Cry Kashmir
Forty five years ago almost to the day, the Hindu Maharajah of Kashmir, Hari Singh, was coerced into signing an Instrument of Accession to India in callous supersession of the will of the 77% Muslim majority of the State. That vain act, meant to bolster his own threatened monarchy, postponed Hari Singh’s departure from the throne but condemned the people of the fair State to decades of Indian subjugation. Notwithstanding the solemn commitment given by India after the UN-arranged ceasefire in 1948 between Pakistan and India for a Plebiscite by which the Kashmiris were to decide whether to accede to Pakistan or India, Kashmir was annexed by India. As late as 1952, the then Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was quoted as saying, “Kashmir is not the property of India or Pakistan. It belongs to the Kashmiri people — we have left the question for final solution to the people of Kashmir and we are determined to abide by their decision”, unquote. The continuing loss of freedom motivated the Kashmiri people to ultimately cross the Rubicon of Fear and rise in total revolt. The indigenous uprising has gathered momentum dramatically in the last three years, inviting a no-holds barred brutal Indian repression. Failing to suppress the freedom fighters, the Indian Occupation Forces (IOF) have embarked on their version of a “Final Solution”, to rid Kashmir of Kashmiri Muslims.
In major urban areas the Indian fiat has been more or less replaced by the authority of freedom fighters. While the whole State has been sanitized of foreign journalists, from time to time the veil has been pierced by credible accounts of unbridled atrocities, yet by and large the world community continues to be indifferent to the plight of the Kashmiri people.
Part of the reason is that the Indians have timed the escalation of their latest round of suppression in Kashmir to perfection. Bosnia occupies centre stage of the world’s attention and the only Superpower left is internally engaged because of the final months of the US Presidential campaign. Utilising this window of opportunity, the Occupation forces in Kashmir have launched an all-out campaign to break the back of the freedom struggle, using means finessed by the Israelis over the years in their campaign against the Palestinians. The latest modus operandi is to seal off mosques during prayers and then search for militants. Naturally this exercise inflames religious feelings and is opposed, the crossfire in an enclosed area has caused many deaths and injuries among innocents. Those arrested are usually found shot dead shortly afterwards while “trying to escape”, their bodies bearing the marks of sadistic torture. Journalists are not spared, Yusuf Jameel, the BBC representative, was mercilessly beaten with rifle butts by the police recently, for the second or third time maybe. Incidents about violence on local journalists is an open-ended coercion meant to tone down their reporting to the international media about the endemic violence being perpetrated.
The atrocities in Kashmir have evoked a sharp reaction in Pakistan. The feeling of outrage has been accentuated by daily reports of killings, maiming and arrests, Indian excesses in trying to suppress the Muslims of Kashmir and their hypocrisy in holding forth about their “secular and democratic” credentials have been well documented. Except for a brave few diehards, the Pakistanis are somewhat mystified and as such hamstrung about the type of support to be given to the freedom struggle. Aid can be in passive form by donations in kind and cash, protest demonstrations, lobbying with the friendly countries or active in support by the funnelling of weapons and ammunitions to the freedom fighters, crossing the border clandestinely to join the freedom struggle or defiantly crossing the Line of Control (LOC) openly and en masse. The militants active within Kashmir depend upon the support of the masses within and outside Kashmir. Crossing the LOC en masse can be understood as the end result of the deep frustration of all Kashmiris but is an exercise that has grave repercussions internationally and cannot have official sanction.
While nobody can really claim to cornering the market on patriotism, that being the last refuge for scoundrels, the attitude of Karachi’s elite is a cause for major concern. Despite the hard fact of continuing Indian atrocities, the sympathy of the rich and famous of Karachi, this coterie representing the dominating influence within the government and business circles, seems to have been side-tracked, a strange reaction to the realities of life within the Kashmir cauldron. The Indian Consulate General in Karachi has played a dubious role in compromising the sympathies of most of those who owe their present fortune in life and positions in society because of the existence of Pakistan. By wining and dining the Karachi affluent and the influential, at lavish parties complete with visiting Indian dancers, classical singers, poets and plenty of wine, the Indians have subverted their conscience. On or about the day, the Occupation Forces were desecrating the Jamia Mosque in Srinagar, one such event was going on in Karachi. We have become callous hypocrites, taken down the garden path by a dreamworld of “culture” created by the masters of the art while less than a thousand miles away a Paradise has been converted into nightmare for our brethren. Today Tuesday October 27, 1992 fully five hundred of our cultured elite will throng India House in Karachi for a Kathak Dance Performance by Ms Kumkum Dhar while Kashmiris are made to dance to the sound of bullets in the occupied Valley.
