A mother's tragedy

From  - Kashmir: The forgotten conflict - Al Jazeera English
By Majid Maqbool

Las Khan and Nabza Bano have lost all of their sons to the conflict [Majid Maqbool]

Sixty-five-year-old Nabza Bano stands near a small cornfield where her three-storey house once stood in Sundbrari village, about 85kms from Srinagar, the capital of Indian-administered Kashmir. Lost in a melancholic silence, she points out all that remains of her old home - a few burnt logs.

She says two of her houses were burned down by the Indian army, along with two cowsheds, but what pains her most is the absence of her three sons - all of them killed by the Indian army. Their loss has inflicted a wound that only festers with the passing years.

But years of mourning have dried her tears and she is unable to weep now.

After their house was destroyed, Nabza and her family lived in a tent adjacent to the burnt remains of their home for six months during a harsh Kashmiri winter. The family's neighbours and relatives helped them to build a modest one-storey house where Nabza now lives with her terminally-ill husband, her daughter, son-in-law, their two children and the two children of her now deceased eldest son.

They live in poverty. Nabza's son-in-law works as a labourer, but he is the only wage earner in the family and his salary is not enough to support them all.

Nabza's husband, Las Khan, suffers from asthma and his treatment costs about 15,000 Indian rupees ($340) a month. Last month, the family had to sell off one of their cows to cover the cost.

Picking up the gun

Nabza displays pictures of her sons [Majid Maqbool]

Las Khan has lost four sons to the conflict, including one from his first marriage. Mukhtar Ahmad was 40 when he was killed in an encounter with the Indian army in 1997. Khan says his eldest son was a militant.

The youngest of Khan's sons with Nabza was just 13 years old when he was killed in 1999. Nabza says Mohammad Abbas would sometimes help out militants who were active in the area by showing them safe passages. "But he was not a militant and never had a gun. He was innocent," she adds.

On the day he was killed, Nabza recalls, he had put on his best clothes and taken food for a few of the fighters who were in the mountains.

"As soon as they finished eating, the army laid an ambush and killed all of them in the encounter," Nabza says. Seven were killed that day, including Mohammad. The death certificate issued by the police refers to Mohammad as a "19-year-old militant".

Ajaz Khan and Ghulam Hassan - the elder two of Khan's sons with Nabza - picked up the gun in the early 1990s when the armed struggle broke out in Kashmir. They both joined the indigenous rebel group, Hizbul Mujahideen.

Ajaz was 25 when he was killed in an encounter with the Indian army in 2002.

"He had come home that day after more than six months," Nabza recalls.

But the army had laid an ambush outside their home and Ajaz was killed in the fighting that ensued. He was shot twice in the chest.

"Army from seven companies laid an ambush for him that day," Nabza says. "Some families had offered him a safe house during the encounter but he declined, saying he could not bring harm to any civilians."

Nabza says the shooting began at four o'clock in the afternoon and Ajaz fought until he ran out of ammunition. He was killed at around two o'clock in the morning. After his death, Nabza recalls, the soldiers fired shots into the night in jubilation.

Ghulam was one of the first young men from their village to join militant ranks in the early 1990s, Khan says.

"In 2003, he was arrested and tortured in custody for eight days in the RR [Rashtriya Rifles] military camp," Nabza adds.

After he was released and returned home, Nabza says, her son bore the marks of torture on his body - his face was swollen, his kidneys damaged and he could barely walk or talk. A few days later he died.

"He died when he was offering morning prayers in this room," Nabza says. "I held him close to my chest. I would not let him go," she recalls. "Then I don't know … I fainted."

"After he died … the army lied and said that he had a heart attack in custody," Khan interjects. "They even wrote this lie on his death certificate," the old man explains.

Ghulam was the only one of their sons to marry. After he was killed, his wife remarried and Ghulam's son and daughter came to live with Nabza and her husband.

'Mother of militants'

Click here for more on the Kashmir conflict

Las Khan fell ill after the deaths of his sons and has been bedridden for the past 10 years. Photographs of his sons hang beside each other on the wall of his small room. He cannot speak or hear well, but he recalls the details of their deaths with clarity. He remembers the date and the deed. And even though illness has made him too weak to walk, he never misses a prayer. Gasping for breath, he prostrates himself in prayer five times a day.

