India’s Heart of Darkness Exposed by the Crackdown in Kashmir

=By= Radha Surya

Kashmir – police respond with deadly force to protesters. – Human Rights Watch

The facts speak for themselves. There is no escaping the implications of the horrors with which innocent, mostly unarmed civilians of India-held Kashmir have been bombarded ever since the present crisis erupted. The ongoing crisis in Kashmir has laid bare the palpable darkness that resides at the very heart of what is often perceived as a vibrant and successful democracy. As a mighty surge of mass resistance to Indian occupation welled up across Kashmir in the wake of the killing of beloved militant leader Burhan Wani on July 8, the Indian state unleashed a crackdown of which the savagery knew no bounds. Kashmiris are accustomed to sweeping as well as limited and less visible crackdowns by Indian forces. This is an old story. Still the current crackdown is of a different order of magnitude. Its ferocity may be without precedent in recent years. It is possible that repression on this scale was witnessed in Kashmir only in the nineties when India launched a brutal counterinsurgency operation to crush a rebellion against Indian rule. Now the no holds barred strategy has returned to a land which has been turned into a war-zone by Indian forces. Hardly surprising then that Kashmiri novelist and writer Mirza Waheed was moved to declare that something unimaginably dark, something sinister, has happened in India. Too many people here have called for more Kashmiris to be killed (https://twitter.com/MirzaWaheed/status/754678431799922689).

Twelve days into the crisis, despite consecutive days of curfew and other repressive measures, clashes have continued between young, undaunted protesters and Indian forces. The death toll has crossed 40. Over 2000 civilians have suffered injuries from state police, paramilitary and army firing with live ammunition and pellet guns. Victims of eye injuries resulting from indiscriminate use of pellet guns have become the emblematic casualties of the ongoing crisis. At one hospital alone over a hundred patients, mostly young people and even children, with pellets lodged in their eyes were brought in for surgeries. Skilled doctors toiled around the clock in their service. Nevertheless it is known that thirty of the injured are doomed to live in darkness for the remainder of their lives. The rest will be left with impaired vision. Such are the unimaginably ruthless methods used by the Indian state as it strains every nerve to retain its hold on Kashmir.

There has been some stone throwing by protesters as well as instances of large civilian crowds attacking and inflicting damage on scattered police stations and seizing weaponry. Much has been made in some reports of the so-called “violent” nature of the protests. For some reason it is assumed that an exclusively pacific response befits Kashmiri protesters when fired upon with live bullets because they broke curfew and assembled to pay their last respects to their slain leader. Indian forces on the other hand have license to maim, blind, kill and commit every possible war crime. The occupation forces have literally gone berserk. Some of the more visible atrocities committed in the wake of Burhan Wani’s funeral have gone on record. Even ambulances were waylaid and stormed by occupying forces when the injured were being rushed to hospitals. Victims of the disproportionate use of force—some with blood gushing from bullet wounds–were subjected to further trauma when they were pulled out of ambulances and beaten by paramilitary forces. Delays in reaching hospitals because of deliberate obstruction by occupying forces have resulted in loss of life in a number of cases. In their frenzied pursuit of protesters police stormed the main hospital in the capital Srinagar and fired tear gas shells in the Emergency ward sowing panic in the medical staff as well as patients and their attendants. The senseless brutality of the occupying forces knows no restraints. A physically handicapped boy was assaulted by soldiers as he played with friends in a field and was thrown into a ditch. He now lies in hospital with a fracture in his shrivelled leg. The heinous deed was perpetrated in an area where protests were not being staged. Then there is the harrowing story of a CRPF or paramilitary assault on a family on its way to the capital Srinagar. The mother was being taken to the hospital for treatment when the family’s vehicle was stopped and surrounded. Of her two children the young man—who was guilty of wearing a beard– was accused of being a terrorist and taken into custody for possible torture and killing. His sister was subjected to a rape attempt by an officer. Police who witnessed the incident intervened and were able to avert both outcomes. The story was headlined “CRPF men brutalise family, attempt to rape and kill.” Ironically its publication resulted in a gag order being imposed on prominent Kashmiri newspapers for a three day period. Printing presses were raided by occupation forces, printers were beaten up and copies of newspapers seized.

