Banglar Bir
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Indian coercive strategy has made Kashmiris more alienated than ever before! (A Sovereign Kashmir: Random Thoughts-302)
May 29, 2017 Abdul Ruff
Wikipedia-Flag of Jammu and Kashmir.
Indian coercive strategy has made Kashmiris more alienated than ever before!
-Dr. Abdul Ruff.
Jammu Kashmir was a sovereign nation until India and Pakistan invaded and occupied it after their independence from Great Britain. Both India and Pakistan wanted to expand their territories by annexing neighboring Jammu Kashmir, and they have done with blessings from their colonial master UK.
India and Pakistan have disputed the territory for nearly 70 years – since independence from Britain. Both countries claim the whole territory but control only parts of it. Two out of three wars fought between India and Pakistan centered on Kashmir.
1989 there has been an armed revolt in the Muslim-majority region against rule by India. High unemployment and complaints of heavy-handed tactics by security forces battling street protesters and fighting insurgents have aggravated the problem Unable to tolerate Indian brutality, Kashmiris are on a revolt against Indian occupational crimes.
They want USA, UK and other veto members to consider the pathetic plight of Kashmiri Muslims and give them their sovereignty back so that at least their children could live in peace without having to face the Indian military brutality.
India is fast losing Jammu Kashmir as it hates Kashmiris for demanding freedom and sovereignty from occupying Indian military which now enjoys more draconian powers to target Kashmiris at will.
Indian regime never cares for human rights violations by its military in Kashmir. New Delhi has conveniently fooled Kashmiris on its promise of greater autonomy for the region for efficiency while core Indian media lords spread lies about Kashmiris through 24 hours in their TV channels.
Now India is using Kashmiris as a military shield with more and more army’s intimidation, wrongful confinement of Kashmiri youth. Instead of punishing the guilty in their ranks for misusing their powers by ruthlessly attacking Kashmiri Muslims through fake encounters, among other techniques, it honors the guilty with awards and more money for their “meritorious services.” This anomaly has annoyed Kashmiri leaders.
A Kashmir Muslim, Farooq Ahmad Dar, who was tied to an army jeep by military soldiers and used him as a human shield in India-occupied Kashmir has said he is “afraid” after the officer responsible for the incident was awarded a commendation by the military. “I was under the impression he would be punished. But he was given a reward,” Farooq Ahmad Dar told BBC. The decision, announced on Monday, was met with shock in Kashmir. The army officer responsible for the action said he did it to make India stronger. Dar had just finished casting his vote at a polling booth when the incident took place.
Tied to the jeep, he was driven around villages, as an “example” of what would happen to anyone who threw stones at armed forces. “I was persecuted even though I was one of the few who voted,” Dar said. “Since the day the officer was awarded, I’m even more afraid. Now he will return to the same camp, and I am in danger.”I am feeling under tremendous pressure. He will be back, and my situation will worsen.”
The army officer at the center of the controversy, Major Nitin Gogoi, in a rare departure from official protocol, was allowed to address a media conference and defended his actions. “With this new India idea, I have saved many peoples’ lives.” The foremost leader of freedoms struggle Syed Ali Geelani, chairman of the Hurriyat – an umbrella group of separatists in Kashmir – called the army decision “distressing and shameful.”
Amnesty International India also condemned the decision, saying it gave out the impression that the Indian army “condones human rights abuses.” But views on social media were sharply divided between those who criticized the army decision and those who said Major Gogoi was a hero.
Former chief minister Omar Abdullah said the army decision was “wrong.” He said the consequences could be “disastrous,” adding that “the use of human shields is now officially fair and justified in a Kashmir that stands more alienated than ever before.”
The Urdu language newspaper Kashmir Uzma saw the move as an “open warning.” “It seems that by honoring the officer, the authorities in New Delhi are trying to send a clear message to Kashmiris that they have reliable tactics for restoring order, even when it involves violating human rights,” it said.
For quite some time, India has been running from country to country and invites rulers from every country to inform that Kashmir has been a part of India for centuries and Pakistan is spoiling the minds of Kashmiris to protest against Indian misrule.
New Delhi might think foreign leaders, like Indian media lords, have no knowledge of the past and history. Last summer was one of the bloodiest in the Muslim-dominated valley in recent years. Following the killing of influential freedom fighting militant Burhan Wani by Indian forces last July, more than 100 civilians lost their lives in clashes during a four-month-long security lockdown in the valley.