Beside his bed is a small trunk. Nabza unlocks it and carefully removes pictures of their sons and their death certificates. She spreads them out on the floor, one by one, and stares at them. There are pictures of funeral processions, of people offering funeral prayers, others showing the burnt remains of their old home. She addresses the pictures as though talking to her sons in person - incoherent lamentations of how much she misses them and how she wishes that at least one of them had lived.

A child enters the room. He is the son of Ghulam. He carries a blackened samovar that had been found a few days before at the site of their old house. They gaze at it, turning it around. Their silence is filled with memories of their life before. Nabza explains that they used to serve tea to guests in this samovar. She says it was the only thing recovered from the burnt remains. Everything else was consumed by the fire.

Nabza recalls how in 1998, soldiers had raided their home, threatening to set fire to it. She says they had called her "the mother of militants".

Las Khan produces a pocket diary. He flips its small pages, showing entries made in Urdu. It is a detailed record of the dates his sons were killed and his properties destroyed - a written testimony to the tragedies the family has endured.

When his sons were alive, Khan was himself arrested several times by the Indian army. He says he was tortured and beaten in custody for failing to convince his sons to surrender. His son-in-law shows an old mobile phone picture of Khan's bandaged broken arm.

"The army said they would give me 1.3 million rupees if my son surrenders," Khan explains. "But my son had not picked up the gun for money. He would not even call me father had I taken even 15 paisa from the army."

Looking at her ailing husband, Nabza remembers how he was beaten every time their home was raided by soldiers looking for their sons. "I felt as if I was receiving those blows," she says. "Those blows also hit my body."

The family says the authorities told them that they could not claim any compensation for their houses or cowsheds because their sons were militants. Neither did they receive any substantial aid from groups opposed to Indian rule.

Now, all that Nabza is left with is her unshakable faith in God. She has a firm belief that her sons did not die in vain. "We will get freedom one day, God willing," she says with conviction.

For Nabza, her sons remain alive in her memories. She talks to their pictures as though they are there with her. "All my sons are alive," she says in Kashmiri, looking at the pictures spread out in front of her. And then, after a brief pauses, adds: "We are all dead."

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A choice denied

From (Aljazera Kashmir: The forgotten conflict)
By Parvaiz Bukhari

Kashmiris are getting tired of having their voices ignored [EPA]

What do the people of Indian-controlled Kashmir want?

It's a question as old as you want it to be, but one that it is alive today, six decades after the decolonisation of the Indian subcontinent left Kashmir divided between India and Pakistan, clearly suggesting that Kashmiris themselves have not even been asked. Or been offered a credible mechanism to determine their collective will.

Instead, the general experience in Kashmir has been that of a repressed subject population ruled by a coercive and militarised governing structure, mainly constituting a client political class cultivated by New Delhi, and which therefore cannot represent the dominant Kashmiri aspiration of an end to Indian rule.

One of the manifestations of that aspiration is a deep yearning among the people of Kashmir for freedom. For a social, political and moral order that is free from suspicion, from invasive state surveillance and the constant threat of incarceration and violent death. Attributes that stem from Indian military dominance of the disputed region.

Partition

Since the partition of the Indian subcontinent that aspiration has not remained unchanged. In the aftermath of decolonisation, and right up to the late 1980s, the yearning for freedom in Kashmir, in the main, meant being a part of Pakistan. But a significant educated political class has all along espoused an independent state of Jammu and Kashmir, free from both the rival claims of the two neighbouring countries.

The past two decades saw the political movement inside Kashmir transformed, from an armed militancy to intifada-style array of stone throwing street demonstrations - but accompanied within Kashmir by a consistent assessment of what freedom means for its people. The long experience of being a "part" of India, and a new understanding of the Pakistani state, has apparently led to a desire to be free from both.

Kashmir has a centuries-long history of struggle against rulers from outside the Himalayan region, the last being its subjugation by the Dogra rulers from the Punjab who had bought the people and their land from the British colonial authorities in 1846 with the Treaty of Amritsar.

When the British left the subcontinent in 1947, the people of Kashmir believed their moment in history had also arrived. But freedom from Dogra autocracy was soon to be replaced with India and Pakistan, both claiming the territory, and, after fighting a war over it that same year, dividing it between themselves. The Kashmiri nation, which had rallied against the Dogra regime for decades, often alongside the Indian freedom movement, was left wounded and undermined.

