America and Kashmir’s tea-party delusions

Riyaz Masroor 

When a frail Kashmiri, according to a local maxim, was beaten by a street goon, he shouted back: my big brother will kill you. During past six decades Kashmiris have been receiving wound after wound but every time they are deluded into believing that the ‘Big Brother’ (America) will avenge their sufferings and force the ‘street goon’ to leave them off. Curiously, the ‘Big Brother’ has often looked the other way, and many in Kashmir, chiefly the ‘Hurriyatists’ (let’s admit Hurriyatism exists), still believe that ‘India hoodwinked’ Him.

Most of the local observers shared with Hurriyat this hoodwink theory when New Delhi appointed a panel to explore new contours of its relationship with J&K. Indeed the appointment of low-key individuals to perform a bigger task appeared a non-military offensive from New Delhi. Yet, the Kashmiris lapsed into the lyricism of resistance rather than attempting to carefully understand the move. Hurriyat must remember that it cannot always hide its political incapacities behind the readymade pretext that India had played a ‘dirty trick’ to ‘hoodwink the world community’ – the world community in Hurriyat jargon is a convenient euphemism for United States. So far, the Hurriyat politics in Kashmir is defined by several such platitudes such as South Asia will burn if talks are delayed, India will break up without resolving Kashmir or the movement is at a crucial juncture. But the most clichéd of all is ‘India is hoodwinking the world’. Can India really hoodwink America on Kashmir? We need a little elaborate answer.

Rewind to 1989 when the Kashmir movement turned violent. Gun-totting boys would conduct daredevil actions against India’s ill-prepared CRPF and stage armed parades on Aug 14 to observe Pakistan’s Independence Day. India did not want to let America know how Kashmiris were defying her rule in Kashmir when William Clark took charge as U.S. ambassador to India. During the welcome briefing to Clark, Delhi chose to ‘hoodwink’ the world community by brushing aside Kashmir and projecting Punjab, where the militancy had almost died down, as India’s major worry. But, the ‘hoodwink operation’ came to a naught because Walter Anderson, head of political desk in the Embassy, had already prepared a detailed note on growing disaffection within Kashmir and predicted the dangers. Clark had gone through Anderson’s note and corroborated it with other intelligence sources before he flew from Washington. India could not hoodwink America on Kashmir militancy. Phew!

In May 1990, the U.S. dispatched an experienced intelligence officer, Robert Gates to Pakistan where he would try to convince authorities on ending the ‘Kashmir operation’ in lieu of a guarantee that India would be asked to initiate some ‘CBMs’ and an “effective intelligence support from the U.S. to monitor the LoC.” Pshaw! The ‘Big Brother’ was rather hoodwinking Pakistan.

In fact, America’s Central Intelligence Agency had started to pry intelligence from the region way back in 1970s, soon after India and Pakistan started acquiring nuclear arsenal. In July 2004 a Brazilian journalist Sao Paulo wrote in the monthly Caros Amigos (meaning Dear Friends) an exhaustive analysis on the dispute titled Kashmir: Occupied, Partitioned and Disputed. The report says, “There are as many CIA agents in Kashmir as there are Al-Qaeda members (in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan)”. 

Such suspicions were visibly corroborated by the fulltime intelligence operation of FBI in Kashmir between July 1995 and May 1996. A group of foreign tourists had been kidnapped while it was trekking at South Kashmir’s Pahalgam heights. Veteran U.S. diplomat Howard B Schaffer disclosed past year how the U.S. Army’s “Crack Delta Force” and elite British and German counterterrorism groups were mounting secret missions in Kashmir to hunt the kidnappers. The CIA papers that were declassified in 2004 have revealed that the CIA sleuths had interrogated some arrested militants of Harkat-ul-Ansar, the group they suspected had masterminded the abduction under the front name of “Al-Faran”. And, the think tanks are still debating whether CIA knew in advance what was happening on the heights of Kargil.

These references prove that the Americans don’t need Hurriyat caveats against India as they get down focusing on Kashmir? They know enough of it, more than Hurriyat and perhaps India. Before tossing up the hoodwink theory Hurriyat camp should have recalled that Loy Anderson was the first U.S. ambassador to India who visited Kashmir way back in 1950. And, a year later, Frank Graham whom the United Nations Organization had appointed as special negotiator on Kashmir, too was an American. Hurriyat expelled Shabir Shah in 1996 for lending audience to Frank Wisner, then U.S. ambassador to India.  Was it afraid India may hoodwink U.S. if Americans engaged separatist leaders? 

Howard B Schaffer was part of the state department’s South Asia mission and used to frequent Kashmir since 1960s. Writes he: “In pursuing an active U.S. role in Kashmir settlement American officials have stayed well informed about Kashmir developments. They have been in touch with all the organizations concerned with Kashmir and been privy to back-channel talks.”

