A bulletin of deaths and injuries is constantly being updated inside a key hospital in Kashmir. Last time the white board showed 48 killings and 3,548 injuries in a week paradoxically just above the marble plate, announcing the launch of the building by pro-Indian politician Omar Abdullah. To the media, these deaths could be part of Kashmir conflict timeline or mere statistics. To the insiders they are people.
It’s a tough time in Kashmir where the wedding season has turned into a spell of wanton killings. A father who dreamt to lead the son’s marriage event is shouldering his coffin. An old mother is forced to attend her daughter at a hospital who was showered with pellets on face and eyes. She may not be able to see again. Others wonder if they could return alive every time they leave homes.
Mobile phone and Internet services are shut. Cable TV is barred. Newspapers were gagged in midnight raids. Kashmir has again become its beloved poet Aga Shahid Ali’s city “from where no news can come”. Mockingly police and politicians keep flooding the mailboxes of journalists with their press statements knowing fully they can’t be published in tomorrow’s papers.
But we’ve been here before as well.
A rebel’s killing leads to protests in disputed Kashmir; Indian police break it with all might. More deaths follow. More stones are hurled. More police stations or chowkis – seen as symbols of tyranny -are set on fire. More bullets are fired. More funerals and protests turn into full-blown demands for independence from India. The cycle gets repeated.
It has been so, especially since 2008 when the tiny Himalayan region was rocked by non-violent protests – in a sign of the departure from armed rebellion. But scores were killed and hundreds injured as Indian soldiers broke protests using force. The only memory of 2008 is the body bags. Again in 2010, much before Arab Spring phrase was floated, Kashmir witnessed pro-independence million-marches brutally suppressed though leading to 126 killings and thousands of injuries. I covered both seasons of protests.
So some 10 days ago, the gap of enforced peace, local elections and shaky calm was shattered when Indian soldiers killed 22-year-old Hizbul Mujahideen fighter Burhan Wani in a controversial gun battle. It looks like the Indian government had no idea that the killing would set off a powder keg that threatens to spiral further.
As has been a ritual now, a powerful section of Indian media is again at it – trying to alter the indigenousness of local protests into Pakistan-funded activity. Interviews of stone hurling youngsters caught by police in the middle of protests are leaked to media to put across the message that 500 rupees were paid to the youngster by Pakistan. In Indian courts such evidences are not admissible. But media trials decide the fate of a person usually. Sometimes I wonder why can’t India – which has pumped billions to hold on to Kashmir since 1947 – pay a dollar more to halt the stone pelter’s rage? But New Delhi understands that it’s not the case. Recently when the pro-India chief minister Mufti Mohammad Syed died, not more than 5,000 people participated in his funeral. In Wani’s, despite curfew and tough restrictions, tens of thousands came to have a last glimpse of Kashmir’s hero.
Pro-Kashmir protests have now taken place in states like Delhi and West Bengal. In Kerala, police detained the activists trying to protest. More must be coming. In the US, UK, Australia, and elsewhere rallies in support of Kashmir’s independence and immediate end of killings can’t be Pakistan-paid. In fact inside Pakistan too, pro-Independence protests have taken place in areas like Balochistan, Lahore, Rawalpindi, and Azad Kashmir. Pakistan isn’t rich enough to fund all these protests immediately after India kills a rebel. One can only laugh at these assertions but that’s the hallmark of a section of chest-thumping media outlets and Indian intelligentsia.
Pakistan is treasured in Kashmir but Islamabad has little influence in Kashmir these days. It’s involved in clearing its own political mess and conflicts. Battered by years of isolation, Pakistan seeks investments and jobs for its poor. It’s working hard to make CPEC a success story. Overhauling economy, not wars, with neighbours is the priority. Its liberals who control the narrative are happy to have a good relationship with India as well. In fact Indian liberals and media celebrities too are more shocked by the news of Qandeel Baloch’s killing and Edhi Sahab’s death than the half-century of killings their soldiers have scored in Kashmir.
A week of protests in Kashmir and we have a salvo of TV shows where Indian commentators assemble to understand how does Burhan became talismanic rebel commander whose funeral was attended by 300,000 people and saw over 40 back-to-back funeral prayers.
To the self-admiring experts, how can a gun-wielding youngster become a central figure of shared desires of the deeply troubled Kashmir? A few nights ago, a debate on popular NDTV discussed minimising deaths and injuries by adopting “humane” weapons to deal with the protests. It’s like treating a patient of liver disease for toothache. Kashmir doesn’t have a military solution as established by previous wars neither is it a law and order problem.
Now that the pro-Independence leaders in Kashmir have put forward a six-point formula to help de-escalate tension in Kashmir, India as usual has sent more troops in reinforcement to solidify the occupation. If one analyse the rigidity of the statements coming from New Delhi, it feels like India may not be disturbed by internal or external calls for restraint while dealing with independence demanding Kashmir protesters.
The stalemate looks to continue and can get as ugly as it has in the past. Remember in 2008 and 2010, it was the pro-independence leaders who called off months of protests notwithstanding the fact that New Delhi didn’t offer any political concession in return. It did commission a group of interlocutors to prepare a report, which is gathering dust for six years on the shelves of Indian home ministry.
The call to end those protests left pro-Independence leaders in an awkward position while Indian police swooped on the protesters and bundled hundreds of their supporters in jails together for years.
Today same leaders may be forced to think twice by their loyalists before winding up the current round of protests without New Delhi’s guarantees of political settlement of the dispute.
What’s also interesting is that there are still some Indian literati who feel now is the time to hold referendum in Kashmir. For example, in her fresh piece, Indian writer Shobhaa De called for referendum to “end the lingering pain in the region” but voices like her are very small in today’s India where Hindu mobs rampage and commit “beef murders” on mere suspicion.
In a separate development, an Indian soldier has died in a natural event in Himachal Pradesh state but India’s Twitter army has already blamed Kashmir and Pakistani “terrorists” for the death.
The writer is a Kashmiri journalist. His twitter feed is @BabaUmarr