Yesterday, a friend & I went to see “Terminator: Dark Fate”, the new Terminator film where three women, including 63-year-old gray-haired Linda Hamilton, were the main action heroes. So much fun to see a cinematic presentation, even in this lowbrow form, of political reality. Women have always played a leading role in history but the men who write the history simply write us out, just as they do Blacks, Native Americans, & other colonized peoples.

That will be harder to do now that women’s political roles are documented on social media. Muslim women can no longer be portrayed as victims who need to be rescued by US-NATO or Syrian & Russian bombers, mercenaries, & Marines. (How Assadists & Stalinists pulled that off in Syria is a triumph of racist & Islamophobic orientalism & ‘war on terror’ rubbish.) The prominent role of Kashmiri women in the struggle against occupation stands out as do these Muslim women at Shaheen Bagh, Delhi, who have not left the streets in 14 days of protest against the citizenship laws that make their persecution legal.

(Photo from News 18)

“It’s appropriation when an Azadi chant is deployed in defence of the Indian occupation of Kashmir. But that is not happening. The problem is only that many of those who do the Azadi chant now have not supported the Kashmiri movement’s call for Azadi. So it is important to emphasise this in the hope that the chanting of Azadi opens more minds to its Kashmiri manifestation as well. However, Azadi is not only about Kashmir, nor is the word an invention of Kashmiri people. Across Asia, it belongs to many freedom struggles — in Kurdistan, Balochistan and also in India, where movements have spoken of concepts like “jhooti Azadi” (fake independence: the transfer of power in 1947) and the need for “another freedom struggle” against the imperialist system from which India is still not independent.

Anti-fascists in India tap into the legacy of the anti-colonial movement against British Raj, and see a continuity with their own struggles of the day. Azadi expresses this sentiment, and now that the Kashmiri movement has given a powerful and lyrical vocabulary and rhythm to go with it, the Azadi chants in the streets of India actually prefigure the necessarily connected future of anti-colonialism and anti-fascism in the subcontinent — the Azadi Kashmiris demand and what Indians mean by Azadi when they say the word in protests are so inextricably linked that neither struggle can advance without advancing the other. Simply put, there cannot be a democratic India if Kashmir is under occupation. Freedom and democracy are prerequisites of each other, so there can be no democracy without self-determination.”

–Indian activist Satyadeep Satya

“The Israeli inspired blockade of Kashmir has brought poverty and misery to Kashmiri homes that is unprecedented. The stories one hears of families struggling to make ends meet are heartbreaking. Indians who are against CAA & NRC but support this inhuman occupation of Kashmir cannot be anything but hypocrites.”

–Shuja Kosher

Matzpen was an Israeli socialist & anti-Zionist organization active been 1962 & the 1980s. Matzpen member Arie Bober who edited “The Other Israel: The Radical Case Against Zionism” toured the US in 1970 & it is his lectures that first introduced me to the theoretical foundations of Zionism. Many today seem to have little understanding of the theory of Zionism & prefer to see it as evil incarnate, a political weakness that lends itself to anti-Semitism. People, for many reasons including class, believe all sorts of irrational things. Believing it is evil incarnate presupposes no possibility of breaking the commitment of Jews to Zionism when we see that transformation happening before our very eyes & taking organizational form in Israel & other countries.

“The Other Israel: The Radical Case Against Zionism”, edited by Arie Bober: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/mideast/toi/index.html?

“New Premises for a False Conclusion”, an analysis of Zionism & its relationship to anti-Semitism, by Matzpen member Moshe Machover: https://matzpen.org/english/1967-05-10/new-premises-false-conclusion/?

Kashmir: An Ode to Resistance from Toronto For Kashmir:

Iltija Mufti, the daughter of Mehbooba Mufti, manages her mother’s Twitter account while her mother pretends to be a political prisoner serving time in a posh hotel suite. The better to position the mother as a moderate leader in hopes Kashmiris will forget her political alliance with India’s fascist BJP, the party of the Modi gang, & her approval of pellet guns, mass incarceration, forcible disappearances.

Iltija Mufti tweeted: “Fellow citizens don’t need to visit Kashmir anymore to witness their subjugation. BJP has brought Kashmir right to the doorstep of every Indian.”

Kashmiri journalist & photographer Showkat Nanda tweeted in response: “Reminds me of the famous dialogue from Amar Akbar Anthony. “Baap ki di hui pistol yaad hai, lekin pistol dene wala baap yaad naheen!” (“Remember the pistol given by the father, but do not remember the father who gave the pistol!”) You remember BJP bringing Kashmir to the doorstep of every Indian but forget who brought BJP to the doorstep of every Kashmiri!”

Your Azadi may bring comfort,
– but my Azadi shall set you free,
Free from tyranny of your soul, – on your soul
Free of guilt, of a culpable conscience,
– a conscience out to slay in your name
Free of the numbness of your heart,
– inflicted with the darkness, in your name.

Your Azadi may let you exist,
but my Azadi will let you live
Live without having to justify,
-blood on the hands of your men
Live without, paining a nation,
to fill the holes in your ego
For the songs of Azadi
shall reverberate,

through the borders
Cages,
Confines,
-closed minds
and one sunny day,
bring down the high walls
from your reason, to see the light.
One day my Azadi shall set you free
-to live with your fellow beings in harmony
Until then,
we shall keep singing
our pain, through a romantic ballad
Azadi,
Until freedom comes.

©Mudasir Firdosi

Pic credits Basit Zargar

More Kashmiris inform me their accounts were shut down by Facebook without cause. They stand with 90-year-old Syed Ali Geelani, the honored independence leader who was shut out of Facebook in 2016 & whose faux Twitter account was suspended in August at India’s request.

Portrait of Ghulam Mohammad Dar, a Kashmiri torture victim who died in 2015 with a body covered in scarring, including from being burnt alive: whatever the Indian government has planned for Muslims & dissidents in India, it first tested on the bodies of Kashmiris.

“Ghulam Mohammad Dar, a resident of Tral area of Pulwama district. In 1995,He and his colleague were picked by SOG without any reason and shifted to a camp in bijbehara.Over the next few days they were inflicted a severe degree torture and later they were burnt alive.While his colleague died,Ghulam Mohammad Dar suffered heavy burn injuries.He was later found by his family and shifted to hospital.However he was never able to recover fully. From 2013 ,his condition worsned,his bones so weak that a soft hit lead to multiple fractures.His body was badly scarred and he was reluctant to show it,so much that he had left a will that no stranger shall see his body when given “Ghusul”..In july 2015,he could no longer fight and left this world.”

–Aahil Asif

Demand the immediate release of all Kashmiri political prisoners & the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all Indian forces from Kashmir.

“A 65-year-old Kashmiri political prisoner named Ghulam Mohammed Bhat who was jailed in Uttar Pradesh died in police custody some days back. His son says he was told that the charges against his father had been quashed. On reaching the jail, he found out that his father was no more. The 32-year-old son met the fear I fight every single day; the only time we shall see our incarcerated families free would be at their funerals. But then Afzal Guru’s son comes into my mind, he didn’t have the closure of seeing his father’s dead body.”

–Kashmiri Ahmed Bin Qasim, whose parents are both political prisoners