In this backdrop, the platitude of ‘hoodwinking America’ appears laughable; it shows incapacity of separatist camp to tackle certain political challenges. When you dismiss a government action as something to hoodwink a superpower you absolve yourself from a desired response, a need to critically understand the move. If India needs just a retired journalist and a trendy academic or for that matter a shamelessly rigged election to hoodwink America, then better be with India to safeguard Jammu and Kashmir from any future invasion. The Brazilian monthly has also quoted some NATO policy documents which say, “After 11 September 2001, the United States does have a legal justification to invade J&K.”

When the state acknowledges only 17 out of 111 killings , that too subject to a lengthy, unending probe, Hurriyat and those peddling  its hoodwink theory, better come out of their tea-party delusions. Ever since 1995 – when the government of India chose to initiate dialogue with five militants who had shunned arms – Kashmiris have been fed on mere noise of the dialogue while the economic and political benefits have been reaped by the ruling class in the state’s neighboring regions.

In response to the four-month unrest in Kashmir that saw 111 deaths and inexplicable tragedies,  Delhi has appointed sitting executives of Planning Commission to rehabilitate the economic and social security concerns of people in Jammu and Ladakh. This implies ‘direct aid’ via Planning Commission. And for Kashmir, the government of India picked up some ‘thought engineers’. No wonder if Azadi is being subjected to rigorous debating across India because Professor Radha Kumar has enough skill to reinterpret this so far objectionable word to suit India’s foreign policy needs. And the ‘Big Brother’ will keep watching.

 This is the time to shun this India-hoodwinking-America stuff from the menu of Hurriyat politics. The ‘Big Brother’ much in the Orwellian sense has all along been around us, but “He” is already friends with the “street goon”.

(email: rmasroor@gmail.com)

Two tales of two cities

The state response to public fury in Kashmir as well as in Jammu has been ideological rather than constitutional.
By Riyaz Masroor
Thanks to the state’s complicity in an avowedly anti-Muslim rioting across Jammu, the ‘iron curtain’ the successive governments in J&K had drawn around the frontiers of J&K’s Muslim regions over past decades is falling away. And with this the incipient feelings of aversion to Pakistan have once again cocooned into a stigmatic shell. Interestingly the state’s ideological response to the land row at Baltal has rekindled separatist Muslim aspirations in Pir Panjal (Rajouri, Poonch, Gool Gulab Garh, Arnas) and Chenab (Doda, Bhani, Bhadarwah, Kishtiwar, Rambhan, Banihal) regions.

Jammu is also Kashmir!
Poonch-based Muslim United Welfare Forum has loudly expressed these aspirations. “We demand that Rajouri, Poonch and Doda should be merged with Kashmir because these areas are similar to it (Kashmir) culturally, religiously and geographically,” the Forum spokesman said in a statement on August 5.
The statement carried a subtle caveat as well. “Before the Muslims are asked to leave form Bishnah, Bhatandi and Jammu, let those refugees leave Poonch who have occupied the Muslim properties since 1947.”
Earlier, Muslim veterans of Poonch, Rajouri and Doda convened an all-party session in Rajouri on August 4 in which Muslims from all sects and social strata participated. The session, according to a news report in Urdu daily Kashmir Uzma, concluded on the consensus that people of these regions would forge a “political accession” with Kashmir Valley and would extend active support to Kashmiris’ struggle for freedom.
Then there were reports of skirmishes between Hindu rioters and Sikh citizens in Poonch. On August 4 a group of rightwing Hindu activists stormed a locality in central Poonch and pulled down the life-size portraits of some Sikh soldiers who had participated in India’s 1971 war to slice Bangladesh off Pakistan. Local newsgathering agency News Today reported on August 5 that the Hindu activists demolished Brigadier Preetam Singh’s statue by the Hindu rioters. This evoked reaction from Sikh residents who later clashed with the rioters. From Indian point of view, Sikh reaction should have been appreciated because it was manifestation of respect for a war hero who had laid down his life while ‘punishing’ Pakistan in Bangladesh. But in contrast the reports from Jammu suggest the worst degree of state’s culpability in the crimes the rioters are perpetrating against the minorities, both Muslims as well as Sikhs.

