...woh khaak e arjumand

The terror channel

2011-12-31T21:36:00.000+05:30

The Indian state has used sheer deceit and force in order to stamp and demonise political dissent, wherever it arose. Today, behind the cacophony of its fabulous “growth” story, it stands on the path of brutalizing the disempowered and the disadvantaged through naked aggression. That such brutalization has snuffed out of them even the vestiges of belonging towards a “nation” which the state seeks to protect is a matter silently left outside rampant debate. The Indian media, too, for its greed of profits, not to talk about its political and ideological malposition, has played no small role in perpetuating this vicious state of affairs. The manner in which it silently ignored the Supreme Court verdict (on Salwa Judum) and the state’s response to it showed that even in the matter of terrorism, the media – very carefully – will not just not challenge the position of the establishment, but effectively enforce it.

By Nawaz Gul Qanungo

An edited version appeared in the Fountain Ink magazine

November 2011

“Over the last couple of years we have taken profoundsteps. We have improved in leaps and bounds,” said Indian National Congressgeneral secretary Rahul Gandhi in Bhubaneswar,a day after serial blasts rocked Mumbai, earlier this year. “But terrorism isimpossible to stop all the time.” Indeed, humans can’t get lucky all the time.

It was July 13. Mumbai’s streets and marketplaces were busyas usual. But in a span of 10 minutes, around 7 in the evening, the city was sentinto familiar horror. Three bomb blasts were triggered between 6.55 pm and 7.05pm. It left twenty-one dead and scores injured.

The next day, the Indian prime minister arrived in Mumbaito “express solidarity with the serial blasts-hit Mumbaikars” as a major daily newspaperput it: “[The perpetrators] must be brought to justice quickly and be subjectto the rule of law that they have sought to subvert,” said Manmohan Singh. “Weowe this to the grieving families.” Grieving families, it seems, are to betaken for granted as if what struck them were an unavoidable natural calamity.

The question one would ideally ask is just what bringsabout a situation where human beings turn inhuman and resort to such horrific violenceand bloodshed. However, the so called experts in India – whether in the government, theopposition, intelligence, the so called civil society or the media – have traditionallybusied themselves in focusing public perception on a deceptively similar, butactually different, question: What can prevent the occurrence of such events? Without exception, the interventionthat such experts propose is logistical which, in turn, is entirely based onsecurity and intelligence.

Expectedly, things were not too different less than two monthslater. It was a Wednesday afternoon, and a pensive Palaniappan Chidambaram beganto speak in Lok Sabha: “It is with deep sorrow and regret that I inform thehouse of a bomb blast that took place this morning in New Delhi.” It was September 7. “At about10.14 am, a high-intensity blast occurred [outside] the Delhi High Court…,”Chidambaram went on to describe the terror strike that had hit New Delhi justhours before in which, eventually, at least a dozen were killed and more than70 injured. He continued: “Intelligence agencies constantly share intelligenceinputs with Delhi Police. Intelligence pertaining to threats emanating fromcertain groups was shared with Delhi Police in July 2011… Despite the capacitythat has been built [to strengthen Delhi Police] and despite the policeremaining on high alert, the tragic incident took place today.”

The objective of the terrorist groups, said Chidambaram,is to strike fear and destabilise the country. “We are clear in our mind thatthere is no cause that will justify terrorist attacks,” he added. Elsewhere,his prime minister, Manmohan Singh, stated that terrorists were takingadvantage of the “security loopholes that needed to be plugged”.

As soon as Chidambaram spelt out “intelligence inputs givento Delhi Police” and Manmohan Singh talked about “security loopholes”, themedia began to conduct a postmortem of these statements: Was the intelligenceinput given to Delhi Police “actionable”? Appearing soon on a leading Indiantelevision news channel, Delhi’sLieutenant Governor Tejinder Khanna questioned Chidambaram’s statement bysaying that it wasn’t. “The letter from the home ministry was not actionableintelligence,” Khanna said. And other security “experts” now started explaininghow and why intelligence could be either actionableor non-actionable. Others, meanwhile,had gone paranoid over whether Pakistanwas being let “off the hook”. Where are the tough measures, asked televisionnews anchor Arnab Goswami. And he thundered: “Who is responsible tonight?”

MUMBAIATTACKS AND THE MEDIA DEBATE

To its credit, this time, in case of the Mumbai attacks, theIndian government didn’t deliver any instant verdicts about who had carried outthe attacks. However, as investigations showed, the usual suspects were onparade: Muslims, Pakistan,Azamgarh, Students Islamic Movement of India, and of course the IndianMujahideen. And most of the media outlets, whether electronic or print, whippedup frenzy about the “suspects” as if the allegation had already been proven.

On thetelevision news channel NDTV, anchor Nidhi Razdan posed a question to Congressleader Mani Shankar Aiyar: “[There are no] shrill reactions… But do you admitthat this was a serious intelligence lapse?”

Taking a dig at the Opposition BJP leader LK Advani, Aiyarreplied: “…We live in a volatile region. And we live in a very volatilecountry. I wouldn’t want to jump to conclusions which suit my politicalpurposes as it would seem Mr Advani has done. The fact is there were terrorattacks when the [BJP-led coalition] was in power. Should we be getting up andsaying that the attack on Parliament was not an intelligence failure but apolicy failure? [Advani] talks about the Indian Mujahideen. How does he know?He talks about there is a definite Pakistan hand. How do we know? Ifwe take it seriously, we will have to move away from partisan politics and dealwith the kind of technical issuesthat were raised by my friend Praveen Swami a few minutes ago…” (Emphasisadded.)

However, for someone like Chandan Mitra, the BJP MP and seniorjournalist, and who was also on the panel, reality wasn’t so hazy. He was askedwhether it was appropriate for LK Advani to bring up Pakistan and the Indian Mujahideen.There was nothing to suggest that this had come from across the border, he wastold.

Mitra argued vehemently, “Of course it is appropriatebecause it is a result of the Pakistani conspiracy to destabilize India… itsstrategy of a thousand cuts. And in this case, it is very clear that there wasa Pakistani imprint.” How can you say that, the anchor asked. In a splitsecond,Mitra replied: “Because… who would be training them? Who would be funding them?Who would be supplying equipment to them? You have home grown [terror] but thereis an ideology of terror export from Pakistan (Sic, throughout). Don’twe know it all? There is nothing to get upset about Mr Advani’s statement thatthere is a very strong Pakistani hand behind it. They may not have carried itout. After Kasab [in the Mumbai attacks of November 26, 2008] got caught, Ithink Pakistanis have got a little more careful about sending their people tocarry out attacks in India.”

It was the television news channel NewsX which, afterreporting the unprecedented raids across the country targeted at nabbing IndianMujahideen “operatives”, raised these points: “The question is whether thesheer number of raids and searches show that the investigators are really stillin the dark. And why are the police focusing on jailed Indian Mujahideenoperatives alone? Also, if the leads are specific, as the investigators claim,why haven’t they really thrown up anything significant?”

Sadly, such scrutiny was a complete exception for most ofthe media. And Mitra’s response showed just why, despite the government stand, themedia were hell bent upon blaming Pakistan and the Indian Mujahideen.The raids across

India

that were aimed at the Indian Mujahideen only added fuel to fire.

TECHNICALISSUES

“There were no intelligence inputs to the Central or theState agencies about any imminent attack in Mumbai. This does not mean afailure of intelligence.” It was the Indian home minister PalaniappanChidambaram talking to the press in Mumbai, a day after the blasts. Theelectronic media instantly took the statement for postmortem. Later in the day,anchor Nidhi Razdan posed the question to “terrorism expert” Praveen Swami, theassociate editor of The Hindu: “Thehome minister today said that there was no specific intelligence input on thisbut he says that it’s not an intelligence failure… Is it that… we just have to livewith this?”

“There are ways of stopping them,” replied Swami. “Thetruth is that police reforms that were put in place after the [November 26,] 2008[Mumbai attacks] – the drama [of] all the expensive weapons being bought, thesewonderful computers being bought, people prancing around in nice uniforms… [The]truth is that none of the infrastructure reforms that were desperately neededhave really taken place. Two years after 26/11, we still do not have a centreof police excellence in this country. We don’t have a place that can producetrainers for academies that are cropping up. Police remain chronicallyoverworked. If you go to the Delhi Metro, you will see that all these people wehave hired, not one of them is holding his weapon correctly. … We need to getto grips with this…”

K C Singh, again a counter-terrorism expert, who was onthe panel, said: “It is oxymoronic to say that this isn’t an intelligencefailure. If you don’t have intelligence, then obviously it is an intelligencefailure. If you have the intelligence but still not able to stop it then thatwould be an operational failure.”

And thus, such were the “technical issues” that ManiShankar Aiyar was advocating and wanted everyone to do deal with: To get the desperately-neededinfrastructure reforms underway; to set up police academies of excellence andto produce trainers to run them; to recruit more people in the police so theirburden is lessened; to call an intelligence failure an intelligence failure,and to call an operational failure an operational failure, and to know thedifference between the two; to not have to face the embarrassment of beingunable to find past perpetrators of terror; and, of course, to train thesecurity personnel at Delhi Metro for how to hold their weapons correctly.

Elsewhere, other experts discussed more such technicalissues:

“MrChidambaram is perceived as being an extremely efficient, dynamic home minister…All of those plans that came up NCTC, there’s going to be a MAC centre, there’sgoing to be a federal investigative agency there’s going to be blah, blah, blah…What’s happened to all of those? Are they actually operational or are theynot?”

“Thefile is pending with the prime minister.” (An Opposition leader in reply to theabove question.)

“Plans of setting up or upgrade ofthe following are stuck for one reason or another: National Counter TerrorismCenter (NCTC), Coastal Security (CS), Multi Agency Center (MAC), Anti-TerroristSquad (ATS), Central intelligence, State intelligence, operation of a SpecialForce, installation of CCTV cameras, improving security of major cities, beatconstable.”

“Untilyou don’t have means to gather intelligence, there is no point in havingsystems that will process intelligence.”

“…we aretalking at the meta-institutional levels… of grand bodies like the FBI… it’s ahideous idea. Because counter terrorism capabilities are required where theyare not being created: on the ground. Five years ago in September 2006, theprime minister said we must bring the beat-constable back into the vortex ofcounter-terrorism. Where is that? Where are the capacity transformations ofyour beat-constable? Where is the integration of this constable to yourintelligence network? This is what will make a material difference. Notcreating bigger and bigger offices in Delhi.Not buying expensive armored cars which may make everybody feel good becausethat are standing outside mantralaya (ministry) and the street corners ofMumbai. But actually improving the capabilities of the policeman on the street[will help fight terrorism].”

“Whereis the beat constable?”

“MrChidambaram is not going to stand in the narrow streets of Mumbai gatheringinformation about some jihadi group over there. Some poor constable is, butthis constable isn’t trained or equipped for that job.”

“We desperately need emergencyservices, policing systems, cameras in crowded areas, there are so many thingswe can do.”

“Why didthe government do away with the TADA? For vote bank politics in the name ofpolitical will?”

“If youdon’t have the intelligence about who carried out the attacks, why give a cleanchit to Pakistan?”

“Wecan’t take the credit for the reduction in terror attacks. It’s because Pakistan is busyin its own mess, not because we are more efficient.”

“Attackswill increase when the USleaves Afghanistan.”

“The Indian government remainedmuted about fixing the responsibility of this terror attack and blaming Pakistan forfear of being accused of knee-jerk reactions and for the simple reason that wehave no clue to who was responsible. We need leads that can be pursuedseriously. And also the Pakistani foreign minister is coming in a few days, sothey don’t want to vitiate the atmosphere.”

The problem is that considering the obsession with such technicalities,the average Mumbaikar, or an average Indian for that matter, is simply beingasked to take for granted that he or she is a perpetual target of terror strikes.Not a single indication of the possibility that terrorism can be dealt with atthe root and overcome at the source isbeing made. Whether such interventions are political – which actually theyshould be – or not is a separate question, but under no condition an avoidableone. But all that the government says it can do is try to catch theperpetrators or, at best, frustrate their plans before they try to do anything;but the perpetrators will continue to exist, perhaps even thrive, and attack. Andthat nothing can be done to stop them from trying. Nothing can be done to stopthe perpetrators from going on the path of violence. In other words, terrorstrikes will continue to be attempted.And what the state needs to do is prevent them from happening.

But, as the Congress party’s general secretary, RahulGandhi, mentioned, no matter what the preventive measures, a fraction of theseattempts will simply succeed. And then, for the grieving families, thegovernment will arrive to mourn, and announce relief. So? Run, if you can hide.

THE MUMBAISPIRIT

The media in India have invariably followed suchevents in Mumbai with a customary story – the story about the indomitable “spirit”of the Mumbaikar, who will go to work no matter what. A few years ago, whenMumbai was attacked in similar blasts, a newspaper headline reflected thistravesty roughly in these words: “Mumbai spirit alive and kicking, Sensex up by500 points.”

This time, however, sections of the media perhaps felt thestory had been dragged far too long. So, on CNN-IBN for example, the “spirit”story was given a twist: “The morning after Wednesday’s terror attacks, Mumbaiwas back on its feet as people went to office and children attended schools.The question is: is it the spirit of Mumbai at work or has the city learnt tolive with terror?” It posed a question to the government: “The questionuppermost in the minds of Mumbaikars is that till how long will the governmenthide its own inefficiencies by praising the spirit of a city.” CNN-IBN shouldhave posed the question first to itself, and to the media it represents.

It was Nidhi Razdan, however, who had to face an embarrassmentIndian television anchors are rarely used to. Nearly half an hour into herprogrammme discussing the terror attack, she turned to her Mumbai guest: “Jerry,I don’t want to generalize this about how the people of Mumbai are taking thistoday. Obviously, there’s a sense of ‘we don’t have any choice but to get onwith life’. How has the response [in Mumbai] been compared to 26/11 [2008Mumbai attacks]?”

Pinto, a writer and critic, retorted in a manner that rattledthe entire panel (except one person): “Why are you asking me this question,” heasked. “Why am I here? Why has this become something that Delhipeople will talk about in Delhi as if it hasnothing to do with Bombay?Why did your cameras go in, do a little camera rape on those victims and thenwalk away? And then you give it to these four distinguished gentlemen, sittingaround in Delhi,discussing as though nothing ever happened? What is going on here?”

There was a commotion among Razdan’s panelists.

Pinto continued: “This is the thirty-first minute of theconversation. And it’s the first time you are asking a question to a Bombay boy? Is this real?”

Razdan began apologizing but Pinto would take none of it. Hecontinued:

“…I’m telling you that Bombay is upset… And we are largely upsetbecause the reportage comes out of Delhi.And Delhi doesnot seem to understand that this is something that happened here. This issomething that happened in this city.”

“Tell me how you feel. Tell us what’s going through yourmind.”

“What is going through my mind is this. That four veryelegant gentlemen, sitting with a lady, and discussing this in abstractions. Andthen you come to me and ask me about the “spirit” question. That old, tired,spirit question. How many times will you ask me that spirit question?”

“I’m not asking you about the spirit at all. I asked you acompletely different question,” said Razdan, as she began to lose hercomposure. “I am asking you that how has the response to this attack beendifferent from 26/11? There is this sense that people have to get on with life,that that whole issue of the spirit of Mumbai is frankly an irrelevant issue. But,what’s the common thread of conversation today?”

Before she could finish, an irritated Pinto retorted: “Whyis it irrelevant? Why is it an irrelevant issue? To whom is it irrelevant? Isit irrelevant to the media? Is it irrelevant to the chattering classes? Or isit irrelevant because you have decided that you are bored of it? What hassuddenly made it irrelevant?”

At this point, Razdan tried to intervene, but ended up laughing:“Mr Pinto, I’m not the one who is your enemy right now… I don’t understand whyyou are angry with us…”

“Shall we go back to your question? About the relevance ofspirit? Every city has to have a narrative that it gives itself. Every city hasa story that it repeats to itself. This story is generally not in use except intimes when difficulty strikes. When difficulty strikes, this city says to itselfthat I am a resilient city and I will get up and go to work.” And he cried in frustration:“What about that seems irrelevant to you? What about that seems irrelevant toanybody?”

At this, the panelists (Chandan Mitra, KC Singh, ManiShankar Aiyar and Praveen Swami were present) gestured as if asking “what nonsense is this man talking?”

And Mitra intervened: “I don’t understand, Mr Pinto. Whatare you getting so agitated about? … You haven’t made a point except express ageneral angst.”

Pinto was agitated at this even further and he cried out: “Mydeep apologies for expressing general angst. I’m so sorry!” A gesticulatingPinto continued asking: “What am I supposed to do? Come here and express myselfin abstractions of policy debates of the BJP versus the Congress? Or whetherthis was an operational failure or anintelligence failure? Is that what Iwas called on to do?”

Following best the traditions of his party the Indian NationalCongress was Mani Shankar Aiyar, who had almost throughout this angry exchangekept his hand over his mouth – watching, without speaking a single word.

The exchange continued until someone in the studio waslaughing out loud.

Razdan intervened finally: “Mr Pinto, respectfully, the restof Indiahas also been a target of terrorist attacks. This is not Mumbai versus the restof India.… Thank you for joining us, Mr Pinto.” Razdan turned to her camera and said, “I’mgoing to take a break and come back.”

The programme restarted after the break. Music was played.The audience present in the studio clapped. The field was all open fordiscussing, yet again, the “technical” issues. Pinto had been kicked out of theshow.

WHAT ISNOT BEING SAID

Pinto’soutburst wasn’t just an outrage about the “spirit” question. And he wasn’talone. Perhaps, in a sense, his outrage was shared less than two months laterin Delhi by thepeople who attacked politicians who had come to visit the injured in hospitals,and the notable one being, well, Rahul Gandhi. When he went to visit theaffected at the Ram Manohar LohiaHospital hours after the blast in Delhi, Gandhi had toreturn without being able to visit the emergency block. Reason? As a televisionnews anchor put it, he was “jeered, booed and heckled” by the people at thehospital. “They must not be allowed to enter the premises,” a relative of aninjured told a newspaper even as Gandhi struggled to cut through an angry crowdas he left the scene after he had somehow managed to visit the surgical ward ofthe hospital. “Embarrassed and humiliated, he left the spot in hurry,” noted atelevision report. Gandhi shouldn’t have been surprised.

“Terrorism is impossible to stop all the time,” he hadsaid just after the Mumbai attacks. Such helplessness doesn’t help when peoplemake simple demands like those of their lives to be safe. People’s anger at thehospital, of which Gandhi wasn’t the only recipient, couldn’t just be a simpleoutrage at the occurrence of a terror attack or loss of precious lives, thoughthat in itself is no ordinary matter. But it was also a warning that a common man was simply,grossly unconvinced by the futile, convoluted and near-psychotic “debate” inresponse to terrorism that was rampant all around. After all, what was beingdiscussed was something that was meant to preventattacks, not to solve the issue,something that every discerning citizen – any citizen, anywhere in the world – wouldbe concerned about.

Following the Delhi blast, on one of the shows of newsanchor Barkha Dutt, former solicitor general Gopal Subramaniam made a neuroticremark when he said that “the choice of a court as a democratic institutionbeing under attack is serious… as it seeks to erode constitutionalinstitutions”. Bombs do not erode constitutional institutions. Bombs erodebuildings. Constitutional and judicial institutions are eroded when thoseinstitutions fail to perform their duties in delivering justice.

Call it an extraordinary coincidence that just sixteenminutes after the blast outside the Delhi High Court, the Indian Supreme Courtbegan the final hearing of the 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blasts case. The serialblasts, almost two decades ago, had left more than 250 killed and over 700injured in what was then Bombay.As a media report noted, the Indian investigative agency CBI tried 123 peopleaccused in the case. Of them, 100 were convicted and the rest acquitted. Of theconvicted, 11 were given the death sentence while others were given sentencesranging from three years to life.

The question that begs asking, however, is just whathappened to the report of the Justice BN Srikrishna Commission which probed theBombay riots of1992-93 in which nearly 1,000 people were killed, most of them Muslims, theriots of which the March 1993 serial blasts were believed to be an immediateaftermath? The riots in turn took place in the wake of the demolition of thecenturies-old Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in December 1992, the culmination of theHindu right-wing leader Lal Krishna Advani’s rath yatra. The Srikrishna Report, if at all any of its shredsexist, must be rotten somewhere while the people it incriminated, including BalThakeray and his Shiv Sena goons, breathe free air.

Shortlyafter the blast in Delhi, the Gujaratchief minister Narendra Modi beamed a message through YouTube: “Terroristsare ceaselessly trying to drench the land of this nation with blood. People arefed up…” Is anyone asking the question how a person who as chief minister of astate allegedly oversaw one of the most horrific anti-Muslim pogroms in India’s history in which thousands of Muslimswere slaughtered on the streets of Gujaratcontinues to be the chief minister of that state? Overwhelming reportage ofinvestigative journalism and testimonies given by individuals even from thestate police top brass has not been enough even to invoke any of India’s draconian laws against a man who wasdenied a diplomatic visa even by the

United States

A dayafter the attacks, the Indian home minister visited the blast sites in Mumbai. The Hindu reported: “Mr. Chidambaram saidthe attacks could be in retaliation for the arrest of Indian Mujahideen (IM)operatives and Maoist cadres in Maharashtra.“The Maharashtra government took successfulcounter-terror measures. They arrested two IM operatives and 17 cadres of theCommunist Party of India (Maoist). We will probe if the blasts were in reaction to this.” (Emphasis addedhere and ahead.) The Maharashtra police wereasked “not to proceed on any kind of assumption or presupposition. All groups hostile to the country aresuspect.” But Chidambaram chose to ignore the disgraceful politicking ofthe BJP and the Congress over the cases related to the mass murder of Muslimsin Gujarat in 2002, a perpetual reminder of how injustice remains systemic in India and fuelsdiscontent. Or for that matter the reluctant admission by the Indian governmentof the existence of the so-called Hindutva terror outfits like the AbhinavBharat. This is not to say that the latest terror strikes have necessarilyhappened for these reasons or have been carried out by such groups. But what’sbeing grossly ignored is what the Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan said: “Youcannot accept that people disagree and then they kill… You must condemn this.But in the discussion afterwards, you cannot say there is no connection. Onethical grounds, it’s wrong. On political grounds, there is a connection.” Itis this political connection thatneeds addressing, irrespective of what may or may not be behind a particularterror attack, be it in Mumbai, Delhi or Malegaon.

BUT IT’SNOT that the government doesn’t know what’s staring at it either. And it’s notthat the “experts” don’t know that improved intelligenceand investigative capabilities will not root out the problem. But thegovernment, the experts and the media have all found their interests in notraising such questions. What then is kept missing from the rampant terrordebate? In the very recent time, there have been at least two issues that, ifpondered sincerely, would have made a difference – both practically andqualitatively.

One,reports published recently by two organizations. While the New York-based HumanRights Watch published The“Anti-Nationals” – Arbitrary detention and torture of terror suspects in India, London-basedAmnesty International published A LawlessLaw – Detentions under the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act.

The “Anti-Nationals” noted that “security forces in India… havetime and again responded to [terror] attacks by committing numerous, serioushuman rights violations in their quest to identify and prosecute suspectedperpetrators. These abuses are both unlawful under Indian and international lawand counterproductive in the fightagainst terrorism.” (Emphasis added.) The report focused “primarily ontorture and other abuses committed by the police against alleged Muslimmilitants. But the Indian security forces have long applied similar, unlawfulmethods against members of other groups deemed a security threat. These includeMaoist rebels known as Naxalites in much of the central and eastern areas ofthe country, parties to the conflict in Jammu and Kashmir, and Hindu militantsaccused by the home minister of ‘saffron terror’.”

Thereport also recalls the heartbreaking story of Mumbai-based lawyer Shahid Azmi:“Azmi was among the few lawyers willing to defend terrorism suspects in Maharashtra. A witness to violent anti-Muslim riots as ateenager in 1992, Azmi was arrested after joining a Kashmiri militant group andwas sentenced to five years in prison. …His experience with the justice systemand those of many others he met while in prison — all convicted under theabusive and now defunct Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act —inspired him to defend persons charged with acts of terrorism. Azmi was defendingseveral of the 2008 terrorism suspects… when he was killed in February 2010.Three gunmen posing as prospective clients entered his office one evening andshot five rounds at him from point-blank range… Three men were arrested andcharged with Azmi’s murder. Police subsequently said the gunmen were contractkillers for a Hindu gang…”

None inthe media bothered to tell the story of the tragic end of Azmi. Fewer stilldemanded answers. Note the story of sheer injustice narrated by thenewsmagazine Tehelka (May 15, 2010):“When Special Judge ML Tahilyani acquitted Fahim Ansari and Sabauddin Ahmed ofculpability in the November 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks captured live on TV,most reporters were already chasing the government lawyer who secured aconviction for the lone Pakistani terrorist, Ajmal Kasab… Inside thefortress-like courtroom in the Arthur Road jail, Ansari’s veiled 32-year-old wife,Yasmin, offered a prayer as the judge lambasted the police for accusing the twoIndians without any evidence… Part of her prayer would have been in the memoryof Shahid Azmi, who had defended her husband in the case until he was gunneddown… It was Azmi’s cross-examination of the prosecution witnesses that exposedthe falsehood of the case against the two… The acquittal has come as a big blowto Mumbai Police, which claimed it had a watertight case in its 12,850-page charge sheet against the twoaccused…” (Emphasis added.) Many a 12,850-page charge sheets of such kindhave ruined the lives of countless people in the deceit of this “war onterror”.

As the Tehelka reporter wrote on his blog, “Ouragencies which have been arresting Muslims in the name of being terrorists beit in the train blasts or the Malegaon blasts had been most troubled with thefact that Shahid was exposing their fake cases and was on the verge of winninga historic judgement not just in the train blasts case but perhaps also in theFaheem Ansari case. Would they not be the only ones benefiting from the deathof Shahid Azmi…?” In sheer frustration, he asked, “Who was the mind behindkilling Shahid Azmi?”

“HadShahid Azmi been gunned down in Russia,China or Iran, his newswould have been all over The New YorkTimes the next morning.” It was Tehelka,again. None of those glossy news channels spared a single square-inch of theirscreens.

The AmnestyInternational report, on the other hand, estimated the number of peopledetained under the Public Safety Act in Kashmir in the last twenty years from8,000-20,000. The report revealed “how the PSA violates India’s internationalhuman rights legal obligations… and [provided] evidence of the ways in whichadministrative detention under the PSA continues to be used in J&K todetain individuals for years at a time, without trial, depriving them of humanrights protections otherwise applicable in Indian law.” The report noted:“Hundreds of people are detained under the PSA in J&K, many of thempolitical activists and youth suspected of throwing stones at security forces. …The J&K authorities continue to circumvent the rule of law by resorting tothe PSA. Repeal of the PSA would send a strong signal to the residents ofJ&K about the government’s commitment to the rule of law and human rights.”

In itsconclusion, the report quoted a statement made by the Supreme Court in a PSAdetention case way back in 1982: “If every infraction of law having a penalsanction by itself is a ground for detention, danger looms large that thenormal criminal trials and criminal courts set up for administering justicewill be substituted by detention laws often described as lawless law.”(Justices DA Desai and PN Bhagwati of the Supreme Court of India in Jaya Malav. Home Secretary, Government of Jammu & Kashmir, 1982.)

