Prof. Angana Chatterji, Asian Human Rights commission, Sep 27, 2010
“Freedom” represents many things across rural and urban spaces in India-ruled Kashmir. These divergent meanings are steadfastly united in that freedom always signifies an end to India’s authoritarian governance.
In the administration of brutality, India, the post colony, has proven itself coequal to its former colonial masters. Kashmir is not about “Kashmir.” Governing Kashmir is about India’s coming of age as a power, its ability to disburse violence, to manipulate and dominate. Kashmir is about nostalgia, about resources, and buffer zones. The possession of Kashmir by India renders an imaginary past real, emblematic of India’s triumphant unification as a nation-state. Controlling Kashmir requires that Kashmiri demands for justice be depicted as threatening to India’s integrity. India’s contrived enemy in Kashmir is a plausible one – the Muslim “Other,” India’s historically manufactured nemesis.
What is at Stake?
Between June 11 and September 22 of 2010, Kashmir witnessed the execution of 109 youth, men, and women by India’s police, paramilitary, and military. Indian forces opened fire on crowds, tortured children, detained elders without explanation, and coerced false confessions. Since June 7, there have been 73 days of curfew and 75 days of strikes and agitation. On September 11, the day of Eid-ul-Fitr, the violence continued. The paramilitary and police verbally abused and physically attacked civil society dissenters. Summer 2010 was not unprecedented. Kashmir has been subjected to much, much worse.
The use of public and summary execution for civic torture has been held necessary to Kashmir’s subjugation by the Indian state. Militarisation has asserted vigilante jurisdiction over space and politics. The violence is staged, ritualistic, and performative, used to re-assert India’s power over Kashmir’s body. The fabrications of the military — fake encounters, escalating perceptions of cross-border threat — function as the truth-making apparatus of the nation. We are witness to the paradox of history, as calibrated punishment — the lynching of the Muslim body, the object of criminality — enforces submission of a stateless nation (Kashmir) to the once-subaltern postcolony (India).
Kashmir is about the spectacle. The Indian state’s violence functions as an intervention, to discipline and punish, to provoke and dominate. The summer of 2010 evidenced India’s manoeuvring against Kashmir’s determination to decide its future. The use of violence by the Indian forces was deliberate, their tactics cruel and precise, amidst the groundswell of public dissent. This was the third summer, since 2008, of indefatigable civil society uprisings for “Azaadi” (freedom).
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1 comment:
Good theory!! But like all Paki statement, it lacks the focus. Good effort, but it's just not enough. Try rewriting the article one more time !!
Do consider these points during the rework:
1. Fundamentally, Pakistan is a failed state. One third is in flood, one third are blood suckers [jehadists] and the rest one third are so filthy rich that they don't care about anything. Their fate is not tied to the fate of Pakistan.
2. Freedom is only understood by people who are free. When democracy has not attained puberty in Pakistan, when women live and die in burkha and when Islam is the only state religion, it is hard to see how freeom in India and Pakistan can be equated.
3. Kashmiries are the cause of their undoing and will continue to suffer as long as they make the wrong selection. Youths there are not ready to work, they are ready to pelt stones, they are not ready to make but they are ready to break. As long as they refuse to live by the law, they will face the baton and there is absolutely no sympathy for criminals.
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