To get the scale of the Indian occupation, it has nearly one-million troops deployed in Kashmir. The US Armed Forces have 1,374,699 active personnel with 210,000 of them deployed in several wars. To pay for that, the US has to steal from the Social Security Trust, Medicaid & Medicare, food stamps, public schools, & the bridges & roads are collapsing. No wonder India can’t afford to build a modern sanitation system & poor people have to crap on the streets. Militarism is the very essence of capitalism in its barbaric phase.
Survival
(I)
How do you bear separation
While your home is under siege:
By recalling an army of metaphors
Or dead clichéd caterpillars of hope?
How do you bear separation alone
While you oscillate between awful
Dregs of despair and the hazy
Halloweens of commercial ads?
(ii)
How do you bear separation?
While a soldier knocks down,
Your ancestral pride and erects
False ego of empire in your lawn.
Do you sing as a culture bird?
Of the smoke shells hovering in air,
Or the breast-fed songs of mother
That vanished along the home fire?
(iii)
How do you bear separation?
While authority attacks in ambush.
Do you alliance or stay alert-armed?
For anarchy’s sake─ anguish, annihilate
Till the bullet buries the body in dust;
The shadow of soldier blows out brains
In defeat and returns home never
To come back─ again.
(iv)
How do you bear separation?
You don’t bear it or even hear it,
While your home hammers suspended
Between the steel hopes of a family;
The aggressor’s unwanted presence.
The soldier shells, shoots and storms
Your air to stifle and suspend survival,
But you rage, resist, rescue and rule.
©Ashaq Hussain Parray
And so it begins in Indian media: the cacophonous Islamophobic motif of internecine divisions within Islam, theological & political differences between Sunni & Shia & other denominations that makes it impossible for them to unite, that puts them at each other’s jugulars. Propagandists of the ‘war on terror’ have used this crap to such pernicious advantage elsewhere that they are now going to start using it against Kashmiris.
In response to this article, Indian activist Satyadeep Satya wrote: “This article must be pulled down. Such nonsense should never be published. What a disgrace to journalism! I’m sure a truthful response is on the way as well as pressure to take down the article. All of this person’s writing on Kashmir published by ‘The Print’ is unadulterated Indian State propaganda against Kashmiri people.”
Kashmiri Ashaq Hussain Parray wrote: “Appalling & disgusting, to say the least about this reporter. They don’t dare report human rights violations in Kashmir & all they can do is orchestrate these damned-out-of-reality narratives to further their propaganda. We are a politically conscious lot & don’t need people like you to represent us. You can’t divide us on this line. Let me tell whoever wrote this article that I am a proud Kashmiri Shia, & I oppose & reject any assault on our collective heritage as any other Kashmiri does. When it comes to fighting against oppression, there is no Shia, Sunni, Sikh or Dogra. Sorry, this trick won’t work. We are unanimously against all your moves. This is one more example of your pathetically engineered schemes to tell the world that only a handful of people are protesting against the scrapping of Kashmir’s autonomy. We are all united against any assault on Kashmir & its people irrespective of religion, class & creed.”
Frankfurt, Germany #StandWithKashmir rally, September 29th, 2019.
India is prolonging this siege to humiliate Kashmiris before the world, to bring their defiance down to size, to shatter their confidence & weaken the spirit of azaadi. Their resistance to one-million troops has made them giants in our eyes & in the history of resistance to colonial tyranny. It has also exposed the Modi gang as two-bit thugs & genocidal monsters. That is not going to change no matter how long India acts the murderous barbarians in Kashmir.
#StandWithKashmir
This rendition by Roberta Flack of a magnificent love song came out after the Civil Rights Movement when Black musicians were transforming US & world music. It captures the magic of love, not just romantic love but that of the first look at one’s child: “First time ever I saw your face.”
(Meme by Shakira Banu)
“Is Modi an “internal matter” of India? Was Hitler an internal matter of Germany & ISIS an internal matter of Iraq/Syria?”
–Indian activist Satyadeep Satya before his lockout by Facebook until October 29th
(Meme by Shakira Banu)