There are“groups hostile” to the country, said Chidambaram a day after the Mumbai blasts.Thirty years have passed since the Indian Supreme Court made the aboveobservation. And the Indian state, rather than bringing people and their politicsat the centre of its nation-building, has increasingly chosen to wipe outthrough brute force any form of political dissent. When such statements ofjustice stand rejected, should it be a surprise that the state faces ajuggernaut today that threatens to devour it from within? Above all, a debateon such issues could have refreshingly shown a mirror to the media itself inhow it is responsible in no small part for demonizing individuals and communitiesby perpetuating the lies and deceits of the state. The political voice of the peoplesis being obliterated.

Second,and perhaps the more important too, isthe Supreme Court verdict that deemed the Salwa Judum, the extra-legal armedforces in Chhattisgarh, unconstitutional. Salwa Judum is much like the dreadedIkhwan of Kashmir, which has, in the name of fighting insurgency, committeduntold human rights violations against men, women and children. Responding to aPIL filed by Nandini Sundar and others, the Supreme Court verdict noted: “Thiscase represents a yawning gap between the promise of principled exercise ofpower in a constitutional democracy, and the reality of the situation inChattisgarh, where the Respondent, the State of Chattisgarh, claims that it hasa constitutional sanction to perpetrate, indefinitely, a regime of gross violation of human rights in a manner, and byadopting the same modes, as done by Maoist/Naxalite extremists.” (Para 1; Emphasis added.)

“We, inthis Court, are not unaware of the gravity that extremist activities pose tothe citizens, and to the State. However, our Constitution, encoding eons of humanwisdom, also warns us that ends do not justify all means, and that an essentialand integral part of the ends to which the collective power of the people maybe used to achieve has to necessarily keep the means of exercise of State powerwithin check and constitutional bounds. To act otherwise is to act unlawfully…”(Para 71.)

The courtordered that “the State of Chattisgarh immediately cease and desist from usingSPOs in any manner or form in any activities, directly or indirectly, aimed atcontrolling, countering, mitigating or otherwise eliminating Maoist/Naxaliteactivities in the State of Chattisgarh…”

One doesn’treally expect the Indian media to give much attention to such findings of andstudies done by human rights groups as mentioned above. The Indian media has chosento ignore them all along. The state – its government and the Opposition both inan extraordinary show of solidarity – has expectedly challenged the SupremeCourt order. The government decided to seek a revision of the verdict. And tearingthe verdict, in a rare attack on the Supreme Court, a top BJP leader said: “Itis for the Executive to decide... The Judiciary cannot tell the government [howto tackle Maoism] … Weakening of the nation cannot be part of anybody’sthinking.” If only one respected a statement in 1974 made by the UN GeneralAssembly while adopting the “definition of aggression.” It noted: “Noconsideration of whatever naturewhether political, economic, military, or otherwise, may serve as ajustification for aggression.” (Emphasis added.)

Lawyerand constitutional expert AG Noorani quoted elsewhere the eighteenth centurypolitical theorist and philosopher Edmund Burke and it is absolutely relevantto reproduce it here: “The use of force alone is temporary. It may endure amoment but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again. A nation is notgoverned which is perpetually to be conquered. The next objection to force isits uncertainty. Terror is not always the effect of force, and an armament isnot a victory. If you do not succeed you are without resource; for theconciliation failing, force remains; but force failing, no further hope ofreconciliation is left… A further objection to force is that you impair theobject by your very endeavours to preserve it. The thing you fought for (to witthe loyalty of the people) is not the thing you recover, but depreciated, sunk,wasted and consumed in the contest.”

The Indianstate has used sheer deceit and force in order to stamp and demonise politicaldissent, wherever it arose. Today, behind the cacophony of its fabulous “growth”story, it stands on the path of brutalizing the disempowered and thedisadvantaged through naked aggression. That such brutalization has snuffed outof them even the vestiges of belonging towards a “nation” which the state seeksto protect is a matter silently left outside rampant debate. The Indian media, too,for its greed of profits, not to talk about its political and ideologicalmalposition, has played no small role in perpetuating this vicious state ofaffairs. The manner in which it silently ignored the Supreme Court verdict andthe state’s response to it showed that even in the matter of terrorism, themedia – very carefully – will not just not challenge the position of the establishment,but effectively enforce it.

Unlucky humans,meanwhile, are expected to pay with their lives.

India debates oppressive law in Kashmir

2011-12-31T21:23:00.000+05:30

By Nawaz Gul Qanungo

Separate versions appeared in The Friday Times and Dinamalar
Srinagar,13 November 2011

“Hamaara iraada Armed Forces Special PowersAct ko un ilaakon se uthana, jahan pe armed forces ko kaam karne ki zururathai, nahi hai. Hum ne aap se ye kabhi nahi kaha ki hum Baramulla ya Sopore ya Kupwaraya aisi jagahon se AFSPA ko hatayenge. Lekin jahan army ne saalon saal kaamnahi kiya hai, wahan se hatane mein aap ko kya aitraaz hai? Mujhe bataiyepichhli baar unhon ne Srinagarmein kab kaam kiya.” It was the J&K chief minister, Omar Abdullah,talking to reporters earlier this week arguing why there was enough reason toremove AFSPA from places like Srinagar andBudgam in Kashmir. “We have no intention ofremoving the Armed Forces Special Powers Act from such areas where the presenceof the army is necessary. We never talked about removing AFSPA from areas suchas Baramulla, Sopore or Kupwara. But if there are areas where the army hasn’tworked for years, why should there be a problem in removing AFSPA there?”

Sadly, it isprecisely the same argument that is enough to suggest that the removal of thelaw from such areas will have no bearing on the ground situation in Kashmir. If the army doesn’t exist in Srinagar, how can the removal of AFSPA fromthe city make a difference? “The killings of the summer of 2010 in the valleywere carried out by the local police, not the army,” says Khurram Parvez. “If the chief minister isserious about justice delivery, why doesn’t he start with prosecuting theguilty within his own police force?” Parvez is the programme co-ordinator of theJ&K Coalition of Civil Society, a human rights conglomerate that has donemuch painstaking documentation of the years of conflict in Kashmir.

The ArmedForces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) is a much dreaded law that allows the army inKashmir to shoot on the basis of meresuspicion. The Act also remains imposed in the Naxal-affected central regionsof Indiaand the north-east among other areas. Many innocents, including old debilitatedmen and mentally challenged people, deliberately or otherwise, have got killedat the hands of the army in Kashmir. But theirprosecution has been hampered by the unbridled powers that AFSPA affords them. Suchcases, however, have generally occurred in areas where the Indian army isdeployed. These are mainly the border districts like Kupwara, a place where thechief minister in his own words doesn’t see much reason for AFSPA to betouched.

Internationalrights organisations such as the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty Internationalas well as local rights groups have been repeatedly making pleas for therevocation of the AFSPA among other draconian laws in vogue in Kashmir. These include mainly the Public Safety Act,something that allows the government to hold people under “preventive custody” fortwo years without trial. The recent times have witnessed the authoritiesholding even minors under prolonged detention, thanks to the PSA, mainly in abid to contain the unarmed youth-led anti-India protests of the last few years.Kashmir has seen some of the most powerfulanti-India protests in the recent years. The pleas against such laws, however,have mostly remained unheard.

Perhaps a much largerfraction of human rights violations in Kashmirhave occurred at the hands of the paramilitary, militants, renegades and, ofcourse, the local police rather than by the Indian army. While it could be mucheasier for the state government to bring such violators to book, it hasn’tshown much willingness to do so.

Lawlessness

Parvez said, “Boththe media and the government have been trying to distort the whole picture. Animpression is being created that human rights violations will cease if AFSPAgoes. We can substantiate the fact that the problems of human rights violationsin Kashmir haven’t been a result of any law.They happened because no laws were followed. Under what law was the Ikhwaancreated? Under what law were they offered arms? There are known offenders amongthe Ikhwaan and they are moving about freely. Why is no action being takenagainst them if the state government means what it says?” The Ikhwaan has beento Kashmir what Salwa Judum is to Chhattisgarh.These are renegade groups dreaded by the population across the valley for themost gruesome human rights violations, loot and plunder that they indulged induring the years of conflict.

“In severalcases of fake encounters and disappearances, the local police is alsoinvolved,” Parvez said, “They don’t have the shield of AFSPA. Why is the stategovernment not prosecuting them if they are really so concerned about justicedelivery? There are senior police officers who have cases of serious humanrights violations against them. Why is nothing being done against them? Thetruth is that even the so called draconian laws were flouted by the securityestablishment in the state since two decades now. The culture of impunitycreated for the security forces, whether the army, paramilitary or the localpolice, and this culture is not a consequence of bad laws, but deliberatelawlessness.”

The Defence version

The centraldefence ministry on its part has reiterated its position in that the decisionlies with the Unified Headquarters. The Unified Headquarters is a groupcomprised by representatives from the Army, the paramilitary, police and the centraland state intelligence agencies. Interestingly, however, it is headed by thechief minister himself.

KT Parnaik, thelieutenant general who serves as the general officer commanding-in-chief of thearmy’s Northern Command told the media earlier this month that unless the armywas able to “neutralise the militant infrastructure” and remove “interferencefrom

Pakistan

”,it may yet not be appropriate to remove AFSPA. The army has however been onrecord several times in the recent years for having said that the total numberof militants active in the valley is below a mere 500 (five hundred). On theother hand, with more than half a million armed Indian troops, Kashmir is widely believed to be the most denselymilitarised territory in the world. The number of troops remains higher than ithas ever been in Iraq and

Afghanistan

combined.

The Opposition

The oppositionHindu right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party has remained opposed to any partialrevocation of AFSPA. A local spokesman of the party recently said: “It was thecivilian administration which [called in] the army to bring peace. … Our standis that any decision regarding the revocation or invocation of the AFSPA has tobe based essentially on the inputs of the security agencies. With inputssuggesting that there is an all-time high build-up of infiltrators across theLoC just waiting for the weather to change, it is not the prerogative of anypolitical party, or a politician however highly he may be placed including the chiefminister, to take a unilateral decision in this regard.”

It is an oddsetting. While the army has been called in by the civilian government to helpit out in the conflict, the same government doesn’t have the power to now sendthe army back. But even within the larger structure of the government in New Delhi, there isvisible obfuscation. While the defence ministry has traditionally been sidingwith the armed forces vis-à-vis AFSPA, the home ministry has more than oncebeen openly vocal in favour of the position taken by the chief minister.

Not a new debate

It must benoted that the debate on AFSPA is not new. The chief minister has on recordseveral times shared his intention of demilitarisation thereby reducing thepresence of the security forces in the valley. Invariably, however, suchstatements have been snubbed by the army both within the state and by itshigher command at the centre. As noted above, the ministry of defence has alsosupported the armed forces as a rule, embarrassing Abdullah and his governmentseveral times in the past. What is interesting this time, however, is that thechief minister seems to be defiant than ever in what he has spoken in public. “Ihave said ‘no’ is not an option that I am willing to consider. So other than that,give me the options that are feasible,” he told reporters last Thursday.Abdullah has even claimed that “as chief minister of the state, he had theauthority to lift AFSPA”.

Significantly, however,in a recent Unified Headquarters meeting, the Army’s top commander in J&Khas reportedly said that India“could be compelled to grant the State independence by 2016 if government plansto lift the controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act from some areas”. Itwas reported in an Indian daily newspaper TheHindu recently: “Lt.-Gen. Hasnainclaimed that lifting the AFSPA would provoke large-scale disturbances which, inthe context of the looming withdrawal of western forces from Afghanistan andthe enhanced presence of members of the Organisation of the Islamic Conferenceon the United Nations Security Council, would lead to Jammu and Kashmir’sindependence.” The tussle between the army and the civilian government overAFSPA has certainly never been worse.

‘Manufacturing’ demand

Parvez said:“The state, and even the media, has been pretending as though the revocation ofAFSPA is a top priority of the people. It is like ‘manufacturing’ demand for therevocation of AFSPA. And the government wants to bask in the glory if it makeseven a partial revocation happen.” While pressure has indeed been building on

India

fromvarious rights groups to do away with some of the draconian laws it has imposedin its conflict ridden territories, Parvez also suggests that the coming UniversalPeriodic Review at the United Nations could well be another reason why such adebate over AFSPA is being generated. The Universal Periodic Review evaluates thehuman rights records of the member countries of the United Nations. “

India

hasfaired very poorly in it,” Parvez said. Each country is assessed every fouryears and

India

is expected to be up for assessment early next year.

While the chiefminister is clearly walking a tightrope, his statements suggest a certainconfidence that he may well be able to have his way in at least a partialrevocation of AFSPA. That, needless to say, would also be excellent PR for an‘emerging’ Indiain the world. Failure on the other hand could well be yet another setback for achief minister who has managed to contain Kashmir’sprotests this year, thanks to an unrelenting political repression. The changein the situation on the ground in the valley, however, will be next to none.

The ghazal loses its lover

2011-10-28T01:21:00.003+05:30

Jagjit Singh1941-2011

Nawaz GulQanungo

The Times of India Crest Edition | October 15, 2011

Baat niklegi to phir duur talak jayegi… Spelt out, and the word shall go afar.

It was 1976.Jagjit Singh had spent some years in the wilderness, in what was then the Bombay film industry. Noone took him seriously until HMV, the music label His Masters Voice of the legendaryGramophone Company of India, gave him a break. The Unforgettables, Jagjit Singh’s first music album, whichfeatured also his wife, the singer Chitra, was made. And the word did, indeed,go afar.

With lyricsfrom the greats of Urdu like Firaaq and Jigar, and an unknown Kafeel, the albummet phenomenal commercial success. And the duo had arrived on the centre stageof the world of ghazals, a genre thatin Indiapeople feared had been showing signs of death after Mallika e Ghazal BeghumAkhtar. The art form of ghazal singingthat was believed to be the forte of Pakistani artists – Noor Jehan, MalikaPukhraj, Farida Khanum, Mehdi Hassan and Ghulam Ali – had now a star, if not anexponent, on this side of the border too.

“Ye to theek thaak gaataa hai… He singswell, after all,” said Jagjit Singh once, recalling how people in the filmindustry reacted to his success with ghazals.“And they finally started offering me work in their films.” HMV had discoveredwhat would enthral millions around the world, a voice that flowed like honey,and carried with it the warmth of love and romance, and the sting of longingand pathos, lilting in his soulful voice.

While he experimentedwith, and eventually regularised, more modern instruments and percussion in hismusic changing the sound of ghazals,he roped in contemporary poets who were at times virtually unknown. With alanguage simpler and more accessible to a generation that wasn’t too wellversed with the classical form of Urdu poetry, Jagjit met such commercialsuccess that had no precedent in his art. People fell instantly in love but puristssounded the death knell of the traditionally sung ghazal – Jagjit was singing songsrather than ghazals. What he didstick to, however, was a written form of poetry, which conformed to theconventions of the written form of ghazal,if not the way he played it on music.

Even at thisstage, however, the film industry hadn’t really opened its gates completely forJagjit Singh. By the time that would happen, however, Jagjit along with singerChitra, his wife, would have come to embody between them a whole new genre ofmusic in India– the non-film music industry. And Jagjit would go on – tragically alone – tobe its most successful artiste. Born in Rajasthan in 1941, Jagjit was the thirdamong 11 siblings. Jagjit ventured to Bombayearly on, where he met Chitra and eventually married her in 1969. The Unforgettables came seven yearslater.

Honton se chhuu lo tum from the film PremGeet (1981) brought the first major success for Jagjit Singh in films. Soon,it was Mahesh Bhat – himself struggling to make a mark with his debut film Arth – who in 1982 would bring in Jagjitfor the score. The result was phenomenal. Kaifi Azmi’s beautiful lyrics were matchedwith Jagjit’s brilliant composition and velvet voice. Tum itna jo muskura rahe ho and Jhukijhuki si nazar were just two of his numbers that hit the chartbusters ofthe time, never to recede from public memory, ever. Tum ko dekha to ye khayal aaya (film Saath saath) was another gem, and Jagjit had earned outstandingreputation in a world of favouritism.

Jagjit howeverpreferred his independence, selecting his lyricists and composing his own ghazals, and his association with filmsdidn’t go a very long way. He meanwhile honed young ghazal singers: Talat Aziz made a major debut with his album Jagjit Singh presents Talat Aziz in 1981.Jagjit gave his own music and ghazalslike Kaise sukoon paaun became arage.

Along withChitra, he was now busy travelling across the globe performing, singing thelikes of Ye kaaghaz ki kashti. Liverecordings of their performances in the 80s skyrocketed their fame and albumslike Passions, A Milestone, The Latestand A Sound Affair brought the ghazal back into the Indian household. In1988, the duo became the first Indian artists ever to sing with vocal digitalrecording. The recording took place in Londonand Beyond Time thus became the firstIndian album that was released on CDs.

By the end of80s, the couple had reached a near-cult status. Then came two television serialsand Jagjit ensured for himself a space in the history of the culture of anentire subcontinent. Writer and lyricist Gulzar made Mirza Ghalib (1988), a long serial on the life and times of one ofthe greatest poets of all time, Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib. And theredoubtable Ali Sardar Jafri came up with Kahkashan(1991), a series based on the lives of the greatest Urdu poets of past. Jagjitgave music to both. For a moment, even the purists were puzzled at whether thesonorous voice of Jagjit Singh was better or the pieces of the greatest Urdupoetry of the centuries past that he was singing.

Tragedy,however, struck the couple soon. In 1990, their only son Vivek died in anaccident at the age of 19. Chitra forever stopped singing and Jagjit went solofor most of the rest of his career. That year, the couple would dedicate theiralbum Someone Somewhere to Vivek. In1991, they released Hope on their son’stwentieth birthday. For Jagjit, now struggling with depression, success would stillknow no bounds. And newer generations would continue to be introduced to the ghazal, courtesy Jagjit Singh. However, thepain and pathos in his voice would become increasingly haunting in character. Inreality, it marked a much bigger shift in his career.

“Bachchon ke chhote haathon ko chaand sitaarechhuune do… Chaar kitaaben padh kar wo bhi hum jaise ho jayenge. Let thekids dream of touching the stars… As we educate them, they will fall in line.” The90s increasingly saw the maestro singing lyrics that turned the conventionalcontent of the sung ghazal on itshead. From his album Insight (1994,written by Nida Fazli) was taken the track Munhki baat suney har koi, which reverberated across millions of homes as thetitle song of the serial Neem ka ped.Elsewhere, he sang, “Saaton din bhagwaanke… Kya mangal kya peer. All days belong to the One… What’s auspicious,what inauspicious?”

In 1995 camehis Face to face, and Jagjit haddecisively ditched ishq, the overridingtheme of the singers of ghazal. Jagjitwas now singing “Sachchi baat kahi thi maine… Logon ne sooli pechadhaya. I’ve spoken the truth… So I face the gallows.” Another gem sawhim singing “Ab main raashan ki qataaronmein nazar aata hun… Now I stand in que for subsidised food… I pay theprice for separating from my crop fields.” For his album Cry for Cry, he featured a young Siza Roy who sang “Maa sunao mujhe wo kahani… Jis me raja naho, na ho rani. Mother, tell me that story… The one that has no prince, northe princess.” And Jagjit lamented: “Bhookaybachchon ki tassali ke liye… Maa ne phir paani pakaya der tak. Until herstarving children fell asleep… Maa cooked the vessel full of water, all night.”He parodied politicians for making false promises to innocent people, even ashe tweaked Ghalib all over: “Naye vaadonka jo dala hai wo jaal acha hai… Rehnumaaon ne kaha hai ki ye saal acha hai! Thesenew promises, this great trap… The pundit says prosperity is around the corner!”Or this one: “Mai na Hindu na Musalmaan… Mujhejeene do! I’m no Hindu; nor a Muslim… Just let me live!”

For most of the90s, Jagjit stuck to his new found unorthodoxy. What was incredible was hiscommercial success in what was certainly not the conventional ghazal. The vulgarity of sharaab-shabaab in the “popularly” sung ghazalremained categorically outside the realm of the music of Jagjit in the rest ofhis productive career. It was in this magnificent domain of sheer humanity, where he let go of his turf oftraditional form of the written ghazal,plunging deep into the rivers of the rustic songs of poverty, starvation anddeath, that he ultimately catapulted himself beyond the likes of Mehdi Hassanand Ghulam Ali. And this not just with mere experiments, but something that thebrilliant performer achieved with phenomenal success. In a world that he sawfull of suffering, that was thegreatness of achievement of this musician, who just sealed his oeuvre. And hasclosed his eyes, forever.

A version appears in the Tamil Dinamalar.

The neighbourhood messenger

2011-10-28T01:18:00.000+05:30

Tribute | JagjitSingh, 1941-2011

Nawaz GulQanungo

The Friday Times| October 21-27, 2011

The redoubtableIndian Mallika e Ghazal Beghum Akhtar had long passed away in the early 1970s. TalatMehmood, though acclaimed for his art but having never made it independently inthe commercial world, was at the ebb of his career. And the art form of singingghazals was now believed to be the forteof artists of Pakistan– with the likes of Noor Jehan, Mallikae Pukhraj, Farida Khanum, not to talkabout the legendary Mehdi Hassan, and Ghulam Ali.

In 1976, however,in Jagjit Singh, Indiafinally saw a star of ghazals, if notits exponent, and who above all belonged to their side of the border. “Ye to theek thaak gata hai… He singswell, after all,” said Jagjit Singh once, recalling how people in the Bombay film industryreacted to his success with ghazals.“And they finally started offering me work in their films.” Jagjit Singh hadspent some years in the wilderness, in what was then the Bombay film industry. No one took him seriouslyuntil HMV, the music label His Masters Voice of the legendary GramophoneCompany of India, gave him a break. TheUnforgettables, Jagjit Singh’s first music album, which featured also hiswife, the singer Chitra, was made. Thus sang Jagjit: “Baat niklegi to phir duur talak jayegi… Spelt out, and the wordshall go afar.” And the word did, indeed, go afar. His Masters Voice had helpeddiscover what would enthral millions for nearly four decades in India andaround the world, a sound that flowed like honey, and carried with it thewarmth of love and romance, the sting of longing and pathos, lilting in a soulfulvoice.

By the time theso called Bollywood – where the show was run by the greats like Naushad,Khayyam, the Burman father-and-son, and Laxmikant-Pyarelal to name just a few –woke to embrace him fully, Jagjit Singh had, along with singer and wife Chitra,come to embody an entire genre that took the might of the Hindi film music ofthe time head on. It came to be known as the non-film music industry. AndJagjit Singh would go on – tragically alone – to be the most successful artistein the genre that he was credited with creating.

Born inRajasthan in 1941, Jagjit was the third among 11 siblings. Jagjit ventured to Bombay early on, where hemet Chitra and eventually married her in 1969.

In the early80s, finally, Jagjit had arrived in Hindi films as well. Honton se chhuu lo tum from the film Prem Geet (1981) brought him the first major success. Soonafterwards, it was Mahesh Bhat – himself struggling to make a mark with his directorialdebut film Arth – who in 1982 wouldbring in Jagjit for the score. The result was phenomenal. The beauty of thelyrics of Kaifi Azmi was matched with the ease of Jagjit’s brilliance incomposition, not to talk about his voice. Tumitna jo muskura rahe ho and Jhukijhuki si nazar were just two of his numbers that hit the chartbusters ofthe time, never to recede from public memory, ever.

The alltime-great Tum ko dekha to ye khayal aayafrom the film Saath saath bolstered Jagjit’sposition even more. Jagjit, however, was looking way ahead of his time and preferredhis independence – in selecting his lyricists and composing his own music –creating his own ghazals. Jagjit experimentedand eventually regularised the more modern sounds of music and percussion inhis ghazals. People fell instantly inlove. Purists, however, sounded the death knell of the traditionally sung formof ghazal.

The decade sawthe duo performing from Wembley to London and New York to Honk Kong, apartfrom Indian subcontinent of course, and recording albums like Ecstacies, Passions, A Milestone, The Latest and A Sound Affair with such commercial success that had no precedentin their art. By the end of 80s, the couple had reached a near-cult status in thesub-continent and diasporas. And then came two television serials and Jagjitensured for himself a space in the history of the culture of an entiresubcontinent.

Writer andlyricist Gulzar made Mirza Ghalib(1988), a long serial on the life and times of one of the greatest poets of alltime, Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib. And the redoubtable Ali Sardar Jafri came upwith Kahkashan (1991), a series basedon the lives of the greatest Urdu poets of centuries past. Jagjit gave music toboth. For a moment, even the purists were puzzled at whether the sonorous voiceof Jagjit was better or the pieces of the greatest Urdu poetry that he wassinging.

Tragedy,however, struck the couple not too long after Ghalib. In 1990, their only son Vivek died in an accident at theage of 19. Chitra soon afterwards stopped singing forever and Jagjit went solofor most of the rest of his career.

For Jagjit, whowas now struggling with depression, success would still know no bounds. Andnewer generations would continue to be introduced to the ghazal, courtesy Jagjit Singh. However, the pain and pathos in hisvoice would become increasingly haunting in character. The content of his ghazals saw a major change. In reality,it marked a much bigger shift in his career.

“Bachchon ke chhote haathon ko chaand sitaarechhuune do… Chaar kitaaben padh kar wo bhi hum jaise ho jayenge.” The 90sincreasingly saw the maestro singing lyrics that turned the conventionalcontent of the sung ghazal over itshead. The fact that he was at the pinnacle of his career and commercial successdidn’t deter the man from doing this. He sang Nida Fazli’s lyrics thus: “Saaton din bhagwaan ke… Kya mangal kya peer.All days belong to the One… What’s auspicious, what inauspicious?”

In Face to face (1994), Jagjit haddecisively ditched ishq, theoverriding theme of the singers of ghazal.Jagjit was now singing “Sachchi baat kahithi maine… Logonne sooli pe chadhaya.” For the rest of his productive career, Jagjit stuckto his new found unorthodoxy. Another gem saw him singing “Ab main raashan ki qataaron mein nazar aata hun… Apne kheten sebichhadne ki sazaa pata hun.” For his album Cry for Cry (1995), he featured a young Siza Roy who sang “Maa sunao mujhe wo kahani… Jis me raja naho, na ho rani.” Jagjit lamented: “Bhookaybachchon ki tassali ke liye… Maa ne phir paani pakaya der tak.” In Mirage (1995), he parodied politiciansfor making false promises to innocent people, even as he tweaked Ghalib allover: “Naye vaadon ka jo dala hai wo jaalacha hai… Ik barhaaman ne kaha hai ki ye saal acha hai!” And “Main na Hindu na Musalmaan… Mujhe jeene do!”And as he departed from the conventional form of the content of the ghazal, Jagjit incredibly came out withthe phenomenal commercial success he was used to.

On the otherhand, music was going through a process of intense commercialisation where ghazals were seen increasingly passé. Itwas also a time when Pakistanwas back in Indiawith an extraordinary performer whose talent knew no boundaries of genres –Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Khan had devastated the lines that divided genres as farapart from each other as classical sufi and western rock. A delight of a wholenew breed of remix musicians like Bally Sagoo, the ustaad had long been annoyed by Bollywood copycats who stole histunes with impunity. In 1996, Khan finally created Sangam with lyricist Javed Akhtar. Sangam was meant to reclaim his oeuvre. While Main aur meri aawaargee was a lament in the wilderness of an unjustlife that the poet retold with sounds of western pulp music backing the vocals,Sheher ke dukaandaron was a moresober lament of the poet in an unjust world. It was, however, Aafreen aafreen, a racy number Khan sangand offered also for a techno remix, packed with a sleazy video featuring adesert-steamed super model Liza Ray. The album had not just upset the purist,but rattled a whole genre leaving the ghazalin a fix. Jagjit succumbed in his album Unique,1996.

