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Thursday March 28, 2024

Threats, deaths and Indian democracy

By Murtaza Shibli
April 15, 2017

Fifth column

A day after All Fool’s Day, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi flew to Jammu in Indian-occupied Kashmir to inaugurate a tunnel that would bring some credibility to the Srinagar-Jammu National Highway that connects the region to the rest of India.

The tunnel will not only shorten the distance of the serpentine mountainous artery but also allow much-needed respite from the harsh elements of nature that would otherwise obliterate the passage during winter and the rainy seasons, testifying to the fragility of linkages between India and Kashmir.

After the summer of unrest following the custodial killing of Burhan Wani last July – which triggered widespread protests, culminating in mass Indian violence amid hundreds of civilian fatalities – this was Modi’s important visit. The inauguration fit well within the ruling Hindu extremists’ vision for development – a rubric that allows it an easy escape from scrutiny for its massive and continued violence against non-Hindu minorities, particularly Muslims. This violence, often realised through the police and other state structures and extremist vigilante groups, has claimed dozens of innocent lives since the beginning of this year alone.

Modi, in his signature coarse and thunderous voice – imitating the formulaic street thugs of the Bollywood films of yore – pilloried Pakistan for “meddling in our internal affairs” while flailing his arms uncontrollably in a show of faux machismo that has endeared him to his extremist constituents.

While justifying the state-sanctioned violence in the occupied territory, he issued a stark threat to the Kashmiri youth to choose between “terrorism or tourism”. For most Indians, this was yet another instance of Modi rhetoric that is known as jumla bazi. However, Kashmiris, who have lived through the Indian doublespeak, decoded it as a grim threat. Muhammad Kamran, based in Srinagar, tweeted: “terrorism and tourism: this jumla of Modi is intimation either we accept slavery or they’ll kill us”.

The threat was soon realised. Last Sunday and the following Monday, about a dozen Kashmiri youth – mainly teenagers – were brutally killed and nearly 200 others injured on a polling day in the Srinagar parliamentary constituency. Those felled were murdered indiscriminately, testifying to India’s growing belief in brutal murders as the only prescription for the growing resentment and yearning for freedom.

The massive state violence against Kashmiris is not unique, but the unprecedented polling-day violence was a first. What was a bigger surprise for the occupation authorities was the massive public response. Thousands of youth came out on the streets, refusing to be cowered by the flying Indian bullets, and marched towards the polling stations to register their resentment. As a result, less than seven percent votes were polled – the lowest in the history of the elections under the occupation, bringing a new low for the process. The boycott was so strong the Indian authorities had to cancel the polls for the Islamabad (Anantnag) constituency to offer some respite to Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti who has fielded her brother – a new entrant to the booming business of family politics that chooses to ignore the mass murder of Kashmiris on a daily basis – as a candidate.

Curiously though, the occupation authorities ordered a re-poll for 38 polling stations this week. It was to offer some face-saving to the polling exercise and force people to participate in the sham in order to restore some statistical sanctity to the process. For 38 polling stations, more than 4,000 troops were deployed. On an average, more than 300 troops were deployed for each polling station, turning the places into mini garrisons. This was in addition to thousands of troops with armoured vehicles and heavy armoury manning the streets and roads surrounding the area. Despite all this, people stayed away, casting less than two percent votes and further exposing a lack of public trust in the practice.

After failing to subdue or woo Kashmiris, it is not strange that the Indian leadership – political and military – is issuing regular threats to Kashmiris and Pakistan. A week after Modi’s threat to the Kashmiri youth to submit or be vanquished, Home Minister Rajnath Singh renewed an earlier threat from the frail-looking Indian army chief, Bipin Rawat, who had warned that the Kashmiri youth will be dealt with sternly for “trying to hinder security forces from performing their duties in Kashmir”.

Not content with repeating the threat, Singh issued his own chilling warning that promised a transformation in Kashmir within a year, “no matter how the change takes place”. Singh is promising a Daesh-style large-scale massacre and eviction of Kashmiris. Last year in August, when all the state terrorism and murders failed to subdue the public resistance, Rajnath threatened to balkanise Pakistan into 10 pieces while accusing the country of “trying to destabilise India by encouraging terrorism”. Soon after, the Indian forces embarked on ‘Operation Tor-Phor’ (operation destruction), initiating a large-scale rampage destroying houses and burning crops.

For all its murderous and militaristic rhetoric, the Indian occupation finds itself in uncharted waters. While the Indian political elite and their Kashmiri proxies carry a bog standard template of repression and more repression as the only response, a new generation of Kashmiris is defying the logic of the occupying calculus and, therefore, throwing their paraphernalia of subjugation into a total quandary.

The old guard of the pro-freedom leadership – barring Syed Ali Shah Geelani – was too susceptible to the ideas of engagement with Indian security and political structures sans any rush or hope for a meaningful outcome. But the new generation has depleted any optimism of extracting anything other than coercion, intimidation and state terrorism from India. Therefore, they remain impassive to any rhetoric – of hope or intimidation – that India has fed Kashmiris for the last 70 years.

Much to the disadvantage of the Hindutva empire, the new generation of Kashmiris has not only lost fear of death or injury, it also seems to have weaned itself off from any inducements – real or promised.

 

Twitter: @murtaza_shibli