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I was in Kashmir during Eid, it was utterly heartbreaking
All we received were rumours and stories of one person killed here, another there.
VOICES
| 5-minute read | 23-09-2016
OMAIR AHMAD
@omairtahmad
Amar Singh Club in the heart of the city – Srinagar’s equivalent of Delhi’s prestigious Gymkhana Club.
The taxi driver was terrified. "Yeh toh military area hai, sir."
Apparently he had not heard that the Club was supposed to be handed back to civilian use after more than 25 years, as part of a set of measures that were supposed to remove 47 bunkers from the city. Imagine that – a capital city that has more than 47 military bunkers that can be done away with! Srinagar is like that, so enmeshed in khaki that you take the madness for normal.
But things were at another level before Eid. The city and the state had been under curfew for 70 days, more than two months, it was a record of sorts, though not one that I presume our government will boast about, or apply to the Guinness Book for recognition. Incredible India indeed.
The colony where I was staying is an upper middle class one; its location and composition meant that we faced little of what was happening in downtown, or in south Kashmir, where the real protests were.
All we received were rumours and stories of one person killed here, another there. They were faceless to us, distinguished only the nature of their wounds ("beaten to death with sticks", "shot to death with pellets") and their ages (11-year-old, 85-year-old, everything in between).
An elderly person seeking permission from security personnel during curfew in Srinagar on Eid-al-Adha. (PTI)
It became so claustrophobic that my wife and I finally took a walk out on to the main road. There were about two dozen securitymen at the crossroads, CRPF and J&K Police, submachine guns, tear gas launchers, the whole paraphernalia of repression on display. And yet, as we walked a short way up the street, we felt a certain sadness for these young men deployed in their gear.
My wife used to manage CSR projects, including one for former jawans to train them with computers to help in their employability. We dispose of our boys, our non-officer class, at the ages of 35 to 40. Untrained except for the Army, they often end up with nothing to do. Ten years ago India employed over five million private security guards, many of them former military or paramilitary with nothing else they can do.
These are the people who are deployed on the streets, largely poorly educated, with limited choices, and soon forgotten. These are the young men that died in Uri. They know they are unloved where they are deployed.
Across from the road somebody had scrawled graffiti. It had been painted over, but you could still read, "Go, India, Go back!" One bit even read, "China, help us!" It was sad-funny, the joke that makes you cry, these young men fighting other young men, the bitterness of it all.
On TV it is portrayed as a story of the military, or paramilitary against stone-pelters, but this is not a war of the Army’s choosing. People forget that the Army was reluctant to be deployed in Kashmir in 1990, and the Centre had to push, cajole and negotiate for the Army to pacify a population after decades of political manipulation and failure.
Now, too, Lt General Hooda, who is in charge of Northern Commandasked "everybody involved, whether it is security forces, whether it is separatists, governments, student leaders… to find some way forward". Weeks later, Ram Madhav publicly rejected such a demand, saying a political solution was the slogan of romantic people. Maybe nothing so clearly shows the contempt with which politicians treat both the security forces, and those it asks them to suppress.
The day before Eid the phone lines were disconnected. Only those with BSNL lines had the privilege to talk to each other. The Eidgahs across the Valley were off limits. Prayers were at the local masjid. I listened as the imam asked what was the faith of the rulers who asked the police to behave in such a manner to their own people. He said that the "wazir-e-ala", the ruler, Mehbooba Mufti, no doubt, would find herself in purgatory alongside people like the Pharaoh who rejected Moses’s teachings. Ahead of me a policeman sat hunched in his uniform. I wonder what went through his mind.
At the house I slaughtered two sheep, one in my name, one in my wife’s. The meat went to the poor, to provide for the wedding meals of somebody who helped out in the house. Even if we wanted to distribute some of it, as custom and law dictate, to relatives, how would we reach them?
We were told that in one area where family stayed, there were only two policemen on the streets. They laid down their arms and said, "We cannot stop you, but if you go past us, the CRPF will surely kill you."
This was Eid al-Adha, the great feast, as it is called, in Kashmir.
http://www.dailyo.in/voices/kashmir...ttack-azadi-mehbooba-mufti/story/1/13066.html
All we received were rumours and stories of one person killed here, another there.