But three yearslater, in 1999, he joined hands with Gulzar yet again and Sony Music came outwith Marasim. The ghazal was back – Haath chhute bhi to rishtey nahi chhoda karte – but Jagjit was not singing love songs to the beloved. At the end of the song, a dreamsequence recited by Gulzar provided the context: “Sarhad par kal raat suna hai chali thi goli… Sarhad par kal raat suna hai kuchh khwaabon ka khoon hua hai.There’s been fire exchanged across the border… There’s been murder of somedreams over the line.” Jagjit left a message we cannot afford to ignore.

The story of Harud

2011-10-28T00:53:00.003+05:30

Talking to young Kashmiri writers

By Nawaz GulQanungo

Srinagar, October 1

To be or not to be:

Is that the only question?

These wordsopen one of Huzaifa Pandit’s poems that he had decided to read at the HarudLiterary Festival. The event was to be held in Srinagar in late September. “I was going totake part in two events. One was on the role of blogging in literature andanother on emerging local writers. I was going to read some of my ghazals too,” he says in excitement. “Taqdeer mein nahi tha, so nahin mila,”he says pensively, “It wasn’t going to be, so it didn’t happen.”

Harud met strongcriticism from writers from within and outside Kashmir.These included perhaps the two biggest names of Kashmiri writers writing inEnglish currently – Basharat Peer and Mirza Waheed. While Basharat, author of Curfewed Night, opened a window to theviolence of life in conflict in the valley in his non-fiction book, Waheed shotto international fame earlier this year with his debut novel, The Collaborator, a novel set, again, inthe midst of Kashmir conflict.

The bone ofcontention, among other things, was the statement by the organisers that theevent was going to be “apolitical”. If that were not enough, Kashmiris tookoffence to yet another statement that the event was to allow “India’s multicultural ethos to resonate across the world”. Majority of Kashmiris support afuture outside the Indian union.

Says SameerBhat, “It simply makes one reflect, if only in self-amusement, how does one de-linkart and literature from politics? And how do you hyphenate the two in a spaceas political as Kashmir?” Sameer is perhapsthe most popular Kashmiri blogger, and has a great following for his shortsatire. Earlier with Financial Timesof London, he is now based in Dubai. Just turned 30, he is currentlyworking on his first fiction novel set in Kashmir.

He adds: “It isastonishing to note that while the organizers scramble about to provide aplatform to writers, they choose to either forgo or overpass the silencedtragedy of Kashmir. Is this an effort to mockat the muffled dissent that is so commonplace in Kashmir?When Kashmiris, by and large, cannot express themselves freely, how can aliterary fest engage them in a meaningful way?”

Arif Parrey, oneof Kashmir’s more promising young writers, hasa different take. “I found Harud’s assertion of Kashmiri and Urdu literature inits proposed event a bit problematic.” Writers in English who have establishedtheir names have found a certain safety in their recognition in the rest of theworld, he says. “People who are based in the valley, especially those who writein the vernacular, do not enjoy that safety as they remain unknown outside thevalley,” he says. Vernacular writings have thus essentially been far lesspolitical than what is being written in English, he adds. “Suddenly, you haveHarud talking about the Kashmiri vernacular literature and one is forced to besceptical.”

But then,wouldn’t calling such vernacular writers to an event like Harud by itselfprovide that “safety”? “Harud is just a show window. The world doesn’t get tosee what is happening within the store behind that window,” he says. Harud willcome and go, he adds. “It could help if it were a sustained effort, but that’snot what it was,” he says. Arif’s writings have appeared in at least two recentanthologies – by Penguin and Harper Collins – on Kashmir.He has a law degree and is a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction.

Tahir Firaz, inhis mid-20s, taught in a local school after doing a master’s in peace andconflict studies. He writes short stories and poetry in English and Urdu,something that has won him praise in local events. “I would have loved to bepart of the audience. As a writer, you can not miss such events,” he says. “However,the criticism that Harud faced dissuaded large sections of aspiring writersfrom attending the event,” he adds, “and I think that happened for the better.”

He reasons: “Itseemed like another programme in the list of what the government has been doingof late – creation of youth clubs, cricket and football tournaments held everyother day… They are simply trying to channel youth anger to ‘harmless’activities.”

Kashmirhas seen some of its strongest anti-India protests, led especially by theyouth, in the previous three years. The government and the securityestablishment this year responded by an extended line-up of sports activitiesfor youth, like T-20 cricket tournaments. Interestingly, DelhiPublic School outside Srinagar which wassupposed to be the major venue for the Harud Litfest was also the venue for onesuch cricket tournament organised by the Indian army.

Talking aboutthe larger goal of the army, Lt. Gen. Syed Ata Hasnain, the Indian army’s chiefin Kashmir, told the media earlier this year,“What we are trying to do is to make extra efforts to reach out to the people…To use the heart as a weapon, this is the doctrine.” The security establishmenthas been proactively trying to “engage” the youth in different activities inorder to keep them away from protests and demonstrations. “This is inventednormalcy,” quips Sameer.

The other Harudvenue was Kashmir University, a place wherepolitical expression is hardly given space. “Even our research proposals arerejected if they are remotely connected to Kashmir’s history and politics in amanner that questions the state narrative,” says Irfan Bashir (name changed), aresearch scholar in Kashmir University. He adds,“What does freedom of expression mean in such a place?” The small office of theuniversity students union was razed by the authorities here in the middle ofthe night a couple of years ago, he quips. Students unions are banned in theuniversity since long now.

“An impressionis being created that dissent is allowed in Kashmir,when actually it is not,” says Jasir Haqqani, one of the young Kashmiris whosigned an open letter critiquing the event and its organisers. Jasir studiedeconomics in Jamia Millia in Delhi and is nowdoing his masters in School of Oriental and African Studies in London. “Young people are being pushed to thewall,” he says. I signed the letter expecting the organisers will clarify theirposition, Jasir adds. “We never meant that the event be cancelled. It wasn’teven a boycott call.”

Owais Andrabi(name changed), a PhD student at Kashmir University, says, “RahulGandhi recently came to the university. Students were called from collegesoutside the university to attend and people were asked to pose pre-draftedquestions to Gandhi.” Private colleges have no choice but to send theirstudents when the authorities demand, he says. “Those who wanted to posequestions on their own were not allowed to reach the mic,” he says. Recently, theCongress party was apparently on a recruitment drive in the university.

Huzaifa, whohad been preparing for Harud, argues: “There were sections in the event whichwere to be devoted completely to politics, like the one on prison diaries.” ButI felt the organisers were a confused lot, he says. “Their homework on Kashmir was lacking.” He adds: “The organisers ought tohave understood that sensibilities in Kashmirdiffer from the outside world. Words here have particular nuances, generated byyears of conflict and strife, attached to them. Add to that their lax approachin refuting the media speculation that Salman Rushdie might attend. WhateverRushdie’s literary abilities, in Kashmir he iswidely seen as a blasphemer, though most people don’t know the grounds on whichtheir claim rests.”

“On Facebook,”he says, “in a group protesting against Rushdie, I tried to defend the festivalby saying that Rushdie had not been invited. But group members smacked themedia reports in my face! My claim that in the provisional itinerary, which theHarud organisers had framed, had no mention of Rushdie failed to holdcredence.”

I couldn’tunderstand why the organisers allowed the Rushdie affair to fester until itsnowballed into a major controversy, he says. He sighs in disappointment: “Itwas a combination of blunders and it so grieved me to see the event beingcancelled. I had great hopes from it.” It would have been a lovely experiencefor people like me who cannot travel outside the valley to interact withreputed names and to learn from them, he says. “I so wanted to meet Rehman Rahiand Gulzar!”

Separate versions appear in the Tamil Dinamalar and Yuva.

‘Solving’ the Delhi terror attack won’t help

2011-09-25T00:30:00.003+05:30

Improved intelligence andinvestigative capabilities might help avoid incidents of terrorism, but donothing to address the root cause

Nawaz Gul Qanungo

The Friday Times | September 16,2011

“Itis with deep sorrow and regret that I inform the house of a bomb blast thattook place this morning in New Delhi.”It was the Indian home minister Palaniappan Chidambaram talking to Lok Sabha inthe Indian Parliament this Wednesday afternoon, September 7. “At about 10.14 am,a high-intensity blast occurred [outside] the Delhi High Court…,” he continuedto inform Parliament about the terror strike that had hit New Delhi just hoursbefore in which, eventually, at least a dozen were killed and more than 70 injured.He continued: “Intelligence agencies constantly share intelligence inputs with DelhiPolice. Intelligence pertaining to threats emanating from certain groups was sharedwith Delhi Police in July 2011… Despite the capacity that has been built [tostrengthen Delhi Police] and despite the police remaining on high alert, thetragic incident took place today.”

Theobjective of the terrorist groups, said Chidambaram, is to strike fear anddestabilise the country. “We are clear in our mind that there is no cause thatwill justify terrorist attacks,” he added. Elsewhere, his prime minister,Manmohan Singh, stated that terrorists were taking advantage of the “securityloopholes that needed to be plugged”.

Nosooner did Chidambaram spell out “intelligence inputs given to Delhi Police inJuly” and Manmohan Singh talk about “security loopholes” than did the media beginto conduct a postmortem of these statements. Was the intelligence input givento Delhi Police “actionable”? Appearing soon on a leading Indian televisionnews channel, Delhi’sLieutenant Governor Tejinder Khanna questioned Chidambaram’s statement bysaying that it wasn’t. “The letter from the home ministry was not actionableintelligence,” Khanna said. And other security “experts” now started explaininghow and why intelligence could be either actionableor non-actionable. Others, meanwhile,had gone paranoid over whether Pakistanwas being let “off the hook… Where are the tough measures?” Arnab Goswami ofTimes Now thundered: “Who is responsible tonight?”

Thequestion one would ideally ask in such a situation is just what can avoid the possibility of such calamity coming topass. However, the so-called experts in India – whether in the government,the opposition, intelligence, the so called civil society or the media – havetraditionally busied themselves in focusing public perception on a deceptivelysimilar, but actually different, question: What can prevent the occurrence of such calamity? Without exception, theintervention that such experts propose is logistical which, in turn, isentirely based on security and intelligence.

Itwas Rahul Gandhi, the Congress general secretary and Gandhi scion, who amongother politicians actually had to face the wrath of the people affected by the latestterror strike in Delhi, when he went to visitthe affected at the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital later in the day.Though Gandhi did eventually manage to reach the surgical ward of the hospital,he had to return without being able to visit the emergency block. Reason? As atelevision news anchor put it, he was “jeered, booed and heckled” by the peopleat the hospital. “They must not be allowed to enter the premises,” a relativeof an injured told a newspaper even as Gandhi struggled to cut through an angrycrowd as he left the scene. “Embarrassed and humiliated, he left the spot inhurry,” noted a television report. Gandhi shouldn’t have been surprised. For,it was him who less than a month before had spoken to the media of a certainhelplessness, in the wake of the Mumbai serial blasts of July 13, 2011.

“Overthe last couple of years we have taken profound steps [to improve security]. Wehave improved in leaps and bounds,” he had said. “But terrorism is impossibleto stop all the time.” Such helplessness doesn’t help when people make simpledemands like those of their lives to be safe. People’s anger at the hospital,of which Gandhi wasn’t the only recipient, couldn’t just be a simple outrage atthe occurrence of a terror attack or loss of precious lives, though that initself is no ordinary matter. But it was also a warning that a common man wassimply, grossly unconvinced by the futile, convoluted and near-psychotic “debate”in response to terrorism that was rampant all around. After all, what is beingdiscussed is something that is meant to preventattacks, not to solve the issue,something that every discerning citizen anywhere in the world would beconcerned about.

Butit’s not that the government doesn’t know what’s staring at it either. And it’snot that the “experts” don’t know that improved intelligence and investigativecapabilities will not root out theproblem. But the government, the experts and the media have all found their mutualinterests in not raising such questions. What, then, is it that is not being talked about?

Callit an extraordinary coincidence that just minutes after the blast outside theDelhi High Court, the Indian Supreme Court began the final hearing of the 1993 Mumbaiserial bomb blasts case. The serial blasts, almost two decades ago, had leftmore than 250 killed and over 700 injured in what was then Bombay. As a media report noted, the Indianinvestigative agency CBI tried 123 people accused in the case. Of them, 100were convicted and the rest acquitted. Of the convicted, 11 were given thedeath sentence while others were given sentences ranging from three years tolife.

Thequestion that begs asking, however, is just what happened to the report of the JusticeBN Srikrishna Commission which probed the Bombayriots of 1992-93 in which nearly 1,000 people were killed, most of them Muslims,the riots of which the March 1993 serial blasts were believed to be animmediate aftermath? The riots in turn took place in the wake of the demolitionof the centuries-old Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in December 1992, the culminationof the Hindu right-wing leader Lal Krishna Advani’s rath yatra. The Srikrishna Report, if at all any of its shredsexist, must be rotten somewhere while the people it incriminated, including BalThakeray and his Shiv Sena goons, breathe free air.

Shortlyafter the blast in Delhi, the Gujaratchief minister Narendra Modi beamed a message through YouTube: “Terrorists areceaselessly trying to drench the land of this nation with blood. People arefed-up with mere promises and what they now want from the leadership is thestrictest action.” Is anyone asking the question how a person who as chiefminister of a state allegedly oversaw one of the most horrific anti-Muslimpogroms in India’s historyin which thousands of Muslims were slaughtered on the streets of Gujarat continues to be the chief minister of that state?Overwhelming reportage of investigative journalism and statements made bygovernment officials including even the state police top brass has not beenenough even to invoke any of India’sdraconian laws against a man who was denied a diplomatic visa even by the United States.

Inthe wake of the Mumbai attacks of July last, Chidambaram said that the attackscould be in retaliation for the arrest of Indian Mujahideen operatives andMaoist cadres in Maharashtra. The Maharashtra police were asked “not to proceed on any kindof assumption or presupposition. Allgroups hostile to the country are suspect.” (Emphasis added.) Chidambaram couldn’thave been expected to mention the disgraceful politicking of the BJP and theCongress over the cases related to the 2002 mass murder of Muslims in Gujarat,a perpetual reminder of how injustice remains systemic in India and fuelsdiscontent. Or for that matter the reluctant admission by the Indian governmentof the existence of the so-called Hindutva terror outfits like the AbhinavBharat.

Thisis not to say that the latest terror strikes in India have necessarily happened forsuch reasons as mentioned above. But as Tariq Ramadan, the Islamic scholar,noted: “You cannot accept that people disagree and then they kill… You mustcondemn this. But in the discussion afterwards, you cannot say there is noconnection. On ethical grounds, it’s wrong. On political grounds, there is aconnection.” It is this politicalconnection that needs addressing, irrespective of what may or may not bebehind a particular terror attack, be it in Mumbai, Delhior Malegaon.

After mass graves, Kashmiris seek the truth

2011-09-05T01:24:00.002+05:30

Nawaz GulQanungo

Dawn | September2, 2011

It was the February of 2007. “The countdown of zerotolerance on human rights violations has started,” said Ghulam Nabi Azad, thethen chief minister of Kashmir. He boastedfurther: “Not only have the people of Jammu and Kashmir liked this gesture of the government, butat the national and international level our concern for protection of humanrights is appreciated.” The concept actually belonged to Indian prime ministerManmohan Singh’s promise of “zero tolerance” towards human rights violations.Disclosures against the Indian security establishment accused of disappearanceand subsequent murder of Kashmiri civilians and passing them off as foreignmilitants, yet again, had set the valley on boil.

A couple of weeks later, Omar Abdullah – the chief ministernow and who in those days as president of the main opposition party NationalConference was still preparing ground for laying claim to the reins ofgovernment in Kashmir – went a step further as he spoke to the media in Jammu: “Ifeel people should know about all killings, those by the security forces aswell as by militants... We want the state to correct the black history of thelast 17 years of insurgency in the state...” Abdullah was talking about truthand reconciliation. A commission on the pattern of the Truth and ReconciliationCommission of South Africa should be constituted to inquire these killings, hesaid. “Everything should come up. People should know everything. There shouldbe no doubts.” A little over a year later, neither the word “truth” nor“reconciliation” figured even once in the Vision Document 2008, the manifestoof the National Conference for the state assembly elections of 2008, the onethat Abdullah eventually won.

Today, in the wake of the revelation of the State HumanRights Commission’s report on mass graves in Kashmir,not surprisingly, chief minister Omar Abdullah’s latest advocacy of a “truthand reconciliation commission” doesn’t find many buyers. Reacting to Abdullah’sstatement, Kashmir’s most influentialpro-azadi leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani said, “There is lot of differencebetween saying and delivering.”

TheIndian Express revealed recently that “for the first time in Jammu andKashmir, an official inquiry has said that it is ‘beyond doubt’ that there arescores of unidentified bodies in unmarked graves in the Valley — as many as 2,156bodies buried at 38 sites since militancy began in 1990.” Relating the presenceof such unmarked mass graves in the valley to thousands of “disappeared”Kashmiris in the last two decades, the SHRC report noted, “There is everyprobability that these unidentified graves at 38 places of North Kashmir may contain the bodies of those believed to be the casesof enforced disappearances.”

“That a state organization has accepted the truth of massgraves is in itself something big,” said a noted Kashmir-based analyst (namewithheld). “But beyond that acknowledgement, it doesn’t mean much.” What alsois important, he added, is to see what recommendations the SHRC comes out with.“Connections [of the mass graves and the disappeared] were not beingconjectured. And now there’s an official investigation to corroborate this,” hesaid.

Parveena Ahangar, chairperson of the Association of Parentsof Disappeared Persons (APDP), however, questions the relation between the SHRCrevelation of mass graves and the disappeared. She said: “There are thousandsof youth who tried to cross the border either from this side or the other. Theseare Kashmiris, Pakistanis, Afghans, others. Countless people were killed whilecrossing the border by the security forces. Some were left to be eaten byanimals and some buried in their dozens. The truth is that the number of massgraves now being talked about and the people buried in them is far too less.”

“But our children were taken by the police, the securityforces and the Ikhwan renegades during raids and crackdowns.” Ahangarquestioned: “Why should they be clubbed with the unmarked graves? People inthese graves may also be Kashmiris, our own children, but the police and thesecurity keep a record of each and every person they arrest. Where are thoserecords? We demand those be publicised.” Ahangar’s son, Javed, then 16, wastaken away from his house by the Indian security forces in 1990 during a nightraid. There has been no trace of him ever since. Ahangar has been at theforefront of the group of people who’s near ones have met similar fate asJaved’s. Based on research and individual testimonies, the APDP puts the numberof the disappeared in Kashmir at 8,000-10,000for the last two decades. These numbers gain significant importance going bythe figures in the SHRC’s report, something which is based on research doneonly in the last two to three years. The J&K government, then led MuftiMohammed Sayeed, itself in early 2003 had put the figure of the missing at3,744.

The rights group International People’s Tribunal on HumanRights and Justice in Indian-administered Kashmir (IPTK) too, based on itsresearch conducted between 2006 and 2009 had documented 2700 unknown, unmarked,and mass graves, containing more than 2,943 bodies. Of these, 2373 wereunidentified and unnamed graves. What is essential to note is that the IPTKresearch covered only 55 villages in just three (Bandipora, Baramulla andKupwara) out of ten districts of Kashmir. Thefindings of the research were released in late 2009 in the document Buried Evidence. “If independentinvestigations were to be undertaken in all 10 districts, notes the IPTK, it isreasonable to assume that the 8,000+ enforced disappearances since 1989 wouldcorrelate with the number of bodies in unknown, unmarked, and mass graves.” Theactual numbers might as well turn out to be more than what the various humanrights groups have so far claimed.

Following the report of the SHRC, DNA profiling of theburied and their comparisons with the families of the disappeared has been oneof the main demands of various groups, including the SHRC itself. What is alsodemanded is an end to the immunity the government has provided to the policeand security forces under draconian laws like the Armed Forces Special PowersAct (AFSPA). Ahangar asked, “Is their no rule of law for the police, thesecurity or the renegades? Yimai maaran… yimaikarne verification? They are the ones who kill. Now, will they be asked toconduct verifications?”

The statement about truth and reconciliation is mererhetoric in the face of solid evidence, said the Kashmir-based analyst. “Letthe government clearly elaborate what process such a commission would entail.Is it going to be like the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commissionwhere you acknowledge the wrong doings and forgive and forget about it? Or isthere going to be a mechanism for a genuine delivery of justice? You cannottalk about reconciliation without bringing the perpetrators to book. But thepossibilities of the latter happening are none.”

South Asia directorat the Human Rights Watch Meenakshi Ganguly in a statement said, “If thegovernment is serious about justice, it needs to get rid of AFSPA immediately.”There is no doubt that before any measures could be expected to make adifference in the lives of people in the valley, the security establishment inKashmir needs to be reined in. But there seem to be no genuine reasons, eventoday, to believe that any such thing will happen. Above all, in such ascenario, who, if at all, will be entrusted with the job of justice delivery? Aday after the news about the SHRC report was publicised in the media, the chiefminister held a meeting to discuss “threadbare” the issue of mass graves. Themeeting, expectedly, was attended by the top brass of the army, police, theCentral Reserve Police Force and heads of other security agencies in Kashmir.

Nawaz GulQanungo is a Srinagar-based writer and independent journalist. He was formerlybased in New Delhiwith the financial daily Business Standard.

Winter gloom sets in on Kashmir’s Harud

2011-09-05T01:15:00.000+05:30

Nawaz Gul Qanungo

Dawn | August 19, 2011

“Harud or autumn is a beautiful season inKashmir. It has inspired much excellent prose,poetry and even a film,” said Namita Gokhale, explaining why the literaryfestival her group will organize in Kashmir thisSeptember was called Harud. “The idea arose from an educationist and artsenthusiasts who wanted to create a platform similar to those that have beencreated in other festivals. There was also special interest and enthusiasm fromsome Kashmiri writers who wanted to emulate the spirit of sharing and discoursein the sessions at the Jaipur literature festival this year. This was followedby a desire to seek an open and democratic space for poetry, readings anddialogue in Kashmir, as had been happening in other recent literary events in locations as diverse as Karachi, Bhutan,Kerala and, soon, Kathmandu.” Gokhale is alsothe founder director of the Jaipur Literature Festival, the much successfulliterary event that’s been held over the last few years in Rajasthan’s Jaipurcity to huge international recognition.

But in Kashmir, the Harud somehow seems to have brought a gloomof winter too soon. Some of Kashmir’s majorliterary figures, though invited, have refused to attend the event. Newsrelated to the event spread by sections of the Indian media seems to have spoiltthe party before it even began. And statements coming out from the organisersthemselves haven’t helped either.

Whileinternational news agency AFP described the event as “another sign of easingtensions in the revolt-hit Himalayan territory,” The Independent of London describedit as a “cultural rebirth” of Kashmir and “anattempt to aid the area’s cultural renaissance.” The Times of India wrote that the “valley had turned a page” and relatedthe event to the fact that Germanyhad lifted the travel advisory for its citizens against visiting Kashmir. It now expected other western countries to“follow suit.” The description hasn’t gone down well with many in Kashmir.

NewYork-based Basharat Peer was quoted by TheGuardian: “The mainstream Indianpress has made it sound like the festival is part of bringing civilisation to Kashmir.” Peer is the author of Curfewed Night. He is also one of the major Kashmiri writers who haverefused to attend the festival. “It's a fine idea but the framing of the eventin the media has been extremely problematic and condescending.”

There areindeed writers willing to attend the event. Rahul Pandita, a Delhi-based writeroriginally from Kashmir, said, “The festivalwould not make the CRPF disappear from the streets. And the fundamental issueregarding Kashmir will not change. But we needto have festivals like this in Kashmir.” Hesaid: “We need to give youngsters a chance to mingle and interact with otherwriters. Something like this should not be politicised. Who are we to decidewhether a young boy or a girl should meet Chetan Bhagat or not? Or Omair Ahmed?Or Javed Akhtar? If they don’t want to, they won’t attend the festival.”

But then,has “everybody” been invited in the first place? “In Jaipur et al, we have haddiscussions on Kashmir and Maoism. Will thisevent have a session on occupation and azadi?Will the likes of Arundhati Roy be called? Who else is more suitable or entitledto attend a literature festival in Kashmir,”asked a Facebook user on the social networking site. To a part of thatquestion, sadly, the Harud organizers have a rather uncomplicated answer: “ArundhatiRoy is not on our list of invitees.” A reason given was that Roy had in the past declined to attendvarious festivals to which she had been invited by them. But it does vindicatein a sense those who were invited but have chosen to stay away from the event.Moreover, there are others too who have been kept out of the event. Film makerSanjay Kak, who recently edited Penguin’s Kashmir anthology Until my freedom has come: The new Intifadain Kashmir, a book released at a crucialjuncture in the very recent times, is just one of them.

MirzaWaheed, the author of The Collaborator,a novel set in the midst of Kashmir conflictand released to international fame earlier this year, is another major writerfrom the valley who has refused to attend. TheGuardian quoted him as saying: “The organisers have said the event will beapolitical. So what would I do if I was there? What would I read? Every page Ihave written is political.” He was referring a statement Gokhale has beenquoted by the media as saying, that the event “will be an apolitical dialogueconcerning literature.”

“‘Apolitical’describes the spirit in which we, the organizers, are approaching thefestival,” Gokhale told this writer, “as we do all our festivals. That surelyis not controversial.” Indeed it is essential, she added. “We create democraticplatforms for debate, discussion and freedom of expression, and facilitate anatmosphere whereby we hope our speakers and audiences will allow for mutualrespect for each others viewpoints, both political and otherwise. The festivalprovides a literary platform for all shades of opinion.” Apolitical, however,has turned to be a word more loaded than political could ever be.

Panditasaid: “I feel that the festival being ‘apolitical’ has been blown out ofproportion. Of course in sessions there will be politics. I for one will talkabout what I call the ‘pain and politics’ of Kashmir – of young boys killed bypolice bullet, an old man made to frog jump in front of his son, the untruthabout the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits, of the hypocrisy of mainstream national presswhile reporting about Kashmir. Who will stop me from talking? Nobody. Even ifit was happening in Papa 2, I would still talk about the same things.”

Papa 2was described by historian William Dalrymple as a detention centre “into whichlarge numbers of local people, as well as the occasional captured foreignjihadi, would ‘disappear.’ Their bodies would later be found, if at all,floating down rivers, bruised, covered in cigarette burns, missing fingers oreven whole limbs.” The centre was shut down in 1996 and was later turned intoofficial residence for high profile ministers in the state.

Thevenues for the event have raised eye brows too. Delhi Public School,the main venue, recently hosted a cricket tournament organized by the Indian army.Talking about the larger goal of the army, Lt. Gen. Syed Ata Hasnain, theIndian army’s chief in Kashmir, had told themedia, “What we are trying to do is to make extra efforts to reach out to thepeople… To use the heart as a weapon, this is the doctrine.” The securityestablishment has been proactively trying to “engage” the youth in differentactivities in order to keep them away from protests and demonstrations.

“DPS hasmany appropriate auditoriums and backup facilities. It has hosted severalsuccessful book and other events, including the recent Bookaroo festival foryoung readers. The excellent record of the school in setting standards speaksfor itself, and Mr Vijay Dhar [DPS chairman] has been most encouraging of ourinitiative to create an inclusive and democratic space for literary voices,”said Gokhale.

Kashmir University, which isn’t known for allowingfreedom of speech, and certainly not political expression, is the other part ofthe venue. Is it a matter of concern for those behind this event to selectvenues that could take care of such political sensitivities? Gokhale said inreply to this question: “We hope and believe that the University readings willbe stimulating and draw engaged audiences from different streams anddisciplines.”

