Frontline
September  2000
Special Report


Voices from the Valley

 ‘All that the common Kashmiris would ask was to carry, for once, their voice, their stories, their feelings and their anguish since the mainstream Indian media percolates the voice of the state and never their voice’ 

YAMINI 

Ayoung boy, just about 18– years–old, called Javed, comes back home after his tuition in Batmaloo mohalla 
 of Srinagar. Little does he know that the armed forces have ordered a crack-down on the area — in search of a militant, who by the ill-fate of this young boy is also named Javed. As the young boy hears people shouting, “Javed, run!” from the neighbours, he gets nervous. Not knowing what to do he tries to jump over the boundary wall and run away. However, the army men quickly nab him. Before his mother could come out to his rescue he is beaten black and blue and is bleeding profusely. He is taken away for investigation. 

That was on 18th August 1990. It has been 10 years since but the boy has not returned home after his interrogation. His mother, initially on the verge of going insane due to the anguish — her elder son, too, was put behind the bars for two years in Jammu – has over the years, run from court to court, all in vain. 
Judicial inquiry and subsequent police investigation found three officers of the NSG responsible for the act. The district judge observed, “It appears as if the authorities in this part of the country are playing the game of poaching holocaust, ie, eliminating human species”. However, the NSG trio is under immunity and, therefore, cannot be prosecuted.

There are 500 such documented cases of missing persons in Kashmir valley; another 500 people are missing but their cases have not been documented. Some have been threatened by our armed forces that if they dared lodge complaints of missing persons, they would kill other members of the family, too, in shoot–outs. 
Naim Ahmed Khan, a young farmer was picked up by the RR (Rashtriya Rifles) on the basis of a complaint lodged against him by the sarpanch with whom he had had a minor land dispute. When released, he was just about alive, having undergone severe torture, the scars of which he would have to bear all his life since he was reduced to a cripple. 

Farooq Wani, a government engineer, was accidentally drawn into a non–violent, unarmed demonstration in Srinagar on January 21 this year. The armed forces fired. And here is his narrative:
“I fell down on the road…I saw young boys being shot…I remained lying …till I saw a paramilitary officer coming…I saw him pumping bullets into bodies of the injured lying on the road…A boy trying to hide was killed… as I lifted my head a CRPF man shouted, ‘He’s still alive!’ I pleaded: ‘I’m a government officer, please don’t shoot’. The officer shouted abuses at me saying, ‘Islam mangta hai?’ (‘You want Islam?’) and fired at me. My back and hands were injured…Another paramilitary man moved up to me and shouted, ‘Tum sala zinda hai, mara nahin hai?’ (‘You bastard, you are not yet dead?’) …he kicked my back and left… (Then) a truck was brought and all of us, dead and injured, were piled into it. 

“They loaded about 30-35 bodies. As there was no space for more, the officer ordered the driver: ‘Baaki ko nale mein phenk do’ (‘Throw the rest into the drain’). A tarpaulin was thrown over us. After some time the vehicle stopped… and I heard voices speaking in Kashmiri. One of the injured among us cried out. 
“The tarpaulin was lifted and we saw a Kashmiri constable, who exclaimed: ‘My God, there are living bodies here!’ Apart from me, three other people were still alive.” Wani survived with 6 bullet wounds. He later discovered that the constable who saved him had suffered a heart attack. 

(Sumantra Bose: The Challenge in Kashmir).
In August 99, Ashraf Bazaz, a bank manager, was coming back from Soura Medical Institute along with his pregnant wife in an autorickshaw. He was stopped at Nowhatta chowk at about 7.15 p.m. and the couple was shot dead by the security forces as there had been a grenade attack on them about half–an–hour earlier (Ashraf Shah — general secretary, People’s Vigilance Bureau). 

