Voices of Resistance From Kashmir

Saturday, August 28, 2021
6:30 PM 7:30 PM

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This webinar was held on 28 August 2021.

“I don’t know how we existed in the past, but for me, the identity I invoke is one of resistance to oppression, this is the identity I was born with, this is how I identify myself. I’m not sure about ‘this land belongs to me’, where my ancestors came from, but this I know for sure, that India is the oppressor and my resistance to this oppression is my identity.”

“We don’t want azadi [freedom] because there’s human rights violations [in Kashmir]; it’s because we are asking for azadi, that there are human rights violations.”

The webinar focused on the impact of the increasing repression in Kashmir and its implications for academic work. We invited four graduates to share their experiences, three as panellists and one to co-moderate the session alongside our InSAF India moderator. Days before the webinar, one panellist pulled out. They were worried that participation in our webinar might affect their security clearance to travel abroad. On 31 July 2021, the Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) government issued an order that police verification will be required for issuance or renewal of passports of all Jammu & Kashmir residents. This includes checking the person’s history of participation in “crimes prejudicial to the security of the state”. In a country increasingly using sedition laws to quell dissent, the spectrum of what is a “seditious crimes” is increasingly broadening. Following the webinar, as we heard about students being affected by this order, we decided not to upload the webinar on our YouTube channel.

The voices of the panellists however cannot be silenced, and this article is a report of the panel discussion and Q&A with the audience. It is necessary to share their experiences, the many ways in which Kashmiri people have been resisting brutal state repression that goes back to before India’s independence from British rule. While major historical developments over the years have shaped the way the conflict has evolved over time, so have the strategies of resistance adopted by the people against the Indian state. The more recent onslaught of Indian repression in August 2019 has been the action of the current Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government under Narendra Modi to autocratically scrap Articles 370 and 35a of the Indian Constitution, which guaranteed autonomy to the region. This action has targeted the very Kashmiri identity alongside their struggle for freedom. Additional troops were deployed in what is already the most militarised zone in the world, countless citizens were arrested and jailed, many activists and journalists were tortured and many remain in preventive detention since over two years. But, as our panellists said, Kashmiri resistance and resilience continue to grow.

Voices of Resistance from Kashmir

“We don’t want azadi [freedom] because there’s human rights violations [in Kashmir]; it’s because we are asking for azadi, that there are human rights violations.”

On the impact of the scrapping of Articles 370 and 35a on everyday life in Kashmir

“Our fight is not for the restoration of statehood but for the right to self-determination. In this, we want Article 370 to be restored till we reach any true resolution … The Indian state has presented their action as a means of ‘development’ and peace building. Actually on the ground, it has disrupted almost every aspect of daily life.”

“For the people, the struggle is for freedom and for self-determination. So the whole narrative of, shooting it down to Article 370 – making it a reference point is a problem. We should always focus on the bigger issue of self-determination.”

In the days just prior to the revocation, recalled one panellist, who had been preparing to travel to the West for higher education, many people had been detained, mosques were asked to submit lists of people who attended them regularly and local police were on high alert. This triggered rumours that the government of India may take some action soon, and on 5 August 2019 Kashmiris woke up to a complete communication blackout: mobiles, landlines, internet, TV networks, public and private transport, all had been stopped. Finally, at midday, an announcement was broadcast informing the people that the articles had been revoked.

A sibling of the panellist was due to fly to Delhi and had to travel to the airport in an ambulance. On the way, the roads were quiet except for the presence of the armed forces. But the internet blockade continued and for more than 20 days no communication was possible with relatives, friends or well-wishers within or beyond Kashmir. Medical supplies and tests (such as CT and MRI), treatments (such as dialysis) and insurance claims, and infant nutritional were some services among others that were severely disrupted because of their dependence on online systems.

The panellist could not respond to university emails to complete admissions formalities. Then local police stations set up a few emergency phone-lines, permitting a 1-2 minute calls in everyone’s presence including the police. So as the panellist called a friend to ask them to communicate with the university, they had no choice but to risk their privacy while spelling out their email address and password.