Talkingabout freedom of speech can indeed be complicated in a region where SMSes have mostlyremained banned over the last few years. Very recently, a programme run by alocal FM station during the ongoing Muslim holy month of Ramadan has been takenoff air amid controversy. The programme featured Kashmir’sreligious head and pro-resistance leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq. According to areport in a leading local daily, the Mirwaiz was told by the radio team that a“ban has been put in place on the socio religious series.” The Mirwaiz said, “Itshows to what extent surveillance and censorship is enforced and implemented onthe people of the valley by the state and central ruling agencies.”

Amongother statements from the organizers was the one by Sanjoy Roy, producer of theHarud Festival. He said, “The Harud festival will be a great addition to ourexisting literary and arts festivals in India. It is a privilege to becreating this program with the backdrop of Kashmirand its legacy of literature, which has a history of over 2,500 years. Westrongly believe that India’smulti cultural ethos needs to resonate across the world.” Invoking “India’s multicultural ethos” has expectedly raised eye brows in the valley where hundreds ofyoung unarmed protesters have been killed by Indian security forces and localpolice during the last three years. Recent years have seen some of the mostpowerful anti-India protests of the last two decades in the valley.

If there were SMSes to sell, what would you write?

2011-08-13T13:29:00.000+05:30

The ban on mobile SMSes in Kashmir has evoked a unique work of art, by a young artist from Australia. The work beautifully captures the banality of what has been barred in Kashmir in the name of security. After being exhibited in India and the world, the project, named ‘Paper txt msgs from Kashmir,’ has now been released on the internet as an e-book.

Nawaz Gul Qanungo

Dawn | July 13, 2011

Shabi to Fancy: “Where are you, Chhoti? Come fast, Papa is searching for you. He is very angry because nobody has given him noon chai. Come fast and prepare noon chai for him.”

[Noon chai or “Salt tea” is the common form of tea consumed in Kashmir.]

* * *

It was the Summer of 2008. The valley had boiled over in protest against a transfer of 40 hectares of forest land to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board, the body which manages the annual Amarnath Yatra pilgrimage in Kashmir. Scores of unarmed Kashmiri protesters had fallen to state police and Indian troops’ bullets. While there were major concerns for the environmental costs that the land transfer was going to draw, Kashmir also feared the move to be an attempt by India to change the demographic character of the valley by creating settlements for non-Kashmiris, as has been done by Israel in case of Palestine.

On the other hand, protests in Jammu – in support of the land transfer – throttled Kashmir as the only road connecting the valley to the outside world, the highway that runs through Jammu, was blocked. As goods lay dead and fruit began to rot, Kashmiri traders decided to turn their trucks in the direction of its historic trade routes that went through territories under Pakistani control, a route blocked since, ironically, 1947. The march to go across the border was promptly banned by the Indian government.

What was also banned in Kashmir around the same time was the facility that enabled people to send and receive text messages on their mobile phones – like the one above that Shabi wants to send to Fancy. On the midnight of August 4, 2008, thus, countless subscribers received an SMS on their mobiles: “Local administration ke ahkamat par J&K ke sabhi mobile operators ki SMS facility aaj raat se filhal bandh ki ja rahi hai. Shuru hone pe aap ko itlah di jayegi… As per the directions of the local administration, the SMS facility of all the mobile service providers is being stopped for now. When the services are allowed, you will be informed.” Since then, the ban has been removed and re-imposed several times, especially in the wake of the 2010 summer protests. Even today, though partially lifted, the ban virtually remains intact.

Worse, in November 2009, the central government for reasons of security imposed a blanket ban on all pre-paid mobile phone connections across the Kashmir region. Needless to say, the “security” measure soon became a nightmare for millions of mobile phone users in the valley.

But it also affected the mind of a young artist. Alana Hunt, then an arts student based in Delhi, was taking keen interest in the developments. “It was the sudden ban of something that was so everyday, so unassuming, and the amount of people it immediately affected that really struck me,” she says. “Lakhs of mobile phone users – people conducting business, college students, families, distanced lovers – left without means of telecommunication virtually overnight.”

“I thought of the feelings of alienation the pre-paid ban would generate… and I wondered what could be done,” she says. It actually required imagination, she adds. And for Alana, originally from Australia, it didn’t take too long to imagine what that response could be.

The idea was simple. Take a blank piece of paper and ask mobile phone users to write what they might have normally written in an SMS at that particular time had the facility been allowed. This was what Alana called a “paper txt msg.”

The idea was a kind of light-hearted gesture into the situation, Alana says. It offered an alternative communicative tool which would in some way facilitate a different kind of space, something that would further discussion in a creative and meaningful way, she adds.

The cards were distributed in the southern and northern regions of the valley, apart from Srinagar. There were close to 1,000 paper text messages in total, which were divided into piles and distributed through friends, family and colleagues. “Close to 150 paper text messages made their way back to me in packages, in peoples’ pockets and individually in the post,” says Alana.

The project generated keen interest, both in India and abroad. Paper text messages went on display in exhibitions last year at Sarai in New Delhi and Fraser Studio in Sydney. In late March this year, the work was shown, among other places, in Berlin and in the Netherlands as part of the Memefest.

The collection – which has now been compiled into an e-book and a video – was recently released on the internet. The e-book also features essays and poems contributed by Kashmiri writers and artists, all in reaction to the ban. “Responses,” Alana says, “were positive. People were intrigued and engaged.”

That the ban on SMSes should intrigue people can hardly be overemphasized. A look through the messages, like the ones above, shows the benign nature of what is being prevented by the authorities in the name of security. Sheikh Sibtain, for example, writes to his mom: “Don’t wait for me at dinner. I’ll be late as usual.” Most of the messages in the collection are related to the everyday life, a pointer towards how life remains affected in Kashmir even in the times of relative calm.

Subzaar writes to Shafi: “Hey, if you are near the market, just bring 1 kg of meat and half a kilo of onion. Some guests have come. Be quick. Mama is waiting. She has to cook.”

Love too is all around the messages. Rukaiya tells Aftab: “Hum ne tumhe qismat ki lakeeron se churaaya hai… I’ve stolen you from the passages of destiny.” And the one that Nusrat tells Hakrash: “I love you dear. This pre-paid ban has turned us into two sad people. Please come to see me on Sunday. I miss you.”

The messages hardly leave anyone unaddressed. Among the people supposed to be the recipients of the paper messages are the Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh and home minister Palaniappan Chidambaram. There are messages sent to the people as well as the government of India. The US president Barack Obama also gets a few messages. And there are messages even addressed to god!

In a region where the 3G services have recently been launched by almost every mobile service provider, the ban on SMSes seems more unreasonable. But then, it also means that for the poor, who won’t be able to afford the costlier 3G services, the ban on effective communication remains. In a sense, this simply goes with the belief in the security establishment that the threat to peace remains from such sections of Kashmiri society. Though post-paid users are allowed to send messages of late, they can do so only within their own service provider’s network leaving the ban almost complete. Alana’s work may not lead to any immediate change in the government’s security policy but it certainly makes the ban look stupid.

One of the messages for Chidambaram goes: “Are you going to ban auto rickshaws too? Syed Ali Shah Geelani (the Kashmiri pro-Independence leader spearheading major anti-India protests) of late has been traveling in auto rickshaws.” The dig is not misplaced, since the restrictions have generally been ordered from the home ministry.

Alana’s work marks brilliance with messages that have to do with the most basic, unassuming issues of life: “You social science students know crap about how the world goes around!” It’s a message from Mudasir meant for Aijaz.

There are many messages which directly talk about the ban on mobile messaging. And such messages – many of them angry – tend to distract the reader from the real import of the work. Perhaps the collection would have been richer had the message writers been asked not to write about the issue of the ban per se. But then, humour makes up for it. Read what Mudasir has to tell Baseer: “No need to buy the mobile now. Just get me some pigeons.” On the other hand, Hyder mixes very evocatively both life and the ban when he writes to his beloved: “Let them ban everything but they cannot ban our hearts beating for each other. Lolz!”

The poem “Stationary” by Agha Shahid Ali, one of Kashmir’s most celebrated poets, features to perfection at the end: “The world is full of paper. Write to me.”

The e-book and the video can be accessed at www.alanahunt.com

‘The Brahminical specialist stranglehold on Kashmir is broken’

2011-07-16T12:32:00.000+05:30

Sanjay Kak in an interview

Nawaz Gul Qanungo

Dawn | July 15, 2011

Until my Freedom has come: The new Intifada in Kashmir was released recently in New Delhi. Published by Penguin, the book is a collection of some of the best writings that have emerged from within Kashmir, and about it. The book will be available in South Asia.

Sanjay Kak is an independent documentary filmmaker whose work includes Jashn e Azadi (How we celebrate freedom, 2007), a feature-length film about Kashmir. His films have been screened across the world, winning several Indian and international awards.

Nawaz Gul Qanungo: There has always been a continual flow of literature related to Kashmir. There is hardly anything that hasn’t been written about in the past. How different is the work that you offer in this book?

Sanjay Kak: I think there’s a big change. A lot of writing on Kashmir has come from a slightly tired, liberal nationalistic position. Much of the commentary of Kashmir is sourced from the same people for the last twenty years, the so called Kashmir specialist. And frankly I don’t think I’ve heard any of them say anything new in the last ten years. And yet, they don’t ever seem to be embarrassed by the fact that their analysis of what is happening in Kashmir is constantly proven wrong. The reason is because they are not interested in seeing what is going on. They are actually interested in articulating what they are told to… that you should see that elections have happened in Kashmir and all is well. So I think the time has come to somehow correct that. And also because the new media has allowed a whole lot of new people to comment on events and a whole lot of people are getting information to which they wouldn’t have had any access earlier, that whole Brahminical specialist stranglehold on Kashmir is, I think, broken.

NGQ: As you write in your essay in this book, you went to Kashmir in 2003 after a gap of 14 years. Why, even as a filmmaker, did it take so long?

SK: I think that for someone who is born a Kashmiri Pandit (Kashmiri Hindu), the years between say 1990 and 2000 were very perplexing, irrespective of what you were thinking of what was going on. When I went in 2003, it was actually just a tourist trip. But even in 2003 what was going on in Srinagar, and outside it, was extremely disturbing. Even as a tourist, you couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed. And I thought the most astonishing thing was the level and impact of militarization. I came back – and sometimes I’m embarrassed to use this word – I came back very humiliated. Because I couldn’t believe that I didn’t know what was going on.

NGQ: In your essay, you talk about militarization and ‘breakdown of institutions of democratic governance’. And ‘something with far-reaching consequences for India brewing in those troubles’. What consequences exactly are you talking about?

SK: I think I have this dual identity both as a Kashmiri and as an Indian. As an Indian I would be very concerned about the growing militarization of our society. Whatever happened in Nagaland and Manipur and Mizoram in the 1950s and 1960s happened very quietly. Then there is the prospect of militarization of central

India

like in Bastar and Chhattisgarh. So it’s not just about Kashmir. It is about what kind of a vision we have of society. We can go on calling ourselves the largest democracy in the world but are we slowly going to see large parts of this country going to military control? Just because we don’t have the political means to address it? And whether it’s in the north-east or whether it is in Chhattisgarh or in Kashmir, it (militarization) will keep growing. And armies are professional institutions. They are not unhappy to have new territories, new forces, new budgets given to them. They are not going to say that it’s a bad idea. But it is really up to the political class to think about it. But the political class is so bankrupt of ideas that all they can think of is increase the number of paramilitary and move the soldiers from here to there.

NGQ: The government has been talking about troop reduction since quite some time especially in the wake of the protests of the last few years. What has been the extent of troop reduction? What has been its effect?

SK: There hasn’t been any troop reduction. Whenever the chief minister makes a statement of troop reduction, the army commander denies it. Not only are they not serious about it, each time they raise the issue it actually makes it more dangerous because you realise that actually it is the army and the defense ministry who are calling the shots and not the political class. It’s becoming more embarrassing for the civilian government more than anything else.

NGQ: You talk about the political leadership and how it is or is not representative of the people of Kashmir. I found it quite interesting that the only political leader to make it to the book is Masarat Alam – someone who is not known much outside the valley. Why did you choose to include his interview in this anthology?

SK: He is there precisely to give you an indication of the kind of figure who not many people know… no one ever considers him in the mainstream. He is not given the darjaa [position] of a leader. He is just some shadowy guy with a big beard. But yet everybody knew that there was a time last year when certainly Masarat was the key player in what was going on. But it was not that once Masarat was picked up [arrested by the police], the protests disappeared completely. So, obviously there are other people like, him less visible perhaps. In fact, he said something against journalists in Kashmir in 2007 at one of my film screenings. But I didn’t know him then, I had never met him. He was just some guy who got up at the back of the hall and asked a question. So there must be many people like that.

NGQ: What about art in this book. There is quite a significant amount of it including the excerpt from a graphic novel.

SK: I used a lot of poetry in my film too. It is very much part of the oral culture in Kashmir. There is poetry of protest and so on. Kashmir did not have a long kind of written literary tradition, but poetry has always been. You find people of the younger generation who can rattle off poetry in ways that at least I couldn’t when I was growing up in the rest of

India

. People know the work of Iqbal, they know the work of Faiz, they know the work of so many poets. So it’s a place where poetry is a very real thing.

NGQ: We often hear something called lasting peace in Kashmir. What according to you could bring such a peace to Kashmir?

SK: Extraordinary imagination. I really think that Kashmir could be… could be… that place of all our fantasies. It could be theoretically a south Asian inn. A place between India, Pakistan, China and Central Asia… which was its traditional role, a kind of crossroads. But it cannot be that if we have narrow and timid imaginations… like once Kashmir is independent, it should have its flag, it should have an army, a navy, an air force… not that way. In fact, I was just going through one of the pieces in the book [Until my freedom has come] and it says, ‘If Bhutan can be an independent country, then Kashmir can certainly be.’ So it’s not about viability, it’s really about whether we have the imagination. Does even the Kashmiri leadership have the imagination to imagine a solution, where it doesn’t need to have its own army and it doesn’t need to have tanks and it doesn’t need to have fighter pilots and jets. We are only limited by our own imaginations.

Book title: Until my Freedom has come: The new Intifada in Kashmir
Edited by: Sanjay Kak
Published by: Penguin India
Pages: 328
Price: INR 299

Voice from the Valley

2011-07-09T01:13:00.000+05:30

Nawaz Gul Qanungo

Ink | June 2, 2011

MIRZA WAHEED is the first Kashmiri novelist on the world stage. Published by Penguin, his novel The Collaborator was first released in Kashmir by Penguin. “I had told my publishers that the maiden reading and release of the book will be at my home,” he said during a reading session. Waheed is a Kashmiri journalist born and brought up in Srinagar. He worked in New Delhi before moving to London where he joined the BBC. He spoke to Nawaz Gul Qanungo in a conversation about writing, the novel form, journalism, the media, Kashmir. The interview was done on February 1 in Srinagar after a public reading of excerpts from the novel by Waheed.

NAWAZ GUL QANUNGO: You spoke about the novel being the best form of writing for what you wanted to do. Could you go through that time of inception of The Collaborator, somewhere where it had to be a novel...

MIRZA WAHEED: Well, sometimes, it’s a matter of what you know best. People don’t really go through a complicated process of decision-making. It’s a continuous process. I’ve grown up with the novel as a form and, I said this elsewhere, in my teenage years I actually used to believe that the novel is one of the best inventions of mankind. This form is something which has survived for so long because essentially it goes back to a very, very long time, the oral traditions, the classics, the Greek epics, even the epics from our culture or even the world culture, the Arabian Nights and all those things.

Then, you also need stories, we always want stories and it has gone through such a huge transformation. From the time when people would sit in a village and then recite and narrate stories even in this era but essentially it is story telling. And we need that all the time. Somebody said something very interesting on Twitter – that even the cave-men used to scribble for recording their things and here’s Twitter doing very much the same thing, after thousands of years. So I’ve always been comfortable in it. What helped and what must have been a catalyst was that I studied literature. You begin to know more about the technicalities. And the sense of delight that you get from a story and the art, the characterisation, and what the novelist is saying beneath the text which is so important, so important. [In a novel,] there’s a beginning and then there’s an end. But, there’s also a lot happening underneath the text. That’s why some novels take time because the writer needs a processing time, there is a period of gestation... What does he or she want to explore? What are the themes? Some novels have a philosophical theme because the writer is of a philosophical kind of mind or thinks a lot. He or she may not even have read the philosophical texts, but there is sometimes an innate understanding of the kind of the world and the universe that we live in.

And then there’s the context, the thematic context or a political context or a historical context and so on. So, it’s a part of it. So, what I found myself is that the novel is the best form for all these things to, you know, to really come together and enter this mix. How a theme emerges from say a dramatic scene. Yes, you are making the reader read, there’s plot, there’s movement, there’s expectation of something, there’s suspense, and all those things. But some of those things may have already worked into the text and what you want in the text. So, yes, I’ve always been with the novel and I’ve always been absolutely delighted by it.

NGQ: There is already this huge body of work about Kashmir that people from outside Kashmir have written. There are writers from India and the world. How do you see that body of work? And how do you see, now, Kashmiri writers entering that space and writing about Kashmir and talking about themselves...

MW: The Kashmiris talking about themselves is very important. And it’s very crucial. In the sense that we have always been written about, we have been “explained” as well. Sometimes, we have been explained to ourselves, that this is what you are like. (Laughs.) And then, when you are growing up, even that plays on your mind, you know. Writing about Kashmir, writing books about Kashmir, writing histories of Kashmir, writing accounts of the conflict and coming up with solutions to the dispute, you know, Formula 1, Formula 2 and Formula 3 and all those things. At one level they are slightly upsetting when you are growing up in Kashmir. Upsetting in the sense that sometimes you read a book and you say, “OK, that’s not how it is, I don’t see that.” Yes, you have done your research and you have spent time here but we know a different Kashmir. So, that plays on your mind. And many of the books about Kashmir are not good. The ones I have read, I found them inadequate. And sometimes, when you don’t know the world, you get a feeling that you are being exoticised, you know, to be otherised, in many ways. You know, there are these native Kashmiris and they are like this and they are like that and they are not to be trusted (laughs) and, you know, they lie, they are deceptive, and all those things. And they have been published! (Laughs again).

NGQ: ...and this affects?

MW: Yes. At a young age, they do affect you. You begin to question you begin to ask that it’s not like that, so why are you saying that?

NGQ: And it affects the process of your writing...

MW: Yes, absolutely. It affects. But it’s not a conscious effort in terms of that you decide like that you set aside a few months and you say that I’m now going you read these books with a critical eye and then I will write something better. It doesn’t work like that. It’s part of your growing up, part of your being as a writer, part of your novelistic process as well. So, those things can impinge on you and they inform you as a writer. At the same time all books about Kashmir are not bad, obviously. Obviously some great writing has been done on Kashmir by people who are not Kashmiris. So one should sort of you know respect that as well. But there have been some horrible books about Kashmir (laughs)... yes, seriously...

NGQ: You want to name any...

MW: Oh no, no... (Laughs again.) I’m sure you know!

NGQ: So, yes, now there is this stage where Kashmiris are talking about themselves, writing about themselves... What difference does it make to the whole discourse and, in a sense, does it have a potential to change the situation on the ground?

MW: It may not change the situation on the ground but it does open up a new narrative space, a very important narrative space. This is my story. I may get it wrong but this is my story. I am writing it. And I have the ownership of that story. And it’s not about territorial ownership or about racial ownership or ethnic ownership. It’s a cultural ownership... (pauses.)

And, you know, that, I can do this. So, it’s about that restoration of faith in who you are and that you can talk about yourself and this is, I think, quite important. And it’s not about ability. You know, some people say that you can’t write, so that’s why you have people writing about you. It’s not so simple. It’s about the impulse. It’s about the need to write. It’s not about that narrow thing called ability to tell a story. It is important for me to write. And it’s also about that moment when you think you cannot not write. One writes, but one doesn’t write because one wants to tell people that one can write in a fine English. One writes because one thinks, “Oh! I think differently. And this is what I think.” The impulse to write is much more than just being a chronicler of your community, area, region, population – there’s something more important. But yes, it’s about the context as well, it’s about nuance and sometimes you think, OK, my story, the story of Kashmir, or any place you may be writing from, you sometimes think that its way more complex and nuanced and detailed than what you’ve read and you think that you want to do that and that you want to add to that body of work, so the novel can be about that.

But it’s also not just Kashmir. It’s also about that I wanted to write (laughs) and at some point of my life I thought I could write and then you test it. And then there comes a moment when you are brave enough and you set up on it and you embark on it and you start a chronicle or a short story or an essay. And that is a crucial act when you tell yourself, “OK, I think I can do this. And now, I want to test it.”

NGQ: And coming back to that... Your book goes almost right across the world, there’s Curfewed Night [Basharat Peer, 2009] already. And so these are going almost across the world. How much does this have the potential to change how the outside world looks at Kashmir?

MW: People begin to take notice that there are stories coming out of this conflict that the world has chosen to forget. It’s exactly what I believe. The world is not really very keen on the Kashmir conflict and you very well know. So, Curfewed Night was important, very important in that context because it did force open the gates. And it told a lot of people that this can be done. And I also think it should be done. And then, I’m not saying that Curfewed Night or The Collaborater will change that overnight. But it does enter public consciousness, to a small measure. Two books cannot be called a work of major proportions or emergence of writing... but it’s a beginning.

NAWAZ GUL QANUNGO: You have been in Delhi, you have been in London, you have been away. And it’s a fast changing world. And when you look back at Kashmir, at least in the last twenty years, nothing has actually changed here. It’s like a situation where yesterday repeats itself today and today repeats itself tomorrow... how does one write a story different from another? How does one move from one work of writing to another?

MIRZA WAHEED: But they do change even when they don’t change. Things do change as well in the way you look at them. You know the way you look at the Kashmir situation between now and twenty years ago, it may not be exactly the same. Not because, you are a different person now but [because] you have grown up (laughs) and you have read a little more and you know you have gone out and you have seen other things and your context is widened. So there is that change. Now, coming to the second part of the question, what will another book look like... you know fiction does more than we give it credit for. And I am speaking from personal experience, it does a lot more, that’s why people still write fiction. That’s why it’s still there. That’s why it is published.

NGQ: And then there is someone like [V.S.] Naipaul who moved from fiction to non-fiction...

MW: I liked his fiction. I’ve read his novels, there was Miguel Street [V S Nipaul, 1959] and In a Free State [V S Naipaul, 1971]. I quite liked that and I read him early, in my late teenage. But in the later years, you know... He is a fine writer you know he is one of the finest living writers. But then he turned to non-fiction, chronicling nations, countries, communities. And he does a brilliant job of it. However, I may not agree with some of his politics. So that detracts my relationship with the book. Although the writing on the page is absolutely brilliant. You know, very few people can write such fine prose but then when you get uncomfortable with the politics, with the way he looks at the world, even his views. But I still admire him for the writer he is. He is one of the greatest writers.

And, so, you know, fiction is – I end up repeating myself endlessly – it is about going beyond what is politically available. You want to explore... Themes and nuances, that may not appear in the immediate cultural output or in immediate output of knowledge in terms of news and current affairs and analyses and backgrounds, seminars, panel discussions, (laughs)... an experience I already hate.

NGQ: You had some panel discussions in the recent Jaipur Literature Festival. So, how were the panel discussions there?

MW: It was OK, I mean it’s a format. So you go there and they have this format. And formats have their limitations. And you can’t do things in sound-bites, especially things like Kashmir though some people may be very good at it, who can do Kashmir in two sentences. I can’t.

NGQ: You also said there that India and Pakistan both were not doing enough. And it is an issue stuck mainly between the two countries...

MW: Yes, they are not [doing enough]. I mean the thing is you know one could easily see there is an issue between these two countries, very simple and nothing new about it. And there is the central party which is Kashmir and unless and until India and Pakistan engage sincerely – and that’s the word – and meaningly – and that’s exactly what’s missing, so unless they make it the top-most priority, and they could have different reasons for doing that, so this has to change. And then they have to understand that they have the Kashmiris, by the way (laughs), which is the most important thing, which they haven’t done (laughs). So, they have to listen to Kashmiris. They have to listen to the younger generation of Kashmiris. They have to listen to all Kashmiris. They have to listen to all kinds of Kashmiris. And unless that happens, I don’t see a lot of hope.

NGQ: You have worked as a journalist in Delhi and you have been working in London. How do you see Kashmir being covered in India and the world?

MW: It’s becoming better, but only slightly. I wish I could say that there has been a watershed change in the way Kashmir has been covered. But there has been a churning. And in Delhi as well. A small churning in the sense that people have begun to look at Kashmir in a slightly different manner as opposed to the 1990s. In the 90s, you know you were here and you would see Kashmir covered in the so called national press and TV as if it were a crime story, or a thriller at best. But that’s what my feeling used to be. I was here and there was a tragedy happening here and you are reporting as a law and order issue, or a thriller or something sensational. It was a very bad decade, which also meant that the word didn’t get out in the manner that it should have gotten. So you have this impression of you know you are a young person and I’ve just seen a tragedy happening during the day and it affects you. You know, conflicts are very personal. And then you see newspapers or broadcasters or whoever and you are shown a completely different narrative which unfold on the screen or in the newspaper that you see in the morning. And then you say that there is something wrong in this – bhai hum to kucch aur dekh rahe hain, you know, ya hum pe to kuchh aur guzar rahi hai, dekhne ki to duur ki baat hai, aur aap is ko, you know, is tarah is ko pesh kar rahe hain. So, that, I think, is beginning to change, but not massively. But there has been something, some sections who are coming and saying OK, let’s look at it in a slightly more broader perspective and with some context.

And thats also happened, I mean, I wish I could say that it has happened internationally in a big way. But internationally, there’s Iraq, Afghanistan, Af-Pak as they call it and other things are still the big stories and there are other reasons for that. There is the entire debate about democracy and it is a huge growing market for western powers and capitals. But, yes there has been a small churning, and that to me is a small ray of hope.

NGQ: Then there is also a sudden outburst in the Kashmir media. How do you see this media doing its job?

MW: I wish I could answer that. I’m not really entirely qualified to comment on the local media because I don’t really get the time to consume all of it from London. But I see, and this is reassuring, that this younger generation of journalists and writers and people you find on the social media and such spaces. They represent hope for me. ... Yes, I do see a difference between this lot, to use a bad word, and the earlier lot, though there are of course fine journalists already here, known internationally. So, this represents hope for me. And the other important thing that’s happened is this new generation is that they do seem to have a sense of their place in history, where they see themselves in a context. And they read. You know its not just about writing. And they – though as I said I’m not entirely qualified because I’ve not spent enough time – but, you know, what I’ve seen and what I’ve read it does feel like that they read.

NGQ: You read out a very moving, painful chapter called “Milk Beggars” at the reading. And some listeners in the room were crying while listening. [A person got up, weeping, asking the novelist to stop reading.] And you said it was your favourite chapter in the book. Why is this one passage the favourite?

MW: Well, it’s not my favourite in that sense. There are other sections in the novel that are my favourites. But this is closest to my heart. Because in the entire 22-year-old narrative on Kashmir, the big constituency of the population are the women of Kashmir and it’s been more or less a silent area while they have suffered in all kinds of ways. They have suffered in involuntary ways and even voluntary ways. They have been left with the legacy of suffering and mostly they have been silent. You have seen pictures of protesting women and that is nothing, they have gone through a lot. So that section is close to me in that sense. I wouldn’t say it’s the favourite section but it is close to me in that it is important. And I actually believe this is true, you know, that the women of Kashmir are among the bravest in the world. It’s not about coming up with a sentence. I actually sincerely think so.