Resistance to the Indian rule of Kashmir has also transformed during the past six decades. After a brief five-year period of relative self-rule ended in 1952, the client Kashmiri ruling class ensured the political arm-twisting of those political groups who - in accordance with the principles of partition - wanted Kashmir to be a part of Pakistan. It paved the way for Al Fateh, an embryonic armed movement for freedom from India, but this was neutralised at an early stage during the 1970s.

This latest phase of the Kashmiri struggle to find its own place in the world turned militant in 1989, when thousands of Kashmiri Muslims - backed by Pakistan - took to arms against Indian rule. This phase also signalled the miserable failure of a several decades-long Indian attempt at emotionally integrating Kashmir with New Delhi. They fought for freedom from being misrepresented, and with the aspirations of a future outside Indian sovereignty.

Up until decolonisation of the Indian subcontinent, Kashmir's culture, language, economy, identity, religious and social order had been a continuum of major influences from western India - now Pakistan - from central Asia, and further afield, even from Persia. That immense civilisational backyard had significantly informed the Kashmiri people's worldview. But now Kashmir was amputated from that body and another dimension of spiritual suffering was added for its isolated inhabitants.

For generations, Kashmiris had journeyed for trade and spiritual gratification to the fabled Central Asian cities of Bukhara, Tashkent, Samarkand and Lhasa. All that suddenly came to an end. Kashmiris are struggling today in the hope of a chance to restore the nation to the world that had historically nurtured its identity and soul.

For the people, taking to arms meant a sharp surge in militarism by India, making Kashmir the world's most militarised zone. That armed conflict has - so far - left 70,000 people violently killed and an unending saga of humiliation, disappeared young men, orphans, widows - and silence from the outside world.

Two decades later, the armed rebellion has received a crushing blow, but the extreme militarisation of Kashmir remains unchanged. Official estimates suggest 627,000 Indian armed forces personnel, protected with impunity laws, are deployed to control an acutely alienated population of a little more than ten million.

Strategy for independence

To regain self-rule, Kashmiri resistance groups had tried the electoral route that the Indian constitution held out, despite a long history of a lack of credibility of that process. Elections held ostensibly for administrative purposes had always been interpreted by New Delhi as repeated referendums in its favour. But all that changed in 1987 when elections to the state legislature were massively rigged in favour of the expressly pro-India parties. For many of those who later picked up arms, and others who would be called "separatists", that election meant the end of constitutionally permissible ways to determine political destiny, and marked the beginning of an armed uprising.

The heavy cost of two decades of this war, and the post 9/11 global "war on terror" have also forced Kashmiris to re-assess their strategy to avoid being branded as "terrorists". The armed rebellion has for the most part today metamorphosised into mass anti-India street protests, which, since 2008, challenges Indian rule in ways that are more acceptable internationally. But, like the harsh military response to armed militancy and the resultant militarised scenario, the government's response to street protests has been brutal. Two years before Tahrir Square, Kashmir had its own "million-man-march" against Indian rule. Government forces killed 60 unarmed protesters during the mass rally.

In 2010, during anti-India stone throwing street protests against Indian rule, government action added more than 100 youths to the body count in Kashmir. Enraged Kashmiri people responded by memorialising their loss, struggle and sacrifice - forcing New Delhi to change its approach, if only superficially.

Deeply resented by Kashmiris, the invasive presence of the incredibly high concentration of armed forces among them now seeks acceptance among the population as coercive partners for their future within India. The army and other federal paramilitary forces have started a new "hearts and minds" campaign in the hope of winning acceptability among the Kashmiri youth at the forefront of the new movement for freedom. It clearly indicates the absence of any intention to demilitarise Kashmir, even as it is becoming increasingly unbearable for everyone - except those among the pro-India political elite.

Harsh Indian rule

For the immediate future, Kashmiris want an end to a situation that in the Indian perspective necessitates draconian laws such as the Public Safety Act (PSA) and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) to keep its hold over the Kashmiri people. Under the PSA, described by Amnesty International as a "lawless law", a political dissenter can be jailed for up to two years without formal charges or a trial. Hundreds of protesters arrested on charges of throwing stones at government forces have also been slapped with PSA charges. The law is wantonly used as a revolving door to keep dissenting voices "out of circulation".

The AFSPA, on the other hand, grants sweeping powers and impunity to the federal armed forces deployed in Kashmir in their hundreds of thousands. Its provisions allow armed forces personnel to arrest or kill people and destroy private property on the mere suspicion that of actions against the state.

