Tag Archives | Kashmir

What utter nonsense

By on December 19, 2012 in Uncategorized

General Durrani’s abominable comment about Indian Muslims

General Mahmud Ali Durrani has a column in today’s The News. He holds forth — as is his wont and what earned him the sobriquet of General Shanti in Pakistan — on the importance of Track-2 talks between India and Pakistan, as exemplified by Aman ki Asha. Among all the other apple pie and motherhood stuff, one particular bit stood out. And stood out for its outrageous abominableness.

We often forget that there are more Muslims in India than in Pakistan. We also seem to ignore that the quality of life of the Indian Muslims is directly linked with the quality of the relationship between our two countries.[The News]

What utter nonsense. Nearly a decade back, MJ Akbar wrote a piece titled Pakistan cannot expect the support of India’s Muslims.

Indian Muslims are the only Muslims in the world to enjoy sustained democracy since the freedom of their country from colonial rule. Muslim nations, particularly Pakistan, have been unable to fashion a polity relevant to the modern age, with governments accountable to a democratic process. …Indian Muslims use democracy with vigour and finesse. They control or influence the results of elections in at least a hundred seats in the Lok Sabha – the House of the People – the directly elected part of India’s Parliament…[Link]

Are there no problems with India’s Muslims? Yes, there are. On the one hand, there are fundamentalists among them and some of them have even been involved in terrorism. On the other, as a community, their challenging social, economic and educational conditions have been well-documented in the report of the Sachar Commission. But these conditions have little to do with the state of India-Pakistan relations. Leave alone Pakistan, the Muslims from the rest of India have never stood out in support of Kashmiri separatists, who portray their cause as Islamic. Forget the rest of India, even Muslims from the neighbouring Kargil region have never supported the separatism in Kashmir Valley.

How can General Durrani, who must have been in the army then, forget what happened in August 1965? Ayub Khan launched Operation Gibraltar, a plan to provoke uprisings in Jammu and Kashmir by infiltrating teams of military personnel to conduct sabotage and prod the Kashmiri people against Indian forces. The Kashmiris did not co-operate with the Gibraltar Force and the plan failed. The same thing happened in 1999 when there was no support from locals for Pakistani incursions into Kargil.

Anyway, this is not the first time General Durrani is spouting such nonsense. He was at it even in 2009, after the Mumbai terror attacks. What is really tragic that we have a vocal community of Indian Track-2 participants who consider him to be an India-friendly Pakistani activist. If he is India-friendly, then imagine what others in that country would be like.

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Syed Geelani’s mehandi problem

By on August 27, 2012 in Uncategorized

India survives only because it is blessed with enemies of this calibre

As reported here:

[Syed Ali Shah] Geelani called for keeping an eye on the non local workers during their stay and work in Kashmir. Citing an example, he said “a trend has started in Kashmir in which Mehandi artists from outside are allowed to create designs on the hands and arms of our daughters on the marriage ceremonies. What has happened to our dignity? It is high time that we introspect and see where we are heading.”[Link]

Thank you, Mr. Geelani. With enemies like you, India can do without friends.

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On the exodus of North-East Indians

By on August 25, 2012 in Uncategorized

Were we too hasty in jumping to conclusions?

Now that the dust has settled over the exodus of our countrymen from the eight states of the North-east and we have moved over to meatier issues such as cricket, films and social media, it is time to step back and take a look at some of the conclusions drawn after that episode.

One, the exodus was driven purely by rumours and had no basis in reality. Here is the Business Standard story on the exodus, which says that ‘Not just SMSes & posts on social networking sites, panic happened due to concrete instances’. Another story in the Outlook magazine also suggests that the reasons go beyond the rumours carried via SMS/ MMS/ social media. Now recollect how the exodus, when it happened, was explained as being driven solely by rumours. The conclusion was simple: the Indian state is so effete that it can’t stop 30,000 of its citizens (see update at the end) who fled solely because of some ungrounded rumours. And then the verdict: no Indian trusts the Indian State now.

This is not to argue that Indian state isn’t effete or the level of trust among Indians on their government is very low. That is a fact well-established by many incidents and anecdotes in the recent past. But is it as bad — all gloom and doom — as it was made out in the immediacy of the exodus? Did the media and social media contribute to further erosion of the little trust that middle India still has in the State? That is a question we will have to honestly answer at some point. Bangalore hadn’t become Karachi and Karnataka wasn’t looking like North Waziristan with drones hovering above. Heck, India hadn’t become Somalia, a land where practically no state exists. Really, it doesn’t take much for many among us to swing from ‘India Shining’ to ‘India Whining’.