NGQ: And then you also said that it was a very long chapter and it took years to write it and then you brought it down to just a few pages. So is there a conflict? You know that you are writing fiction but you also know that you are talking about reality. And then there may perhaps be a temptation to exaggerate reality while, on the other hand, you do not even want to tell the truth and you kind of suppress the story.

MW: See, fiction is a very complex business. Even the concept of realism is a very complex concept. There is realism... there is literary realism and there is realistic fiction. They are two different things. And a novel can be real, in that context of the novel, in the pages of that novel, it’s very real. It may not be realistic in relation to what has happened for real... It’s a very, very complex. And there’s a huge discussion about fiction and non-fiction. See, fiction is like, it’s sometimes more effective than reality. It brings reality alive. At least it hopes to do that. It’s not about just picking up an incident and narrating it. I would have then written a non-fiction book... It’s not about that at all. It’s about what you do with that material and what is the effect, what is the engagement with the reader, what is the contract with the reader. And, have you agitated the reader enough. I do think that fiction should, you know, it should provoke. And it should agitate in all kinds of ways. It doesn’t always have to be disturbing. But it should do something to the reader and that is the whole point about the novel as well. That you want to write about a thing that may be real but that’s not the main motive of writing that I want to represent reality. It’s about taking the reader along on a more, if I may use the word, illuminating curve. You know, after he has read it, does it come alive for him or, more importantly, has it made him think.

When a bank loses a state

2011-05-10T01:38:00.001+05:30

The government’s “financial indiscipline” argument for dislodging J&K Bank from being the state’s central bank is more of a disgrace, let alone an excuse. Rather than seriously ponder over its expenditure and resource utilization, the state government has yet again preferred a dole from New Delhi. The problems will arise as and when the doles are either exhausted or simply siphoned off. The government would do well to realize that J&K is more corrupt than any state in India (since Bihar, the only more corrupt one, must be fairing better now during Nitish Kumar’s impressive tenure). The so called fiscal indiscipline might as well turn out to be a smokescreen for such outrageous levels of corruption. And while fingers remain crossed for a peaceful summer ahead, the ruling coalition has only further strengthened the economic dimensions of occupation by deliberately throwing the state under the clutches of New Delhi. In fact, that the state government doesn’t seem to have shown any resistance whatsoever to the move only proves its subservience to New Delhi. The inept economics is matched only by its reckless politics.

Nawaz Gul Qanungo

April 28, 2011

The tag “Bankers to the government of Jammu & Kashmir” has set J&K Bank apart from any other bank in

India

since the last six decades. “The slogan is gone. Tonnes of stationary that proudly displayed this tag will now go down the drain,” says Rafiq Hussein. Hussein has been working as a senior officer for J&K Bank for the last twelve years. The “divorce” between the J&K government and J&K Bank, he says, is something that will have serious repercussions not just for the bank but even the state. For, beginning with April, J&K Bank has seized to be the banker to the government of the state of J&K. It was the only bank with such a position – roughly being to J&K what the RBI is to India – something that J&K enjoyed as a state with a special status in the Indian Union. The state government will now do its banking with the Reserve Bank of India, like any other state would.

Hussein’s colleague, Imran Malik, has a slightly different opinion. “More than the bank, it’s for the state to worry,” says Malik. He explains: “The bank has a total credit portfolio of around Rs 29,000 crore. This is the total amount of money that the bank has given as credit to its clients, big and small. For not being the lender to the state government now, this amount will now be reduced by around Rs 2,300 crore. It’s a marginal difference and cannot have any major implications for the bank. The bank may in fact find better sectors and avenues for its investment.” The Rs 2,300 crore is the overdraft that the government needs to correct the mismatch between its revenue and expenditure and has been acquiring from J&K Bank.

More than the financial implications of the development, however, what has bothered analysts is its political significance. What has been most scathing is a latest statement by the former chairman of J&K Bank, Haseeb Drabu, who was unceremoniously removed from his post late last year. In a recent essay published in a magazine, he writes: “…the manner and motivation in which the new arrangement has been carried out represents the microcosmic reality of how the Indian State handles the Kashmir issue. Even as the interlocutors were “talking” and soaking up the autonomist sentiment among the people before advocating it, the government of India was working to pull out the only substantive pillar from under the edifice of autonomy.”

The Opposition PDP too had attacked the National Conference soon after the decision was announced in late January. PDP president Mehbooba Mufti said, “Exclusion of J&K Bank as bankers to the state government… and conceding debt management of the state to the RBI is the latest and the most lethal nail in the coffin of the state’s autonomy by the National Conference.”

The state government and J&K Bank itself have long defended the decision as a “win-win” situation. The state finance minister, Abdul Rahim Rather, had told a press conference that financial indiscipline in the past had forced the state government to allow the RBI to take over J&K Bank’s role in providing overdraft facility to the state. “The overdraft facility with J&K Bank was meant to be used to meet a temporary mismatch between the availability of cash and expenditures for only a few days. But due to its continued non-liquidation, the overdraft had become a permanent structural liability deficit in the state finances.” He further claimed that the move was beneficial to the government as well as the bank as it would improve the financial position of the state in the coming years. J&K Bank, on the other hand, noted that the revised banking arrangement was in fact the continuation of the existing arrangement.

Malik doesn’t agree with the government statements. “Where, from now on, is the government going to get this (Rs 2,300 overdraft) cash from? How can it meet this requirement when RBI is willing to give it only Rs 600 crore as overdraft? If the government actually pulls it off, and saves itself from the interest burden on a debt of up to Rs 2,300 crore, that would be great. But you need a miracle to do that.” For the sake of reference, he adds, the government needs nearly Rs 400 crore just to meet its salary expenses which it is not able to meet on its own, hence the doubt on the wisdom behind the decision.

Being the regulator of all banks in India including J&K Bank, the RBI had been taking exception to the fact that J&K Bank’s overdraft to the state government was way beyond its prescribed limits. As a result, J&K Bank was not meeting the regulation guidelines of the RBI. “Now, since the overdraft to the state government doesn’t exist, J&K Bank will have a better rating from the RBI for meeting its requirements,” adds Malik.

He says further: “The RBI is now going to provide around Rs 600 crore to the J&K government as overdraft. However, this money will have to be returned by the government within 15 days. How will the government be able to do that?” The doubt is not unfounded. The J&K government has been in overdraft continuously for the last two decades.

Drabu, however, gives a different perspective in his essay. “Rs 2,300 crore of decline in the credit portfolio is not such an issue as J&K Bank can deploy it elsewhere. [But] it is unlikely that this amount will be deployed in J&K as there are no large borrowers.” In other words, J&K is bound to lose this money to outside states.

Nisar Ali, a prominent Kashmiri economist and advisor to the state government, does not share such anxiety. “There is no [political] connection,” he says. It’s just that the state government needs to be vigilant and maintain fiscal discipline, he adds. “The relationship between these institutions remains the same. But, now the J&K Bank will be dealing with the state government on behalf of the RBI rather than on its own as it used do earlier,” he says.

How do the rest of the states of India deal with such situations? Ali says the other states are self sufficient and they don’t need any such help from the RBI, some of the north eastern states being the only exception. So the question doesn’t really arise, he says. In other words, the J&K government is simply not able to meet its own expenses. But how does this new arrangement change that basic situation? In Nisar Ali’s words, “The government actually needs to raise taxes. But it is hesitant as it fears a public backlash.”

The repercussions are already there to see, Hussein says. “The recent attempt by the government to impose Property Tax is nothing but a desperate effort by the state to extract money from the people by any means possible,” he says. The government recently attempted to impose a tax on all kinds of properties within municipal limits. The move witnessed huge uproar in the Assembly while the public reaction was one of anger and mistrust. The government soon buckled under pressure and deferred the Bill.

ON ITS PART, the state government has maintained that it had pleaded with New Delhi for a grant of Rs 2,300 crore to clear in one go the structural debt that the government was reeling under in the form of the overdraft. Consequently, the 13th Finance Commission, the government said, awarded the state government a one-time grant of Rs 1,000 crore and allowed it to raise the remaining Rs 1,300 crore through market borrowing. The argument doesn’t really impress since the state government itself owns more than half of the total stake in J&K Bank. The interest that it pays to the J&K Bank on its overdraft is partly its own profit. For the Rs 1,300 crore that it will raise from the markets, it could have continued to do so with its own bank.

Moreover, Hussein asks, what is the guarantee that government won’t consider alternative banks for its dealings at some point in future? He says: “Earlier, the government was viewed to be bound to go with J&K Bank. Now that trust has gone. The government disburses its entire salaries, for example, through the various branches of J&K Bank. The state government may prefer bigger banks like State Bank of India and Punjab National Bank someday. SBI boasts of the lowest cost of deposits among all banks and that can be an attraction for the government.”

Najeeb Saraf, a highly placed J&K Bank official, says, “There is a view that the government is trying to grasp the management core of the bank. With a compromised management at the helm, it will be easier for the government to use the bank for its own vendetta, political or otherwise. There are certain welfare schemes that have been pushed by the government when actually the risk falls on J&K Bank. With a strong management, such approaches of the government would have easily been spurned.”

Saraf is talking about programmes like the “seed capital scheme” for “entrepreneurship development” started by the government where J&K Bank is supposed to offer loans of up to around Rs 21 lakh to unemployed youth without receiving any guarantee or a mortgage. Though it is for J&K Bank to approve each such individual case, it seems to be under influence of the government to go soft on its regular guidelines. Saraf says: “With a genuinely strong management, such a scheme would never have seen the light of the day. But since the government has asked the management in J&K Bank to do it, the bank is doing it. In other words the bank ceases to be a genuine financial company that, ideally, would purely go by its self-interest.” Worse still, the scheme was pushed through J&K Bank when Drabu had been forced to resign and an acting chairman was at the helm, he notes.

Hussein says that government interference will also lead to dubious appointments. “A weak CEO will certainly buckle under government pressure,” he says.

Malik has doubts, however. “Drabu’s exit may or may not be related to this issue. But the efforts for bringing in the RBI were under way since many years. It’s just that it has finally happened now. The RBI was also interested in seeing this happen since it wanted the bank to fully comply with its norms. Compliance, in turn, would be beneficial for J&K Bank.”

“But the chain of events leaves one with enough suspicion,” says Hussein. Drabu was a far stronger top man to come under any adverse influence from the government, he says. The unceremonious exit of Drabu in any case is going to be detrimental for not just the bank but even the entire state, he adds. “The question also is what happens to the status of the bank – its brand value – once it is no longer the lender to the state government.”

“Being the banker to the state had a positive effect on the public confidence in the bank,” says Hussein. He elaborates: “This in turn made it possible that J&K Bank enjoyed some kind of a monopoly in the state. Now if you want the bank to no longer be the banker to the state, let the government give up part or the whole of its stake in the bank and let the bank itself be the majority stake holder. The element of government interference has to go so that the bank can be in control of itself. This has happened when the government doesn’t seem to be working in favour of the bank. Why after all would a government that has its own independent bank give up such priviledge? Why should financial indiscipline suddenly lead to such a drastic step when things have been pretty much the same for decades?”

Mubeen Shah, formerly president of the Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry, says, “So far the issue of the RBI is concerned, I feel the independence of J&K Bank is certainly important for the independence of the state economy. This will be compromised, and eventually lost, if the government goes ahead with its decision. In that context, the decision needs to be resisted by all the political parties as well as the people of the state.”

He adds: “But J&K Bank has been working as per the RBI norms. For a common businessman, there will be no difference either way. J&K Bank did not make any changes in their credit policy considering the prevailing situation in Kashmir. In fact, they are lagging behind even in following the RBI policies like in the credit guarantee scheme, something that could have genuinely changed Kashmir’s economy in trying times, particularly the fund-deprived artisans, small-scale industry and MSMEs.”

But Drabu grimly states: “A trader or businessman is never going to be assured of a government payment. At any point, if the government stays in overdraft for 14 working days (they have been in overdraft for every single day in the last twenty years), the RBI will stop making the payments and the cheques of the government will be dishonoured till the overdraft is cleared.” He adds: “The unknown impersonal monolith of the RBI will decide to stop the payments and the familiar face of J&K Bank will enforce it on the ground.” So far, Drabu says, the RBI had only regulatory oversight. Now they have the operational control.

Saraf raises an alarm, too: “The future suddenly looks bleak. We are not sure who is running the bank now – the centre or the state. It is certainly not being run by the management of the bank itself. In a situation such as Kashmir’s, you need a supportive government for an institution like J&K Bank. Considering the developments, that doesn’t seem to be so. Maybe it’s a matter of time that the only listed company that Kashmir boasts of will no longer be so. Maybe it will be forced to merge with a larger bank.” The concern has reason. J&K Bank is among the top one hundred companies in

India

, and the only such that belongs to the state.

Saraf adds: “Despite the disastrous two decades that the valley has seen, businesses incredibly have managed to survive. Economic pundits say this has to a huge extent been due to the easy access to small credit made possible by J&K Bank. So much so that the bank has relaxed the general guidelines nearly as a norm to let people have access to capital. Any weakening of this institution will certainly affect the economic independence of the state.”

“The Hurriyat raised a cry over the issue of Property Tax and the Dogra Certificate. But an issue of a far more existential threat to the state has met criminal inaction from them,” says Saraf.

It is difficult to predict which side the financial implications of this decision will ultimately fall. But it needs no great wisdom to say that both the state government and J&K Bank can meet any financial challenge if it follows a basic discipline. Looking at the fiscal “discipline” the government is known for, however, a disaster in the not-so-distant future is very likely. Moreover, in a time when decentralization and devolution of power is the catchphrase of state governments in India, the J&K government has taken a regressive step in surrendering what was in effect its central bank.

That “financial indiscipline” forced the government to do this is more of a disgrace, let alone an excuse. Rather than seriously ponder over its expenditure and resource utilization, the state government has yet again preferred a dole from New Delhi. As Ali says, “The government doesn’t have any issues for the near future.” But the problems will arise as and when the doles are either exhausted or simply siphoned off. The government would do well to realize that J&K is more corrupt than any state in India (since Bihar, the only more corrupt one, must be fairing better now during Nitish Kumar’s impressive tenure). The so called fiscal indiscipline might as well turn out to be a smokescreen for such outrageous levels of corruption. And while fingers remain crossed for a peaceful summer ahead, the ruling coalition has only further strengthened the economic dimensions of occupation by deliberately throwing the state under the clutches of New Delhi. In fact, that the state government doesn’t seem to have shown any resistance whatsoever to the move only proves its subservience to New Delhi. The inept economics is matched only by its reckless politics.

Names of all the J&K Bank officials changed.

A version appears in Dinamalar.

Sopore sisters: In death, and life

2011-02-28T18:33:00.000+05:30

Nawaz Gul Qanungo

March 1, 2011

In the May of 2006, Praveen “Five Police Station” Swami wrote in Frontline: ““Long live Pakistan,” chanted the hundreds of young men who, armed with axes and crowbars, had gathered to demolish Sabina Hamid Bulla's home in downtown Srinagar on May 5. “We want freedom!” ... Last month, residents of Srinagar complained to the police about two 30-second pornographic video clips that had been circulating through mobile phones. A 16-year old girl was then detained, who said she had been recruited by a prostitution ring run by Bulla. In an unsigned statement to the police, the girl said Bulla, to whom she is related, supplied her with drugs and cash for having sex with two State Ministers, a Border Security Force officer, 10 policemen and several well-known businessmen. ... As thing stand, though, the Central Bureau of Investigation - which was, notably, given charge of the case before the protests began - has an enormous mission before it. First, it will have to persuade the girl, who was married off in April with some financial assistance from Bulla, to make a formal statement before a magistrate. Then, corroboration will have to be found to back the charges she has made - no small task, given the influence of the men who now face charges of rape.” [Frontline, May 20 - June 2, 2006.]

People who have tooth and nail tried to connect the murders of Arifa and Akhtara of Sopore’s Muslim Peer to “promiscuity” and whipped up fears of hijacking of Kashmir’s struggle for independence by a barbaric indigenous Taliban perhaps need to be reminded that Sabina Hamid Bulla, the king pin of one of the most outrageous “morality” scandal to hit Kashmir ever, is still alive. And safe. In fact, she might as well be writing a book right now! And, as the trial has it, with witnesses turning hostile one after another, the accused are being given a neat, clean chit one by one! Just where is the hit squad of Koshur Taliban? The story of the probe and trial in the scandal that began almost five years ago is fascinating with its twists and turns.

On July 31, 2006, Press Trust of India reported: “The CBI on Monday filed chargesheets against seven persons, including two former Jammu and Kashmir ministers, arrested in connection with the sex racket case. ... Former ministers G A Mir, Raman Mattoo, senior IAS officer M Iqbal Khanday, Deputy Superintendent of Police M Yousuf Mir, hotel manager Riyaz Kawa, suspected kingpin of the racket Sabeena and her husband A Hamid Bulla have been charged under various sections of the Immoral Trafficking Act. ... Nine persons including Sabeena, Bulla, former Additional Advocate-General Anil Sethi, DIG BSF K C Padhi and Deputy Superintendent of Police Mohammad Ashraf Mir have already been chargesheeted by the investigating agency in the designated court under Section 376 of Ranbir Panel Code for raping a minor girl.”

Three years later, Praveen Swami recalled (The Hindu, July 29, 2009): “The former Additional Advocate-General, Anil Sethi; Border Security Force Deputy Inspector-General K.C. Padhi, Deputy Superintendent of Police Mohammad Ashraf Mir, Shabbir Ahmad Langoo, Shabbir Ahmad Laway, Mehrajuddin Malik and Masood Ahmed were prosecuted for raping the minor, as well as violations of the Prevention of Immoral Trafficking Act. ... Iqbal Khandey, then Principal Secretary to the Government of Jammu and Kashmir, was also charged with the PITA, along with the former Deputy Superintendent of Police, Mohammad Yusuf Mir, and sitting members of the Assembly Raman Mattoo and Ghulam Nabi Mir. Srinagar resident Riyas Ahmad Kawa was also prosecuted under the provisions of the PITA. ... Shabbir Ahmad Langoo, who circulated pornographic photographs of the minor taken with his mobile phone, was prosecuted under the Information Technology Act.

... Few of those tarred by the allegations of having been linked to the prostitution scandal seem to have suffered serious damage.

... Both politicians now being tried on charges of having hired prostitutes from Ms. Bulla contested last year’s Assembly elections. Mr. Mir won the Dooru seat with a comfortable margin. Peerzada Mohammad Sayeed, a senior Kokernag-based Congress leader who, others in his party claimed, without basis, was linked to the scandal, defeated PDP nominee Seher Iqbal, daughter of Mr. Khandey. ... Mr. Khandey, like other officials suspended when the scandal broke out, has since been reinstated. ... Late last year, in an interview to a Srinagar paper, Ms. Bulla said she was planning to write a book.” (Emphasis added here and below.)

A few days later in the same year, Muzamil Jaleel reported (The Indian Express, Sunday edition, August 2, 2009): “When The Indian Express exposed the racket..., the police arrested Sabina. The expose led to a public outcry, forcing the government to hand over the investigation to the CBI. ... The CBI probe initially went full steam. Two former ministers, a BSF DIG, a top IAS officer and senior police officers were arrested while several top J&K politicians, including ministers, legislators and officers, were named. But then there was a sudden halt. ... Highly placed sources have revealed to The Sunday Express that the “CBI was requested to go slow” at the highest level because there was serious threat of a total demoralisation in the political class as well as the security establishment fighting separatists. “It was going out of control. If there was rigorous probe, it (sex abuse scandal) would have transcended out of Kashmir,” a top J&K Congress politician said.”

TODAY, NEEDLESS TO say, the Indian security enterprise would fancy basking, too, in the prospect of a “Kashmiri Taliban-abetted double-murder of two poor sisters accused of promiscuity” in Sopore’s Muslim Peer. As a piece carried on the website of Tehelka magazine criminally put it in the context of the double murder, “a demonic embryo that will grow up to be Kashmir’s Frankenstein, devouring its people in the name of Azadi”. The way it displayed the news, Tehelka in its print edition (February 9, 2011), too, did brilliant service to the “rumour” mill. So did sections of the media here and elsewhere. The audience, too, need not have necessarily been in the valley. In fact, it actually served the audience outside it.

Kashmir in the last three summers has seen some extraordinary anti-India protests mostly involving young stone throwing men and teenagers coming out on streets against human rights violations, a picture that’s also in total contrast to the ugly gun culture of the 1990s. Ignoring the real import of the absence of the gun today in Kashmir’s protest, a question of “double standards in reacting to violence perpetrated by the state and that by the terrorists” is being raised. So much is the zeal among the people behind this argument that there is no thought whatsoever spared to the equation thereby created between the action of the state and terrorism. For the common people, thus, both ought to be the same though this is not actively implied but quietly, deliberately overlooked.

In New Delhi, the state chief minister, Omar Abdullah, told the media, “Under these circumstances, I doubt anybody would have guts to stand up and say they did it and why they did it.”

There was absolutely no element of responsibility, let alone guilt.

“...if there was even the slightest of indication that these deaths have been the result of high handedness of forces, the whole Valley would have erupted in flames,” he said.

Sections of the media, on the other hand, have accused the people of being “complicit by staying quite” after the murders of Arifa and Akhtara “because they were killed by militants”. The situation has been compared with that of the Shopian double rape-and-murder case of 2008.

However, this is not to ignore the near total absence of any major protest against the murders of Arifa and Akhtara. It was four days after the killings that the mood in the valley finally forced Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the most influential pro-independence leader in Kashmir, to call for a shutdown in Sopore against the murders. The call was heeded by the people. It was Friday too and some violent incidents of stone pelting against the police and security forces were witnessed in and around Sopore. An SHO and a constable were injured in the clashes in Baramulla, just outside Sopore. Women of Muslim Peer took out marches in the streets.

Apart from the fear of danger from protesting against an invisible enemy, an important factor for the lack of a major public backlash against the killings also remains that such a move would be construed as support for the government. Moreover, the government itself would turn any such eventuality to its own advantage. Sopore remains the bastion of anti-India sentiment in the valley next only, if at all, to downtown Srinagar. Being close to the line of control has also made sure that Sopore takes the brunt of the two-decade-old security onslaught be it against the militants or the peaceful protesters.

But in no way can it be ignored that Dar’s family, and thousands of such others in the valley, are paying the cost of a long, bloody conflict that has sustained itself purely on the extraordinary deceit that the establishment, both within the state and in New Delhi, has been practising for more than six decades – promising a Kashmir resolution and offering none. In Kashmir, it is this conflict that creates an environment for masked terrorists to go around and plunder innocent families and get away with it – a situation that also stops people from rising against a faceless enemy. Shirking responsibility on part of the government is just another disgrace for a three-quarter-million security enterprise which in its own estimates claims to be fighting not more than a few hundred gunmen.

Four days after Arifa and Akhtara were murdered, an innocent 21-year-old Manzoor Ahmed Magray was killed in the dead of the night by the army in Handwara. Margay had slipped out of his house at night to meet his girl friend. The army thought it was a terrorist. Fearing a public backlash, Omar Abdullah rushed to meet the family and vowed to bring the killers to book. He didn’t bother to meet Dar’s family. Apart from the huge protests at the funeral of Magray, Kashmir has seen no major backlash against the incident, either.

The deafening public outcry in the Shopian case was an exception in the valley rather than the rule. Magray’s death at the hands of the army is a stark example. In over a hundred thousand Kashmiris killed according to unofficial estimates, a Shopian-like public backlash was seldom seen. The least the government can do is bring the murderers to book, both in Sopore and Handwara. Given its history, however, there’s no reason to believe it will happen. Not surprisingly, then, while the Lashkar has “ordered a probe at its own level” in to the killing of the two sisters in Sopore, the army, too, has “ordered an enquiry on its own” into the killing of Magray in Kupwara! For the devastated Dars and Magrays, it would hardly make a difference which side the bullet had come from. Omar Abdullah, though, seems to think otherwise.

Some of the residents willing to speak believe the girls were killed for being police informers and that they had been warned by the militants before. Posters have been found pasted in the town with militants warning people, including women, against working for the government intelligence agencies. Yet people are, albeit silently, angry with the killings. Sources, apart from media reports, suggest that the sisters indeed possessed mobile phones. The family vehemently denies this. There is above all no substantial proof that the sisters were actually working for the security. The police on the other hand haven’t openly given any clue about the existence of mobile phones. But there are suggestions also that the police may soon have details of the call records of the two sisters. Whether that actually comes into the public domain remains to be seen. What is beyond doubt is that rather than messing itself up in the possibility of the sisters being security informers, the police and the government would find it far more convenient – and useful – that the killings be projected through the “promiscuity” angle. Sections of the media, local as well as from outside, have only obliged the establishment.

“More than the security establishment, or even the militants, people need to question their own conscience for why the poor young sisters of Muslim Peer met such a fate. The dreadful poverty that their family lived in is a question first not to the government or the militants but to the exceptionally rich population that pervades Sopore, even in the times of intense conflict, where such a poor family existed uncared for,” said Salim Ahmed (name changed), someone who has lived in Sopore for several years. The apple-rich town of Sopore is renowned for the wealth its crop brings every year, one season after another.

The answers to the tragic story of Arifa and Akhtara perhaps will not be found completely in the circumstances of the murders that have devastated their family. But rather in the conditions in which they had lived.

Separate versions appeared in Dinamalar and Kashmir Times.

Sopore smoulders

2011-02-28T18:30:00.002+05:30

Nawaz Gul Qanungo

Dinamalar | February 22, 2011

On the night of January 31, Arifa, 17, was cooking rice in her room. The 6-by-12 room in the Muslim Peer locality in Sopore is what her parents, elder sister and younger brother called their home. At 7.45 pm, a few masked men armed with guns barged in and asked for Arifa and her elder sister Akhtara, 19. They wanted to “talk to them outside”. Akhtara was in her uncle’s house upstairs cleaning fish, a job both sisters did for earning a few rupees a day. Their father, Ghulam Nabi Dar, a labourer, was out in the mosque. Akhtara was called from her uncle’s house. And both the sisters were dragged out. Their mother, Fareeza, begged the masked men. They’d be back soon, she was told.

It’s been three weeks now. Fareeza’s eyes have run out of tears. And the tears seem to have drained all her blood leaving her with a pale, yellow face. She talks to the people around her, then to herself, and then to her two dead teenage daughters. “Tami Lalla Dedi pruchhnam yi kehe daleel ateth, mama?That noble girl had asked me, what’s the matter there, Ma? And she went to the gunmen and asked them if she and her little sister had made a mistake. Forgive us if we have done wrong, she told them. What took you away, then, Akhtara? Did you both beg them and fall on their feet, my brides? Why did you leave me alone, shattered? What hit my world, what storm was this?”

The gunmen dragged the two sisters out and took them away. Gunshots were heard a while later. The two sisters had been taken to a distance of half a kilometre and killed in cold blood. No one claims to have the knowledge of who the killers were, except the police, which, within hours of the killings, came out with the names of two local Lashkar e Taiba militants. The Lashkar and the militants across the line of control have refuted the claim repeatedly, blaming the security agencies for trying to malign them. During the days in between, posters appeared with the Lashkar claiming the responsibility for the murders saying the girls were killed for being informers, and for being promiscuous. Not that it mattered, but there’s nothing about the very poor family of Dar to corroborate this.

“This pile of clothes is all they had. These are their clothes,” says Shareefa, the sisters’ aunt, who used to help them with cleaning the fish. Crumpled, old worn-out clothes lie on the shelf. Electric wires hang around the ceiling. A blackened yellow clock hangs on the wall, ticking. Jeelani, 16, the sisters’ little brother, is fighting the silence imposed on him. “Sit there. Don’t say anything, please,” Fareeza tells him.

