which is it?

There in the Shankill, I wondered: how many King Rats in Kashmir, whetherthis Kashmir or that other one? Yes, who are the young men that we Indians thinkare deluded and brain-washed and fed on terrorism, but who believe they aresoldiers of Islam, fighting for the freedom of Kashmir? Is my terrorist alwaysgoing to be your hero?

I found an answer of sorts only a few hundred years from king Rat's mural. Inan utterly different world from the Shankill, I found a second memorial to him.Just a scrawled comment on a wall: "King Rat gets early parole".

Which, I suppose, he did. If you're looking from Falls Road.

Falls Road is Catholic ("Wouldn't even dream of it", snapped Normanwhen I asked him to come with me to a bar here of an evening, and I knew mycompany wasn't the issue), and nothing comes subtle here either. Naturally,these murals remember Catholic, mainly IRA, heroes. In 2001, several commemoratethe 20 years since the deaths of the hunger-strikers. That's Bobby Sands andcolleagues, who protested so famously and fatally in jail in mid-1981. Iremember Sands, and also remember being awed in that my 21st year by hisdedication and heroism. What manner of man could stage a protest like his,purely on a matter of principle? Certainly none had, at least since our own M.K.Gandhi.

And yet, something had irritatingly slipped my mind in the 20 years. What wasthat principle? For what great cause did these men lay down their lives, sogreat that I could not immediately recall it as I looked up at them on theirmurals? It did come back to me eventually. They were demanding to be treated notas criminals, but as political prisoners.

Oh yes, that matter of principle. Right. And seen through the long lens ofhistory, did it really matter? No doubt their demand stood proxy for the IRA'smore profound struggles, but still: did it really matter? Now? Then? What drovethese young men to die? What glory was achieved? What glory is celebrated byputting them up on memorials, 20 years on. After all, they were subject to thesame equation that applied to the Rat, the one whose weary truth men of theirkind all over the world must face up to. Certainly Bobby Sands is a hero onFalls Road, but this is how Maggie Thatcher described him when he died;

Mr Sands was a convicted criminal. He chose to take his own life. It was achoice his organisation did not allow to many of its victims.

Your hero, my criminal. All over again, which is it? Whether the Shankill orFalls Road or Kashmir, which is it? Are we condemned to live forever on one oranother side of fences, our perspectives coloured by our sides and by nothingelse? Is Kashmir condemned to eternal bloodshed?

But if so many Troubling questions ask themselves in Belfast, there's alsoblack wit. A gate leads off Falls Road to the Shankill. Closed when I passed,this explanation was spray-painted on: "Due to the spread of foot-and-mouthdisease by Protestants, this gate will remain closed till further notice."

In a place surcharged with distrust, even a cattle disease can be blamed onthose stinking others.

How do you work beyond all this to hammer out some kind of peace, even a fragile one? Somehow, they have done so here. Despite the occasional flare-ups,despite the wells of distrust, it has held for five years plus. "Theviolence of the Troubles is largely gone", David McKitterick of the Independenttold me as we drove home from a meeting. The hate simmers, but both sides areslowly learning that common cause takes them to new places. Northern Ireland isnow the most dynamic economy in the UK.

So for an Indian, this Indian, there were parallels and perspectives inplenty to come to grips with in the Shankill and Falls Road, much to take homeand think about.

And the lesson to be learned, in Ireland as in India, is in the murderous andhate-filled cocktail that comes of mixing religion with questions aboutnationhood and patriotism. And in how convoluted, even perverse, a nationalismit can breed. Protestants assert an identity distinct from the rest of(Catholic) Ireland, founded on their hatred for Catholic ways, and that is thebasis of their aspirations to nationhood. That nationhood is expressed byjoining the United Kingdom. So if they are not Irish, they are British. But justto retain that distinct character, they must maintain their distance fromEngland. Yet if they are not English, what are they? Irish?

Tightrope nationalism, you might say. Do we walk it on our subcontinent? ArePakistanis Pakistani just by not being Indian? What makes Indians Indian? Arethese questions to ask ourselves as the years pass, as the hostility grows, asthe piles of dead mount of both sides? As Kashmir bleeds?

I never found Kashmir, which later struck me as a sort of metaphor all byitself. But I did stop to read the graffiti on the wall that runs long andimposing between the Shankill and Falls Road. "How can we have peace",asked one scrawled note, "when there's reason for a wall?"

Any answers? I think Kashmir longs for some.

(A computer scientist by training, Dilip D'Souza now writes for his supper in Bombay. His first book, "Branded by Law" was published last year by Penguin, and his second, on the Narmada dam projects, will be out later this year. He has won several awards for his writing, including last year's Outlook/Picador shortlist.)