“Indian authorities have denied claims of snowfall in Indian-administered Kashmir, terming the images, videos and reports as fake, malicious and intended to threaten national security. “
–Kashmiri sarcasm by Shahid Tantray- شاہد تانترے @shahidtantray on Twitter
(Photo of first snowfall in Srinagar, November 7th, 2019 by Basit Zargar)
“Indian authorities have denied claims of snowfall in Indian-administered Kashmir, terming the images, videos and reports as fake, malicious and intended to threaten national security. :)”
–Kashmiri sarcasm by Shahid Tantray- شاہد تانترے @shahidtantray on Twitter
(Photo of first snowfall in Srinagar, November 7th, 2019 by Basit Zargar)
Translation of this window posting from Kashmir: ” Fall in love with us Kashmiri boys with remarkable caution because our funerals are often taken out in our youth. “
(Source is many Kashmiris on social media; date of photo not identified)
One Kashmiri friend was suspended for writing a piece on the character of freedom deemed a violation of community standards & another has been disappeared without notice.
There are different ways of capitalizing & punctuating English. When I edit your comments which I share into standardized American English form, it isn’t to pull a ‘cultural imperialism’ thing but to make your comments conform to my rigidities in language. Please don’t hate me for it.
India is discussing changing the official language of Kashmir from Urdu to either Hindi or English. Farah Bashir responds: “Changing Urdu as the official language in Kashmir is essentially to control all the communication and official dealings. By excluding Urdu in a region where majority reads and writes in that language is nothing other than apartheid.”
The Hindu is reporting today that of the 6,300 Kashmiri young people & political activists arrested since August 5th, all but 1,300 were released. They got that information from the police. Kashmiri human rights leader Parvez Imroz recently claimed with certainty that between 20,000 to 30,000 Kashmiris were arrested & other human rights sources have reported that at least 13,000 young boys were kidnapped & sent to prisons in India. The Hindu apparently lacks the investigative skills considered de rigueur for a 7th grade book report. They should have begun by interrogating the police report statistics & ended by demanding proof that 5,000 Kashmiris have been released. Otherwise they’ll soon be mistaken as a propaganda agency for India like RT or Sputnik news, both wholly owned by Russia.
“When Columbus traveled to America, in 1492, he described the natives as “peaceable” and “tractable (easy to control)”. He called them “sweet and gentle.” He was moved by how beautiful the island of San Salvador was. The native Americans presented him with gifts and treated him with respect. The Europeans preyed on the niceness and welcoming nature of the natives and colonized America. They killed them, plundered their homes, destroyed their crops and abducted their women and children. If the natives tried to fight back, they were called “savages and uncivilized”.
Nehru described Kashmiris as “not what are called virile (valiant) people. They are soft and addicted to easy living.” The Indian tourists over the years have called Kashmiris as warm and hospitable people. “Kashmiriyat” was the term manufactured, to define our friendliness. But just like colonizing Europeans, India too exploited our kindness. Today, they dream of settling in “heavenly” Kashmir, even at the cost of suppressing the locals. And if we resist it and fight for what belongs to us, we are called “intolerant and terrorists.””
–Kashmiri Ahmed Bin Qasim
Kashmir is now referred to as the “erstwhile state of Jammu & Kashmir.” That juridical status will entail many changes & may make the struggle for self-determination much more difficult because of iron-fisted & fascistic control by India. But it will not defeat Kashmiri resistance nor crush the spirit of azadi. Kashmiris will be free. Forging active solidarity in unity with Palestinians, Rohingya, Uyghur, & others sustaining dispossession & genocide will make that day come sooner for all.
It’s been recently reported that Kashmiris, Palestinians, & Rohingya all suffer heightened degrees of mental distress in response to genocide. Shobna Sonpar is a Delhi-based clinical psychologist & psychotherapist who has studied & spoken often on the issue in Kashmir, including one study on Kashmiri militants. She discusses the problems of approaching mental distress caused by war & genocide using only a mental health & medical model when its origins are violent oppression. She’s very insightful but you can see the problematic nature of analyzing mental health issues among the oppressed when she discusses violence (beginning around 7:00). It cannot be said her explanation here is sufficiently elaborated. But she does address briefly, if also insufficiently, the issue of mental health among those who support or who do not actively oppose their governments engaged in war & genocide.