It’s not looking very promising this summer. India occupied Kashmir has seen a fresh upsurge of violence in the past few months, with stone-throwing civilians pitted against military personnel. India is not happy that the youth has not taken real weapons so that Indian military could kill all of them and ask Indian core media lords, controlled by intelligence, to call the Kashmiris “TERRORISTS.”
As its usual safe tactic, whenever there is an upsurge in Srinagar, India quickly blames Pakistan for inciting the violence, a charge the latter dutifully denies.
This month’s parliamentary election in Srinagar was scarred by violence and a record-low turnout of voters. To add fuel to the fire, graphic social videos surfaced claiming to show abuses by security forces and young people who oppose Indian rule.
A full-blown protest by students has now erupted on the streets; and, in a rare sight, even schoolgirls are throwing stones and hitting police vehicles. JK Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, who leads an awkward ruling coalition with the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), rushed to Delhi last week to urge the federal Modi government to “announce a dialogue and show reconciliatory gestures.”
India ignores the military atrocities on Kashmiri Muslims being ritually committed as a tool to silence the Kashmiri youth. Apparently, PM Narendra Modi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh told her that they could not “offer a dialogue with separatists and other restive groups in the valley” while brutal violence and militant attacks continued.
Former chief minister and leader of the regional National Conference party Farooq Abdullah warned India that it was “losing Kashmir.” What Abdullah suggested was unexceptionable: the government should begin talking with the stakeholders – Pakistan, the separatists, mainstream parties – and start “thinking of not a military solution, but a political way.”
Ignoring the plight of Muslims in the valley, but only thinking only about Hindus in Kashmir as being propelled by Hindutva zealots in the media is not okay.
Kashmir is one of most militarized zones on earth with military troops occupying almost every place so that any protest for freedom could be put done forthwith while informing the media to cook stories to make reports about “Muslim terrorists attacked or killed” type headings.
With more than 500,000 security forces in the region, India is unlikely to lose territory in Kashmir, but Kashmiris are not with India.
Shekhar Gupta, a leading columnist, says that while Kashmir is “territorially secure, we are fast losing it emotionally and psychologically.” The abysmal 7% turnout in the Srinagar poll proved that “while your grip on the land is firm, you are losing its people.”
So what is new about Kashmir that is worrying India and even provoking senior army officials to admit that the situation is fragile? Kashmiri youth is now politically matured, and they know they need sovereignty for self-development and regain dignity.
For one, a more reckless and alienated younger generation of local youth is now leading the anti-India protests. More than 60% of the men in the valley are under 30. Many of them are angry and confused about what India plans and wants in Kashmir. Hope has evaporated for his generation “in the face of Indian oppression, ” and he and his friends did not “fear death.”
When I took him aside after a while to ask about his ambitions in life, he said he wanted to become a bureaucrat and serve Kashmir. “It is wrong to say that the Kashmiri youth has become fearless. He just feels alienated, sidelined and humiliated.
When he feels like that, fear takes a backseat, and he becomes reckless. This is irrational behavior,” says National Conference leader Junaid Azim Mattoo.
Secondly, the new younger militants are educated and come from relatively well-off families. Youthful Kashmiri leader Wani, who was killed last July as the militant, headed a prominent rebel group and came from a highly-educated upper-class Kashmiri family: his father is a government school teacher. Wani’s younger brother, Khalid, who was killed by security forces in 2013, was a student of political science.
The new commander of the rebel group, Zakir Rashid Bhat, studied engineering in the northern Indian city of Chandigarh. The two-year-old fragile PDP-BJP ruling alliance, many say, has been unable to deliver on its promises.
While BJP is trying to increase its base in Jammu Kashmir, PDP is fast losing popular faith in its ability to defend Muslims in Kashmir. An alliance between a regional party which advocates soft separatism (PDP) and a federal Hindutva nationalist party (BJP), they believe, makes for the strangest bedfellows, hobbled by two conflicting ideologies trying to work their way together in a contested, conflicted land.
Both Congress and NC are trying to make maximum mileage from the weak government in Sri Nagar. The federal government’s message on Kashmir appears to be backfiring.
Then PM Modi recently said the youth in Kashmir had to choose between terrorism and tourism; many Kashmiris accused him of trivializing their “protracted struggle.”
When BJP general secretary Ram Madhav told a newspaper that his government “would have choked” the valley people if it was against them, many locals said it was proof of the government’s arrogance.