While arriving at conclusions about trusting the Indian State, we must not forget that the people who chose to move were North East Indians. Since independence, when India inherited the concept of Inner Line and Outer Line from the British, the Indian State hasn’t exactly done much to win the trust of these people. If you have lived through turbulent, conflict-ridden times in the North East, marked with insurgencies and counterinsurgency operations, and have been brought up on horrid tales about the Indian State, you will find it difficult to overcome that instinct even if the Police Commissioner of Bangalore or the Karnataka Home Minister assures you personally. More than an administrative failure of the South Indian states, the exodus is a legacy of last 64 years of maladministration and poor governance in the states of NE India. This blogger would like someone to seriously explain what more concrete steps could the governments have taken to stop the exodus.

Look at it in another way. Across the country, most middle-class Indians would trust the Indian army to secure them, if it so assures them. But if you were to ask the same question in Kashmir or Manipur, you would get a radically different answer. It is the same people, it is the same army but our responses are conditioned by our experiences and the tales that our families have brought us up on. Would anyone draw the conclusion that the whole of India doesn’t trust the Indian army because a vocal section of urban Kashmiris or Manipuris says so? Obviously, the sample being used isn’t representative. Perhaps, it was a similar case for North East Indians moving out of some South Indian cities. We must not jump to hasty conclusions and indulge in collective breast-beating about India based on skewed samples. That time and effort can be better spent in creating public pressure on our political leadership to undertake police reforms and fix the criminal justice system.

P.S. – Jinnah created Pakistan on the premise that an exclusive territory is required to protect a community and its identity. Look where that experiment has brought Pakistan today. Some of our leaders in the North Eastern states need to look at Pakistan closely and ponder. It is not the exclusive territory that safeguards a community but the rule of law. That is the only lasting solution to most problems faced not only by the North-Eastern states but also by the rest of India.

Update (26/8): Even though 30,000 is big number, this story from The Telegraph puts it in context:

Altogether 34,627 people from the Northeast, including students, had left the southern city in special trains, fearing reprisal attacks after the Assam riots. Officially, 3.5 lakh people from the region stay in Karnataka, of which 2.5 lakh stay in Bangalore as professionals and students.[Telegraph]

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Facts don’t forget

By on July 6, 2012 in Uncategorized

The arsenal captured from terrorists in Kashmir in the last two decades

Among the many myths about the trouble the Kashmir, a few continue to be perpetuated by Pakistan and Pakistan-backed Kashmiri propagandists even today. One of them is that Kashmir was an indigenous insurgency, with Pakistan only providing its “moral, political and diplomatic support” (as it continues to do even today in the words of the new Pakistan PM on Thursday). Another one is that India unnecessarily responded with a military hand to a political problem, where a few misguided Kashmiri youth had picked up some weapons (the canard about the high ratio of Indian security forces to civilians in Kashmir has been rebutted in this blogpost).

Here are a few hard facts to demolish these myths.

Figures with Jammu and Kashmir’s home department say that security forces have seized 30,752 AK-series assault rifles, 11,431 pistol and revolvers, 1,027 universal machine guns, 2,262 rocket propelled grenade launchers, 391 sniper rifles and hundreds of other weapons, including light machine guns and self-loading rifles.The ammunition recovered includes more than 45,00,000 bullets and 63,000 grenades, besides 45,000kg explosives.

The figures also reveal that that 21,449 militants were killed and 21,655 arrested during this period, taking the combined figures to over 43,000. Security forces lost over 5,300 soldiers and cops. The number of civilians killed crossed 16,000, officials said.[Telegraph]

The security forces in Kashmir have nearly completed their job, and contrary to what many would like us to believe, are on their way out. Reports indicate that the specialist counterinsurgency Rashtriya Rifles units are likely to be moved to the North-East while AFSPA is likely to be lifted from Jammu and Srinagar districts by the end of the year.

But with the decline in violence to its lowest levels ever, it is easy to forget the level and intensity of violence in Kashmir at the peak of insurgency. The spate of fedayeen attacks on army camps in the late 1990s are a distant memory now. These facts, brought out by the J&K state government now, are a reminder of the formidable challenge overcome by the Indian state in the last two decades. It is something we can afford to forget only at our peril. After all, in Durant’s words, “the present is the past rolled up for action, and the past is the present unrolled for understanding.”

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What you won’t hear from Sopore

By on June 11, 2012 in Uncategorized

Signs of an improving security situation

If you know the importance of Sopore for separatists and militants in the Kashmir valley (if you don’t, then read this post on Why Sopore matters), then you would appreciate the significance of this piece of news. Buried as a small news-item in only one newspaper, Greater Kashmir (at least Google Search doesn’t fetch any other result), is the story of relocation, removal and dismantling of CRPF bunkers in Sopore.