Armed forces' personnel accused of grave human rights violations such as custodial killings of civilians and rape cannot be tried in civilian courts unless specifically permitted by New Delhi. Human rights defenders and police themselves have established hundreds of such cases prima facie against army and paramilitary forces' personnel, but not a single prosecution has been possible since 1990 - for want of the mandatory sanction from New Delhi.

But demands for demilitarising Kashmir and the repeal of laws such as AFSPA have started coming from within Indian civil society as well. The Indian army has declined to operate in Kashmir without the cover of AFSPA by calling the impunity law its "holy book".

With the bitter national memory of loss and humiliation caused by the militarisation of Kashmir, New Delhi is unlikely to succeed in attempts to normalise this extreme situation.

Meanwhile, Kashmiris are feeling ever more politically choked after the mass upsurge of the summer of 2010 - which was followed by a massive security crackdown, large scale arrests of protesters and resistance leaders alike from across the region - including some who are charged with protesting on Facebook.

The renewed stifling conditions have pushed the new generation of youth to force open new spaces amid the enforced "surface calm" which prevails now, after three years of mass protests against Indian rule and retaliatory killings by government forces. They have begun representing themselves by writing about their condition using the internet and social media such as Facebook and Youtube to reach out to a wider world. However, there is yet no sign of any significant change visible on the horizon.

Status quo

When Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently hoped that "Pakistan will leave Kashmir alone" he also revealed the Indian state's will to maintain the status quo, in the face of a decades-old mass movement for the right to self-determination in the part India holds in the disputed region.

In the autumn of 2010, New Delhi also appointed three interlocutors to engage "all shades of political opinion" in Kashmir. They lack credibility in Kashmir, as the main resistance leadership continues to refuse to meet them - mainly because the interlocutors are working for a political solution to the issue of Kashmir within the Indian Constitution.

An approach to resolve the dispute without the participation of Kashmiri resistance leadership presents a cul-de-sac. The region remains a keg of bitter and unforgiving memory, likened by many observers now to a live bomb - connected to a fuse that is already lit. The military establishment is constantly trying to lengthen the fuse.

Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers recently resumed a bilateral dialogue, but nothing more than enhancing a few existing Kashmir-specific confidence-building measures between the nuclear-armed rivals was achieved. The Kashmiri demand of inclusion in that dialogue process has again been ignored.

While people in Kashmir are waiting for the two countries to agree to end their political and existential uncertainty, they continue a lonely journey - pushing for, and hoping to win, a chance to decide their own future. 

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‘I don’t feel any purpose in life now’

Mirza Iftikhar Hussain, 40 
Namchebal, Srinagar, Jammu & Kashmir

WHY: Arrested for alleged involvement in the 21 May 1996 Lajpat Nagar blasts in Delhi. He was at that time in a rented room in Bhogal but police said they caught him at the railway station after a tip-off
WHEN: 14 June 1996
WHERE: Bhogal, New Delhi

Photo: Baba Umar

LAST YEAR on 9 May, amid the din of cheering friends and tearful relatives, 39-year-old Mirza Iftikhar Hussain walked slowly into his ancestral Srinagar home after nearly 14 years. The handicrafts dealer got pats on his shoulder, winks and hugs. Behind his back, he was the subject of ‘do-you-recognise-him’ remarks.

“Those who were kids all those years ago took time to recognise me,” says Hussain. “It wasn’t a problem for the elders though. They had waited 14 summers for my return.”

At the time of his arrest, Hussain, who used to run a Kashmir arts shop in Mussoorie, UP, was in Delhi. His younger brother Mirza Nissar Hussain (then 18), also an arts trader, was shown arrested on 17 June 1996 from Mussoorie. For the next 13 years, 10 months and 25 days, Hussain remained incarcerated, mostly in the high-security cell in Tihar Jail, facing trial on charges of possessing explosive substances and arms.

After a lengthy trial, District Judge SP Garg of the Patiala High Court declared Hussain innocent and acquitted him of all charges, along with three other accused, finding the police investigation full of holes. This was on 8 April 2010. Hussain’s younger brother was, however, convicted and awarded death sentence.

For his part, Hussain himself finds little meaning in being ‘free’. “I couldn’t attend my sisters’ weddings. Our business sank permanently. And Nissar (his brother) will never come out of jail. What price this freedom? Will I get back what I lost?” he asks, as he rests his arm on friend Riyaz Ahmad’s shoulder in the lawns of a Srinagar lower court.

