“Be human: stand against Indian occupation.
Seventy Kashmiris labelled as “terrorists” by the kangaroo-court counter-terrorist system (recently fortified with the UAPA terrorist-designation tool) have been flown out of Kashmir to an Agra jail. Prison, concentration camps, & demographic terrorism are the core of India’s ‘Kashmir solution’.”
#StandWithKashmir# #RedForKashmir”
–Indian activist Satyadeep Satya
Asian News International (ANI) reported that India beefed up its security “as a precautionary measure” at Aligarh Muslim University in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, India when students announced a debate on scrapping Article 370. This is terrifying. India can’t call itself the largest democracy when it brings storm troopers & jackboots to universities to intimidate & bully students holding a debate. Whatever India is doing in Kashmir will be reproduced in every other state in India. Other governments are following events in order to develop their own tactics against civil unrest. Hold on to your hats cause this fight against barbarism is going to be a bumpy road.
(Photo from Aligarh Muslim University from ANI)
Young Kashmiris interviewed by BBC brilliantly sum up what this onslaught means: “We’ve been pushed back into medieval times.”
If there were ever a bolder expression of Indian democracy, it would be nearly a million occupying troops, razor wire in the streets, an entire population under house arrest & shot on sight if they attempt to leave their homes, the arrest of political activists & leaders, a complete telecommunications blackout, restrictions on traveling in or out of the country. In most lexicons, that’s called fascism.
#IndiaOutofKashmir #StandWithKashmir
(Photo of Kashmir from Al Jazeera)
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 had 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 colonialism & occupation to carry out another genocide against Hindus. It’s been an effective propaganda, so effective that it was used against Rohingya in Arakan state, claiming they took time out from fighting the Burmese genocide to form death squads against Hindus in the state.
This interview by David Barsamian of Indian filmmaker Sanjay Kak, himself a Pandit, is one of the clearest & most politically astute elaborations of the conflict involving Kashmiri Pandits in the 1990s:
“The Pandit exile is the single biggest and most important narrative tool used by India to delegitimise and undermine the Kashmir’s struggle for existence. This narrative has been so strongly ingrained that every Indian who knows nothing about Kashmir will ‘know’ that lakhs of Pandits were murdered, lakhs were raped and thousands of temples were destroyed by crazed Muslims. This has been the most successful rallying cry for aggression against Kashmir by India, robbing Kashmiris of even the natural human sympathy even an opponent would have on seeing our condition.
“The majority of Pandits have done nothing to counter this propaganda, but have nurtured it, keeping the pot of hatred and falsehood festering. When Hindu India seeks a Hindu resurgence and righting of wrongs ostensibly perpetrated by Muslims, the efficacy of this narrative has played a significant role in dehumanising us and, consequently, in our brutal destruction.
“I say, ‘Enough!’ Enough of apologising and placating. Pandits know what happened, who did what and how many died. If they don’t present this to the Indians hell-bent upon a genocide of Kashmiris, then they don’t deserve our apologising. An apology we can ill afford. They are as much our murderers as the soldiers holding the guns.”
–Shuja Kosher
“These posts about buying land and marrying Kashmiri girls.
Yes those are the fetishes the thugs in Indian parliament are playing to. They know their electorate well. Basic knuckle dragging animals with morals to match. The rest is window dressing.”
–Shuja Kosher
This morning Facebook notified me of a 30-day suspension for my sarcastic post about Hindutva rape fantasies. Since social media allows the rape fantasies to be expressed & also one about making porn films of Kashmiri women, I found the action appalling & asked for a review. Believe it or not, Facebook retracted the suspension & I am back to #standingwithKashmir.
Another 30-day suspension from Facebook. I anticipated it but had no idea which post they would use as a pretense. Keep in mind that Hindutva posts expressing rape fantasies toward Kashmiri women or one threatening to make porn films of Kashmiri women were not deemed objectionable by Facebook censors after they were reported.
There was nothing precipitous about India taking over Kashmir in such an aggressive fascistic way. It was a show of power orchestrated to humiliate, overwhelm, terrorize & designed to have maximum demoralizing effect on the struggle against colonialism & occupation. The movement for azaadi was confident & fearless, with powerful writers & polemicists, unarmed protesters who stood up over & over against Indian troops armed to the teeth with pellet guns, rubber bullets, live ammo, tear gas shells. Kashmiri activists on social media had a strong voice & presence despite constant harassment & censorship on both Facebook & Twitter. Their educational & campaign work on social media had forced mainstream media to end the news blackout in order to manage the narrative without Kashmiri voices for self-determination dominating & the false narrative about a territorial dispute between India & Pakistan being sabotaged.
When India moved in over 100,000 troops in addition to the 700,000 already present, when it closed schools, set up more roadblocks, established curfews put an entire population under house arrest, shot at them if they tried to leave their homes, arrested political activists & leaders, silenced & threatened journalists, closed down all telecommunications even for commercial purposes, changed the juridical relationship to India to make Kashmir completely subordinate to India, those were actions designed to bring Kashmiris to their knees, to demoralize & humiliate them. It was an attempt to bring Kashmiri intransigence down to size because a confident freedom struggle is a dangerous freedom struggle to growing Indian fascism.
These kind of action are shattering & we’d be fools to think Kashmiris will not be afraid, if not for themselves, for their children. It will take them time for them to recover psychological & political equilibrium, to think through the strategies to manage these new political conditions, to organize defense of those who have been arrested, to figure out how to continue their political work & to stand up against the increasing aggressions of the occupying army without getting arrested or disappeared.
That’s where international solidarity comes in. We have to maintain a steady presence on social media reporting about the Kashmiri struggle, especially during the telecommunication lockdown. We have to organize forums, panels, media interviews & articles, teach-ins, protest rallies. We have to let Kashmiris know they do not stand alone & we have to support their struggle for political power by demanding the Indian government immediately & unconditionally withdraw all its troops from Kashmir.