“We have removed bunkers near Town Hall, Shah Faisal road and Damno building General bus stand,” he [Superintendent of Police Sopore Imtiyaz Hussain] said, adding that CRPF has also vacated Kapran cinema. “Besides, we have also removed CRPF from few shops near Plaza,” he added.[GK]

This is the reality of how things are changing in the Kashmir valley. No one can claim that the situation is perfect in Kashmir today. But nor can one deny that things have steadily improved over the last two years.

The improvement is like a car on a damaged, hilly highway — we would all want our car to move faster but the more important thing is for the car to stay on the highway, safe, even if it moves a bit slowly. For, as the cliche goes, the slow and the steady wins the race. Especially if he is on the right path.

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Grand Mufti’s not-so-grand call

By on May 4, 2012 in Uncategorized

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Lessons from Mamata’s toon tactics

By on April 18, 2012 in Uncategorized

Let’s repeal bad laws. But let’s also prevent misuse of good laws.

The recent actions of West Bengal chief minister, Ms Mamata Banerjee in arresting a professor for circulating a cartoon mocking her on the internet have again brought the focus on the rules promulgated under the Information Technology Act. These rules are an assault on our freedom and privacy. Needless to add, they must be reversed.

West Bengal police has charged Professor Mohapatra under IPC offences relating to defamation and insulting the modesty of women as well as cyber crime offences. Although the professor has been granted bail by an Alipore court, here is what should worry us.

A senior police officer in Kolkata, where the case against Mr. Mahapatra was registered, said the professor is accused of having violated India’s Information Technology Act. He described the material shared by Mr. Mahapatra as an “offensive and non-featurable picture of our honorable chief minister.”[IRT]

This is clearly a case of a bad law being abused by the state government. But even if the state government were to harass the professor (or any other citizen for that matter), it doesn’t need bad laws for it. Even well-established good laws can be used — abused or misused — for this purpose by a malevolent government. In this case too, the major charges against the professor are under the Indian Penal Code. He was arrested on charges of eve-teasing (Section 509 of the IPC), defamation (Section 500 of the IPC), and humiliating a woman (Section 114 of the IPC), besides causing offence using a computer (Section 66 A (b) of the IT Act).

While the IT rules are bad and need to be annulled, there are genuine cases in this country where information technology tools are being used against the state. Take Kashmir for example. Social networking tools and websites are being used by anti-India forces (from both inside and outside the state of Jammu and Kashmir) to incite violence in the state. Jammu and Kashmir Police has already registered two cases under section 66 of  the Information Technology Act and section 13 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act against the miscreants: the first one  in 2010 and the second in 2011. Because it involves teenagers, in most cases the state police takes defaulters into custody, calls their parents and if necessary, counsels them and releases them right away. Barely have any cases been filed by the police against the offenders under the PSA .

Indian government is not alone in being confounded by this challenge of reacting to flow of information in radically networked societies. The British government has not been able to devise a coherent — and socially acceptable strategy — to prevent the occurrence of London riots of last year. The NSA in the US is building a huge data-centre to monitor, process and crack all communication. While the liberals want to safeguard free speech (and rightly so), the radicals (as in Kashmir) are always willing to abuse these provisions to unleash violence against the state. The challenge is huge and there are no easy answers. For any democratic government, the balance between privacy and security is not easy to strike. And with enhanced threat of terrorism and higher proliferation of social networks, this challenge has increased manifold now.

Notwithstanding that dilemma, the answer to the challenge is not promulgating bad laws. And the problem of bad laws in India runs deeper. Once you have been charged, whether you are pronounced guilty or not doesn’t matter — the process itself is the punishment in India. Indian police’s pathetic rate of conviction (40.7% in 2010) lends credence to the belief that our state is actually operating on that dictum. Bad laws make it easier for the state to charge you with an offence, and thus punish you by making you go through the ordeal of the process.

Having good laws on the statute will help but a malefic state can always misuse and abuse reasonably good laws. That is the real danger. Where are the institutional checks and balances to prevent the descent of a democratic republic into a majoritarian dictatorship? Our police is compromised, our courts are overburdened, and our political institutions effete. Take the example of the current case in West Bengal. The police has acted like an arm of the ruling party. If the professor were to approach the courts with a case against the government, it will take him years before his case is finally disposed by the court. Moreover, the courts have refused to take suo moto notice of the case. With the central government dependent on Trinamool’s support, the governor and the union government have failed to advice or warn the state government for its actions. The whole system seems to have collapsed in Bengal.

