Pune, India #StandWithKashmir protest, Sunday, September 15th, 2019.
“All Kashmiris imprisoned in Indian jails outside Kashmir (300+ in Agra, a large number in Jodhpur and many elsewhere) are victims of a crime as heinous as extrajudicial killing or enforced disappearance. India deprives Kashmiris even of the right to die in their homeland as a means of ‘disciplining’ the rebellious people. Free all Kashmiri prisoners. Every Bastille is bound to fall.”
#StandWithKashmir #EndTheOccupation
–Indian activist Satyadeep Satya
A tribute & act of solidarity from Rollie Mukherjee who artistically represents #StandWithKashmir.
“No civilized people in the world will allow these types of restrictions.”
Many may not understand exactly what Stalinism represents in modern politics since the Soviet Union has long-since collapsed & one would think its apologists right along with it. But that isn’t the case. It’s an entrenched, entirely deranged political method with many faces but which always remains rooted in the original matrix of support for Stalin, his pogroms, gulag, mass murders, violent repression of democracy. There are sophisticated types like Michael Parenti who claims Stalinism no longer exists but wrote a pernicious Stalinist apologetic for the Chinese occupation of Tibet. Then there are the types most frequently encountered in political movements who use bullying, guilt-baiting, stonewalling, even physical threats to get their way. That’s because their ‘theoretical’ skills are an embarrassment of cognitive disorders. This Stalinist thing was deleted from a discussion on my wall but shows the mangled nature of their political reasoning & why Stalinism is finding its final rotting place within fascism. If only those who call themselves Marxists could learn to make these distinctions.
Raleigh, North Carolina #StandWithKashmir rally, Sunday, September 15th, 2019.
REPOSTING AGAIN ON THE KASHMIRI PANDIT ISSUE BECAUSE IT IS SO IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND:
As solidarity with the Kashmiri struggle grows, we will need to arm ourselves to respond to the accusations of Hindutva activists who are at least as rabid as Zionists & Assadists. Among their favorite weapons against Kashmiris is the history of conflict involving Kashmiri Pandits (Hindus) in the 1990s. It’s an issue very difficult to get reliable information about & when I first studied it only found the poorest resources, all of which claimed Pandits were the victims of a Kashmiri Muslim genocide. That would mean Muslims took time out from defending themselves against colonial occupation & genocide to carry out a secondary genocide against Hindus. That makes as little sense as the claim by Islamophobes that the Rohingya took time out from fighting the Burmese genocide to form death squads against Hindus in Arakan state.
This interview by David Barsamian of filmmaker Sanjay Kak, himself a Pandit whose parents live in Srinagar & support #azaadi, is one of the clearest & most politically astute elaborations of the conflict involving Kashmiri Pandits in the 1990s:
Doesn’t this photo of heavily-armed Israeli soldiers with a Palestinian child whilst engaged in a home invasion near Hebron in the West Bank resonate with the photo of Indian paramilitary forces ganging up on a little Kashmiri boy & forcing him to do calisthenics? In this case, moments after this photo was taken, the baby’s family home was bulldozed & they were left homeless.
Stand with Palestinians. Build BDS.
(Photo by Hazem Bader/AFP)