“These clothes are all that belonged to them. They had nothing more. They didn’t even have a mobile phone. They didn’t know what SIM cards mean,” says Shareefa. “Akhtara was cleaning fish even at that time,” she says. “All that Akhtara had on herself was an old bangle made out of a piece of iron. Arifa had in her pocket a rubber band she used to tie her hair,” says Shareefa, who also helped wash their dead bodies. “We didn’t even have a picture of theirs. They never clicked a photo of themselves. The only picture we had of them was at their maternal home taken during a marriage. What danger could they have posed and to whom?”

“Akhtara’s hands still smelt of fish. Are such girls accused of promiscuity? This is how old scars are peeled off and wounds opened afresh,” she says. It’s not the first time violence has shattered the family.

On August 14, 1993, one of the brothers of Fareeza, Muhammed Sultan, was killed when he was raising a flag during a pro-independence demonstration. He was shot in the neck and died on spot.

Hardly three months later – November 27, 1993 – Dar’s brother, Khazir Muhammed, was killed. An encounter between the security forces and militants had been going on and houses in the neighbourhood had been set on fire. “He went outside with water to put out the fire in the neighbourhood. Hamsaayan log balaayi. He sacrificed himself for the neighbours. He was shot dead right there,” says Shareefa. “Our families are left shattered ever since. What more sacrifice is expected of us,” she asks.

“This year, we may have somehow managed to get both the sisters married. But where does one go in life when such disasters hit you one after another?”

Dar enters the room. A corner at the window is cleared for him and he absorbs himself in the little space. Dar begins to speak, without betraying any emotions: “Every group has come to visit us. The Hurriyat. Shabir Shah. Yasin Malik. They came. They condemned what had happened. Expressed sorrow. Deep sorrow. And left. But help for us... No one has come to help. The police came when the dead bodies were brought. They looked around the place and left.”

“He would go for labour even in poor health. What labour will he do after going through all this,” asks a lady in a room full of women and children. Dar has left. “The family needs some help now.”

“Their father would toil, bring what he could manage. And give his daughters what they needed,” says Fareeza. “Even murderers are given the time to have their say,” she says. “My daughters were innocent...”

Jeelani, meanwhile, has uttered the only words he spoke: “Is anyone out there who condemns this? Or is this all over?” He is signalled to exit the room. He leaves.

A couple of weeks ago, Jeelani looked stunned, floating in an aimless world, unable to believe that he had lost his sisters forever. He had helplessly watched them being dragged out. Today, he is aware of the world around him, the rage within him unmistakable.

Dar returns and speaks again: “Let me say one thing. The daughters of the rich are troubled with what helps them look beautiful. And the daughters of the poor are bothered with what covers their bodies. My daughters didn’t need any artificial beauty. God had bestowed upon them enough of it. God knows, maybe they rebuffed someone, and paid the price.”

INSIDE DAR’S HOUSE, the neighbourhood women, most of whom are relatives, are brave, defiantly vocal. “Today it’s us. Tomorrow, it may be your turn,” said a woman. The meek indifference of men of the Muslim Peer neighbourhood outside Dar’s house is shocking. But it is practically impossible, too, to meet anyone in Sopore who doesn’t have a tale of suffering to tell – a tale of destruction and bloodshed that has hit almost each one of them during the last twenty years.

Meanwhile, outside Dar’s neighbourhood, two young boys of not more than 12 years, well-dressed and in small pherans, come running from the main road through a busy market, frolicking into a narrow lane, laughing. One of them suddenly stops, turns around and stands still on one side of the lane. A police van passes by on the main road and the boy throws a stone. He misses the target. Dismayed, the boy turns to his friend and says, “Wucchtha? Did you see that?” With arms around each other’s shoulders, they disappear in the clutter of the little houses of Muslim Peer.

Some of the inputs previously in this piece have been removed and added here:

Sopore sisters: In death, and life | http://drqanungo.blogspot.com/2011/02/sopore-sisters-in-death-and-life.html

Resolutions of deceit

2011-01-25T13:37:00.000+05:30

The least Chidambaram could do was send the three jokers packing. But, of course, that isn’t meant to happen

The Core by Nawaz Gul Qanungo

Kashmir Times | January 25, 2011

ONCE A CHILLY new year’s winter morning, walking purposelessly over a blanket of snow into a field, Calvin was talking to Hobbes explaining why they were kicked out of the house. “I asked Dad if he wanted to see some new year’s resolutions I wrote. He said he’d be glad to. He was pleased to see I was taking interest in self-improvement. I told him the resolutions weren’t for ME, they were for HIM.”

That’s why we are outside now, he tells Hobbes. A pensive Hobbes looks at Calvin, and says, “I WONDERED what the rush was.”

Walking on, looking far ahead at nothing, Calvin says, “I’m getting disillusioned with these new years.”

Looking skywards, Calvin suddenly raises his hands in helplessness and opens his mouth wide: “They don’t seem very new at all! Each NEW year is just like the OLD year.” Hobbes scratches his chin.

Calvin’s mouth gets bigger, “Here another year has gone by and everything’s still the same! There’s still pollution and war and stupidity and greed! Things haven’t changed!”

Calvin opens his mouth really wide now and raising his fist in the air, thunders: “I say what kind of future IS this?! I thought things were supposed to improve! I thought the future was supposed to be better!” Hobbes keeps looking at him, listening intently. Meandering into snow-covered woods, they both walk on.

“The problem with the future,” a resigned yet sagacious Hobbes quips, “is that it keeps turning into the present.”

* * *

“I am announcing from the platform of this convention on Kashmir that nobody should meet the interlocutors when they visit the State.” It was Syed Ali Shah Geelani talking at the now famous Azadi seminar in New Delhi. “Do they not know what people in Kashmir want?” (Emphasis added.)

He continued, “What will these interlocutors do in their one-year-long mandate? They want to meet students, shopkeepers and everyone else but what do they want to know?”

The three jokers seem to have since consulted “all” the people – “even the poor” people, as the “eminent” journalist told us – and the poor old rabbit has been pulled out yet again. Geelani must be basking in glory.

Early this month, the Indian home minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, told the media that a parliamentary panel discussed matters relating to Jammu and Kashmir in December, while the interlocutors visited the state for the third time last month. “The three-month period of agitation was an unfortunate and deeply regrettable chapter. However, after the visit of the all-party parliamentary delegation and the appointment of interlocutors, there has been a significant improvement in the law and order situation,” Chidambaram said. “In particular, the interlocutors have been able to change the discourse and have been able to persuade a number of stakeholders to offer suggestions for a political solution,” the Chidambaram said.

Indeed, less than a month before, a 10-member team of parliamentarians and civil society members led by Delhi-based think-tank Centre for Policy Analysis that had come to the valley on on a three-day fact-finding mission early December came out with its damning report. The report noted: “The situation in Kashmir has worsened dramatically and the death of 112 boys at the hands of security forces and the mass arrests of young people that are still continuing have virtually helped seal the alienation, giving the slogan for azadi popular and widespread support.”

Comprising parliamentarian Ram Vilas Paswan and others, the team also met Hurriyat leaders Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, PDP leader Mehbooba Mufti. Worse, it declared the three-member committee of interlocutors did not have the support of the people. “The current movement is spontaneous, with strong anger against Pakistan making that state irrelevant in the Valley,” the report said. Within less than a month, the three interlocutors have turned the argument up on its head.

Chidambaram it seems didn’t find it important enough to note the unbelievable difference of opinion between the interlocutors and the parliamentary panel. It shouldn’t surprise anyone. It is the policy, after all. Days before, the three interlocutors in their report were believed to have urged the government to not deny the people’s right to protest. What do people want to protest about? The answer is finally out now.

“A small but vocal section of opinion harped on the UN resolutions, plebiscite and self-determination resulting in independence of the state as it existed before august 1947,” Padgaonkar told reporters. “By and large, however, most people we spoke to did not refer to that option. Instead, reiterating their faith in democracy, fundamental rights, pluralism and tolerance, they sought the empowerment of people to enable them to realise in full measure their political economic social and cultural aspirations.”

Someone asked him, “You mean people of Kashmir do not want [independence] from India? How can you say that when you have just met the [elite]?”

“No, we haven't just met the elite,” Padgaonkar replied. It seems the interlocutors, as feared earlier, have consulted “all” the people – stone pelters, unemployed youth, traders, students, Facebookers, doctors, engineers, lawyers, actors, artists, writers, journalists, chemists, industrialists, shikara walas, taxi drivers, bus drivers, their conductors, auto walas, shopkeepers, barbers, grocery walas, fruit vendors, bakery walas, Bihari labourers, pick pockets, north Indian beggars and their dogs – they consulted “all” of them. It seems they even met the “poor” people!

And so it turns out that a hundred and fifteen people were killed in broad day light by the Indian security and police last summer because they were “reiterating their faith in democracy, fundamental rights, pluralism and tolerance” seeking “the empowerment of people to enable them to realise in full measure their political economic social and cultural aspirations.”

The least Chidambaram could do was send the jokers packing. But, of course, that isn’t meant to happen. Whatever happened to all that drama one May in the year 2006:

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday announced the setting up of five working groups to resolve the issues confronting Jammu and Kashmir. The groups will deal with improving the Centre’s relations with the State, furthering the relations across the Line of Control (LoC), giving a boost to the State's economic development, rehabilitating the destitute families of militants and reviewing the cases of detainees and ensuring good governance. The announcement, made at the end of the two-day round table here, was endorsed by the conference and included in a statement. Dr. Singh said the groups would submit reports to the Government and they would be discussed in the third round table. The groups that would deal with the confidence building measures across the segments of society in the State, would comprise members from those present at the conference, or those nominated by parties and groups. The measures that would come under the groups include improving the condition of people affected by militancy, evolving schemes to rehabilitate all orphans and widows affected by terrorism, relaxing the conditions for those who have foresworn militancy and providing employment to Kashmiri Pandits. The steps to improve relations across the LoC include simplifying the procedures to facilitate travel, increasing goods traffic, opening new routes such as Kargil-Skardu, and expanding people-to-people contact, including promotion of pilgrimage and group tourism. Without mentioning the autonomy demand (by the National Conference) and self-rule (by the PDP), the fifth group would study matters relating to the State's special status within the Indian Union and methods of strengthening democracy, secularism and the rule of law in the State. It will also discuss effective devolution of power among different regions. Dr. Singh suggested appointing a convener for each group. The composition of the groups could be decided in consultation with all leaders. Acknowledging that people were put to inconvenience due to the prevailing situation, Dr. Singh said it must be understood that this scenario was the result of the actions of certain elements. He had instructed the security forces to be “more mindful” of human rights and be sensitive to the liberties and self-respect of ordinary people. “At the same time, it is our collective responsibility to create an atmosphere where the people of the State can be free from the fear of oppression and terrorist activities and go about their normal lives like their fellow countrymen. “If this requires strengthening the State police – both in numbers and materially – the Central Government will be willing to support that.” – The Hindu, May 26, 2006

“At least 150 rounds of talks between New Delhi and Kashmir in the past six decades, has changed nothing. India has always used dialogue as a tool to corrupt Kashmiri leadership or buy time to continue with its occupation,” said Geelani once recently. Need we add anything?

Who killed us?

2011-01-10T21:10:00.000+05:30

Bhat’s remains one of the most daring criticisms of the pro-independence movement in Kashmir. It also remains perhaps the most misdirected

Nawaz Gul Qanungo

January 7, 2010

Late last week, the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front held a seminar to commemorate the death anniversary of top JKLF political ideologue and academician Prof Abdul Ahad Wani, who was kidnapped by unknown gunmen and shot dead on December 31, 1993. At the seminar, former Hurriyat chairman Abdul Gani Bhat set the proverbial cat among the pigeons. Thus spoke the perpetually theatrical Bhat: “... Ahad saebas karaw kharaj adaa, timav diut zuw... Lekin, kharaj adaa karaan karaan yus sawaal meanis zehnas manz wotlaan chhu – agarchi tamuk juzwee jawaab Bilal [Ghani Lone] saeban yeteth dut – bu chus saelim jawab yachhaan. Pareshaenee chhe laahak gachhaan, kiazi morukh yi? Aes chhinaa wanaan wariah cheez, amis won asi Shaheed Abdul Ahadie yot. Yi osa shaeed e zakaawat? Kini shaheed e rakaabat? The martyr of brilliance? Or the martyr of rivalry? Kamiuk shaheed os, aes nai chhini yi kath karaenie? Daenishwaran hund role chu poz wanun. Poz chu yi, Ahad saeb mor ne Hindustanik fojan kiahn, kehien wani ne! Ahad saeb mor ne Kaeshir puleesan ti kiahn. Ahad saeb mor me, Ahad saeb morwan tohi, Ahad saeb mor pan’niaw, Ahad saeb mor ne pardiaw kiahn... Omar saebun baabsaeb mor pan’niaw, pardiaw mor ne. Bilal saebun baabsaeb mor pan’niaw, pardiaw mor ne. ... Dastan che zeeth ... Lekin... Waen chu marhale su aamut yeteth poz pazi wanun...”

“... The truth is that Ahad saab wasn’t killed by the Indian security, no! Ahad saab wasn’t killed by the Kashmir police either. Ahad saab was killed by me, Ahad saab was killed by you, Ahad saab was killed by his own, Ahad saab wasn’t killed by others... It is time to speak the truth.” It’s always time to speak the truth, indeed.

While sections of Kashmir’s pro-independence groups have accused Bhat of being an “Indian agent”, others, most notably Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s Tehreek e Hurriyat didn’t react. And, no wonder, the director general of police, Kuldeep Khoda, seized the moment to take on the Hurriyat the next day. “Mirwaiz Farooq was killed by militants. He and his killer were buried in the martyrs’ graveyard in Eidgah. It is so surprising that the killer and the victim both have been buried as martyrs,” he said.

On May 21, 1990, Maulvi Mohammed Farooq, a leading politician and Kashmir’s hereditary chief cleric, and the father of the present Mirwaiz, was assassinated by gunmen at his residence in Srinagar. In the valley, the killing was immediately thrust upon the Indian security agencies and the Mirwaiz senior branded immediately a martyr of the freedom movement. The government, however, directed the blame on Pakistan-backed militants. Exactly twelve years later, senior Hurriyat leader Abdul Ghani Lone was similarly assassinated at a rally to commemorate Maulvi Farooq’s death on his 12th anniversary at Eidgah. No one in Kashmir has been talking openly about these killings. Years later, however, among the public, there does seem to be a growing acceptance for the version that the killings were carried out by Pakistan-backed militant outfits who felt the leaders were in parleys with the Indian establishment for a “compromise” formula over Kashmir.

Sajjad Lone, the other son of Lone senior, stated, “Prof Bhat’s statement [is] yet another chance for the nation to evolve. Truth, however bitter, must prevail. The least we owe to the people is the right to know who killed whom.” That, however, would be too simple a demand to make, however much both the security and the pro-India political establishments would want to discredit the Hurriyat. The present chief minister, a few years back as leader of the opposition went public with his demand for a “truth and reconciliation commission”. In February 2007, he said, “I feel people should know about all killings, those by the security forces as well as by militants... We want the state to correct the black history of the last 17 years of insurgency in the state... People should know everything.”

As convenience would demand, there was no mention of such a thing happening in Abdullah’s National Conference party manifesto released for the state assembly elections in 2008. The Muftis of the Peoples Democratic Party, similarly, have made such demands as demilitarisation and revocation of draconian laws such as AFSPA (and even currency!) when out of power. In power, they maintained a low profile over the issues while conveniently taking the credit for the thaw between India and Pakistan and the various confidence building measures over Kashmir during the Musharraf era.

The reasons for such double standards are not hidden too far away to find. Kashmir remained edgy over Wednesday last even as Bhat’s speech was being debated, dissected. The district of Sopore was shut down while the security imposed an undeclared curfew in certain areas. People remembered the bloodbath of the chilly morning of January 6, 1993, when security forces after a brief encounter with militants set the town on fire before slaughtering more than 50 innocent people, many of them roasted to death. A bus half-full of passengers was burnt, along with the passengers. A women’s degree college was set afire and brought down to rubble. A newspaper recently quoted the Time magazine having called it “one of the worst massacres in Kashmir’s history [that] Indian forces [carried] out”. The Central Bureau of Investigation, reports suggest, is still probing the massacre.

But an event that remains still closer to the issue in focus is that of just the day Maulvi Mohammed Farooq was assassinated. Hours after Mirwaiz senior’s murder, his funeral procession went through downtown Srinagar. As the funeral approached the troops posted at Islamia College, it was fired upon indiscriminately by the forces. The government claimed there was fire from within the crowd. Eyewitnesses said the security forces attacked in panic due to the sheer magnitude of the crowd coming towards them. At any rate, the troops killed dozens of innocents in the procession and left many, many more maimed and injured. In the somewhat raging debate these days over who killed the Mirwaiz senior, the massacre by the security forces barely hours after the killing has remained untouched. Not without reason did Kuldip Khoda say that he is surprised. Indeed, at such spectacular success of mass-murderers, surprised he must be.

And such are the reasons that the question of “who killed whom” isn’t something the establishment can get really too serious about. Obviously, the last thing the government of today, or of any day, would want to do is attempt suicide. Kashmir remains a place where individual killings continue to be used, abused and half-debated, while brutal State-backed massacres of the innocents neatly obliterated.

Bhat spoke more: “Yeteth daenish chhane, tateth chhane azaediyie. Tohi kaerwe kaem, meherbaeni, yeteth daenish aes so wudaew’wan. Tohi korwu shuru – kati pethe? – daenish wudawnas pethie. Patte chhiwe chhandaan azaedi, kichh azadi? Katich azaedi, kami khaetre azaedi? Zakawat marne khaetre? Hikmat marne khaetre? Azaedi? No.

“... Tuih hai raath aeswe wanaan, we will never do the talking with India? You are talking to Indians, you talk to Indian parliamentarians! The contradiction in politics has to go. If you choose to speak truth, if you choose to speak your heart out, contradictions will have to go. Unity, yes – unity with a purpose, unity for a cause. [But,] unity for aggrandisement? Never. Unity for hegemony? Never.” Whom was Bhat aiming these questions at?

Sons of both the slain top Hurriyat leaders – Abdul Ghani Lone and Maulvi Mohammed Farooq – that Bhat mentioned were present at the seminar. Neither Bilal Ghani Lone nor Mirwaiz Umar Farooq reacted to what Bhat had said. Bhat’s remains one of the most daring criticisms of the pro-independence movement in Kashmir. It also remains perhaps the most misdirected. Who controlled the killers that assassinated our best minds? Who controlled the troops that massacred our innocent people, and continue to do so? The only “unity” that the Hurriyat and its fragments need is an agreement on the answer to these two questions: Pakistan and India.

Separate versions appear in Kashmir Times and the Tamil Dinamalar.

The summers of no end

2011-01-04T01:05:00.001+05:30

Even as the Hurriyat stands clueless after yet another summer of bloody sacrifice, Srinagar and New Delhi, both, have kept all the settings in place for yet another Amarnath, another Shopian, another bloody summer of 2010

The Core by Nawaz Gul Qanungo

Kashmir Times | January 4, 2011

Late last November, the state government decided to remove a battalion of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) from the Srinagar city. It meant removal of 1,000 troops from the city. Ten bunkers were also to be removed in addition to the 16 that had already been removed since October 5, after a summer of mayhem with over 110 unarmed protesters and bystanders dead at the hands of the police and security forces during strong anti-India agitations. Later in the day, Omar Abdullah told a Delhi-based television news channel that the process of demilitarisation in the valley was actually scuttled due to the violence in the valley during the whole summer. “The Hurriyat needs to realise that the politics of violence is not going to take us anywhere,” he said. “We can bring normalcy only if peace prevails.” A brutal clampdown on public protests had ensured a month of relative calm in the valley. And this was what Abdullah claimed had given him the leeway to finally go ahead with the step.

Abdullah was turning logic over its head. The sheer magnitude of militarisation that breathes down the throat of a common Kashmiri makes the removal of a battalion or two looks almost like a joke. To call it “demilitarisation” is not just out of place but a plain lie. Kashmir is more militarised that Iraq and Afghanistan put together, according to unofficial estimates. There are no definite official figures.

It is, however, the “violent” protests that have rocked the valley over the major part of the last three years that are a more compelling reason for the state government to push for anything it may find sellable to the public, including any degree of “demilitarisation” it can achieve. Even if it seriously wants to go for such measures, it finds it almost impossible to push successfully for it. Something like the recent spat between Abdullah and the army doesn’t help either. On the contrary, it has not just brought out in the open the sharp differences between the state government and the security establishment but even exposed the state of functionality between the two.

In the aftermath of an encounter in Srinagar which led to the killing of three men – who were claimed to be militants by the police and innocent civilians by their families – the army claimed that the encounter had taken place because of the removal of troops from the city. The army in a release said the Abdullah government was “compelled to give in” (to the removal of bunkers) and that it could have “pleased a few hardline separatists and their ISI handlers” but had compromised the security situation. A frustrated chief minister had to speak to the prime minister before the army came out the next day with an apology.

However, what’s come out worse from the Abdullah government – and this remains at the core of its failure in dealing with, and on behalf of, the valley – is the lack of political will to engage New Delhi and keep it pushing towards a pro-people peace policy, especially when the valley seemed to be limping towards some sort of calm.

It first wasted a chance, after the installation of the Abdullah government in the January of 2009 when the valley had just come out of the strife of the Amarnath land row. That the agitations were contained through incredibly brutal, and fatal, measures with an election thrown in under ludicrous security restrictions should have been reason enough for any sane mind to know where such “democracy” would lead to.

The test in the Shopian double rape and murder case of 2009 was another similar story of incompetence. Kashmir was a place where the ruler could be “misled” by his associates in such critical cases. Here was the state of the governance out in the open, just in case someone took the chief minister a tad seriously. Then came the CBI, exhumation et al. But the less said about it, the better. Today, the victims of Shopian stare at the prospect of conviction. Shopian has not just come to be perceived as yet more proof that there was no justice for a common Kashmiri, it has exemplified the farce that the state is capable of in Kashmir. However, the period of calm that followed Shopian was yet again wasted with no initiative taken by the state government to address the root cause of strife in Kashmir.

The government never seemed to recognise the necessity of demilitarisation and action on the revocation of draconian laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, Disturbed Areas Act or the Public Safety Act. Over the last summer, in fact, the Public Safety Act has been used by the state with impunity booking even a minor once under it. The killings have continued as easily for the state as they have always been. The small, negligible measures of “demilitarisation” remain just a miserable face-saver for the government when in reality the process should have been robustly pursued by it on war footing since day one. And there are no signs of this changing in any manner. Even as the Hurriyat stands clueless after yet another summer of bloody sacrifice, Srinagar (or call it Jammu for the winter) and New Delhi, both, have kept all the settings in place for yet another Amarnath, another Shopian, another bloody summer of 2010.

The country without a project

2010-12-28T00:18:00.000+05:30

That there’s a world outside that Kashmir must win over not just as a principled supporter but an active stakeholder is indeed the only option for the Hurriyat is beyond doubt. But its lack of a workable agenda currently points to the same old state of political coma it has suffered since it was formed.

The Core by Nawaz Gul Qanungo

Kashmir Times | December 28, 2010

Tariq Ramadan, the Swiss Islamic scholar, in a context not completely removed, wrote in a recent work: “We have projections, but at the same time we have to admit that we have no projects.” He was talking about the present era of so called globalisation where people, in reality, seemed to be more trapped in the differences between them. It was a world where people defined and, worse still, identified themselves by their differences with the “other”. Ramadan spoke of a situation where people stood stationary, with viewpoints unchanging and deadlocks eternal.

Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq in the very recent past travelled in India on some political missions of sorts, even though the initiatives were not really their own. While Geelani, after much speculation, has an FIR lodged against him and must be bracing to face the courts, perhaps even pleased with the prospect of quoting reams that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and others once wrote while addressing the British and facing the charges of sedition against them, the Mirwaiz, well, got physically bashed up to his horror.

There could hardly be a more shocking manner, especially in the case of the Mirwaiz, in which one could be jolted out of a deep slumber of indifference and inactivity. The point, however, is that the events clearly illustrated what extreme repulsion – both from the Indian state and its political establishment, specially the Hindu right – a real political activity for the campaigning of Kashmir’s own political future would entail. It also recalled the fact that even after all these years of turmoil and bloodshed, the Hurriyat does not have a genuine plan of political action. Worse still, it doesn’t even seem to be prepared for one.

The only factor that has been strengthening the Hurriyat in the recent times, though it didn’t truly deserve it, is the spectacular form of public protests in the valley, triggered each time there is a human rights violation or a similar lapse of governance. Unfortunately, for the Hurriyat, the only way it could capitalise on this change in the ground situation, if it truly means business, is mobilising public support outside the valley through vigorous campaigns at a grassroots level involving the common people and civil society who, though interested in Kashmir, have no clue about how to be of any help in resolving the impasse.

India has indeed to some extent been compelled recently to acknowledge the political reality of Kashmir, if not its disputed nature – be that the statements by the Indian home minister in its parliament or the various statements of UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi or the statement of chief minister Omar Abdullah in the state assembly. The reality, however, remains that such acknowledgement doesn’t mean anything in absence of a sustained political pressure from within the valley for a resolution to get under way in whatever manner. It is precisely this pressure that the Hurriyat could create by campaigning outside the valley for the support of a process towards a pro-Kashmiri Kashmir resolution.

As noted above, such political activity is not a sport and involves huge political challenges and genuine risks. In such a situation, the logical thing to do is to look closer at the divide within and between the regions of Jammu and Ladakh, and the valley as well. Even as the Hurriyat asserts that it holds the key to the mood on the streets of the valley – which in this case is power flowing from the people to the Hurriyat rather than the other way round and something that the Hurriyat has appallingly wasted over the last three years – it could well look over the Peer Panjal and beyond the Zoji La to bring people on the other side of the political divide as active stake holders of a just resolution of the Kashmir dispute. This is not to suggest that the Hurriyat needs to campaign to influence and change the larger political goals of the people in the regions of Jammu and Ladakh. After all, trying to steer the political atmosphere in such regions that do not conform to the basic politics of the valley is not just unreasonable but impossible.

Rather, in order to help clear the path to a resolution, people in other parts of the state outside Kashmir need to be convinced about the different political realities of the valley. This process also involves invoking the support of the politically confluent areas surrounding the valley, like Poonch, and asserting that the areas outside the administrative divisions of Kashmir are no monolithic block either.

Importantly, it becomes essential here to emphasise that the Hurriyat, especially SAS Geelani groups, needs to recognise and accept that even the so called state of J&K is not a monolith, either in the political context or otherwise. Also – and this is what must follow naturally – the Hurriyat must work towards gaining acceptance of the people beyond the Peer Panjal and Zoji La in that that while the political goals of all the three major regions of the state may not be the same, they could still cooperate in pushing together for their respective political objectives. Since Kashmir is the one that has taken all the brunt of the ever-evasive resolution, the onus of creating such an atmosphere in the state is also on the Kashmiri leadership.

Sadly, leave alone the last 20 years, a deliberate move towards such a goal has perhaps never been made by any Kashmiri leadership, let alone the Hurriyat. To bring change, however, the Hurriyat has to act and come out of its comfort. Ramadan wrote, “Coming to terms with the very essence of the relativity of our gaze does not imply that we have to doubt everything and can be sure of nothing. It might mean quite the opposite, and the outcome might be a non-arrogant confidence, and a healthy, energetic and creative curiosity about the infinite number of windows from which we all observe the same world... What can the ego make out of egoisms?”

