Kashmir: Answering Stones With Bullets
By Ershad Abubacker
08 July, 2010
Countercurrents.org
More than fifteen civilians, mostly youngsters, have been killed in police firing in past three weeks of civil unrest in Kashmir and yet the government is under the colonial impression that people could be won over at gunpoint. But how many more civilian deaths would suffice the government to act sane has been the question echoed everywhere. While the mainstream media and its cohorts have been fairly successful in rendering a pro-Pakistani colour to the otherwise peaceful civilian unrest for the just cause of demilitarizing Kashmir valley, unarmed, non-violent citizens, especially teenagers and school going children has been shot dead in the valley that was once described by Pundit Nehru as the Heaven on Earth.
The mainstream media portrays anything associated with the Kashmiri people’s struggle for the demilitarization of the valley as though it is inherent part of the culture and the region, implying that the Kashmir issue is an ancient problem with little hope of a solution. The world, educated by this media, often sees the issue of Kashmir as instigated by the ISI and Pakistan’s cross border mischief. Despite all the clear statements from virtually everyone in New Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir administration squatting on the public record describing that Kashmir being an integral part of India, there has been little measures to be called solid from both the governments to actually understand the harsh reality on the ground faced by the Kashmiris.
The Indian media at large tent to portray the protesting Kashmiri youths as ‘unruly mob’ and picture the whole scenario as a conspiracy against the Indian democracy. A small section of media did put up the other side of the violence, but dismissed the protesters version of the story in a paragraph or two buried deep inside stories that highlighted customary reports of stone pelting on CRPF, anti government protests or the ever reliable Pakistani infiltration. The government has suspended all curfew passes and has literally put a blanket ban on journalists recently that would curtail even the remotest of truth to be let out of the valley. Instead of putting a wider analysis that would suggest that there is a way out of this ‘unruly mob,’ the state Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has been praising New Delhi for its staunch ‘support’ and is a leading advocate of this propaganda and find the whole issue as the handiwork of people whose motive is to create instability in the valley and hence to his government.
The way out of these ongoing protests is to provide circumstances in which these young people would find every news of hope instead of every news of despair. But perversely there is an orchestrated campaign to silence that kind of an analysis inside the Indian media and it is trying to scare people into silence by conflating any genuine protest by Kashmiris for a peaceful living to have been instigated by pro-Pakistani elements. The governments at the centre and state should heed a willing ear to the voices from within the valley. Blind accusation of your foe in any internal matter of Kashmir would deepen the already frenzy relationship with Pakistan and will just upset the road to any credible peace process in the valley. And in by doing so the great Indian media is drawing parallels with the age old Israeli tactic of a deafening chorus of Anti-Semitism accusation for anyone who dares to legitimately criticize Israeli policies.
Further to this intellectual weakening, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), basically being an armed force, is adept only in dealing with an arms struggle or insurgency. They turn out to be a frenzied mob using indiscriminate use of military force against unarmed civilians when it comes to dealing with a civilian unrest or the so called ‘angry mob pelting stones at anything Indian’ as the media would like to put it. No wonder why innocent teenagers get shot and teargas canisters kill more people than actual bullets in Kashmir. The credibility of CRPF in handling a normal law and order situation as in Kashmir, which must actually be dealt by the state police, has been questioned by many including former IG of Kashmir EN Rammohan.
Any violence done by any people does not mean that they are essentially more violent than others, it is an alarm, a signal deciphering that there is something wrong in the treatment of this community. When a community is left at the mercy of a heavily militarized crowd, stripping off their civil liberties, the only resort for them is to turn onto whatever that comes handy for them at that moment to show up a brave front against the tyrant force. Pelting stones are the result of a generation that has been deprived of dreaming high, deluded of their aspirations about having a demilitarized Kashmir that has been the sentiment of all the six decades since independence. People cannot be won over or suppressed at gunpoint. Certainly, the people of Jammu and Kashmir deserve a more rational, humane, visionary and sensitive response from the Indian state. Answering stones with bullets does not yield peace or stability, rather results in more dissent and more deaths that would turn the great Indian democracy into a ‘demon-crazy’ one. Let deaths does not yield more deaths in the valley.
Ershad Abubacker is a Research Analyst based in Chennai. He can be reached at [email protected]