VOICES
| 5-minute read | 23-09-2016
OMAIR AHMAD
@omairtahmad
Amar Singh Club in the heart of the city – Srinagar’s equivalent of Delhi’s prestigious Gymkhana Club.
The taxi driver was terrified. "Yeh toh military area hai, sir."
Apparently he had not heard that the Club was supposed to be handed back to civilian use after more than 25 years, as part of a set of measures that were supposed to remove 47 bunkers from the city. Imagine that – a capital city that has more than 47 military bunkers that can be done away with! Srinagar is like that, so enmeshed in khaki that you take the madness for normal.
But things were at another level before Eid. The city and the state had been under curfew for 70 days, more than two months, it was a record of sorts, though not one that I presume our government will boast about, or apply to the Guinness Book for recognition. Incredible India indeed.
The colony where I was staying is an upper middle class one; its location and composition meant that we faced little of what was happening in downtown, or in south Kashmir, where the real protests were.
All we received were rumours and stories of one person killed here, another there. They were faceless to us, distinguished only the nature of their wounds ("beaten to death with sticks", "shot to death with pellets") and their ages (11-year-old, 85-year-old, everything in between).
An elderly person seeking permission from security personnel during curfew in Srinagar on Eid-al-Adha. (PTI)
It became so claustrophobic that my wife and I finally took a walk out on to the main road. There were about two dozen securitymen at the crossroads, CRPF and J&K Police, submachine guns, tear gas launchers, the whole paraphernalia of repression on display. And yet, as we walked a short way up the street, we felt a certain sadness for these young men deployed in their gear.
My wife used to manage CSR projects, including one for former jawans to train them with computers to help in their employability. We dispose of our boys, our non-officer class, at the ages of 35 to 40. Untrained except for the Army, they often end up with nothing to do. Ten years ago India employed over five million private security guards, many of them former military or paramilitary with nothing else they can do.
These are the people who are deployed on the streets, largely poorly educated, with limited choices, and soon forgotten. These are the young men that died in Uri. They know they are unloved where they are deployed.
Across from the road somebody had scrawled graffiti. It had been painted over, but you could still read, "Go, India, Go back!" One bit even read, "China, help us!" It was sad-funny, the joke that makes you cry, these young men fighting other young men, the bitterness of it all.
On TV it is portrayed as a story of the military, or paramilitary against stone-pelters, but this is not a war of the Army’s choosing. People forget that the Army was reluctant to be deployed in Kashmir in 1990, and the Centre had to push, cajole and negotiate for the Army to pacify a population after decades of political manipulation and failure.
Now, too, Lt General Hooda, who is in charge of Northern Commandasked "everybody involved, whether it is security forces, whether it is separatists, governments, student leaders… to find some way forward". Weeks later, Ram Madhav publicly rejected such a demand, saying a political solution was the slogan of romantic people. Maybe nothing so clearly shows the contempt with which politicians treat both the security forces, and those it asks them to suppress.
The day before Eid the phone lines were disconnected. Only those with BSNL lines had the privilege to talk to each other. The Eidgahs across the Valley were off limits. Prayers were at the local masjid. I listened as the imam asked what was the faith of the rulers who asked the police to behave in such a manner to their own people. He said that the "wazir-e-ala", the ruler, Mehbooba Mufti, no doubt, would find herself in purgatory alongside people like the Pharaoh who rejected Moses’s teachings. Ahead of me a policeman sat hunched in his uniform. I wonder what went through his mind.
At the house I slaughtered two sheep, one in my name, one in my wife’s. The meat went to the poor, to provide for the wedding meals of somebody who helped out in the house. Even if we wanted to distribute some of it, as custom and law dictate, to relatives, how would we reach them?
We were told that in one area where family stayed, there were only two policemen on the streets. They laid down their arms and said, "We cannot stop you, but if you go past us, the CRPF will surely kill you."
This was Eid al-Adha, the great feast, as it is called, in Kashmir.
http://www.dailyo.in/voices/kashmir...ttack-azadi-mehbooba-mufti/story/1/13066.html
