This is an article about the Indian government’s plans to make Hindi the official language of Kashmir. It isn’t going to change how Kashmiris speak within their families but it will be imposed on legal proceedings, in education, in documents, & journalism. It’s an attempt to destroy Kashmiri culture as it is embodied in & transmitted through language. Anyone in the US who has followed or been part of the struggle for bilingual education for immigrant children understands how massively aggressive this plan is against Kashmiri culture.
Indian police from the town of Amethi in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh openly threatened prominent Indian journalist Rana Ayyub for her tweet about the destruction of the 470-year-old Babri Masjid demolished by a Hindutva mob in December 1992. The destruction of the mosque is an extremely important political event in India involving the persecution of Muslims & Hindutva claims that it was built over a Hindu temple. The dispute parallels Israeli claims to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem which Zionists claim was built over a Jewish temple although the mosque has been there for 1,314 years.
Ayyub’s tweet came after an Indian Supreme Court decision which ruled in favor of the main Hindutva plaintiff & gives legal possession of the land to political forces responsible for the mosque’s destruction. In response to the threat, Ayyub said she would delete the tweet only if the police found any factual inaccuracy.
Al Jazeera reports that “masked men” shot & killed five protesters in Basra, Iraq & injured at least 120 others. Government snipers & security forces riddled with CIA operatives have killed nearly 300 protesters since last month by firing directly at their heads & chests.
This is a watershed moment for nearly 30 years of US sanctions, war, occupation in Iraq. The US maintains one of the largest military compounds in the world in Iraq & is responsible for the deaths of millions of Iraqis. We stand in full solidarity with the protesters & look to them for leadership in rebuilding the international antiwar movement. The Assadist & Stalinist cult that destroyed the antiwar movement is either silent about the protests or splitting on the protests with some who support Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians in Syria trying to go antiwar in Lebanon & Iraq. Many others, like Eva Bartlett, Tim Anderson, & Laith Marouf, are showing their fascism by denouncing the protesters in Lebanon & Iraq.
Stand with the protesters by demanding the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all US-coalition forces & mercenaries from Iraq.
(Photo of protester in Basra, Iraq from Al Jazeera)
“Snow becomes slate for Azadi graffiti in occupied Kashmir. As the snow flakes began to fall, Kashmiris write anti-India & pro-freedom slogans on the snow. They make use of everything available to show what Kashmir actually is.”
–Tweeted by Junaid Bhat Photographer @Junaidbhatphoto
“There is a good old saying that “you can take Kashmiris out of Kashmir but you cannot take Kashmir out of Kashmiris”. The land is in our hearts and soul, and we will continue to campaign for our freedom.”
–Kiran Butt in “A Kashmiri’s Love Letter To Kashmir”
Despite the controversy surrounding it, I went to see the film “Harriet” about the life of Harriet Tubman, a runaway slave from a Southern plantation who became one of the most remarkable freedom fighters in all of human history. That her biography is not already widely known testifies to the racism & misogyny of history as it is written & taught. You could tell that Blacks played a major role in the making of the film because it lacked the more egregious features of the white savior genre. But there was an episode in the film where the director took artistic liberties not based on the experience of Ms. Tubman & which dramatically stood out like a sore thumb. Blacks & others who saw the film object to that episode as an outrageous compromise with white savior crap.
The episode which is not reported in Tubman’s biography is when she was being chased by a Black bounty hunter & the plantation owner. According to some historians, there were Blacks who collaborated with the slaveocracy by serving as bounty hunters for runaway slaves just as there were Native Americans who scouted for the US Army in the wars of extermination. (Collaborators have an ubiquitous presence in human history.) But since there is so little reputable history of slavery or the wars of extermination, there isn’t much written about the role of collaborators. More to the point, they don’t play a prominent role in Tubman’s remarkable biography which needs no artistic license to improve upon. Why the director included that peculiar episode is an issue since there is no report that it happened, dramatically it bombed, & politically it stunk to high heavens of white savior stuff because it showed the vicious plantation owner shooting the Black bounty hunter who was about to shoot Tubman. In an incident that didn’t happen, the white slave owner saved a runaway slave from a Black hireling. It reeks of white savior compromise & racism.
There is so much about Tubman’s life that could have, should have been included in this film (like her leading a regiment in the Civil War) that adding in the white savior thing that never happened is truly regrettable. But if it makes us seek out more information & the truth about the extraordinary Harriet Tubman, then the film will have been worth this colossal lapse in cinematic & political judgement. She went on to play a role in women’s rights & in the welfare of the elderly. Everyone should know who she was & honor her for her monumental contributions to human freedom.
“They tell me the first snowfall has arrived,
But I wouldn’t know.
I can’t see past the blood soaked concertina walls they have put up.
They say the tree branches are swinging under the weight of the fluffy white snow,
But I wouldn’t know.
I can’t see past all the new guns and jack boots.
They have stolen my earth and my sky,
My trees and my air,
They have changed the names of my streets and declared my language a bastard,
They have changed the locks to my front door,
My keys no longer work.
They say I was never really here.
But what I know is
that though I travelled the world
I was never really anywhere but here,
Buried under the first snow.
You exhumed my body from my home,
But
Not my soul.
Never my soul.”