The visits of Geelani and the Mirwaiz perhaps did instil a certain sense of political vitality both within the Hurriyat and in the public perception of what the Hurriyat was doing in effect of the public agitations in the valley. Today, however, after three successive years of colossal public protests – colossal both in terms of their immensity and the human loss they have wrought, not to talk of the complexity they seem to have precipitated in the public discourse over freedom in the valley – the Hurriyat yet again seems set to break in to a much familiar strategic indecision and political standstill.

That there’s a world outside that Kashmir must win over not just as a principled supporter but an active stakeholder is indeed the only option for any pro-independence political structure of the valley is beyond doubt. But the Hurriyat’s lack of a workable agenda currently points to the same old state of political coma it has suffered since it was formed. Certainly, it must come out of both – the valley and the coma. The question that remains is not whether it needs to, but, gravely, whether it really wants to.

Language of politics

2010-12-21T00:48:00.000+05:30

Is there any scope for comparison between an individual like Noor Muhammed Bhat and a state that by definition is infinitely more powerful than the individuals it is supposed to represent? If there is an element of protest and dissent in Bhat’s conduct, there is also a background of the reality of Kashmir’s unending suppression

The Core by Nawaz Gul Qanungo

Kashmir Times | December 21, 2010

“Mujhe koi afsos nahi hai ki aaj mere aate hi yahaan peechhe se ek aadmi khada hua aur us ne naara diya... I have no regret that as soon as I came here, someone behind got up and shouted a slogan.” It was Omar Abdullah speaking at the official function on India’s independence day in a garrisoned Bakshi Stadium in Srinagar on August 15, 2010. He had just been graced with a pair of shining brown leather shoes while he had begun taking salute. “Agar haath me joota raha – patthar nahi – to mujhe lagta hai is se behter ehtitaaj ka koi tareeka ho hi nahi sakta... If it was a shoe in his hands – not a stone – then I don’t think there’s a better way of protesting.” Behind him at the third row of the VIP enclosure, Abdul Ahad Jan, the shoe thrower, had by this time been pounced upon by the police and beaten until he started throwing up blood through his mouth. Security for the function was so high that no civilians – not even school children, who once used to be trained by their school games teachers to march for the day at the same stadium – were allowed at the venue. Fifteen policemen were suspended for what was considered a major security lapse.

All this, however, is beside the point, here. The point is what Omar Abdullah went on to say further in his speech: “Lekin Jammu Kashmir ka masla buniyadi ek siyasi masla hai. Aur us ka siyaasi hal khoj ke nikaalna aap ka aur hamara farz hai... But the problem of J&K is basically a political one. And finding a political solution to this problem is the duty of both you and me.” (Emphasis added.) He even went on to pledge on his part: “To aaj kyun na hum ye tai karen ki kamaskam is Ramzaan ke paak maheene ke liye dono taraf se hum ehtitaaj ya taakat ka silsila band karen – patthar na chale, goli na chale, tear gas na chale, lathi na chale... So, at least in this holy month of Ramzaan, why not resolve that both the sides stop this cycle of agitations and force – let no stones fly, no bullets, no tear gas, no batons.”

There could hardly be a protest more purely political – aur us ka siyaasi hal khoj ke nikaalna – than what Noor Mohammed Bhat did in setting a BSc exam paper. Why then is he rotting in a jail, like a criminal? “Are the stone pelters real heroes? Discuss,” he asked candidates appearing for their English examination. He then asked students to translate an Urdu-language text into English: “Kashmir is burning once again. The warm blood of youth is being spilled like water. Police and soldiers are beating even small children to death. Bullets are being pumped into the chests of even girls and women. People in villages and towns are crying in pain. Rulers continue to be in a deep slumber. It appears they’ve turned dumb, deaf and blind.”

If this were “spreading disaffection against the state” as Shiv Murari Sahai, the inspector general of police, Kashmir, said on what Bhat was accused of and arrested for, the whole population of Kashmir should be behind bars. Why an examination question paper, one may ask. But then, why not? “Are the stone pelters real heroes?” Well, the students could argue they were not if they so believed. They had a choice of answering alternative questions so they could skip such questions if they so desired. Why bring politics in a language subject? Well, what subject can deal with politics if not the languages? What language of Faiz, Shakespeare, Iqbal or anyone is not politics? Are these not the luminaries of prose and poetry in Urdu and English? Are BSc first year students fit for such questions? Well, they have to be – in all the simplicity and in all the complexity of the questions – if they are already eligible by law to vote for electing not just a state government but even the central government of India.

Above all, if the state comes to regulate the politics of question papers in our examinations, does it then have a license to regulate the students’ answers, too? Had Bhat asked his students to “describe a cow,” there could still be enough politics to discuss for students.

Moreover, such students and such spaces as University of Kashmir are also the ones that are barred by the state from not just practising but even talking politics. Is it a wonder that politics has reared its head through an examination question paper in this unusual manner? One may of course argue about the wisdom of Bhat’s action. But the paper – and Bhat’s subsequent arrest, rejection of his bail appeal and probably the loss forever of his job – raises far more important questions than the ones that appeared in its print.

To begin with is the overarching presence and interference by the state in people’s lives that has literally made it difficult for them to breath, let alone setting examination and education standards. Banning of students’ unions and campus politics is simply the most glaring example of concern. Kashmiri students are being taught a history of Kashmir that knows no relation with truth. Is not Bhat as an individual invoking history and politics in a system where the state is hell bent up on negating and erasing it?

Neutrality would be to judge Bhat’s professional conduct purely on the merit of the paper he set. The state administration decided to take up the matter in its own hands and arrest him, when there is nothing so complicated in the paper that couldn’t be dealt with by the university management itself, if at all there was a need.

If there is an element of protest and dissent in Bhat’s conduct, there is also a background of the reality of Kashmir’s unending suppression. At the cost of sounding repetitive – for having used this passage in this space twice already – here is what Tilak, in 1909, had to say to the judge who was trying him for sedition for justifying in his newspaper a bomb attack by militants against the British:

“This, no doubt, will inspire many with hatred against the people belonging to the party of rebels. It is not possible to cause British rule to disappear from this country by such monstrous deeds. But rulers who exercise unrestricted power must always remember that there is also a limit to the patience of humanity… True statesmanship consists in not allowing things to reach such an extreme stage… Where government neglect their duties towards their subjects, the occurrence of [such] calamities is inevitable… The authorities have falsely spread the report that [these] bombs… are subversive of society. There is an excess of patriotism at the root of the bomb… If bombs are to be stopped, government should act in such a way that no ‘turn-headed’ man should feel any necessity at all for throwing bombs. When do people who are engaged in political agitation become ‘turn-headed’? …The real and lasting means of stopping the bombs consists in making a beginning to grant the important rights of Swarajya to the people…”

Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front chief Yasin Malik, at the peak of this year’s agitations, said, “Let me warn you that your state [India] is once again pushing the Kashmiri youth towards the gun.” Bhat is only a symptom of this reality. The treatment he’s being given vindicates Malik even further.

What precedent does Bhat’s action set? Will Hitler’s inheritors, too, come out with their own set of question papers now? Let them. Is any right wing rant on a par with what Kashmiris – or any person, people or group including Hitler’s – are demanding? Is it not about the legitimacy, or otherwise, of a people’s – any people – demands that should be the real concern?

At the time of Omar Abdullah’s August 15 shoe-gate speech – patthar na chale, goli na chale, tear gas na chale, lathi na chale – 57 young innocent Kashmiris beginning June 11 had been killed by the state police and the troops during unarmed public protests. At the time of Bhat’s setting of the English language examination paper, the toll had crossed 110. We are obviously not counting the dead since 1989. Is there any scope for comparison between an individual like Bhat and a state that by definition is infinitely more powerful than the individuals it is supposed to represent? It is precisely for this reason that young men and women’s stones do not, and cannot, justify in return the killing bullets of the state.

Malcolm X, the African American rights activist, talking about the discrimination and injustices perpetrated against the African community in the US said in the Oxford Union Debate of 1964, “Those people [African Americans] are justified to resort to any means necessary to bring about justice where the government can’t give them justice. I don’t believe in any form of unjustified form of extremism... [but] I, for one, will join in with anyone... as long as you want to change this miserable condition that exists on this earth.” It is this “miserable condition” in Kashmir that needs to be brought to an end before any Noor Muhammed Bhat can be at peace in this world.

A wall in my brain

2010-11-30T02:38:00.001+05:30

And a wall on your head, Mr Chidambaram

The Core by Nawaz Gul Qanungo

Kashmir Times | November 30, 2010

It was Friday, November 26, 2010. Exactly two years since 26/11 happened in Mumbai. And thus said Hindustan Times: Mihir Ganatra had firmly held his beer mug as he tapped his foot in resilience to a live band playing at the Leopold Cafe in Colaba. Thirteen years ago, the 29-year-old event manager had his first drink at the restrobar. On Friday, he was back at the café to express solidarity and pay homage to the memory of 11 people who died when two terrorists sprayed the café with bullets on November 26, 2008. “The nostalgia is obvious,” Ganatra said. His latest post on Facebook read, “Mr Terrorist, if you visit Leopold Café today, the beer bong will hit you harder.”

By late evening, the café staff barely had any space to move between the tables as young people of different nationalities thronged the venue “that has become an iconic post of the city’s bloodiest terror strike,” HT wrote. The graffiti boards placed at the entrance had very little white space left. Visitors and passersby had scribbled for those “who failed to go back to their families on the same day two years ago.”

“I feel lucky to be here on such a historic day,” said Evan Betti, an Argentinean tourist who was passing by the café and knew little about the terror attacks. Betti and other visitors also lit candles at the entrance. Several others stood outside the café straining to hear the live bands that played tributes to those who died and to the city that stood resilient after the attacks. “I have seen Friday night crowds. But this is something else,” said a steward. Visitors at the restaurant stood up and observed a minute’s silence for the victims earlier in the evening.

On November 26th in the year 2008, the city of Mumbai was held hostage in a deadly, extraordinary terror strike that lasted nearly three days and killed more than 170. This Friday, on the second anniversary of the attack, people came to hold firmly their beer mug and tap their feet in resilience. And for those who knew little about the terror attack, this Friday night crowd was something else. Eleven people had been killed at the Leopold.

Kanika Saxena and her two friends managed to convince the police to let them inside the cordoned off area around Taj Mahal Palace. It was the same day, Friday, and Kanika and her friends wanted to pray for those killed in the terror attacks. HT: The trio stood on the pavement at the hotel’s back entrance with folded hands and said a silent prayer. But before they could light candles, the police asked them to vacate the area. Wearing a deserted look, the area around Taj hotel and the Gateway of India resembled a fortress with security around the 1.5-km radius. “Though we lost no one we knew in the attacks, the trauma is still fresh in our minds. We came here to pray for their souls,” Saxena said.

The hotel held a private memorial service. Thirty-six had been killed at the Taj.

Indian home minister Palaniappan Chidambaram addressed a function organised to award the dealership of a CNG outlet to the family of assistant sub-inspector Tukaram Ombale. Ombale was killed while intercepting Mohammad Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone survivor among the ten attackers.

“If it was not for Tukaram Ombale and his bravery in apprehending Ajmal Kasab, Indians would not have been able to expose that the plan of the attacks was hatched on the soil of Pakistan and this fact was brought in open for the world to know,” he said.

The minister went further: “Our neighbour Pakistan made many promises to us that they will bring to justice the masterminds, controllers and handlers of the 26/11 tragedy. They have not done so, so far. They promised me they will arrest all the seven persons whose names I had handed over to them. They have not done that so far. They promised me, they will provide voice samples of the persons whose names are handed over. They have not done so far … It is my duty to caution the people that we have a neighbour who has not yet fulfilled the promises it made to us.”

Ah, these words! Promises. And Justice. Chidambaram could have easily borrowed the words of Syed Ali Shah Geelani. Words that he had spoken exactly a week before: Jo qaum qurbaniyan dekar un qurbaniyon ki hifaazat karna jaane, usko dunya ki koi taaqat shikast nahi de sakti. “A nation that knows how to preserve the sacrifices that it makes... no power of the world can overwhelm such a nation.”

“So, this Friday, on the 26th of November,” Geelani had said, “For the first time, as a beginning, we shall build a symbol in Srinagar, a symbol in remembrance of our martyrs. After the [Friday] prayers, we shall go there – to Eidgah – Allah willing. Everybody must bring a brick each, and we shall lay a foundation.” For, we have more than three lakh Kashmiri Hindus who left their homes behind in one tragic departure, and we don’t know exactly why and how. For, we have countless daughters, sisters, mothers, grandmothers and some entire villages raped and gang-raped by Indian forces during the last twenty years. For, we have mothers who have waited for two decades and wondered if their missing sons would return to meet them first or the angels of death. Death has – and it seems it will to most – arrived but not their sons. For, we have thousands who saw their dear ones killed in front of them and left to live a life of insanity, forever, if it all they survived. They stare at nothing with startled eyes, even today, crowding the corridors of Kashmir’s only “mental” hospital. For, we don’t know if the number of dead in the valley during the last 20 years has crossed the hundred-thousand mark or not just yet. For, we have buried more than a hundred young children just this year, Indian bullets still inside their tender bodies.

Last Friday, police in Srinagar seized a truckload of bricks near Eidgah presuming they were brought for the construction of the memorial at Eidgah. It turned out it was meant for construction of a house nearby.

Last Friday, millions stared in depression at yet another curfew in the ugly jail of a beautiful vale.

Last Friday, millions built a wall brick by brick, inside their brains. The one that’s on your head, Mr Chidambaram.

And last Friday, far, far away in Mumbai, someone firmly held his beer mug and tapped his feet in resilience.

The Oped Page >> Kashmir Times

A brick in my hand

2010-11-23T11:01:00.004+05:30

And a brick in yours, Mr Abdullah

The Core by Nawaz Gul Qanungo

Kashmir Times | November 23, 2010

It was during the early times of the armed uprising, when mujahideen in Kashmir were called mujahideen without stumbling down too easily into a moral fix. It was late 1990, perhaps. Human slaughter in Kashmir was commonplace. Late evening, an ailing old man, almost on his death bed, was talking about what the Indian government was up to in Kashmir. The British Broadcasting Corporation had just finished its radio bulletin, talking about how Kashmir’s shaheed were being prevented from being buried at Srinagar’s Shaheed Malguzaar – the martyrs’ graveyard – at Eidgah. “Why?” The old man raised the question, to himself.

Then, he raised his left hand, stretched it upwards and spoke with frail voice: Yim chhi ne yachhaan zi kahn nebrium gochh yor yun te pruchhun, “Yeet saas baed lookh kithpaeth mooid? Yim kaem maeir?” “They don’t want the world to come here and ask, ‘How did such thousands of people die? Who killed them?’” Yi rozi taa-qayaamat yihndi zulmuk nishaan. “It could be an eternal proof of [India’s] brutality [in Kashmir].” Of course, it was also for ourselves to remember, lest we forgot.

After twenty years, the grand old man of Kashmir’s resistance – aka Hartaal Babb – seems to have got the message. Aur aaj pehli baar... aur pehle marhaley ke taur pe... Sringar mein Eidgah mein ek symbol taameer karne ke liye, jo shohda ki yaad mein ho, us roz [Friday] uska aaghaaz hoga... Namaaz ke baad wahan jaaya jayega, insha Allah, aur wahan eenten le kar... ek ek eent lekar sab jayenge... aur wahan us deewar ki buniyaad rakhi jayegi. “For the first time, as a beginning, we shall build a symbol in Srinagar, a symbol in remembrance of our martyrs. After the [Friday] prayers, we shall go there, Allah willing. Everybody must bring a brick each, and we shall lay a foundation.”

He came to the point a little later: Jo qaum qurbaniyan dekar un qurbaniyon ki hifaazat karna jaane, usko dunya ki koi taaqat shikast nahi de sakti. “A nation that makes sacrifices and knows how to preserve those sacrifices... no power of the world can overwhelm such a nation.”

THEN, THERE ARE other bricks. The ones that are used to build back credibility, brick by brick. It was July 11, earlier this year. Human slaughter was commonplace.

Are you planning once things settle down to maybe meet the families of those who have been killed?

Let me once and for all sort out this immediate problem and that definitely is something that I would need to do... not political, don’t be surprised if you don’t see it on any channel or read about it in any newspaper... But just for my own personal atonement for the way I feel... that would be something that I would like to do.

So you do feel the need to atone... you do feel that...

Even if my finger is not on the trigger, the butt of the rifle is on my shoulder. I mean I cannot and will not shy away from my responsibility I’ve never been one to shy away from my responsibility. I’ve never been one to shy away from admitting that look I’m wrong and I’m sorry.

Does that give you sleepless nights?

This “job” gives me sleepless nights. But then that’s always been the nature of this place and this work.

Do you feel weakened in any way by this crisis? Do you feel that it has taken away your strength in a sense to bring back control to the city?

A tired, depressed Omar Abdullah took a very deep breath, sighed and said:

I have...

He stopped, closed his eyes, shrugged as if willingly betraying his helplessness. And said:

There are no easy answers to that question... This has been a huge setback for me personally and politically... And I’ve got to build it back brick by brick.

A pleased Barkha Dutt frowned and said:

That’s honest!

It’s the truth.

Behold! Bricks. And truth!

Mere mortals like us never get to know this one thing: Truth! (Especially when big brother has some of the “truth” taped with its telephone surveillance.) All that we have is a poor memory. So let’s cut back further to the February of 2007:

“I feel people should know about all killings, those by the security forces as well as by militants... We want the state to correct the black history of the last 17 years of insurgency in the state... We know some of them have gone across [the LoC]. But there are others.”

Omar Abdullah, then president of the Opposition NC, was talking about “Truth and Reconciliation”:

“Everything should come up. People should know everything. There should be no doubts.”

Just that a little over a year later, the word “truth” figured not even once in the Vision Document 2008, the manifesto of the National Conference for the state assembly elections.

But then, truth we do need to know. Just why exactly, and how, did all those Kashmiri Hindus leave the valley? Who drove them away, who arranged for their colossal departure? How many daughters, sisters, mothers, and grandmothers have been raped in Kashmir in the last 20 years, what happened in Kunanposhpora? How many Kashmiris have been, as they say, disappeared? Exactly how many have been killed? How many litres of lost blood would that be? Would it be enough to turn the colour of Dal deep red, Mr Abdullah?

We are prisoners of such cruel questions. You could help find us some of this truth, and set us free, Mr Abdullah. And that could well be a brick, too. One for yourself.

PS: So, will there be a curfew on Friday?

The Oped Page >> Kashmir Times

Geelani to ‘change tactics’, govt seems without one

2010-11-22T23:58:00.000+05:30

Nawaz Gul Qanungo

Dinamalar | Srinagar | November 21, 2010

Even as the UPA is finding it increasingly difficult to find a way out of the quagmire of the 2G spectrum scam – perhaps the biggest crisis it has faced since it first came to power at the centre in 2002 – its strategy of dealing with the unrest in Kashmir doesn’t seem to be making much headway.

On one hand, the three interlocutors appointed by New Delhi for bringing an end to the turmoil stand rejected outright by the pro-Independence political groups. On the other hand, with Eid celebrations over, the Syed Ali Shah Geelani-led Tehreek e Hurriyat is back with its protest calendars.

Geelani, though having stated that shutdowns could not be a “permanent strategy”, told a press gathering here that there was hardly an option other than shutdowns. “What else can we do in response to India’s brutality? People demonstrating are simply fired upon.” But we shall have less of shutdowns from now on and change our tactics, too, he added. More than 110 people have been killed by the troops and state police during the current anti-India agitation.

Geelani has called the people to gather this Friday after prayers at the Eidgah Martyrs Graveyard in Srinagar to set foundation for building a “memorial for the martyrs of Kashmir”. “For the first time, as a beginning in Srinagar, we shall gather at Eidgah and lay foundation to a memorial for the martyrs.” Geelani asked the people to come with a stone each. The Hurriyat has been under tremendous pressure to go soft on its shutdown programmes, a fact that Geelani admitted during his press conference.

What remains to be seen, however, is whether the government will allow such “strategy and change of tactics”. On one hand, if the government allows such symbolic political moves, it may lead to a cascading effect where the Hurriyat and its supporters in the general public may go for more of such “innovative” programmes embarrassing the government in the state and potential at the centre. If, on the other hand, it decides continue with its crackdown and imposes curfew and restrictions for thwarting Hurriyat programmes, it may yet again end up in a conflagration between protesters and the police.

Chief Minister Omar Abdullah meanwhile during a programme in New Delhi earlier this week indirectly raised the pitch against the Hurriyat by saying that militants in Kashmir had been found to be in touch with Naxals in a bid to come together in challenging the Indian Union. He said, “Of late we find efforts being made to build bridges between the Maoists and Naxalites of the rest of India with militants of Kashmir and also some Left-thinking academicians and students in the Jammu region.” He said, “We have seen evidence [of] a lot of movement of known Maoist sympathisers now travelling to Srinagar and organising seminars and conferences with supporters of militant violence in J&K, he said.

Responding to the statement, Hurriyat leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq told repoerters yesterday, “I will not be surprised if the chief minister tomorrow says that Al-Qaeda was behind the protests and the people killed [during the current agitation] were its cadre.”

However, the state coalition government on its part doesn’t seem to be taking a common line either. State Congress president and Member of Parliament Saifudin Soz told reporters yesterday, “I do not think there is any relationship between Naxals and Kashmir.” Soz also contradicted the chief minister on the issue of Geelani’s five-point Kashmir formula. The CM had earlier told the media that Geelani’s demand that Delhi must recognize Kashmir as a dispute had been accepted. Soz however said, “This may be the CM’s view. Our party has a different opinion.” Abdullah heads a Congress-National Conference coalition government in the state.

The Mirwaiz, while criticising the state government, told reporters: “The state has been turned into a police state. All control lies with the police and paramilitary forces.” For the first time in Kashmir’s history, he said, a Mirwaiz hasn’t been allowed to offer Eid prayers at Jama Masjid. The Mirwaiz remained under house arrest on the day of Eid, on Wednesday. Back in September, the Mirwaiz was accused of inciting violence on the day of Eid ul Fitr.

The Hurriyat leadership across the board has refused to meet the panel of three interlocutors appointed by the home ministry at the centre. The interlocutors on their part have claimed that they will prepare a “framework” for a Kashmir resolution within a year. “Bilateral talks between India and Pakistan or between Kashmir and India have failed to resolve the issue. It is high time India shuns its military approach vis-à-vis Kashmir. A dialogue between India, Pakistan, and the Kashmiri leadership will help resolve the dispute,” the Mirwaiz said.

Hinting at continuing the agitation in the valley in one form or the other, Geelani, while talking to the reporters yesterday said, “We will not, however, stop our peaceful struggle for freedom.” Nor shall we grant legitimacy to India’s presence in Kashmir by engaging with them on their terms, he added. With the centre busy in its 2G crisis, and the Opposition BJP with its own in Karnataka, an embattled chief minister Omar Abdullah may find himself yet more lonely in the days to come.

News >> Dinamalar

NOTE: The J&K Pradesh Congress Committee issued a statement later saying “Prof Soz was misquoted by a section of the press”.

No, you can’t

2010-11-18T01:32:00.000+05:30

It is true that the question of Kashmir cannot be answered fully without bringing Pakistan on board. It is also understandable that the US can, if it ever so desires, push for such an engagement. However, what is more important is to recognize that it is the Indian state which is responsible for such a thing not happening. India will not bow under what the United States says or believes. To bring change, Kashmir must look back within, not without

The Core by Nawaz Gul Qanungo

Kashmir Times | November 16, 2010

There are statements and there are “statements”. And the latter is the most bizarrely overrated commodity in the sick, all-pervading media of today. It has, indeed, been so since long. And it is also a trait that the media share with politics. Paper mills thrive up on selling the newsprint used to publish such “statements”. Politicians use them for easy-breathing difficult moments away.

Reams of paper and cans of ink have been used during the last few months in repeating just one statement: That of the first prime minister of India which he made inside the Indian parliament right after Kashmir’s partition/annexation by India and Pakistan some 63 years ago. Kashmiris will decide Kashmir’s future is what he had in effect “stated”. Reams and cans are used just to emphasise the fact that he didn’t “mean” it.

Similarly, significant statements have come from successive Indian prime ministers and other leaders spoken as and when it suited them or simply under compulsion. So: “Anything less than azadi.” “The sky is the limit.” “We shall do anything within the framework of humanity.”

Quite obviously, in terms of its significance, the more recent statement of the Indian home minister admitting the “unique” nature of the state of J&K and the “unique” solution it would require would fall far below the rest of many statements. Not very long before, his prime minister while standing on a train-inauguration dais just outside Srinagar even declared in his “statement” that there would be no toleration towards any human rights abuse in Kashmir. What he actually “meant” should be visible even to the blind: He didn’t mean anything at all.

Barack – Hussein, before I forget to mention the celebrated Muslim connection – Obama during the run up to the US presidential elections he eventually won had stated that the resolution of Kashmir was essential both for peace in South Asia and indirectly (or directly?) for a relatively safe exit of the US from Afghanistan. It was a statement that he in all probability meant. It was a statement of actionable nature: deployment of a US envoy committed to a Kashmir resolution. Harder realities weighed him down not long afterwards. India’s holy cow was much annoyed, too.

Now, some two years later, Obama has even been snubbed by his own electorate. In the US mid-term polls, his Democratic Party lost majority in the US House of Representatives. Understandably, in his last Cabinet meeting before he left for his first India visit, and right after the mid-term election results, he stated (and meant, too): “I’m going to be leaving tomorrow for India, and the primary purpose is to take a bunch of US companies and open up markets so that we can sell in Asia and some of the fastest-growing markets in the world, and we can create jobs here in the United States of America.” (Emphasis added.) It was the only actionable statement that was meant for the trip, ever. The rest was incombustible gas. Try igniting.

The media have their businesses to run. No one expects them to be any different, however much one would desire. What is disappointing is the “seriousness” of the so called political leadership of Kashmir with which it anticipated what Obama told India vis-à-vis Kashmir, where the stakes in what he uttered were raised so high as if his utterance were something of an actionable nature. Suddenly, there was nothing to do in the world but to wait for Obama and expect alms with both hands stretched open. For heaven’s sake, statesmen state many a “statement”! Why get so serious and pull poor Obama’s memorized speeches apart to shreds? If anything, it displays the political ineptitude of Kashmir’s pro-independence political establishment. It also underestimates the fossilized nature of India’s nothing-doing Kashmir policy.

It is true that the question of Kashmir cannot be answered without bringing Pakistan on board. It is also understandable that the US can, if it ever so desires, push for such an engagement. However, what is more important is to recognize that it is the Indian state which is responsible for such a thing not happening. (And, over the last more than six decades at that.) India, with its increasing economic might and clout, will not bow under what the United States says or believes. Not for a very long time to come.

If there’s anything that can force the Indian state to radically change its Kashmir policy on the ground in favour of Kashmiris, it is the people of Kashmir. (If only we could save our own lives.) If the Hurriyat wants in any way possible to catalyse this process, it must look back within, not without.

PS: Wonder what happened after a famous, historic speech at Egypt’s al-Azhar? The famous assalaamu alaykum? “I am honoured to be in the timeless city of Cairo, and to be hosted by two remarkable institutions. For over 1,000 years, Al-Azhar has stood as a beacon of Islamic learning, and for over a century, Cairo University has been a source of Egypt's advancement. Together, you represent the harmony between tradition and progress. I am grateful for your hospitality, and the hospitality of the people of Egypt. I am also proud to carry with me the goodwill of the American people, and a greeting of peace from Muslim communities in my country: assalaamu alaykum.”