Litany of Woes
On July 1 when the controversial order about the transfer of 99 acres of land to SASB near Baltal was revoked by G N Azad’s minority cabinet, Jammu began to simmer. The rightwing BJP and its allies termed it Governor N N Vohra’s ‘surrender’ before ‘Islamists’. But the significant aspect of Jammu’s reaction to this ‘surrender’ is that there was no spontaneous reaction in winter capital, although the BJP activists would stage intermittent demonstrations under a coalition of political and religious groups Amarnath Yatra Sangharsh Samiti (AYSM).
On July 23, three weeks after government revoked the order, Kuldeep Kumar, a 33-year-old shopkeeper from Talab Tuloo showed up in a gathering the AYSM had sponsored at Parade ground. Kumar, who according to Jammu’s leading daily Excelsior had allegedly consumed some poisonous substance at home before reaching the venue, was badly under debt. He had reportedly raised a loan to set up his business and was upset over his inability to liquidate the loan money in view of the mounting interests. He is right now projected as the ‘first martyr’ of Jammu’s ‘Jihad’ against J&K Muslims.
The government has already ordered an inquiry into the incident. But the investigators would be hard-pressed to probe the death without the mandatory autopsy report. In fact, the Police despite hard efforts could not conduct the autopsy on Kumar’s body as the ferocious agitators had snatched the body.
As against the standing facts, Kumar’s death was mischievously reported as a “protestor’s suicide during agitation” and the Police received constant brickbats for ‘mishandling’ the issue. Several Police officials including a senior officer were transferred. Emboldened, the sponsors went out to whip up passions across Jammu’s Hindu heartland setting a chain reaction in Bishna (Kuldeep’s native Town), Kathua, Akhnoor, Udhampur and other areas. The rioters grew so much used to defy the curve and army deployment that the JKLF leader Muhammad Yasin Malik termed the curfew as a “friendly match” between the army and the rioters.
While the rioters put the entire region upside down and vandalized public property, the authorities appeared to have given enough leeway to the rioters after the Kumar’s death. The administration marked its first ‘action’ against the rioting only on July 26 when some Sangh leaders and office bearers of the Samiti were arrested and later released. While the agitation was visibly spawning into a vengeful racist campaign against Muslims and reports of harassment of Muslims, as also burning down of Gujjar dwellings in Samba, R S Pura and Marh, were pouring in, the administration wasted another four days and opened a dialogue with the sponsors of the agitation only on July 30 . The talks proved futile, the crisis deepened.
The BJP ideologues including Uma Bharti, Ratimbara Sadhwi and Swami Dinesh Bharti (Swami Dinesh openly called for Muslim massacres) had reached Jammu to boost the rioters’ ‘morale’. In an incident, reported widely in Jammu press, a mob chased away the Police contingent that had held a Samiti leader Chandra Prakash Ganga under house arrest at his residence near Sarore and got him released. The violent mobs tried to force their entry into Raj Bhawan but could not breach the Iron Gate. The mob stormed the Police headquarters and torched a police lorry. By now the closure of Lakhanpur entry point had been enforced and a complete economic blockade was in place, leaving the Valley in the lurch. The rioters not only chased the officers and cops of Jammu and Kashmir Police but also, at times, attempted to snatch the weapons from the Inspector rank officials.
On August 1, when according to IGP Jammu, the army had taken over the most sensitive Samba Town to prevent mob violence, frenzied fanatics set ablaze almost entire government infrastructure including the Dak Banglow and Tehsil office. The army somehow saved the deputy commissioner’s office. During a protest rally at Samba, the rioters held hostage the deputy commissioner Sourabh Baghat. An Excelsior report said on August 1 that Baghat was rescued by Army. The situation was more like a total anarchy and the army had to take full control of DC office and other vital installations. It was during this frenzy, which was marked by prolonged clashes between Police, CRPF, Army and the rightwing activists, that two persons who were amongst the rioters were hit by bullets and died on spot. The Police maintained that their death was actually the outcome of an inter-gang rivalry. But the administration removed the local SSP Vijay Kumar and asked SSP Prabhat Singh to take charge. However Mr Singh again fell in the trap of rioters on August 4 when fearing that the mob would lynch his cops he ordered fire in self defense. The firing killed two rioters and injured eight others. Police would have certainly expected a mob backlash but it is yet to be explained how two Gujjar cops of JKP were hacked to death in Jhorian village of Akhnoor.
Ideology overtakes constitution
You need not be a rocket scientist to compare the administrative response to public anger in Jammu and Srinagar. Can any protestor dare to look at Raj Bhawan in Srinagar? Is it possible to defy curfew in Kashmir even if only CRPF troops dot the streets? How many ‘suspects’ would be arrested if a police officer or deputy commissioner is held hostage? Can a Kashmiri mob however furious lynch two cops amidst army’s flag March and curfew orders?
The death of the 19-year-old Asif Me’raj of Maisuma is an unambiguous answer to these questions. This poor dropout, who was working with a local car dealer, Highland Automobiles, was killed when JKP cops fired a volley of tear-smoke canisters toward a group of protestors, who were demonstrating against the harassment of Muslims at Maisuma.
Asif is actually the eighth death ever since the protests broke out in Kashmir on June 23 (the strike and protests lasted only 9 days). Earlier six persons died during Police action while a girl of Maisuma, already ailing from Bronchial infection, died of suffocation after the Police barraged the area with dozens of smoke shells.
Calculate the costs
In the colonial times even the brute monarchs would detest the discrimination between the subjects. The state response to public fury in Kashmir as well as in Jammu has been ideological rather than constitutional. In Kashmir an unwritten policy appears to infuse among troopers and cops a sense of being deployed in ‘enemy territory’ while in Jammu the same policy gives them a feeling that they are in a ‘friendly territory’, which has to be used against the ‘enemies’. At both places, the constitution is put to shame. If it is not really happy with the concept of Muslim Kashmir, New Delhi should calculate the costs of anarchy that usually follows the defiling of constitution. feedback on riyaz.masroor@yahoo.com