And most recently, on June 11 this year, when I was in Kashmir, four young boys returning from a marriage party at around 8.30 p.m., were stopped by the armed forces at Lal Chowk, others were made to flee but one of the boys, Baqal, was shot down. Police says he was carrying 60 kgs of RDX, local people say he was only carrying mutton in a plastic bag for his family. In fact, the local people claim the boy had been marked by the armed forces as he used to object at their passing comments from their omnipresent barracks at young girls. And this proved to be an ideal time to settle old scores, they claim. The army later “unofficially” accepted, that the boy was innocent (The Times of India, June 29, 2000). 

Such cases are no aberration – it is too patterned and widespread to merit that conclusion. The macabre state in which the awaam (people) of Kashmir are, is heart–wrenching. The state–sponsored terrorism, violence due to retributive emotions, the interrogations which leave people mentally and physically crippled, gang rapes in villages, the “collective punishment” on a “disloyal punishment” etc… All these add up to a never–ending spiral of revenge and violence and this has taken a heavy toll on the psyche of the people. 

It is indeed an unfortunate turn of fate that people known for peaceful living — in her book Sumantra Bose quotes a British official, Walter Lawrence, who observed at the turn of the last century that “the sight of blood is abhorrent to them” — were pushed so much that they took to armed struggle. 

“The cult of Buddha, the teaching of Vedanta and the mysticism of Islamic sufism have one after the other found a congenial home in Kashmir”. But today Kashmir lies like a piece of bone between two hungry nations vying for territory. It is well-known by now that the Kashmiris are disillusioned by both: “Pakistan has also disappointed us no doubt”, a local person said, “but we did not expect this from India”. 

India did not stand by 1948 Plebiscite Resolution that it had adopted and had repeatedly promised the Kashmiris till 1954. The justification is simple — Pakistan did not withdraw from the territory of Jammu and Kashmir. However, little thought, if at all, is given to what the people have gone through over the years. By 1958, only a decade after it had appealed to the Security Council of the UN for outside mediation on Kashmir, India changed its stand, declared Kashmir an “integral part of India”, an “internal affair”. Since then, it has declined all offers of mediation by other countries. 

The Instrument of Accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India limited her accession to three subjects: defence, foreign affairs and communications as per Article 306A of the Indian Constitution which extended such autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir. Even this arrangement, an ‘interim system’, pending the promised plebiscite, was done away with in 1954 by a constitutional order promulgated by President of India. 

The order gave the GOI the power to legislate on all matters on the Union list — not just the three mentioned above. That was the beginning and end of article 370, which was never truly implemented in the state. The order also put drastic curbs on fundamental liberties: freedom of speech, assembly and association. The state assembly could be suspended at any time, without judicial review of such suspensions, on grounds of security. 
I quote Sumantra Bose’s book: “What we in India experienced for a brief period in 1975 during the emergency imposed by Ms. Indira Gandhi, Kashmir has suffered for years. We cannot deny people rights that flow out of their citizenship and then expect their allegiance”. Jammu and Kashmir has had something resembling representative government for just 12 of its 49 years (1948–53, 1977–84) as an ‘integral part of India’. So much in the name of democracy. 

It is this alienation of the people and their indiscriminate exposure to state–sponsored violence that has resulted in several people — erstwhile believers in India and democracy — abandoning their faith and taking to the gun culture. 

During my recent visit to Kashmir, all that a common Kashmiri would ask, is to carry, for once, their voice, their stories, their feelings and their anguish since the mainstream Indian media percolates the voice of the state and never their voice. 

What the armed forces are facing is no easy task either and it might be their feeling of helplessness due to which they get back to the people with vengeance which further aggravates the problem and strengthens the people’s disenchantment with India. However, their feeling of helplessness can in no way justify the treatment they meet out to the people. 

What would you say to a 76–year–old Muslim preacher in Sopore being forced to chant ‘Ram! Ram!’ at gun–point by the army (Asia Watch 1991)? Or women in a Srinagar mohalla being lined up and ordered to shout ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ (Kagal, 1990)?


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