The panellist cited several data from the “[Dis]Integration at Gunpoint: Kashmir Reading Room Yearly Report (Aug 2019 – Aug 2020)” to highlight the damage incurred in several areas. They referred to the economic damage incurred in the first year after the revocation; and the increase in cordon and search operations, killings and territory wide internet shutdowns. They also talked about surveilling of government employees including teachers -- with suspension of salaries or termination of services for “alleged” actions or links to terrorists, going back even 20 years, without due investigation. The destruction of over 45 properties on the claim that terrorists may be hiding inside was particularly concerning since it happened during the Covid-19 pandemic, when the government was advising people to stay at home.

The panellist also discussed the case of a teacher’s son who committed suicide in May 2020. The teacher’s salary had been stopped on a claim that he had been a militant in the 1990s even though the allegations were never proven in court. In November 2019, the government of India claimed that 609 detainees remained of 5,561 since 5 August 2019, but a report by the Jammu and Kashmir High Court Bar Association states that nearly 13,000 people are still in detention.

The other panellist emphasised that the abrogation of Article 370 was a tool to invisibilise the real issue – the occupation of Kashmir by the Indian state.

“So many discussions and reports are mostly focusing on the revocation and repercussions of the abrogation. So, for example, stories like, if the Article has been taken, everything has been taken, statehood has been taken, our whole identity has been taken … So the whole narrative of, shooting it down to Article 370 – making it a reference point is a problem. We should always focus on the bigger issue of self-determination. Also the abrogation is a form of legal annexation that India did to Kashmir, in the sense it is, like we say, this colonisation is double faced – this Article 370 abrogation is seen as another form of invisibilisation of the real issue … we never had any contract with the Indian government, I don’t know who this ‘we’ was, because we never had that autonomy to decide for ourselves. So this democracy, these articles, have all been tools to invisibilise the occupation.“

However, the panellist then noted, the “iron fist” approach since the revocation has made this occupation fully visible.

On being a Kashmiri student in India and the West

“It is the failure of Indian academia that there is no political space left in the university for a Kashmiri to talk about what they have faced.”

One panellist has found it difficult to talk about Kashmir in Indian university spaces. When Indian students asked them about Kashmir, they said the onus is put on them to prove that they had been oppressed, and to provide the facts. The panelist found this situation so ironical because the Indian students were more likely to have greater access to the internet or to libraries. They quoted a poem by Tariq Umair Usmani to convey how the atmosphere made them feel guilty of just being a Kashmiri in India’s metropole university political spaces:

I have been charged guilty of being murdered

The one who has murdered me is my judge

He has given the verdict that my dead body should be sent to prison

Now when, and even though, everything is over

The lawyers and intellectuals have started discussing that this murderer became a little tired when he was committing the murder

And the knife was also somewhat blunted

So who will compensate for that?

In their experience, Kashmiri students wanting to contribute to the political culture of Indian universities also have to resist the saviour stance of more privileged Indian students, particularly after 5 August 2019: “they were going to free us from this permanent state of victimhood that we had to portray.” Some Kashmiri students formed an apolitical collective, in which it became apparent that many were scared “because colonisation destroys your self-hood. And you need self-hood for forming a political group. So we thought forming a collective would help pick up the pieces of our broken self-hood and then we could think of the next level. We’d also internalised Article 370 – so when we’re together we think we’re doing something illegal, we’ll be cautious with each other.”

At one Indian university the panellist joined an association for Kashmiri students that had the patronage of the Students Federation of India (SFI). They took part in organising and asserting their political identity. Here the Kashmiri students are not “a ‘B’ team of SFI, but have our own identity and we are not just objects of sympathy.” But, as they would explain the necessity of creating spaces for the Kashmiris’ demand for self-determination, they noted that Indian students would feel uncomfortable.

Also, as the Western discourse of Islamophobia has filtered into these university spaces, and many Kashmiri students are also Muslims, asserting their identity becomes even more difficult. Because Kashmir “has a Muslim majority population our being Muslim is part of being oppressed. So they’re uncomfortable and it becomes difficult for us to assert our identity and a barrier remains.”