The shrill anti-Muslim rhetoric by radical Hindutva groups and politics of incidents of cow protection attacking Muslim cattle traders in other parts of India could end up further polarizing people in the valley.
“The danger,” a prominent leader told me, “is that the moderate Kashmiri Muslim is becoming sidelined, and he is politically radicalized.” The security forces Kashmir, now adhering to Hindutva politics, differ and say they are worried about rising “religious radicalization” among the youth in the valley.
A top army official in Kashmir, Lt-Gen JS Sadhu, told a newspaper that the “public support to terrorists, their glorification, and increased radicalization are issues of concern.” Kashmiri public does not the government or governor or New Delhi masters.
One army official said that religious radicalization was a “bigger challenge than stone pelting protesters.” He even claims that some 3,000 Saudi-inspired Wahhabi sect mosques had sprung up in Kashmir in the past decade.
The military is eager to build some Hindu structures in Kashmir valley as well. Most Kashmiris say the government should be more worried about the cause of “political radicalization” of the young, and that fears of religious radicalization were exaggerated and overblown.
Also, the low turnout in this month’s elections has rattled the region’s mainstream parties. “If mainstream politics is de legitimized and people refuse to vote for them, the vacuum will be naturally filled up with a disorganized mob-led constituency,” Mattoo of the National Conference said.
In his memoirs, Amarjit Singh Daulat, the former chief of India’s spy agency RAW wrote that “nothing is constant; least of all Kashmir.”
But right now, the anomie and anger of the youth and a concerned people’s revolt against Indian rule appear to be the only constants. If New Delhi still believes that Indian military in Kashmir could solve the Kashmir problems by Zionist or Indian guns there it is mistaken- it is ridiculous for any regime which is serious about democracy to think of a military solution.
Kashmir requires a political solution. If India still thinks Kashmiris want to be controlled by the Indian military, then, a referendum should be organized under the UN flag. As India’s most restive region JK stares down the abyss of what a commentator calls another “hot summer of violence,” the doom-laden headline has returned with a vengeance: Should India let Kashmiris live on their own as a sovereign nation?
- See more at: http://southasiajournal.net/indian-...fore-a-sovereign-kashmir-random-thoughts-302/
May 29, 2017 Abdul Ruff
Wikipedia-Flag of Jammu and Kashmir.
Indian coercive strategy has made Kashmiris more alienated than ever before!
-Dr. Abdul Ruff.
Jammu Kashmir was a sovereign nation until India and Pakistan invaded and occupied it after their independence from Great Britain. Both India and Pakistan wanted to expand their territories by annexing neighboring Jammu Kashmir, and they have done with blessings from their colonial master UK.
India and Pakistan have disputed the territory for nearly 70 years – since independence from Britain. Both countries claim the whole territory but control only parts of it. Two out of three wars fought between India and Pakistan centered on Kashmir.
1989 there has been an armed revolt in the Muslim-majority region against rule by India. High unemployment and complaints of heavy-handed tactics by security forces battling street protesters and fighting insurgents have aggravated the problem Unable to tolerate Indian brutality, Kashmiris are on a revolt against Indian occupational crimes.
They want USA, UK and other veto members to consider the pathetic plight of Kashmiri Muslims and give them their sovereignty back so that at least their children could live in peace without having to face the Indian military brutality.
India is fast losing Jammu Kashmir as it hates Kashmiris for demanding freedom and sovereignty from occupying Indian military which now enjoys more draconian powers to target Kashmiris at will.
Indian regime never cares for human rights violations by its military in Kashmir. New Delhi has conveniently fooled Kashmiris on its promise of greater autonomy for the region for efficiency while core Indian media lords spread lies about Kashmiris through 24 hours in their TV channels.
Now India is using Kashmiris as a military shield with more and more army’s intimidation, wrongful confinement of Kashmiri youth. Instead of punishing the guilty in their ranks for misusing their powers by ruthlessly attacking Kashmiri Muslims through fake encounters, among other techniques, it honors the guilty with awards and more money for their “meritorious services.” This anomaly has annoyed Kashmiri leaders.
