Kashmir’s defiance and resistance’s refusal to surrender. Curfew was clamped again on Friday as authorities apprehended fresh protests in the Valley where 36 persons have died, and over 3,100 injured in clashes following the killing of young Kashmiri militant Burhan Wani last week.
The current outbreak was triggered when the Indian forces took out Wani in a blatant extrajudicial killing. Tens of thousands of angry young people poured out of their homes in towns and villages, hurling rocks and bricks, and demanding that the Indian state relinquish control of this festering wound of partition left consciously behind by the British imperialists in 1947.
Wani is from the latest generation of youth in Kashmir defying Indian hegemony. A new breed of educated youth — that joined militant struggle after the 2010 uprising –that are web-savvy and use social media to popularise their demands. It was no surprise that more than 100,000 people attended his funeral last Saturday.
Kashmiri youths like Wani are yearning for an end to their national and economic oppression having little choice but to either hurl stones at the state forces in the streets, or join these militant outfits due to lack of real and genuine alternative to Kashmir’s Indian collaborators like the Abdullahs, Syeds, or the so-called Hurriyat leaders.
In an recent article, Times of India has pointed out that indigenous violence in the pursuit of “azadi” (freedom) coupled with the deep state games played by both India and Pakistan provide fertile ground for mythologies in Kashmir. Quoting a military officer the newspaper writes, “Burhan was not the militant material. I think we fell in the Pakistani trap. They led us to create an icon out of him.” The Indian state called it a successful anti-terror operation, but common Kashmiris propped up Wani along with the likes of the JKLF’s Ashfaq Majeed Wani, an “iconic martyr” of the 1990 Kashmir militancy. Some have even dubbed him as the “Kashmiri Bhagat Singh.”
However, the Indian state clearly didn’t expect such public outrage. Each day last week has brought a new surge of resistance by young, rock-throwing protesters, defying curfews to challenge the Indian troops firing live ammunition. It seems that by this provocation the Indian troops revive a rebellion. Omar Abdullah, the former chief minister of the Jammu and Kashmir, aptly tweeted: “After many years I hear slogans for “Azadi” resonate from my uptown Srinagar locality. Kashmir’s disaffected got a new icon yesterday.”
The pressure from this mass upsurge is palpable within the Indian establishment. Narendra Modi called a high-level meeting to discuss how to restore peace. Indian authorities sent at least 2,000 more paramilitary troops to the mountainous region, where more than 500,000 already are arrayed permanently, one of the highest.
For the Pakistani state and the regime it was an opportunity to wash their dirty linen. From the usual condemnations and appeals to the so-called UNO and “world community” by the regime, Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif could not let the opportune moment let go without adding his populist theme.
However, in the last 70 years the masses in Kashmir on both sides of the Line of Control suffered. Socioeconomic agony for the oppressed masses of the subcontinent was no less. But Kashmir has been the “bone of of contention” between the two nuclear powers that are amongst the highest spenders on armaments and lowest on health and education. The politicians of the vale’s elite also betrayed Kashmir masses. Despite all the odds the defiance and revolutionary fervour has passed on from one generation to another.
Across the Line of Control the situation is not much better. It is manipulated and subjugated by the ministry of Kashmir affairs and state’s security agencies. Most Kashmiri youth mainly from the Pakistani controlled region have immigrated to Britain, Europe and to the Middle East. Their plight of this uprooting is another tragic story.
There have been ebbs and flows in the mass movements throughout these seven decades of aggression. However, individual terrorism has been counterproductive. It has been used as an alibi for the justification of the Indian state’s vicious repression on the one hand, and allowed Pakistan’s deep state to infiltrate the struggle with fundamentalist proxies. These bigots didn’t even spare the innocent Kashmiris from their fanatic brutality. Where individual terrorism failed to get the Kashmiri masses any closer to freedom, the dream of attaining independence through a negotiated settlement seems to be farther away than in 1947.
The UN and the so-called world community have proved to be impotent and deceptive. However, there have several mass uprisings this vale in the shadow of the Himalayas. The intifada of 1987 shook the Indian state. The movement in 2010 was orientated more towards socioeconomic emancipation. Any spectacular event or a major incident can trigger even greater mass revolts. With the incessant and seething turmoil in Kashmir there can be no stable rule.
More upheavals impend. However, for the national and social liberation of the Kashmiri people these mass movements have to be linked to the class struggle. The revolutionary uprising of this class struggle in the subcontinent is the only method through which the strangle hold of the vicious states fighting their greedy wars by spilling blood of ordinary Kashmiris, and oppressing more than one and a half billion souls of this historic subcontinent can be broken. The Communist elements in the Indian occupied Kashmir and the Marxists of JKNSF across the LOC have this historical challenge to redeem.
They have to provide leadership, organisation and direction to these mass uprisings. It is also the historical task of revolutionary activists, youth and workers in India, Pakistan and beyond to support courageously the struggle of the Kashmiri masses against the oppression and tyranny they have been endured and fought for generations. The spark of a Kashmiri mass revolt can kindle a torch that shall enlighten the path of revolutionary socialism for oppressed of this south Asian subcontinent to rise up, and make the prospect of emancipation and prosperity a reality.
The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and international secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at [email protected]