One panellist has found it easier to organise in Western universities. In these spaces, a wider range of opinions were encouraged. But “if you speak too much here” it can have “consequences back home”. They reminded us of the missing panellist. The Kashmiri moderator also noted that there were limits to Western openness: “what kind of narrative you are presenting and how it suits institutions [here] often takes precedence over simply amplifying voices.”

Personal experiences with faculty in India or of Indian origin had often been disillusioning. In the main, nothing was articulated on Kashmir with these students, except in commonly heard ways, for example, “Oh you’re a Muslim, I just love biryani. Biryani is my favourite.” Some faculty assumed the students were from another country such as Iran.

The pandemic has also affected educational outcomes. The lockdown environment and continued crackdowns by the security forces were distracting and accessing online learning was difficult. One panellist was not able to complete and submit their assignments and experienced “insensitivity in the Indian academic environment”. On explaining the situation to their ethics professor they had hoped for an empathetic response and extension of the deadline. When the professor called back, said the panellist, “I was excited that he will tell me ‘Okay beta, it’s okay, please submit later on’”, but the professor only perfunctorily asked how everything was going and then he said he could not change the deadline. The panellist felt the pressure of being a Kashmiri student and the irony of not only pleading to an ethics professor, but also that it would encourage the Indian saviour attitude. Eventually their grades were negatively affected, and so also their final degree certificate.

On the significance of the varied impact of the oppression on strategies of resistance among different social groups

“This narrative that the state wants to create that they are there for the marginalised minorities … is a hoax like all their narratives of development … and there will be different strategies of resistance, but there are no ‘favourites’ of India”

Both panellists acknowledged that Kashmir society has its own hierarchies of gender, religion and caste. This means that the impact of the oppression can be differently experienced. The panellists elaborated on this in terms of gender and religious background, drawing on their experiences based on their social positionings. But they clearly stated that no one voice could represent all of Kashmir, whether it was theirs, or the diaspora’s or any other Kashmiri’s.

The Indian media has attempted to portray Shia Muslims “as in favour of the Indian state” or as “oppressed by the majority [Sunni] in the past”, and that the Indian state is bringing “liberation for the Shias”. Yet, when Shia Muslims assert themselves, the Indian state displays its colonial character; for example, the crackdown on Muharram mourners and the detention of the Shia cleric Manzoor Malik on spurious grounds. In other words, the oppression itself is often not hierarchical although the impact can be differently experienced.

Similarly, panellists also spoke about how the oppressor state does not divide by sexual orientation in the larger spectrum of oppression, but that “violence is practised differently on men and women”. They noted similarities with the American invasion of Afghanistan: in November 2001, Laura Bush said that the fight against terrorism was simultaneously a fight for the rights and dignity of women. The Indian state similarly misappropriates feminism.

For instance, “women’s empowerment” is a reason India has also given for the revocation. Popular Indian cultural stereotypes portray Kashmiri women as the light-skinned, gullible women who need to be saved from the Kashmiri men who are portrayed as oppressive, aggressive and extremist Islamists. While acknowledging that Kashmiri society is patriarchal like other South Asian societies, the panellists pointed out that Kashmiri women have played an important role in the resistance against state oppression in a variety of ways: from scholarly writing to picking up arms. No acknowledgement of these actions is made by the Indian state, which instead intimidates the women speaking out or writing, for example charging the international award winning photojournalist Musrat Zahra under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).

The agency of Kashmir women has also been reduced by the Indian state’s ‘championing’ of women’s empowerment in a militarised state through actions such as a fashion show held at the same time when the region was experiencing a surge in Covid-19 infections.

The state’s noticeable silence on the struggle of Kashmiri women to get justice in the many cases of sexual assaults by the Indian state’s armed forces encourages denial of these assaults by those in positions of influence. One panellist recounted an event in a feminist college where they asked the guest, the vice-chancellor of Kashmir Central University, on their stand on the Kunan Poshpora case. The vice-chancellor summarily dismissed Kashmiri women as backward, saying they are actually beaten up by their in-laws but put the blame on the Indian army, and “they were just four women initially and then the number magically rose to 40 or 50 ...”.

