Modi and Kashmir

Narendra Modi ended his month-long silence over the ongoing crisis in Held Kashmir, by offering jobs and laptops to the restive Muslim youth there. He also claimed that Kashmir was as free as the rest of India.

The freedom seekers in Indian-held Kashmir reacted by carrying more Pakistani flags, this time on boats on the lake in Srinagar. The wily Kautilya died 2300 years ago but his avatars keep reappearing in characters like Modi who think denial can be state policy. And if you are persistent with a lie, people might just end up accepting it.

Narendra Modi might still be selling tea in Indian Gujarat if another fellow named Mohan Das from that area had not asked the British to quit India. After all, the world’s premier colonial power had given India a semblance of modernity by building communication, governance, health, education, justice and other infrastructure hitherto unknown in the Subcontinent. They also provided hundreds of thousands of jobs to Indian people in both the civil and military sectors.

The system worked and delivered services to the people and yet the slogan of ‘Free India’ reverberated with the masses till the Union Jack was lowered at Delhi’s Red Fort.

The same old Modi mantra on Kashmir would be laughable only if the situation on the ground was not so dramatic. Life in Srinagar and other places remains paralysed with curfews preventing people from leaving home. With the international media regularly reporting on the popular uprising and a vibrant Kashmiri social media bringing hourly updates, nobody believes the Indian version about Pakistan instigating the agitation.

As for US claims about the involvement of LeT and JeM, you need to stretch your credulity to the extreme to accept that the vast dragnet of security would allow any significant penetration in the occupied territory. Besides when the flame of freedom is lit, you don’t need others to come and train you on how to throw stones or make flags to taunt the occupiers.

Modi insults the Kashmiris by claiming that “a few misguided people” are responsible for the violence in Kashmir or the movement “may benefit some people’s political agendas”. This is a blatant attempt to question the intelligence of all those, in India and elsewhere, who had been waiting for Modi’s reaction to the worldwide resentment over the latest wave of repression against the Kashmiri people. Unlike some of his ministers, Modi refrained from blaming Pakistan for causing the violence.

Lest it be forgotten, after winning the 2014 general election on promises of jobs and development for all in India, the BJP leadership started with a wrong foot on Kashmir by threatening to scrap Article 370, which grants Occupied J&K the right to govern itself. Realising that there were no takers among the Kashmiri Muslims to such highhandedness, the BJP resorted to muscling its way to the Mufti led coalition. After having served their Indian masters for long, the Mufti family now finds its role reduced to lamenting Kashmiri deaths.

There are signs of growing resentment within India about violations of human rights in Held Kashmir. Mani Shankar Aiyar, a veteran of the Congress Party asked the BJP leaders to stop blaming Pakistan for Kashmir unrest and called for a parallel dialogue with both Pakistan and the separatist leaders. Modi’s home minister, Rajnath Singh, however, ruled out talks with Pakistan and announced instead plans to send an all-party delegation to Kashmir to talk to the valley’s leaders.

This is contrary to repeated statements about willingness to discuss all outstanding issues with Pakistan including Kashmir. Modi is fond of recalling only Vajpayee’s mantra on Kashmir, ignoring various rounds of talks between Congress prime ministers with and Pakistani leaders. Selective memory is combined with a partial reading of history.

The latest outbreak of uprising in Kashmir has been met with a brutal response. There is still a chance to review the BJP’s strategy on Kashmir which has been marked by a will to dominate and subjugate the Kashmiri people. The results of using force and money to crush the freedom movement has reached a dead end. The only way to address the Kashmir problem is to start talks with Pakistan and the genuine representatives of the Kashmiris.

The ball is in India’s court. The BJP can go on trying the methods applied since 2014 to break the will of the freedom fighters, or give dialogue a chance to mitigate suffering of the people in the first instance, followed by a sincere effort to resolve the dispute by engaging Pakistan and the Kashmiri leadership.

Congress leader P Chidambram was heavily criticised for asserting that successive Indian governments had broken faith with the Kashmiris. The BJP and Congress have both distanced themselves from his plea for restoring autonomy that was granted under Article 370. But that is the plain truth no government in Delhi is willing to accept. India has its own distorted version of the Kashmir issue and the BJP has gone an extra mile in imposing even greater domination over the occupied territory.

People like Arundhati Roy, Mani Shankar and P Chidambaram may continue to appeal to India’s collective conscience over the broken promises once made to the Kashmiris. Pakistan may persist with efforts to urge the international community to raise its voice against the systematic and brutal repression of the Kashmiri people.

But, sadly, India will continue to practise democracy and human rights on a selective basis. The Kashmiri people are left with few options to resist the occupation of their homeland.

Email: saeed.saeedk@gmail.com