To quote Lord Avebury, “The atrocities committed by the Indian imperialists in Occupied Kashmir surpass brutalities of the Apartheid Regime in South Africa, or the Nazis 50 years ago. The systematic and deliberate attacks against the people, murder, torture and rape; the destruction of houses and businesses; the disappearances of hundreds of young people in the Concentration Camps of the Indian oppressors are part of a vicious plan to break the will of the people”, unquote. Even the US Congress has passed House of Representatives (HR) 5234 ‘The Justice in India Act’ to protest the unlawful detention and imprisonment in sub-human conditions of over 40,000 Kashmiris. With what face or heart do our elite beat a regular path to the doorstep of the Indian CG? However, since the Indians are so good to them, maybe they would also be good enough to organise a social visit to Occupied Kashmir across the Line of Control. By their insensitiveness to the realities of life, they are undercutting the sacrifices within Kashmir.
In the diplomatic sense we are hamstrung because of a number of reasons, viz. (1) our lack of ability (and therefore failure) in exposing the Indian atrocities to the international media successfully (2) the failure of our diplomats to quietly convince their counterpart international colleagues about the legality of our contention (3) the inherent Indian ability to contain the damage due to adverse publicity at their brutal actions by their extensive media connections and false propaganda (4) the lack of dedicated enthusiasm (till recently) on the part of the Kashmiri leaders on our side of the fence to brave the fire while being bellicose from positions of safety (5) the partial success of Indian intelligence in creating differences between the various militant factions (using a minority Muslim group as their surrogates) about the final objective, accession to Pakistan or independent Kashmir, thereby confusing the issues and (6) the unfortunate previous attempts to cross the Line of Control by Amanullah Khan and friends in independence of other parties thus diverting from the sacrifice of the freedom fighters within Kashmir and giving India another propaganda advantage internationally. The latest all-party attempt reverses this significantly, however.
The FIVE draconian laws that the Indians have applied in their counter-guerilla campaign allows them to search and arrest without warrant, hold without trial, dynamite, bulldoze or burn homes suspected of being hideouts, etc in effect gives a blanket authority to commit genocide legally. Notwithstanding the inherent cruelty, there are definite indications that the Indians have begun to see the writing on the wall, that they would be willing to enter into a dialogue about Kashmir, but certainly not with Pakistan. As the Indians are increasingly being convinced that Kashmir is well and truly lost to them they are turning to a fall-back position, an independent Kashmir, as they did once before in 1962 in the wake of the military disaster visited on them when they provoked the Chinese. At that time Nehru had sent Sheikh Abdullah on an exploratory mission to meet the leaders of Azad Kashmir but resiled on this as soon as the situation stabilized for India. To that end, their intelligence agencies have already embarked on a dual-track policy, creating controversy and division by giving clandestine support for those militant minority factions who call themselves Muslims but are not acceptable to the broad mass of Muslims (as members of the faith) and by using the leverage of money, wine and women (culture?) in encouraging the intelligentsia within and outside Pakistan to echo the same demand, that of an independent Kashmir. The choice before the people of Kashmir is clear according to the UN resolution on Plebiscite, accession to Pakistan or India according to their wishes. The third option of an independent Kashmir is a bogey created by the Indians to set back the present freedom struggle and if not, to at least divert it to an entity which is more acceptable to India. We must be extremely careful that we do not fall within this trap. Our AIM should be clear, a choice to the Kashmiris to either accede to Pakistan or India is the only option, no third choices can become a part of the debate.
We must also be careful to remain on this side of maturity, learning through sorry experience. The ill-conceived Operation Gibraltar involved the infiltration of forces into Kashmir in 1965 when the situation within Kashmir was not conducive for such an exercise, setting the Kashmir freedom movement back 25 years. Let us be more sophisticated this time and not blunder into naive adventures of the same sort on the basis of emotion and rhetoric.
Kashmir is a justifiable cause to cry for, that cry forces those who are sincere to the cause into acts of desperation like the crossing of the LOC on the contention that the greater the cause, the greater must be the sacrifice. Since most of us cannot physically join the struggle, at least let us Cry Kashmir.
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