The bottom-line is simple. We must oppose bad laws and ensure that they get rescinded. But we must not stop there. We have to ensure that the state doesn’t misuse good laws. For that, we need to reform the police and the judiciary, and reinvigorate our political institutions. Only then can we hope to be safe in the long run.

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2011: The most peaceful year in Kashmir

By on April 7, 2012 in Uncategorized

The data says it all

Greater Kashmir newspaper (and it is not an India-friendly publication) gets hold of police data on militancy-related incidents in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Here is a quick recap:

  • 189 militancy related incidents in 2011, compared to 488 in 2010
  • 183 militancy related casualties in 2011, compared to 375 in 2010
  • 34 civilians and 30 security personnel died while 119 militants were killed in 2011, compared to 36 civilians, 69 security personnel and 270 militants in 2010
  • 4 districts with “double digit” incidents of militancy: Srinagar, Baramulla, Kupwara and Pulwama in Kashmir region
  • 13 districts with “single digit” incidents of militancy: Budgam, Ganderbal, Kulgam, Anantnag, Shopian and Bandipora in Kashmir region; Kishtwar, Ramban, Doda, Poonch, Rajouri and Udhampur in Jammu region
  • 7 districts are militancy-free: Leh and Kargil districts of Ladakh region; Samba, Jammu, Kathua, Reasi and Doda districts of Jammu region

After the turbulent summer of 2010, it was a huge turn-around for the state in 2011.  It left many self-styled Kashmir analysts with egg on their faces. If the state government headed by Omar Abdullah got the flak for its inept handling of the situation in 2010, it justifiably deserves credit for what it achieved last year. Of course, the stinginess in praise comes as no surprise considering the hypocritical nature of our left-liberal commentators. Thankfully, it doesn’t matter as long as the situation on the ground is evident to everyone — and can be backed by data.

Does it mean there isn’t anyone left in Kashmir who still wants Azadi (though no two persons can define Azadi the same way) and harbours anti-India sentiments? Of course, there are more than a handful of that variety in certain urban pockets of Kashmir Valley. But as long as the state is able to ensure peace and security for the majority of Kashmiris, the anti-India ruck doesn’t matter. You need an environment where students can attend schools, a shopkeeper can open his shop, a dailywager can earn his daily wage, a transporter can ply his truck, a farmer can sell his produce and tourists can visit the state without having to worry about a grenade or a bomb going off. Maintaining peace and ensuring security is essential, though not sufficient for attaining normalcy in Kashmir. The state government has been able to get the essential part right.

Building on this reduction in militancy, the state assembly has approved the amendments to the much-maligned Public Safety Act. Of course, this development has gone unnoticed lest it forces some commentators to acknowledge the good work put in by the state government.

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Actions have consequences

By on February 26, 2012 in Uncategorized

The Kashmiri stone-pelters of 2010

“My career is ruined. I cannot seek admission in any college. I cannot get a passport, and worse, I cannot get a government job,” said one young man, arrested for throwing stones at police, who did not want to be named.[BBC]

Dear unnamed young man from Kashmir, you should have known that before joining the gang to throw stones at policemen, indulging in arson or destroying public property. The petty cash paid by Pakistan-backed separatists for taking part in those organised protests was never going to compensate you for the losses you will incur. You were dispensable for these separatists. You have been used. The separatist leaders will find a new set of boys to do this a few years down the line again. That is the way they operate.

You made your choices in 2010. Your frustration is a consequence of the choices you made. But it should be directed against these separatist leaders who enticed you into their devious plan, and not against the government which was reacting to the events.

If you do get an amnesty from the state government, good luck to you. If not, hard luck mate. Such is life. Remember, actions have consequences.

PS – Hopefully, your own friends, cousins and community members will draw the right lessons from your example and stay away from participating in organised street violence in Kashmir in the future. Your tribulations would have served a great purpose if that happens.

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Ignorance is bliss (Kashmir version)

By on February 14, 2012 in Uncategorized

The political status of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan

A friend sent me this report, titled Perception Survey of Media Impact on the Kashmiri Youth, conducted by the Institute for Research in India and International Studies in January 2011. Two questions and their reply by the Kashmiri youth are particularly noteworthy.

Q. Do you know whether Azad Kashmir is a part of Pakistan or, is it an independent state?

Q. What do you think is the political status of Gilgit and Baltistan?

On such foundations of blissful ignorance is the edifice of so-called Azadi constructed among the youth in Kashmir.

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