A Kashmir Muslim, Farooq Ahmad Dar, who was tied to an army jeep by military soldiers and used him as a human shield in India-occupied Kashmir has said he is “afraid” after the officer responsible for the incident was awarded a commendation by the military. “I was under the impression he would be punished. But he was given a reward,” Farooq Ahmad Dar told BBC. The decision, announced on Monday, was met with shock in Kashmir. The army officer responsible for the action said he did it to make India stronger. Dar had just finished casting his vote at a polling booth when the incident took place.
Tied to the jeep, he was driven around villages, as an “example” of what would happen to anyone who threw stones at armed forces. “I was persecuted even though I was one of the few who voted,” Dar said. “Since the day the officer was awarded, I’m even more afraid. Now he will return to the same camp, and I am in danger.”I am feeling under tremendous pressure. He will be back, and my situation will worsen.”
The army officer at the center of the controversy, Major Nitin Gogoi, in a rare departure from official protocol, was allowed to address a media conference and defended his actions. “With this new India idea, I have saved many peoples’ lives.” The foremost leader of freedoms struggle Syed Ali Geelani, chairman of the Hurriyat – an umbrella group of separatists in Kashmir – called the army decision “distressing and shameful.”
Amnesty International India also condemned the decision, saying it gave out the impression that the Indian army “condones human rights abuses.” But views on social media were sharply divided between those who criticized the army decision and those who said Major Gogoi was a hero.
Former chief minister Omar Abdullah said the army decision was “wrong.” He said the consequences could be “disastrous,” adding that “the use of human shields is now officially fair and justified in a Kashmir that stands more alienated than ever before.”
The Urdu language newspaper Kashmir Uzma saw the move as an “open warning.” “It seems that by honoring the officer, the authorities in New Delhi are trying to send a clear message to Kashmiris that they have reliable tactics for restoring order, even when it involves violating human rights,” it said.
For quite some time, India has been running from country to country and invites rulers from every country to inform that Kashmir has been a part of India for centuries and Pakistan is spoiling the minds of Kashmiris to protest against Indian misrule.
New Delhi might think foreign leaders, like Indian media lords, have no knowledge of the past and history. Last summer was one of the bloodiest in the Muslim-dominated valley in recent years. Following the killing of influential freedom fighting militant Burhan Wani by Indian forces last July, more than 100 civilians lost their lives in clashes during a four-month-long security lockdown in the valley.
It’s not looking very promising this summer. India occupied Kashmir has seen a fresh upsurge of violence in the past few months, with stone-throwing civilians pitted against military personnel. India is not happy that the youth has not taken real weapons so that Indian military could kill all of them and ask Indian core media lords, controlled by intelligence, to call the Kashmiris “TERRORISTS.”
As its usual safe tactic, whenever there is an upsurge in Srinagar, India quickly blames Pakistan for inciting the violence, a charge the latter dutifully denies.
This month’s parliamentary election in Srinagar was scarred by violence and a record-low turnout of voters. To add fuel to the fire, graphic social videos surfaced claiming to show abuses by security forces and young people who oppose Indian rule.
A full-blown protest by students has now erupted on the streets; and, in a rare sight, even schoolgirls are throwing stones and hitting police vehicles. JK Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, who leads an awkward ruling coalition with the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), rushed to Delhi last week to urge the federal Modi government to “announce a dialogue and show reconciliatory gestures.”
India ignores the military atrocities on Kashmiri Muslims being ritually committed as a tool to silence the Kashmiri youth. Apparently, PM Narendra Modi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh told her that they could not “offer a dialogue with separatists and other restive groups in the valley” while brutal violence and militant attacks continued.
Former chief minister and leader of the regional National Conference party Farooq Abdullah warned India that it was “losing Kashmir.” What Abdullah suggested was unexceptionable: the government should begin talking with the stakeholders – Pakistan, the separatists, mainstream parties – and start “thinking of not a military solution, but a political way.”
Ignoring the plight of Muslims in the valley, but only thinking only about Hindus in Kashmir as being propelled by Hindutva zealots in the media is not okay.
Kashmir is one of most militarized zones on earth with military troops occupying almost every place so that any protest for freedom could be put done forthwith while informing the media to cook stories to make reports about “Muslim terrorists attacked or killed” type headings.
With more than 500,000 security forces in the region, India is unlikely to lose territory in Kashmir, but Kashmiris are not with India.
Shekhar Gupta, a leading columnist, says that while Kashmir is “territorially secure, we are fast losing it emotionally and psychologically.” The abysmal 7% turnout in the Srinagar poll proved that “while your grip on the land is firm, you are losing its people.”