The savage crackdown that rages on the ground has its discursive counterpart in the inflammatory and hate-filled rhetoric of some of India’s jingoistic TV channels as well as in social media postings. New Delhi seems to have been taken by surprise as the conflagration overwhelms Kashmir. The Prime Minister was away on yet another of his all too frequent foreign jaunts when fires flared up in the valley. He remained silent in the initial days of the crisis although he had the time to tweet birthday greetings to all and sundry and to convey his sympathy with grieving survivors of the carnage in Nice, France. Analysts have been warning for some time that traumatized Kashmir long denied its aspiration for azadi or freedom is ripe for yet another outbreak of mass resistance to Indian rule. New Delhi has been urged to proactively seek a political solution to the conflict in Kashmir. But the Indian state has hitherto seen no reason to modify its policy of containing Kashmir’s political aspirations by means of brute force. In response to the current crisis the state has rushed 200 paramilitary troops to the valley. The number of active militants has dwindled to 200 or fewer as opposed to several thousand when insurgency was at its peak in the nineties. Nevertheless New Delhi continues to station over half a million soldiers in Kashmir making the state the most militarized zone in the world. By some estimates the number of soldiers stands at 800,000. Calls have been made without success in the last ten years or so for demilitarizing Kashmir or at least reducing troop numbers.

India’s military occupation of Kashmir is particularly relevant to the conversion of Burhan Wani to militancy. How Burhan the bright, cricket loving son of a school principal joined the armed struggle against Indian rule in 2010 at the age of fifteen is now a familiar story. Burhan and his older brother Khalid had gone for a bike ride in their village in South Kashmir when they were stopped by soldiers who sent them to buy cigarettes. The cigarettes were duly purchased and delivered but the brothers were given a beating all the same. Khalid was beaten till he became unconscious. Burhan vowed he would take revenge. Soon after the incident of gratuitous violence on the part of the occupying forces Burhan disappeared from his home and went underground. He joined the Hizbul Mujahideen, a militant pro-azadi group which has been active in the valley since the late eighties, and rose swiftly to the position of commander. Also well-known now is the story of how Burhan boldly stepped out of the shadowy realm traditionally inhabited by militants and attained almost mythical status through images and videos of himself and his comrades that circulated on social media. And of course there was the impact of his refusal to tolerate zulm or oppression and his espousal of the pro-freedom cause at the ripe age of fifteen. Both the visuals of the handsome Burhan with his earnest, guileless looks and the narrative must have cemented his place in the hearts and minds of Kashmiris who groaned under the Indian yoke and shared Burhan’s political aspirations. It seems correct to perceive exceptional historical significance in the post-Burhan moment as in the analysis of writer Mohamad Junaid at http://raiot.in/the-restored-humanity-of-the-kashmiri-rebel/. How else does one explain the outpouring of grief and anger at the killing of the youthful twenty-one year old leader. How else does one explain the fact that over two lakh Kashmiris broke curfew and placed themselves in harm’s way in order to pay their last respects to the slain commander. Or that protests spread across Kashmir in defiance of the military might—the lethal bullets and supposedly nonlethal pellets–of the occupying forces and continued for days despite the ferocity of the ongoing crackdown by the Indian state?

India too should weep for Burhan and others who shared his fate—all the young Kashmiris who were driven into embracing the armed struggle and were brought to an untimely end. Indeed protests against the crackdown in Kashmir have been held in Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai. But it’s too much to hope that outrage will be substantial or nation-wide. Despite witnessing such wanton destruction of life and human potential no doubt India will go on with business as usual. This time around as well the occupying forces will be able to bludgeon, blind, torture and kill Kashmir into submission. The status quo that existed prior to the current crisis will be restored. A limited acquiescence to Indian occupation will be re-established and will hold in place until the next crisis erupts

Radha Surya writes on issues in Indian and international politics. Her articles have appeared on Znet and Countercurrents. She lives and works in the United States in Bloomington, Indiana.

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