The panellists explained that people can be insensitive because Kashmiri women are viewed as “women of the enemy”. They reminded us of how immediately after the revocation, on social media sites, Indian men were celebrating the idea that now they would get to marry light-skinned Kashmiri women: Kashimir jayenge, usko utha layenge. “This fetishization of Kashmiri women is pure racism,” one panellist wryly commented, “when these thoughts are proliferating, that marrying a woman of a particular colour or region is a sense of achievement, what empowerment is there here for women?”

On Kashmir’s additional challenges in the pandemic

“The biggest Covid virus in Kashmir is the Indian army.”

Prior to the Covid-19 lockdown in India, Kashmir had already been on lockdown for several months. But the lack of a widely familiar “language of lockdown” meant that it was not easy for Kashmiris to explain what they were experiencing, including their psychological trauma. While the pandemic brought additional challenges, it continued to be monitored by the military rather than police as in the rest of India (although that too is problematic).

Many people did not have money to buy medicines for Covid-19 because the economy was already suffering due to the ongoing Kashmir lockdown. Many half-widows, family members of disappeared persons, who depend on NGOs were not able to access them, having no internet or transportation. LGBTQ community members who live alone were hard hit because of lack of income. A 2020 government order for their ‘welfare’ only gave them Rs 1000 (£10) per month and that too only after they would have to wade through a whole host of bureaucratic procedures and present a certificate in Covid times.

An “economic resistance” has developed as mohalla committees, mosques, student platforms, and organisations such as Sonzal continue to take risks and manage to distribute food packets and other aid. Shopkeepers are fulfilling daily needs via debt.

At the time of the webinar, the Covid lockdown was over, but the panellists spoke about several other “lockdown” issues they were still facing, for instance using the internet to express themselves and struggles with ongoing education.

The panellist reflected that while the lockdown had done much damage, people continue to resist: “I believe in this circumstance, when your colonisers have these genocidal tendencies/impulses, even to exist is a form of resistance.”

On how the constant experience of oppression and resistance contribute to the Kashmiri identity, Kashmiri social self

“You will see some Kashmiris and some anchors saying – what did you think of the Kashmiris? Oh yes we liked them very much, they are very good at heart. I have been to many places in India but no-one’s ever asked me how did you find the people of Himachal or Delhi?”

The panellists talked about how the Kashmir identity is shaped by the statist narrative of development, and how Indian administrative policies for Kashmir are often projected as development projects. The neoliberal narratives are rooted in Islamophobia: that Kashmir is “underdeveloped” because it is a Muslim majority region and that Kashmiri women are more oppressed because they are Muslim.

For example, they talked about how Kashmiris are represented by the tourist industry (which is encouraged by the Indian state’s narrative of development to justify the colonisation) as benevolent, happy, innocent hosts who look forward to serving visitors from India (but who become “dangerous” when outside Kashmir). Kashmir was often used as a backdrop in Bollywood films of the 1970s, creating the impression of “our Kashmir” among Indians. Hence the encouragement of the tourist industry as part of the “progressive” development of a conservative state by Indian, even through the pandemic, is to gloss over the resistance, to encourage Kashmiris to internalise their oppression.

An example of resistance through culture that panellists mentioned was Kashmiri singers choosing to sing Kashmiri songs in preference to Bollywood songs. The panellists also outlined other forms of resistance. They talked about knowledge-based resistance – the Kashmir Reading Room initiative, the feminist Zanaan Wanaan collective’s writing on what liberation means for them, even though “In these times just talking can send you behind bars”. They also talked about psychological resistance – not accepting the status quo – I need to do more, I could do more (either inside or outside Kashmir) a constant guilt, although “this guilt is also a form of resistance – it’s resistance against the internalised oppression; political resistance – you can make us sing the national anthem but it doesn’t make us feel anything and we continue with the slogan of azadi despite all the violence we’ve faced.”

