Kashmir Let Down Even by India’s Parliament | Mustafa Khan

by Mustafa Khan

Never before had Kashmir felt that it was not part of India. All this on account of India itself and its delinquency in the hour of need. The cumulative long term shadow is the startling revelation of Omar Abdullah in his interview published in Indian Express of July 28 2020. The response of India to the plight of Kashmiris in the turmoil there was:

“Hardly anything. Parliament, may be one odd speech, otherwise nothing. It was, for the first time perhaps, politically I felt that we were absolutely alone. That all these friendships that we talked about and these grand alliances and all, they all stopped the other side of the Pir Panjal. They didn’t extend this way.

 

“They were happy to take our support when they needed it for their own causes but they didn’t find common cause with us and, honestly, I will not stand up for a single one of them tomorrow. Not one of them. I won’t campaign for any of them, I won’t support any of them and god forbid any of them get taken off to jail, I will not utter a word for them, because they didn’t speak when people here were suffering.

 

When Kashmiri kids weren’t able to go to school. When our traders weren’t able to open their shops. When tourists were being railroaded out of here overnight in buses and hotels were being emptied. When jails were being filled with people for no reason. These people lost their voices. God forbid, anything like this happens to them, I will lose my voice as well. I have no cause with them. That’s it. I will speak for the people of J&K, I don’t speak for anybody else.”

Hence the imperative as far as this day is concerned: compel the making of immediate decision.

No political space left. What Mahbooba Mufti feared of shrinking space after the murder of a sarpanch who happened to be a born Hindu in Kashmir it is immaterial if many more were done to death subsequently including a father and two sons. No matter what Ram Madhav spoke when he visited the bereaved family. Indian moves of the last one year and more had done what now cannot be undone.

The long simmering influence of cruelty and communal bias was there but we chose to look the other way. Davinder Singh used to piss into the mouth of Afzal Guru and forced him to lick his own shit and curse Afzal’s simpleton behaviour. The ambassador car that entered the gate of the Parliament followed the open door left by LK Advanis’s entry. Politics had a watershed in 1993. The clock was reset then and there thanks to the BJP leaders AB Vajpayee and LK Advani in the PM Narsimharao [era]. In the massacre of more than 50 Kashmiris at Bijbehara [1] during the siege of Hazratbal on October 22 1993 only one BSF jawan was injured. Human Rights Watch had thus rejected Indian explanation of this ambush. Many know that the massacre was the offshoot of former Governor Jagmohan Malhotra’s insistence for more repressive measure he voiced on July 15 1993 even after his two terms as governor in Kashmir – from 1984 to 89, and then from January to May 1990. The government inquiry in 1994 indicted 14 BSF jawans for firing into the crowd. However the Vajpayee government later acquitted all the accused. It was this that led to US assistant secretary of State Department Robin Raphel rejecting India’s Instrument of Accession of Kashmir. Her statement in the background briefing was, “As I said, we view Kashmir as a disputed territory. We do not recognise...(pause)...that instrument of accession as meaning that Kashmir is forevermore an integral part of India. And there are many issues at play in that timeframe, as we all here know.” [2]

March 25 2000 the last day of President Clinton’s visit the Home Minister LK Advani and Narendra Modi secretary of RSS were treated to the presentation of the brave soldiers who had finished the so called five dreaded terrorists from Pakistan. Modi applauded the soldiers who had killed the five innocent villagers with excessive use of fire power at the scene that looked like a battlefield when in fact the victims bore the brunt of bullets, grenades for a long time.

The villagers found out more details of the fake encounter of the five and on April 3 they started their first mass protest against the killing of the shepherds. A crowd of 2000 marched to the district headquarters in protest. They were fired on in which 8 protestors lost their lives. This was the third killing. In all the three killings the victims were innocent. The killers were soldiers of the 7 Rashtriya Rifles.

CM Modi and LK Advani played politics. They opposed the arrest of Sadhvi Pragyasingh and others. But after the martyrdom of Karkare Modi offered huge sum of money to the widow Kavita Karkare which contrasts with money he donated to Swami Aseemanand. So the question of impunity is non-negotiable. Kavita Karkare refused the offer.

Playing politics with the indigenous people of the valley is a game. Arundhati Roy: Afzal “extruded through the sewage system of the hell that Kashmir has become. He surfaced through a manhole, covered in shit (and when he emerged, policemen in the Special Cell pissed on him.”

As Maulana Mufti Abdul Qayum Ahmad Hasan Mansoori writes in his book Eleven Years Behind the Iron Bars [3]:

“Kashmir aa kar doodh ka doodh and pani ka paani ho gaya.” After the Maulana was brought to the valley by DG Vanzara and his team truth came out in the open “our Indian officers were not only perpetrating torture on Muslims but they were deceiving Hindus in order to get medals and awards.” (p.49)

Phoenix’s puzzle, Omar:

“I am not willing to put a stone or a gun into my own kids’ hands, I have no business doing the same to any young Kashmiri. I am very clear on that.

 

“So if the people of Jammu and Kashmir, are looking towards me as some sort of person who will rally them out into the streets and god forbid get some of them killed, then I am not that person, I will not do that. I will raise my voice against what has happened. I will fight against what has happened but I will not give somebody wearing a uniform with a gun an excuse or a reason to kill one of us. That’s not me.”

The Author: Mustafa Khan, Malegaon, Maharashtra. He blogs at: http://commonalty.blogspot.com/