Kashmiri after Kashmiri & many of their supporters are pointing out the hypocrisy of Indian liberals holding up placards of ‘Black lives matter’ whilst supporting the brutal occupation & lockdown of Kashmir. Nationalism makes you stupid but the problem is more insidious when it creates such a chasm of cognitive dissonance. When I first began writing about the Kashmiri struggle, hundreds of my FB friends who were Indian liberals & socialists went ballistic & became so vituperative & aggressive in their language & so insistent in their objections that I had to block them. Their heads are stuffed full of Islamophobic treacheries that portray the Kashmiri freedom struggle as ‘Pakistani-trained terrorists’. Their nationalism makes the development of an anti-colonial movement in India almost impossible & the suffering of Kashmiris unimaginable.
Building Kashmiri solidarity around the world can put political pressure & help educate the blunt minds of so many Indian liberals who cannot call themselves human rights activists whilst they support the occupation of Kashmir even if they hold the biggest banners proclaiming ‘Black lives matter’. So do Kashmiri lives matter.