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Friday March 29, 2024

Fifth column: Modi’s warm words

By Murtaza Shibli
August 19, 2017

On the 70th anniversary of Independence, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his customary speech from the historic Red Fort in New Delhi, spoke briefly about Kashmir. In his address, he said the problem of Kashmir will not be resolved by bullets or abuses but by embracing the Kashmiris.

This is a welcome development for three reasons. First: finally a sitting Indian prime minister has tacitly acknowledged that Kashmiris are treated harshly through bullets and abuses by the Indian state. Second: “bullets or abuses” are not the answer to dealing with Kashmir. Third: brutal state repression has failed to achieve the desired results for the government of India.

Modi’s short but terse message on Kashmir is a diametric departure from his government’s previously articulated extremist and maximalist position wherein it sought to discredit the Kashmiri political struggle as Pakistan-inspired and funded terrorism. In response, it offered nothing more than brutal military oppression as the only policy prescription to people’s demands for freedom.

The jingoistic Indian media actively advanced the official narrative to scandalise the Kashmiri rights struggle to pander to the rising extremist constituency of the Hindu right wing. As a result of this harsh official policy, Kashmir has witnessed continuous death and mayhem that is mainly provoked and enacted by the official military and paramilitary forces with wanton ferocity. This has ossified the widely-held belief among the Kashmiris that the Indian government is acting on a deliberate policy of genocide to compromise the yearning for freedom.

Modi’s words of affection and tenderness should have generated some anticipation for optimism as such a desire for change in course merited some deference. But they did not. The pledge was lost on the besieged Kashmiris who had to negotiate with the increased military presence on the streets on the same day that the speech was made as the authorities imposed extra security details to pre-empt any possible public demonstrations for azadi and obliterated any semblance of normality – whatever that means in the Kashmiri context.

In the late afternoon of August 15 – the day Modi talked about embracing Kashmiris – I strolled through my ancestral town for a couple of miles to gauge the mood on the streets, only to be confronted by a massive and ubiquitous presence of military men with rifles and armoured vehicles. There was sparse public movement in a curfew-like setting, with dread hanging thick in the air. In the old town, there were some signs of life but no one seemed excited at the prospect of being embraced by the Indian prime minister.

Prominent Kashmiri pro-freedom leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq did react with a cautious and guarded welcome to Modi’s desire to engage Kashmiris outside the standard template of bullets and repression, calling for the “abuses and bullets to be replaced with humanity and justice”. But the statement from the prime minister did not go well with the public as such grandiose statements, dripping in the verbiage of love, have as a rule always meant the opposite.

Former Indian prime ministers – PV Narsimha Rao and Atal Bihari Vajpayee – talked about the sky as the limit for engaging Kashmiris or operating within the ambit of insaniyat (humanity), only to choke Kashmiris with more repression and officially-sanctioned murder. Sheikh Showkat Hussain, a prominent Kashmiri writer, told Al Jazeera that statements such as the one made by Modi about Kashmir rarely lead to improvements for its residents.

Hussain said: “This is not the first time that such [a] statement is being made on Kashmir. What we see practically is more oppression and humiliation. These statements never get translated on the ground”. Casting doubts about his intensions, Hussain added: “Modi gives these soft statements just for the media coverage and to wash away his past sins”.

Parvez Imroz, a leading rights activist in Kashmir, was also dismissive of the Indian prime minister’s seemingly warm statement. He accused the Indian government of adopting the “Israeli tactics” in oppressing Kashmiris. He added that “the reality on the ground is totally different to what Modi said today”.

Modi’s words failed to even impress the pro-India Kashmiri politicians. Engineer Rasheed, a legislator in the pro-India Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly, discredited Modi’s rhetoric as hollow. He accused the Indian prime minister of creating confusion among Kashmiris and claimed that Modi had nothing to offer. Addressing a public gathering, Rasheed reiterated that the Kashmiris have rendered huge sacrifices for nothing less than the right to self-determination. He tacitly criticised Hurriyat leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq for his reaction to Modi’s statement, counselling the pro-freedom leadership not to “say [anything] that could bail out Narendra Modi and dilute the Kashmir cause.”

Postscript: A day after Modi’s public display of warmth towards Kashmiris, the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the central Indian agency to combat terror, restarted its raids targeting the pro-freedom Kashmiri leadership and their families. During the past month, scores of raids have been conducted on the houses and offices of various Hurriyat leaders under the pretext of unearthing illegal assets or foreign funding.

While there is no doubt that some pro-freedom Kashmiri leaders have enriched themselves with ill-gotten wealth during the past three decades, the campaign by the NIA is politically-motivated. It is aimed at forcing the leadership to abandon support for the public rights movement. Moreover, the fact that an anti-terror agency is dealing with the Kashmiri leaders makes it clear that India refuses to acknowledge the demands of the Kashmiris as political and continues to conflate them with terrorism. This negates Modi’s latest rhetoric on embracing the Kashmiris and giving up repressive tactics.

Appendage: The Modi government created history by blacking out the Independence Day speech of Manik Sarkar, the chief minister of Tripura. Sarkar, who heads the Left Front government, had talked about the diversity of India’s traditional heritage and its secular values. This did not go down well with the ruling BJP government that has thrived on creating divisions and pogroms, mainly against Muslims. As a result, the government blocked the public broadcast of the speech.

This should afford us enough sense about any change of heart on the Modi government’s part on engaging secular forces, let alone the Kashmiris, who are, by default, seen as separatists – and, therefore, as enemy agents.

 

Twitter: @murtaza_shibli