Graffiti art, a popular art form, played a role in political protest throughout the Arab Spring uprisings & are important in the Palestinian & Kashmiri struggles.
Understanding the history of Kashmir is important but I well know from my own studies that it isn’t easy at the local library, even many university libraries, to find coherent accounts, especially histories from the point of view of the Kashmiris themselves. A lot of what you find is US State Department-type analyses. This brief history by Ashraf Bhat will help those trying to understand how Indian colonialism came to dominate Kashmiri politics & cause such immense suffering for the Kashmiri people.
Repression, physical assaults, arrest of Kashmiri journalists & heavy restrictions on foreign journalists is the Hindtuva view of press freedom in Kashmir. As Satyadeep Satya has said, if journalists don’t act as stenographers for the Modi gang, they are denounced as fake news, terrorist or separatist propaganda, or Pakistani propaganda.
Full disclosure: don’t count me in as an admirer of Gandhi. His politics are not just problematic to me, but disturbing. He is, to my mind, a figure whose stature was built out of mythology & does not bear close scrutiny. But that demigod stature is deemed real by millions of people throughout history. When the NY Times published an oped piece today by Modi the genocidaire titled “Why India & the World Need Gandhi: the great leader envisioned a world where every citizen has dignity & prosperity,” they were intentionally tapping into the mythology–or iconic stature of Gandhi, if your prefer–to rebuild the reputation of Modi from a genocidaire into a champion of human rights. It is a detestable compromise of the kind the NY Times has made for decades to support Israeli colonialism, apartheid, & genocide against Palestinians.
It isn’t just a compromise but signals that the US power elite is going to cooperate & outright collude with India in covering for the genocide in Kashmir & the disenfranchisement of Muslims in India. The Muslim-hating ‘war on terror’ is that central to US foreign policy goals involving war, occupation, genocide.
However you regard the legacy of Gandhi, #StandWithKashmir.
A moving piece about the traumas of the siege & blockade by Kashmiri author Mirza Waheed.
A powerful report from Kashmir by Ashraf Bhat in the period from July 1st to August 16th, just eleven days after the siege & blockade began on August 5th. Ashraf reports with the indignation of a Kashmiri seeing other Kashmiris suffer, not with the detachment of a foreign journalist nor certainly with the mendacity of an Indian nationalist stenographer for the Modi regime.
http://www.albiladdailyeng.com/ground-report-kashmir-july-1-august-16-2019/?
Targeting young boys in Kashmir for arrest, injury with pellet guns, & torture: a strategy also used in Palestine & in the US Black community.
There is still this: Modi, Interior Minister Amit Shah, & General Dhillon, commander of Indian forces in Kashmir, remain under summons by a US District Court to answer for human rights crimes in Kashmir.