So what is new about Kashmir that is worrying India and even provoking senior army officials to admit that the situation is fragile? Kashmiri youth is now politically matured, and they know they need sovereignty for self-development and regain dignity.
For one, a more reckless and alienated younger generation of local youth is now leading the anti-India protests. More than 60% of the men in the valley are under 30. Many of them are angry and confused about what India plans and wants in Kashmir. Hope has evaporated for his generation “in the face of Indian oppression, ” and he and his friends did not “fear death.”
When I took him aside after a while to ask about his ambitions in life, he said he wanted to become a bureaucrat and serve Kashmir. “It is wrong to say that the Kashmiri youth has become fearless. He just feels alienated, sidelined and humiliated.
When he feels like that, fear takes a backseat, and he becomes reckless. This is irrational behavior,” says National Conference leader Junaid Azim Mattoo.
Secondly, the new younger militants are educated and come from relatively well-off families. Youthful Kashmiri leader Wani, who was killed last July as the militant, headed a prominent rebel group and came from a highly-educated upper-class Kashmiri family: his father is a government school teacher. Wani’s younger brother, Khalid, who was killed by security forces in 2013, was a student of political science.
The new commander of the rebel group, Zakir Rashid Bhat, studied engineering in the northern Indian city of Chandigarh. The two-year-old fragile PDP-BJP ruling alliance, many say, has been unable to deliver on its promises.
While BJP is trying to increase its base in Jammu Kashmir, PDP is fast losing popular faith in its ability to defend Muslims in Kashmir. An alliance between a regional party which advocates soft separatism (PDP) and a federal Hindutva nationalist party (BJP), they believe, makes for the strangest bedfellows, hobbled by two conflicting ideologies trying to work their way together in a contested, conflicted land.
Both Congress and NC are trying to make maximum mileage from the weak government in Sri Nagar. The federal government’s message on Kashmir appears to be backfiring.
Then PM Modi recently said the youth in Kashmir had to choose between terrorism and tourism; many Kashmiris accused him of trivializing their “protracted struggle.”
When BJP general secretary Ram Madhav told a newspaper that his government “would have choked” the valley people if it was against them, many locals said it was proof of the government’s arrogance.
The shrill anti-Muslim rhetoric by radical Hindutva groups and politics of incidents of cow protection attacking Muslim cattle traders in other parts of India could end up further polarizing people in the valley.
“The danger,” a prominent leader told me, “is that the moderate Kashmiri Muslim is becoming sidelined, and he is politically radicalized.” The security forces Kashmir, now adhering to Hindutva politics, differ and say they are worried about rising “religious radicalization” among the youth in the valley.
A top army official in Kashmir, Lt-Gen JS Sadhu, told a newspaper that the “public support to terrorists, their glorification, and increased radicalization are issues of concern.” Kashmiri public does not the government or governor or New Delhi masters.
One army official said that religious radicalization was a “bigger challenge than stone pelting protesters.” He even claims that some 3,000 Saudi-inspired Wahhabi sect mosques had sprung up in Kashmir in the past decade.
The military is eager to build some Hindu structures in Kashmir valley as well. Most Kashmiris say the government should be more worried about the cause of “political radicalization” of the young, and that fears of religious radicalization were exaggerated and overblown.
Also, the low turnout in this month’s elections has rattled the region’s mainstream parties. “If mainstream politics is de legitimized and people refuse to vote for them, the vacuum will be naturally filled up with a disorganized mob-led constituency,” Mattoo of the National Conference said.
In his memoirs, Amarjit Singh Daulat, the former chief of India’s spy agency RAW wrote that “nothing is constant; least of all Kashmir.”
But right now, the anomie and anger of the youth and a concerned people’s revolt against Indian rule appear to be the only constants. If New Delhi still believes that Indian military in Kashmir could solve the Kashmir problems by Zionist or Indian guns there it is mistaken- it is ridiculous for any regime which is serious about democracy to think of a military solution.
Kashmir requires a political solution. If India still thinks Kashmiris want to be controlled by the Indian military, then, a referendum should be organized under the UN flag. As India’s most restive region JK stares down the abyss of what a commentator calls another “hot summer of violence,” the doom-laden headline has returned with a vengeance: Should India let Kashmiris live on their own as a sovereign nation?
- See more at: http://southasiajournal.net/indian-...fore-a-sovereign-kashmir-random-thoughts-302/
