The intifada for Freedom

KASHMIR is one hell of a problem that neither India nor Pakistan is trying to sort out sincerely. Neither side really wants the train to stop, with possible exception of those who are actually on board, and no one sincerely knows in what direction the train is heading. There is a drill on both the sides with the barrel dominating the scene: let the drama play out, then commemorate the Heroes and the Martyrs – or, maybe, traitors.

Until My Freedom Has Come: The New Intifada in Kashmir, is a hard hitting anthology that celebrates the triumph of words over fearful silence. When the government-controlled guns take rest, some conscious minds think of documenting the present. But as for Kashmir, these stories are not merely a mass of words documenting the pain and agony of people; of course it is not the other way way around, but then, more importantly, it is a fight against forgetfulness. The book is pretty much a tale of every person living in Kashmir; a tale that people scream and murmur and dream and, at times, even forget, but fail to make others understand.

Most of what has been happening in Kashmir over the past couple of years comes in a furious rush of summers itself. But, 2011, somehow, pretends to be different. At the moment ‘violence’ seems to have hibernated. A deceptive calm sizzles around the streets of the Valley, thereby giving ‘peace’ a forlorn chance to show how it looks in the beautiful Valley.

But, when memory goes back to the summer of 2010, a portrait of India’s manoeuvring against Kashmir’s determination to decide its future comes to mind. The use of “deliberate violence” by Indian forces, the cruel and precise tactics – as if they are out to hunt rather than to control, the stubborn gag over media and what not. Throughout the summer uprising, 'Indian Media' has been downplaying the peaceful demonstrations in Kashmir, dubbing protestors as 'miscreants'; are they?

By the time Suvir Kaul is out for her ‘Diary of a Summer’, Srinagar has already turned into a city of shatters. The impression that she carries while flying from Delhi suddenly starts to vanish. Out on streets are not the ‘miscreants’; they carry no guns to engage in combat, barehanded they are shouting for what they see as their 'birth right'.

Turning the pages of the book, it seems India has a strange understanding of the Kashmir conflict or, at least, it pretends so. The Kashmir problem is not about a want or a desire; had it been so, there was, probably, no better state than India to calm it down. It is about a “right” that is being “denied”. The strength of forces in Kashmir may have given India what it wants – to minimise, or more specifically, to end, the militancy; but what India has failed to do is to kill the sentiment of “freedom”.

History must not be allowed to come in the way of building a shared future. The widespread peaceful protests are a message about the transition that Kashmir witnessed. These protests carried the sentiment of “freedom” to the next generation, which is up with pen, instead of gun, which inevitably means more agonizing engagement on the intellectual front.

Freedom, Angana Chatterji writes, is fundamentally an experiment with risks that Kashmiri’s are willing to take. ‘The global community must support them in making such risks ethical.’ Over the past two decades, Kashmiris have lost the right to speech, assembly and travel; they have lost all guarantees of their freedom from violence, harassment and unlawful detention. They have heard of democracy, and seen brutality. So they are out but they ‘don’t want an Azadi where all the young men are dead’.

In the mess, months pass by; curfew continues in valley, violence shows no signs of waning, neither does the death toll. Police is on fire - defending the almost failed state of affairs from teenage students who are out in a different avatar. Running out of options, government bans media; stops circulation of news papers, bars text message form cell phones and all outgoing calls from mobiles phones. Changing their modus-operandi, out comes the youth with innovation - Social networking sites emerge as the tool of mass contestation in Kashmir. Instead of speaking to each other, Kashmiris are suddenly speaking to the entire world.

While contemplating what Kashmiri people have been demanding, there is no denying that they don’t want to be a part of India. But the actual question is, have they ever been?

Then there are people, young and enthusiast, who remember the Azadi slogans by heart. And they had been shouting: “This bloodshed will bring life, there will be Revolution.”

Book: Until My Freedom has Come: The New Intifada In Kashmir; Binding:  Paperback; Language: English; Publisher:  Penguin; Pages:     302; ISBN 13: 9780143416470; Author: Sanjay Kak (Ed.)