On the role of the Kashmiri diaspora and others in supporting Kashmiri resistance

“Now the space is shrinking for us in India, even in Kashmir I feel there’s no space. So to keep the narrative alive … so like before in 2009, 2010 they [the diaspora] used to look at us – what we are doing and then support us, now the trajectory has changed a bit. Now we’re looking at them and what they are doing as they still have that space.”

The panellists agreed that the Kashmiri diaspora “have much more responsibility than before”. They could build solidarity with groups in Kashmir and form safe networks so information about situation in Kashmir can be amplified. They can also contribute towards the financial help needed to rebuild destroyed homes.

The panellists also appreciated the work by the diaspora they knew of. They did not think that any one group could represent the whole of Kashmir’s diverse society and in their experience, they had not come across this as an issue.

On the obstacles to a mass movement by Indian intellectuals against human rights injustices in Kashmir and in support of self-determination in Kashmir

“they want to hear the answers that we’re refusing to give. If you just understand Kashmir as a human rights violations issue … we can’t expect anything from you. It has to be like [we] said: We aren’t killed because human rights violations are occurring, human rights violations are occurring because we demand the right to self-determination.”

The panellists emphasised that Indians needed to think beyond the simplistic narrative of nationalism that was pervasive: “All people in power [in India and in the West] have been complicit in the war in Kashmir. … It is inhuman when you take advantage of the misery of people, people being killed, blinded and assaulted on the ground and nurture your politics out of it.”

Academics and students need to be discerning about “what they read in universities, be sensitive, show respect, and what you advocate as flag bearers of democracy and equality think about Kashmir. We aren’t some dummy bodies or vote bank for you. We are real people, we suffer, every word you utter has an impact so please be very careful and stop doing politics with real human suffering and tragedies.”

Academics and students “also need to understand that selective inclusion, the intellectual hypocrisy empowers the oppressors instead of weakening them.” For instance, in the current climate of Islamophobia, Indian Muslim colleagues of the panellists tend to support the nationalistic narrative by declaring Kashmir should be part of India. But that same nationalistic jingoism is also being used against the very same people by the BJP when they have resisted institutionalising the party’s Islamophobic ideology.

The panellists agreed that for a mass movement to emerge, selective support strategies will need to be discarded. Along with other Indians, Indian Muslim students need to ensure a space for Kashmir in their political spaces, and to challenge the narrative on Kashmir that is being propounded by the Indian state; otherwise they are complicit in the dehumanisation of Kashmiris.

Concluding reflections

One panellist ended by quoting from Albert Camus and Faiz Ahamd Faiz:

“To my people of Kashmir …: Even if you are thrown to the gallows, it’s up to you how you choose to face death. You can cry, you can weep, that is us.”

“Dil nā-umīd to nahīñ nākām hī to hai, lambī hai ġham kī shaam magar shaam hī to hai”*

For the twilight [shaam] to end, “We need to understand the power of international solidarities, learn from each other’s struggles and see the similarities in the structures of oppression globally but also need to understand the socio-political context that makes one struggle different from another. So in the context of South Asia let’s stop finding similarities between Kashmiri suffering and marginalised others in India and stop conflating the two issues. The Kashmiri issue is not just against right wing propaganda or the BJP, the conflict is much older. We must understand the issues at the core of the conflict and educate ourselves to recognise the falsities in the narratives being fed to us. So the solidarity in this context needs to be unconditional, needs to be more nuanced and Indians and the international community need to realise their accountability towards Kashmiris and demand the end to the occupation and recognise the right to self-determination.”

*Translation: I haven’t lost hope, but just a fight, that’s all; the night of suffering lengthens, but it is just a night, that’s all. [Salil Tripathi: Faiz, love and revolution, 24 February 2011, mint]

Other webinars available as educational resources

Co-hosts for the above webinars include Ambedkar King Study Circle (California), India Civil Watch International, British Association for South Asian Studies, Scholars At Risk, the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis (ASCA), University of Amsterdam, The Forum on Education in Asia (UCL), and the SIU University Honors Program