Ahmad, 40, was among the few friends and neighbours who saw the family’s glory and decline in a span of a decade. “They (Mirzas) had a name and presence in the handicrafts market. But after 1996 they lost everything. The status they had acquired slipped through their hands like dry sand,” says Ahmad.

While the brothers were locked up, the world Hussain left behind didn’t stand still. Nor did his family. His unlettered mother, three sisters (unmarried then) and younger brother Mirza Zaffar endured emotional and financial hardships. “Zaffar quit graduation and started teaching in a private school to support the family,” he says.

Hussain is oval-faced, tall and well-built. However, his complexion is sallow and he is fast balding. While in jail, he completed one year of IGNOU’s commerce degree and then the Bachelor’s preparatory programme exam. But “I wasn’t mentally strong enough to get the degrees. I abandoned studies thereafter,” he adds.

After prolonged incarceration for a crime he didn’t commit, Hussain says he can’t even feel anger any more. “Things rarely make me angry — because I don’t feel any purpose in life now,” he says. And, after a long pause, adds: “I want to tell you that if you make a promise, you have to fulfil it. At least 10 percent of it, if not entirely.”

Hussain is referring to Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s announcement of rehabilitation made immediately after his release, which he says was a “hollow pledge to impress upon the media that he cares”.

“Leave aside rehabilitation, I applied for a loan to purchase a loom costing around 3.5 lakh. The bank refused. And they (government) talk about rehabilitating youth and promoting khadi and village industries in Kashmir,” he says.

Hussain is wary not only of mainstream politicians but of separatist leaders too. “No one visited our family. There was no medicine for my old mother. My sisters had a tough time finding a proper match and my brother suffered. But there were no freedom fighters to help us. At least they should have helped my family,” he says bitterly

Baba Umar is a Correpsondent with Tehelka.
babaumar@tehelka.com

(c) Tehelka

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MAMA I AM IN LOVE

In memory of Sameer Rah, 7 years old martyr

One fine afternoon he came rushing

Innocence on his face all gushing

He was emphatic with something great

Enthused this way was not in his trait

He had seen perhaps something unseen

His face was shining with an angelic sheen

He came rushing for his mother and said

Mama I want to reveal something I never had

Ma, I am in love, for which never did I dream

Ma, I know I am still not in that young team

I am a child, but I feel the love inside my soul

This struggle is taking on my mind a big toll

Mother said, my kid I still cannot believe

You still cannot put your hand through the sleeve

Go my lad take it easy and have a tight sleep

I still have the whole house to keep

But he kept on saying the same

Mother do u want to hear her name

Mother I am in love with my death

They will come to stop my breath

Mother I am going to die for my undone crime

Mother let me go, I am left will little time

And he came out of the lap and walked towards the street

Composed and calm he went for his love to greet

They came and took him away in their rage

They beat him till he was out of his cage

He cried at their kicks and buts but did not run

They plugged his mouth with the butt of the gun

He breathed his last after being tossed upon a stone

He met his love, and his mother did not mourn

For he is a lover who did not betray

Martyrs never die, Allah did say

His death gave us a new grave

More Sameer’s shall be consumed in this wave

Till mothers let leave their lads off their laps

Cruel guns shall roar for them perhaps.

(C) Koshur Mazloom with tearful eyes

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Pushing the Kashmiri to the wall, again

By Shivam Vij

In the first week of June, I sat at a shopfront with a group of shopkeepers of Kalarus, a small town in Kupwara district in north Kashmir. In 1999, they collected money and bought land for a martyrs’ graveyard, one of many such in Kashmir. Whenever the Indian army killed militants trying to infiltrate from Pakistan to the Indian side of the Line of Control, they would hand over the bodies to the Kupwara police, who would give it to these people to bury after the autopsy.

by Shivam Vij

“Look up at the mountain peak,” said one of them, “It is snow clad all twelve months. It is the LoC, 70 kms from here. Do you think anyone would cross that wearing the traditional Kashmiri Khan dress?” And yet, most of the hundred odd bodies in the graveyard had come wearing clothes unfit for snow. And, most of them had so many bullet marks on the face that they were unidentifiable.

This May, however, three bodies came whose faces were not mutilated, only one of them had a bullet mark on the face. They got mug-shots taken and gave them to Kashmiri Uzma, an Urdu daily. Some distance away in Handwara their families saw the photos and went to the police station. These were their missing sons; they had been taken to the LoC to work as porters for the army. This case is by no means an aberration, just that it came to light so conclusively it could not be denied by the authorities.

