Kashmir's
'City Of Bunkers'
By Wajahat Ahmad
30 October, 2007
Countercurrents.org
I was born and raised in a sleepy
village in the conflict torn territory of Kashmir. Dubbed as the 'Paradise
on Earth' and 'Switzerland of the East', the beautiful land of Kashmir
has for centuries captured the imagination of many great writers, poets
and film makers.
But the captivating land of Kashmir is now death's dominion. More than
70,000 people have been killed in Kashmir since 1989 when a popular
Kashmiri uprising broke out against Indian rule. Hundreds of thousands
of Kashmiris marched through villages and towns, shouting slogans in
favor of Independence of Kashmir.
I was barely 11 at that time. I witnessed and participated in a number
of such processions in my ancestral village Seer, in South Kashmir,
which were often led by young men clad in white shrouds, symbolizing
their readiness to die for the cause of Kashmir's freedom. By the end
of 1991 long Indian military curfews had put a stop to the peaceful
processions, which had been replaced by daily gunfights between Kalashnikov
carrying Kashmiri militants and the Indian military forces.
India rushed thousands of troops to Kashmir to quell the Kashmiri uprising.
By late 1990s the massive Indian military machine, numbering around
half a million men and practicing an 'iron fist' policy-that included
burning of dozens of Kashmiri villages, rape of many Kashmiri women
and wanton arrest, torture and killing of thousands of young Kashmiri
men- had considerably weakened the Kashmiri resistance. My teenage eyes
witnessed a drastic change in Kashmir's beautiful landscape: from a
fabled land, Kashmir was transformed into a huge military garrison,
with hundreds of Indian military camps and bunkers springing up in almost
every village and town. I witnessed numerous skirmishes between Indian
troops and Kashmiri guerrillas in my village and in adjoining areas.
I was fortunate to survive but some of my friends and relatives weren't.
In the second half of the 1990s I left Kashmir to pursue my higher education,
which led me to distant places like Delhi, Freiburg and Durban.
Years after I returned in 2006 to work in Srinagar, the capital city
of Kashmir. The violence had considerably declined in the city but the
Indian military presence seemed to have increased further. The city
of Srinagar is dotted with hundreds of Indian military bunkers. Bunkers
have become an integral part of the city's topography. They dominate
all the major roads and approaches of the city, the sidewalks, most
of the buildings housing government offices, markets, the bridges, almost
all the crossroads, lakes, sports stadia, precincts of God's own places
like mosques and temples, government run hospitals, some educational
institutions and the hill overlooking the city of Srinagar.
More than the physical spaces they occupy in the city, the bunkers pervade
the mental spaces of a commoner with fear. Whether walking on the sidewalks
of a road, through the city centre or crossing a bridge in the city,
one anxiously passes by sandbagged and concrete bunkers, surrounded
by mounds of ugly barbed wires and occupied by aggressive Indian soldiers.
The long barrels of machine guns jetting out of the bunkers form eerie
reminders of the violent conflict in Kashmir. With the all-pervading
bunkers occupying most of the roadsides and sidewalks, temporarily parking
a vehicle on a roadside turns into an ordeal as the soldier occupying
a bunker nearby aggressively whistles or shouts at you to move away.
Ignoring the warning can invite threats and at times a severe beating.
Having lived in Srinagar for a year now, I am reluctantly getting accustomed
to frequent and unending Indian military crackdowns, check posts, the
overarching sight of military bunkers, vehicle checks and body searches.
My typical day starts with my departure for my office. My journey from
my home in posh Rajbagh locality of Srinagar to my office in Hazratbal,
an old district of Srinagar, starts and ends with the sight of soldiers
and bunkers. Almost daily my vehicle gets stopped near a military barricade
or a bunker. The vehicle is thoroughly searched by the soldiers. Then
my identity card is checked and the routine questions are asked in an
unfriendly tone: What is your occupation? Where are you coming from?
Where are you headed for? Forgetting to carry an identity card means
an invitation to trouble. One could be stopped for lengthy questioning
and at times taken to a nearby military camp for rigorous interrogation
and detention.
For a young Kashmiri like me who enjoyed the luxury of living in the
peaceful environs of Delhi and of Germany for almost a decade, it is
hard to ignore the glaring sight of the ubiquitous bunkers. The bunkers
are of varying shapes, sizes and colours, ranging from concrete ones
made of only bricks to the ones made of rocks or bricks and plastered
with cement. They carry the colours of orange, sky blue, red, yellow
and green or a combination of these colours, which in certain cases
form parallel or overlapping and winding streams.
A few months ago the Kashmiri media was awash with news stories that
revolved around the 'aesthetics of bunkers', of military and police
officials giving statements to the press about their plans to 'beautify
bunkers' in the city. The military officials stated that the planned
'beautification drive' was to be carried out to make the bunkers look
less threatening to a visiting tourist's eye. The bunkers are supposed
to 'blend in' with the surroundings. Now ugly sandbagged bunkers are
being replaced by hut like bunkers.
The new bunkers are primary made of coloured tin sheets or have painted
wooden exteriors, which are reinforced by thick iron sheets, concrete
or sandbags from inside. In outward appearance they are sleek, smaller
than the older ones, squarish in shape with conical roofs, the walls
and roofs of the tin and iron ones painted green or yellow with patches
of yellow or rust brown forming patterns on them. Ironically, a few
bunkers serve both military and commercial purposes in Srinagar. In
a central market of Srinagar a square shaped police bunker, made up
of thick tin and wooden sheets, is located almost in the middle of the
road. Given its prime location and high visibility, a local enterprise,
Rehmat, which sells spices and food products, has painted it with advertisements
of its hot spice products.
Then there are some bunkers which are painted with peculiar slogans
like ''From Kashmir to Kanyakumari, India is one'', 'Great is my country,
India', and 'Kashmir: Crown of India', slogans emblematic of a military
assertion of Indian nationalism in a region in rebellion against India.
Recently there were news stories regarding the Indian military's impending
plans to induct around 12000 more troops in Kashmir. It seems quite
likely that Srinagar would receive a fair share of these new troops
and by extension the population of new military camps and bunkers is
bound to grow. Soon, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to call Srinagar,
''The city of bunkers''.
The author can be reached
at [email protected]
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