NYC protest for Kashmir on Friday, August 9th:
An excellent article on India’s military onslaught against Kashmir, by Pakistani novelist Mohammed Hanif.
A moving account of growing up under occupation by Kashmiri journalist & novelist Mirza Waheed.
There is opposition in India to the brutal occupation of Kashmir (many are among my Facebook friends) but there is no organized opposition with any influence, authority, or national scope that can publicly challenge the occupation & stand with Kashmiris although there were solidarity protests in India with Palestinians & with the Rohingya. This lack of an anti-colonial movement is a monumental problem for Kashmiris & for Muslims & oppressed castes in India. Such a movement would decisively alter the relationship of forces so that the Modi regime would be forced to withdraw troops, not send more in & make Kashmir what the NY Times calls “the most dangerous place in the world.” Unfortunately, the lack of such a movement also means there is no powerful political counterforce to the growth of fascism in Indian politics.
Given the corrupt & moribund state of the antiwar, immigrant rights, & other social movements in this country, I do not say that with hauteur & in an accusatory spirit but with deep concern. The Indian progressive movement has sustained some of the same debilitating influences as the movements in the US, Europe, Latin America, & other global regions, most regrettably the amalgam & influence of Stalinism & Assadism with all that “US regime-change operation” & self-determination for a dictator crap.
Understanding this political phenomenon is essential to resolving it. That necessary analysis is not helped by organizational squabbling like that foolish Kautsky vs Lenin debate rather than the politics of war, occupation, genocide. May I remind them that Marx said, ‘the point is not to interpret the world but to change it’? In many ways, social media provides us an opportunity to have these discussions of what went wrong, what are the underlying dynamics of the degeneration, what can we do to reverse it, but they must begin with discussion of what is happening to the oppressed rather than what organizational form is most preferable for Lilliputian grouplets. The only organizational form we should be talking about is how to form a coordinated international movement to stand in active solidarity with Palestinians, Kashmiris, Rohingya, Uyghur, Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis, Yemenis, Somalis, Libyans, refugees from wherever they are, & those suffering inequality & injustice wherever they are. That is not an anti-intellectual or anti-theoretical view but an assertion that what is primary is standing with the oppressed, not looking smarter than everybody else in the room.
Several Kashmiris have been reporting about the disturbing trend of Hindutva nationalists publicly smacking their dirty minds about how scrapping Article 370 now makes whiter Kashmiri women available to them. There apparently is little to distinguish nationalism from racism from rape in the fascist mode of intersectionality. That creepy information accords with reports that most of the white nationalist perpetrators of the deadliest massacres in the US have domestic violence in their backgrounds. Like their nationalist brothers in India, they are not mentally ill so much as poisoned by hatred & violence against women, Blacks, & others with brown skin.
Solidarity with Kashmir from the Syrian Arab Spring now under aerial & ground bombardment by Syrian, Russian, Iranian, US-coalition, Hezbollah, Israeli forces:
There are a few reports trickling out of Kashmir however not by Kashmiri journalists who have been silenced. It’s not certain, given the complete shutdown of telecommunications in Kashmir, how these reporters are getting their information or getting it out of Kashmir. The BBC which apparently has journalists on the ground has reported scattered protests in Kashmir & Huntington Post published this disturbing report that a 17-year-old boy was drowned trying to escape paramilitary troops chasing a group of teenage boys. Thirteen of the boys ended up in hospital with pellet gun injuries. There is no indication the young boys were engaged in protests or any kind of mischief but only that they were in the public streets during curfew.
“Indian journalists who’ve been given “access” to Kashmir by the state, please do spare a thought for your colleagues in Kashmir. They haven’t been allowed to report, write, speak one word.”
–Kashmiri journalist & writer Mirza Waheed
Indian scholar Jairus Banaji on India turning Kashmir into a concentration camp:
The shameless subjugation of the Kashmiris should come as no surprise to all those in India and outside who know that the BJP government doesn’t give a f**k about the constitution of India, much less about legality, democracy or individual rights. But the curfew that is currently in force amounts to a crime against humanity under international law, since article 7(e) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court includes, in the list of such crimes, “Imprisonment *or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law*”.
Doval has described the situation in Kashmir as one of “normalcy”. The architects of India’s national-security state think it is normal to live surrounded by tens of thousands of troops, to have barricades and check-points every few metres, to imprison people in their homes, to cut their communications completely, to try and keep them in the dark about what is happening, to make it near-impossible to access emergency services such as hospitals, etc., basically to live in a state of fear and isolation as if gathered in one vast concentration camp. One can only hope that one day Doval and his wretched ilk will have to face similar conditions.
A facebook friend commented that the annexation of Kashmir has been driven by “a desire to put Muslims in their place and have them crawl before their Hindu masters” (comment by Amitabha Pande). To this one might add that the true target of Kashmir’s subsumption into what is rapidly becoming a Hindu state is Article 35A, because that is widely perceived as a hindrance to “freeing” the resources of the Valley and to its unfettered economic exploitation (euphemisically called “vikas”) by powerful business interests linked to the present government.
As for parliament, it has been reduced to a fig-leaf for the exercise of naked force.
Protests are erupting in Kashmir despite the presence of nearly a million troops. The struggle for #azaadi is irrepressible. This is a brief but very good video report including interviews with two insightful young Kashmiri men.