The ‘encounter’ had taken place at Machhil on the LoC on April 29, bodies exhumed after protests on May 30. This is only one of many encounters at Machhil in 2010, and many more have taken place elsewhere. India had maintained over the past few years that infiltration and militancy were down to record levels as Pakistan had turned off its support to the militant groups. What has changed in 2010? India and Pakistan are talking peace despite 26/11 being just a year old, and there is no change in the prevailing internal situation in Pakistan. This can’t surely be the time when Pakistan will re-open its support for the Kashmir insurgents?

What has changed is that the decline of militancy gave people the space to breath and reflect, and they refused to accept the Indian version that after the defeat of militancy all was over, and that we were now in a post-conflict situation. For the third consecutive summer now, therefore, the people of Indian-administered Kashmir have been taking to the streets, demanding azadi and pelting stones on soldiers and policemen they see as “occupying forces”. This is taking place despite that fact that Pakistan’s hold on even the separatists is at its lowest ebb and India has managed to win over and/or discredit various factions of the Hurriyat Conference. In such a scenario, there has been increasing pressure on Delhi to, at the very least, demilitarise in response to the decline in militancy.

The Indian Army is not only not in favour of repealing or amending the Armed Forces Special Powers Act that gives it impunity in all its actions in Kashmir and the north-eastern states, but has also on record stated its objections to be called back to the barracks. This supports widespread allegations in Kashmir that Indian forces have vested interests in Kashmir; earning monetary rewards and medals for killing innocent people and passing them off as militants is only one of them.

As Kashmir was protesting the Machhil fake encounter, a young boy, Tufail Ahmed Matoo, 17, was killed in Srinagar by the local police. They fired at him from such a close range that he died with a half-inch hole in his skull. He was returning from tuition, and even though the local police were chasing stone-pelters, the precision with which he was killed cannot be a mistake.

Why was Tufail Ahmed Mattoo killed? It may just be police frustration, but conspiracy theorists in Kashmir say it could be a way of diverting attention from Machhil.

Far from offering regret and ordering enquiries into Mattoo’s killing, the state government pretended as though all was fine. Stone-pelters had to be dealt with and such mistakes would take place. That’s when a vicious cycle of protest-death-protest started. In 18 days 11 civilians died, mostly minor boys, one of them 9 years old.

Kashmir’s summer of discontent has to be seen in the context of the post-militancy situation. As India was claiming victory in Kashmir, the people rose in revolt in 2008. 62 innocent protestors were killed.  There were protests all summer in 2009 against a double rape and murder case in Shopian, committed allegedly by either the local police or Indian forces. 32 (check) protestors were killed. In Shopian I met one of the members of the local committee asking for justice. They said they did not want to link this to azadi, they wanted justice under Indian laws. But when justice was denied, everybody said the only solution was azadi.

By this summer India has come down very hard on stone-pelters, arresting and killing countless. Protests have been responded to with bullets, curfew, banning media, even arresting those active on the internet. Delhi has made it clear it is not serious about engaging the separatist leadership, even though it has been pretending to be pen to dialogue since 2003. As a result, angry youth are not even in the control of the Hurriyat leaders.

It is clear that Delhi is not going to make any concessions to the people of Kashmir. The troops that Kashmiris see as a problem are for Delhi the solution. The Kashmiri common man feels frustrated to hear about Indo-Pak talks as though the Kashmiri people don’t matter. Not all of the infiltration encounters this summer have been fake, and there are rumours of more Kashmiris trying to cross the LoC into Pakistan. Delhi is pushing people to pick up the gun again, and perhaps it prefers that to non-violent protests for azadi that attract international attention.

Delhi, it seems, prefers to deal with an insurgency. Crushing non-violent protests makes India seem bad even before its own people, and that’s why the disinformation campaign through the Delhi media.

Another round of militancy in Kashmir, however, would mean that India will be able to portray itself as a victim of terrorism, especially if Pakistan re-opens the militant tap to Kashmir after Obama exits the Afghan theatre. It will be easier for India to crush another armed struggle as it is much better prepared to do so now that it was in 1989. Sadly, all signals are that Kashmir is headed for another bloody decade.

Source ( http://shivamvij.com/2010/07/29/pushing-the-kashmiri-to-the-wall-again/)

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