Let’s say waalaykum assalaam, and do something more useful.

The Oped Page >> Kashmir Times

Trying for sedition? Not yet

2010-11-03T02:39:00.000+05:30

To even remotely allow any similarity between such celebrated stalwarts of the Indian freedom struggle as Tilak and Gandhi with the likes of Arundhati Roy and Syed Ali Shah Geelani by trying them for sedition is something the Indian establishment can hardly afford. The obvious comparisons are far too damning

The Core by Nawaz Gul Qanungo

Kashmir Times | November 2, 2010

“In 1947, we were told that India became a sovereign nation – a sovereign democracy. But if you look at what the Indian state did [right] from the midnight of [August 15,] 1947, that colonized country… That country that became a country because of the imagination of its colonizer – the British drew the map of India in 1899… That country became a colonizing power the moment it became independent.” Arundhati Roy was talking at a public seminar in New Delhi this October 21, as has been reported endlessly in the last week or so. “If anybody has any shoes to throw, please throw them now,” she had begun moments before. “Kashmir has never been an integral part of India, however aggressively you ask me [if it is].”

Syed Ali Shah Geelani was among the people sharing the dais. She, along with him, came very close to being in the company of the likes of Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi for being tried for sedition – for “exciting disaffection towards the government established by law in India”. Just what did the Indian state do “right from that midnight”?

In 1947, on the 15th day of August, as India was celebrating its birth, one Muhammad Mahabat Khanji III, the last Nawab of Junagarh, decided to formally accede to Pakistan. He signed the accession documents on the same day. Junagarh was then a small princely state facing the Arabian Sea and surrounded on all other sides by India. It had a population of not more than half a million. In the following month, as Pakistan accepted the Nawab’s proposal of accession, India’s original lauh purush Sardar Vallabhai Patel, as the home minister of Jawaharlal Nehru, set perhaps the most important precedent to what India’s statecraft in the sub continent was going to be all about. He rapidly mobilized his armed forces, including the navy, to annex Junagarh against the stated choice of its ruler. Just like the Pakistan tribal fighters who invaded Kashmir.

But that’s not all that the Indian state did “right from that midnight”.

Patel’s wrath was not limited to the attack on Junagarh or his show of India’s intent to other princely states and the newly formed Pakistan. He held out another death blow at the same time to an unborn news service organization called Free Press of India and its originator Swaminathan Sadanand, the radical hero of Indian journalism who had for decades been crusading against the British rule, a legendary journalist who pervades the much forgotten history of the genesis of Indian media. When the government of India was preparing for the assault on Junagarh, the Nawab had already acceded to Pakistan, now an independent state. “Legally”, India should have taken the matter to Pakistan.

Sadanand’s newspaper, Free Press Journal, went ahead and published a report about what in all probability it believed was a step devoid of any morality, a “colonizing” mobilization of troops by India in order to annex the princely state. But, Junagarh was annexed just as quickly as Sadanand’s wings were brutally clipped. His plan of launching Free Press of India, an international news agency that was meant to be based in India, was throttled after Sardar Patel refused him the necessary government clearance. This happened after Sadanand had already set up his bureaus in as far as London and Washington.

Who, then, was Sadanand? A fiercely independent and painstaking journalist, an anti-establishment man who had had a long and bitter experience during the British rule – long before the midnight. In a bid to counter the pro-British propaganda of Reuters and Associated Press, the only news agencies working in India those days, Sadanand started his Free Press News Service in 1927. To his dismay, while newspapers paid for his feed, they published the content in a distorted tenor that served their own purpose. Sadanand looked for alternatives and found one in a dwindling Madras-based newspaper, The Indian Express. Sadanand bought the paper and turned it around in no time. But he lost control of the newspaper to Ramnath Goenka, a major stakeholder, after a controversial court battle in 1935. Sadanand converted his Free Press News Service in to the Free Press Journal newspaper while concentrating on his plans of an Indian global news agency. He died in 1950, three years after Patel had busted his Free Press. His legendary Journal collapsed soon afterwards and, for obvious reasons, it remains largely forgotten as well.

What is significant, however, is that the struggles of Sadanand serve as a critical link to how the policies of the establishment vis-à-vis the freedom of expression and speech remained unchanged before and after the British had left. The state of the press in India hence under the British does not seem to be too worse. The famous trial of Bal Gangadhar Tilak – and that of Gandhi more than a decade later – serves a lesson even today. As the struggle for independence was gaining momentum, the need for putting across the Indian view point against the British rule was felt more than ever before. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, with his Kesari and Maratha, and later Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, with Harijan, Navajivan and Young India, etc, had vociferously taken up the fight for freedom of the press.

In 1909, Tilak was tried by the British for sedition when he justified a bomb attack on a District Judge by what the British called Indian “terrorists”. Two innocent women, though not deliberately targeted, had got killed in the attack. What Tilak wrote in Kesari is a significant pointer for our times and deserves to be recalled in major part:

Expectedly, Tilak was sentenced to six years of prison in exile. The final exchange between Tilak, who was defending himself without a lawyer, and the Judge is very interesting. Tilak maintained: “In spite of the verdict of the Jury, I maintain that I am innocent. There are higher powers that rule the destiny of men and nations and it may be the will of providence that the cause which I represent may prosper more by my suffering than my remaining free.” The judge on his part censured Tilak thus: “You hail the advent of the bomb in India as if something had come to India for its good. I say, such journalism is a curse to the country.” For those words of justification for “good” violence, and for such “journalistic curse”, Tilak is worshipped even today as one of India’s greatest heroes in its struggle for freedom from the British.

As Roy said in that Delhi seminar, “the Indian state militarily intervened in Manipur, in Nagaland, in Mizoram, in Kashmir, in Telengana during the Naxalbari uprising, in Punjab, in Hyderabad, in Goa, in Junagarh.” But things couldn’t have been taken too far for comfort. So the new colonizing power stopped just short of being too similar to its own colonizers. Sadanand was destroyed but not tried for sedition. The obvious comparisons would have been too damning. But while Sadanand remains forgotten even within the Indian media, not to talk about the public at large, to ignore an Arundhati today would hardly be as easy. But to even remotely allow any similarity between such celebrated stalwarts of the Indian freedom struggle as Tilak and Gandhi with the likes of Arundhati Roy and Syed Ali Shah Geelani by trying them for sedition is something the Indian establishment can hardly afford. The obvious comparisons are, even today, far too damning.

Kashmir Times

The Core appears every Tuesday

Why everybody hates three idiots

2010-10-26T13:20:00.001+05:30

It was no surprise that the three interlocutors from New Delhi stood rejected and disgraced before they even set their foot on the ground in the valley. Despite this, the trio might as well leave with some degree of success at the end. Such could be the cost Kashmiris pay for playing political double agents; for doing ‘Bharat ka jhanda ye ragda’ one day and running to polling booths like wild monkeys let loose the next. And just another reason why a genuine resolution process appears elusive even today

The Core by Nawaz Gul Qanungo

Kashmir Times | October 26, 2010

It was a cold November Sunday, a long decade ago. The then Indian prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, had, to the horror of his larger pro-Hindutva right-wing, announced a unilateral ceasefire against militants in Kashmir as part of a process for the resolution of the Kashmir dispute. It was a grand design of none other than the prime minister himself for bringing peace to the subcontinent.

Dismissing the euphoria generated by the Indian media around the initiative, an analysis went thus: “A real peace process in Jammu and Kashmir cannot be manufactured: it needs to emerge from real political activity, not closed-door intrigue and diplomatic manoeuvre. It will need mass mobilisation, and the creation of genuinely democratic fora in which issues, not deals, are discussed.” Words of wisdom indeed, these were written ten years ago by – hold your breath – Praveen Swami. Kashmir, it must be said, however, has since pronounced loud and clear that there are no “issues” to be discussed. The only issue at hand, whether India likes it or not, is the issue of Kashmir’s Independence.

Praveen Swami went on: “And it will need to foreground the diverse cultural, economic and democratic aspirations of the peoples of the state, not meaningless cliches. Such a process, sadly, appears nowhere near even its beginning.” (Emphasis added.) Such a process appears nowhere near its beginning ten long years later, even today. Even the ghosts of that Vajpayee initiative of the year 2000 are long dead. In reality, countless such “initiatives” – even when they had the blessings of, and were led by, Indian prime ministers themselves – have received a burial of betrayal in Kashmir without leaving even a feather ruffled.

Today, three Indian jokers have come to town with the blessings of one Palaniappan Chidambaram. This, after a summer of bloodshed has already been prolonged into a winter of despair leaving more than 110 unarmed Kashmiri anti-India protesters – boys, girls and young adults – dead at the hands of Indian troops and police. Is it a wonder that the trio stands rejected by all alike, disgraced before they even set their foot on the ground in the valley?

“The political input is missing,” said the PDP chief, Mehbooba Mufti. She was bang on spot.

At Tangmarg, where Chidambaram led a part of the parliamentary delegation he was heading last month in September, he was, now famously, told by a youth: “You call Kashmir the crown of India, its integral part, and Kashmiris your own people. How can you not then feel pain by inflicting wounds on us?” A few more taunts later, Chidambaram mustered some courage and said: “The time for us to talk has not yet come.”

When the time to do the talking finally came, New Delhi “advised” the state government to immediately release all students and youth detained or arrested for stone pelting and to withdraw the charges against them. New Delhi “advised” the state government to immediately review the cases of all PSA detenues. New Delhi “requested” the state government to “immediately convene a meeting of the Unified Command and to review the deployment of security forces” in Kashmir. New Delhi “requested” the state government to “take steps to immediately reopen all schools”. If the scorn that this “request” and “advice” was met with in the valley wasn’t enough, the Rs 5-lakh ex-gratia relief to the families of those killed by the police and troops during the current protests met with a deeper sense of insult.

However, as should be evident now, the biggest source of disenchantment in the latest 8-point initiative from New Delhi remains the appointment of “a group of interlocutors under the chairmanship of an Eminent person to begin the process of a sustained dialogue with all sections of the people of Jammu & Kashmir, including political parties/groups, youth and student organizations, civil society organizations and other stakeholders.” The clumsiness of the language of this clause brings sense to what has since been repeated a zillion times: That the interlocutors are going to consult “all” the people – stone pelters, unemployed youth, traders, students, Facebookers, doctors, engineers, lawyers, actors, artists, writers, journalists, chemists, industrialists, shikara walas, taxi drivers, bus drivers, their conductors, auto walas, shopkeepers, barbers, grocery walas, fruit vendors, bakery walas, Bihari labourers, pick pockets, north Indian beggars and their dogs – they “all” have to be consulted. Do not be surprised if the Mirwaiz, Yasin Malik, their servants and the rest are each given a tourist visa to Timbaktoo and sent on a family tour package never to return. For, precisely out of these – “all” the people – may well “emerge” a fresh batch of factory-made leaders that New Delhi will manufacture, prop up, nourish and inflate. To spend yet another decade, fifty years or more playing politics over the blood of Kashmiris. Many a donkey from the countryside after all have before been picked up and jailed, simply to be released years after with the paraphernalia of a “leader” all in place.

The Peoples Conference chief Sajad Lone said recently: “The choice of interlocutors is spiteful and insulting to say the very least. It is not that their eminence is ambiguous, it just that they are the wrong people for the right job.” Spiteful is not just the choice of interlocutors. Spiteful also is the idea behind the choice of the spectrum of people they are supposed to engage with. But a question still remains. Does such a process have any credibility outside Kashmir? Or even outside India? Yes and no. And then, how far can the Indian government hoodwink with such great success its own people over what it is doing in Kashmir? The fact is it has been doing it time and again, and with rather effortless ease. Will “all the people” meet the interlocutors? They will. But imagine if the whole civil society completely rejected the invitations of the trio – social boycott as someone said. The truth is that won’t happen. The political storm that the stone-pelters have created notwithstanding, a genuine pro-independence political mechanism at the grassroots is missing in Kashmir.

It’s not that just the Hurriyat is responsible. The people are very much a part of this failure, perhaps because such a mechanism doesn’t guarantee them an immediate promise of jobs. The politics of independence even stands denied by some because their hard earned rapport with the establishment will be at stake. How else will their daughter-in-law’s transfer to the high school situated just outside the window of her bathroom happen? “Even the people of Kashmir are not serious about a resolution,” said an observer in a recent public discussion held at the lawns of an upmarket coffee shop. Sadly, it is true.

The fact that the interlocutors will still be able to create some sort of success, even after being snubbed by the pro-independence political establishment across the board, must tell us just why a genuine “resolution process appears nowhere near even its beginning.” That could, well, also be the cost Kashmiris pay for playing political double agents; for doing ‘Bharat ka jhanda ye ragda’ one day and running to polling booths like wild monkeys let loose the next. Kashmir needs to realise that it cannot slaughter the Indian cow and milk it too.

The Core appears every Tuesday in Kashmir Times. The writer is a Srinagar-based journalist.

Eight Point No One

2010-10-19T02:47:00.000+05:30

Never in the recent political history of Kashmir perhaps was a grave dug out so fast and filled up so quickly by anyone as Omar Abdullah has done for himself. But, truth be told, New Delhi’s man he is after all; to them he isn’t quite a No One. In the process, however, New Delhi stands predetermined in dismissing the utility of, and concern for, people’s voice in Kashmir for a long, long time to come

Nawaz Gul Qanungo

The Core | Kashmir Times | October 19, 2010

“To the extent that the government’s approach is anti-separatist and pro-citizen, we will welcome it,” the Bhartiya Janta Party declared a day after the Indian home minister came out with his eight-point “proposal” to deal with the deepening political crisis in Kashmir. “Any dilution of this position will not find support from the BJP.” It is, basically, this politics of lies and deceit that is at heart of the farce of New Delhi’s fast dwindling Kashmir “peace process”. Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front chief Yaseen Malik has rightly called it a joke. Beginning with the so called all-party parliamentary delegation, not a single reason has survived long enough for hope to be named genuine.

Nearly a month ago, an exasperated Naeem Akhtar of the Peoples Democratic Party told the media in the morning of September 20: “The delegation is being held hostage to the [state] government viewpoint.” It was early hours in Srinagar for New Delhi’s all-party parliamentary delegation that had come to take stock of the crisis situation in the valley. “They have been holding fake interactions... it’s like staging a fake encounter.”

Akhtar’s fear – or rather a politically motivated grouse – wasn’t too unreal for the time. For the worst part, his own party president had decided to stay away for no convincing reason. Tehreek e Hurriyat chief Syed Ali Shah Geelani had refused to meet the delegation, for “no talks within the Indian constitution were going to yield any results”. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Yaseen Malik both chose to stay away, even as they sent a memorandum to the delegation. Commoners who did want to meet were not allowed to step out of their houses. Faxes were sought from people interested to meet but fax walas were not allowed to open their shops. A ruthless curfew took care of it all.

Still, little did Akhtar know what encounter was waiting to be captured by the media and beamed across to millions of TV screens. Extraordinary political reality television was waiting to happen. Five out of the 39 members of the delegation went to meet Geelani. The latter would tell them they were welcome, but only in presence of the media. The visitors were, well, trapped and there was no going back. “Our youth have decided they’ll die but will not surrender in front of the blind imperial might of India,” Geelani said. An embarrassed Sitaram Yechury of the CPI(M) replied: “Let us first restore normalcy. We can talk about all other issues later.” Millions were watching it happen, live.

Less than fifteen kilometres away, CPI’s Gurudas Dasgupta told the Mirwaiz: “We’re not here to defend any indignity, barbarism or any wrong. We represent different political voices.” The Mirwaiz replied: “You cannot force the will of India on Kashmiris. You’re witnessing the reaction to the force.” Yaseen Malik met the team visiting him at his office, where Ram Vilas Paswan spoke as if to a sage: “We’ve come to seek your counsel. What is the way out? What is the way to stop the bloodshed?” Mercifully, sagacious indeed was the response: “Do not give the Kashmiris a sense of defeat. Give them a sense of hope. Or you will push them to revolution.”

Dramatic images of the meetings filled the screens of every major television news channel. It came so close to define in substance New Delhi’s parliamentary delegation, that next day when Sushma Swaraj – the BJP president and head of Oppostion in the Indian Parliament – dashed hopes wherever they were raised, the Opposition PDP back home would have heaved a sigh in relief. The cynicism, even if with misplaced reasons, was real after all.

Swaraj told the media that even though some delegates had gone to meet the Hurriyat, it was their personal decision and not that of the delegation. “Some delegates went to meet the Hurriyat but the BJP did not go. That was their personal decision, not a decision of the delegation. If some people want to go we cannot stop them but we decided not to go. It was not a mandate. It was not discussed in the delegation.”

That the pitch had indeed been queered was clear from the words of Sitaram Yechury, who still continued to maintain that the visit was official and represented the entire delegation: “It was officially on behalf of delegation that we went to meet them.” And that it all ended up in Indian home minister Palaniappan Chidambaram’s eight-point “formula” which didn’t, and doesn’t, have the mileage to even go a baby step ahead – to borrow words from Chidambaram’s own Kashmir manual – should hardly be a surprise.

Appalling, this comes after Chidambaram standing on the floor of the Indian parliament himself acknowledged the “unique circumstances” of the accession of Kashmir to India and a “unique problem” that it was, requiring a “unique solution”. Indeed, this “acknowledgment” is a lie, familiar deceit. But to this sham of politics, the BJP’s fanaticism vis-a-vis Kashmir is not an impediment; they inform, support and consolidate each other.

Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s five-point proposal as a pre-condition for formal talks with New Delhi was even by his own standards a departure of sorts. All that was needed was sincerity and sense of purpose on New Delhi’s part. That Delhi hasn’t given a damn is just the same old same-old, but what is horrifyingly unbelievable is that back home, Omar Abdullah, the chief minister, has shown not an iota of earnestness to come to forge a deal for talks between New Delhi and the Hurriyat and come to the rescue of the common people, something long overdue.

Never in the recent political history of Kashmir perhaps was a grave dug out so fast and filled up so quickly by anyone as Omar Abdullah has done for himself. Under eternal abhorrence of Kashmir’s men, women and children alike, he lies buried today. But, truth be told, New Delhi’s man he is after all; to them he isn’t quite a No One. This is not to suggest that his removal would help; nor does he deserve to be raised from the grave. It must be said, however, that in the process, New Delhi clearly stands predetermined in dismissing the utility of, and concern for, people’s voice in Kashmir for a long, long time to come.

Note: More on the eight-point formula and the three idiots with a “political persona” in this column, next Tuesday.

The writer is a Srinagar-based journalist.

Let the schools begin, please

2010-10-12T21:40:00.000+05:30

Indian Muslims would do well in putting some serious, tangible efforts in improving education among Muslims. It is the only workable means towards facing the endless onslaught of the Sangh. And, meanwhile, the Hurriyat would do well by listening to the sane voices calling for the reopening of schools for our children. The dangers of not doing so, in the long term, are categorically existential ones.

Nawaz Gul Qanungo

Kashmir Times | October 12, 2010

“Don’t judge a car by its driver,” said the one and only Zakir Abdul Karim Naik. “If you want to judge how good is the latest model of the Mercedes car and a person who does not know how to drive sits at the steering wheel and bangs up the car, who will you blame? The car or the driver? But naturally, the driver. To analyze how good the car is, a person should not look at the driver but see the ability and features of the car. How fast is it, what is its average fuel consumption, what are the safety measures, etc.” His actual argument was that Islam couldn’t be judged by its followers.

Now, cut to the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court which on September 30, 2010 pronounced its verdict on the title suits relating to the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi dispute. Justice Sudhir Agarwal has been quoted as saying (The Indian Express, October 6, 2010): “Whether Lord Ram was born and was a personality in history, as a matter of fact cannot be investigated in a Court of Law,” Justice Agarwal begins. “Simple logic is that failing to find evidence to something does not necessarily result in that the thing does not exist.” If you have heard enough of Naik, including his argument supporting the destruction of the Bamiyan statues in Afghanistan by the Taliban, you would appreciate that either Dr Naik and Justice Agarwal both went to the same school, or both their respective schools remained continually shut due to incessant hartals.

Khushwant Singh once wrote about Naik: “His arguments never rise above the level of high school debates.” He is right, so far a huge lot of arguments Naik makes are concerned. “Juvenile” is the word Singh used for Naik’s arguments. Consider this one, which Naik calls the “example of twin sisters” and provides as one of the reasons why women should wear the hijab: “Suppose two sisters who are twins, and who are equally beautiful, walk down the street. One of them is attired in the Islamic hijab i.e. the complete body is covered, except for the face and the hands up to the wrists. The other sister is wearing western clothes, a mini skirt or shorts. Just around the corner there is a hooligan or ruffian who is waiting for a catch, to tease a girl. Whom will he tease? The girl wearing the Islamic Hijab or the girl wearing the skirt or the mini? Naturally he will tease the girl wearing the skirt or the mini. Such dresses are an indirect invitation to the opposite sex for teasing and molestation. The Qur’an rightly says that hijab prevents women from being molested.”

Naik takes this “example” from a verse of the Quran. But he chooses the verse to buttress an argument of his which derides, essentially dumbs down, the context in which the question is usually asked, which is something pertaining to individual freedom and liberty and the ability to enjoy and afford that liberty.

Now, face the question Justice Agarwal poses next in his verdict: “Nobody can dare to ask such questions for such pious and reverent beliefs in other religions like Jesus Christ, Prophet Mohammad Saheb, etc...then where is the question of asking such an evidence in the matter of religious faith and belief which is not just a few hundred years old but travels in the history of several thousands of years,” he questions. He quotes the dispute of Al Aqsa in Jerusalem where the Far Mosque is “treated the third most pious place by Muslims since they believe that Prophet Mohammad descended there after visiting Heaven”. “Nobody even doubts their faith,” he says. (Ibid.) Thank heavens much of Islam has got to do with history’s broad daylight. Wonder what, otherwise, could have been the arguments of the likes of Naik.

A few years back, in the local neighbourhood, in Srinagar, a provision store keeper was watching TV at his shop. Islamic scholar Israr Ahmed – he was alive then, by the way – was being shown giving a lecture. In a while, the shopkeeper exclaimed: Wuchh haz, toti kiah gow nafrah aasun! “Now, here is a man!” He was impressed by Ahmed’s intellectual depth, he said. What did he think about Naik? Su ti chhu jaan, magar ore kati waati... “He too is fine but no match for this man,” he replied. This is not, however, to accept in totality the politics of Israr Ahmed and neither is it to reject all that Naik stands for.

The historical and political dynamics underlying the movement that culminated in the criminal act of the demolition of Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992 and what has been termed its legalisation in the form of the verdict of the Allahabad High Court on September 30, 2010 is something that goes far, far beyond the basic legality of the gross vandalism wrought up on the historical structure by those thousands of so called kar sevaks led by Advani & Co.

Back home, Tehreek e Hurriyat chief Syed Ali Shah Geelani said: “The issue is close to the hearts of Muslims around the world. But I fervently appeal to the Muslims of Kashmir to let the Muslim Personal Law Board fight the case in the Indian courts and not take any steps that may harm the ongoing freedom movement in Kashmir.”

Kashmiris we all know are a people who do not see their future, or their past, with India. An event in Palestine evokes reaction in the valley more easily than something happening anywhere in India. But that the Indian state denied Kashmir its daily freedom was not the only challenge New Delhi posed on the curfewed day of September 30, 2010, when the latest Ayodhya verdict was announced.

The danger that India’s Hindutvavaadis have come to pose today is not essentially from the Hindu religion or something related to just the Indian Muslims. Far from it, though we haven’t yet, at the larger level, come to mention the many massacres, some of them state-sponsored, of Muslims across India at various times in post-1947 India. But how the once-despised, disregarded Hindutva brigade – horrifying and perilously ensconced as it now seems to be within the very soul of the Indian nation state – has come to define the character of the country it has infested so successfully is a juggernaut that can blow to smithereens the hopelessly uneducated, apparently benign bunch of morons who think of themselves, even with a sense of religious enlightenment, as the fans and “followers” of Naik. Naik may be doing well for himself but the followers he seems to be winning among countless Muslims seem more of a liability. For, any defence of the restoration of the Babri Masjid must deal also with the might and complexity of the history and politics of hatred of the Sangh, with all its extrapolations, and not just the historical crime it perpetrated on that fateful December 6. Mercedes-car arguments will fall short by a long, appalling distance.

Opinion >> Kashmir Times

Ayodhya verdict day: Kashmir continues to cripple under curfew

2010-10-01T12:26:00.003+05:30

Nawaz Gul Qanungo

Dinamalar | Srinagar | September 30, 2010

After eighteen days of almost uninterrupted curfew and restrictions in Kashmir since Eid ul Fitr, the state government on the day of the Ayodhya judgment yet again imposed a strict curfew across the Srinagar city and all the major towns of the valley, on Thursday. This came a day after people witnessed a rare normal day of activity on Wednesday when the government lifted restrictions in most parts of the valley on the day of a no-strike call given by Syed Ali Shah Geelani, chief of the Tehreek e Hurriyat, and leading the current anti-India agitation in the valley. Till the time of filing this report, no untoward incident was reported from any part of the state.

Reacting to the judgment, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, told this correspondent, “The issue [of Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid] is a creation of politics of both the Congress and various pro-Hindutva groups in India. Today, the Indian judicial system has failed to deliver justice. This verdict is a blot on the Indian judiciary.” He added: “The issue is close to the hearts of Muslims around the world. But I fervently appeal to the Muslims of Kashmir to let the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board fight the case in the Indian courts and not take any steps that may harm the ongoing freedom movement in Kashmir.”

Kashmir has remained extremely tense since more than three months in the wake of the disclosure by the army of a fake encounter, in which three civilians were killed and passed off as terrorists by a group of army men in April in the Machhil region of the Kupwara district. In the ensuing public protests across the valley, more than 100 people, including children, have so far been killed in police and paramilitary action.

People remained glued to their TV screens throughout the afternoon waiting for the verdict to be announced. Manzoor Ahmed, a local businessman, on hearing that the land could be equally divided between the contesting parties, said, “It must end the long pending discord. The court seems to have taken consideration of the politics of the matter.” I hope the case has been solved forever and no one starts another trial in the Supreme Court, he added, while he remained confined to his house in downtown Srinagar throughout the day.

Masood Hussain, a senior journalist based in Srinagar, recalled the day of the demolition of the Babri Masjid. “It didn’t have a serious impact in the valley,” he said, dismissing fears of any violence in the valley after the verdict was announced. Kashmir, however, witnessed violent protests on September 12, a day after Eid ul Fitr, when people started protesting the alleged desecration of the Holy Quran in New York. At least fifteen civilians were killed by the end of that day during clashes, which, however, were largely also attributed to the prevailing unrest in the valley.

Reacting to the verdict, Sheikh Showkat Hussain, professor in the department of law in Kashmir University, said the “court has acted as an arbitration tribunal rather than a judiciary tribunal”. He added, “It [the court] has failed in upholding the rule of law.” This judgment will enhance the trust deficit and the alienation among Kashmiris towards New Delhi, he said.

Meanwhile, the leader of opposition Mehbooba Mufti announced today that her Peoples Democratic Party would boycott the assembly for the rest of the session. Today was the first day the assembly had met as the Speaker moved Obituary Motion. Jammu observed a bandh on a call given by the Bhartiya Janata Party and supported by other Hindu groups. The bandh was called against what they called a “Kashmir-centric” 8-point proposal, given by New Delhi in view of the current unrest.

News >> Published in the Tamil daily Dinamalar