Cry for Compassion

I started reading “Curfewed Nights” by Basharat Peer after reading “Our Moon Has Blood Clots” by Rahul Pandita. Both are of about the same age and are talking about the same time, landscape, and issue. But what struck me like a thunderclap on my head is, I was looking at two different windows into their world which show completely different scenes. I know it is the same land they are talking about, Kashmir. But the views they presented were completely diverse.

While Rahul Pandita chooses to focus only on the issues of Pandits and pointing to religious bigotry of the Muslim brethren as a crux of the issue, without any larger context thus blinding out the organisational apathy and atrocities on Kashmir on whole, Peer tries to cover a larger picture. Both choose to go silent on the pains, atrocities, and ravages the other side faced. To be fair to Peer, he tries to walk around the Hindu Pandit issue with fragility and tenderness it requires, but he never delves into what triggered it or who perpetuated that. Pandita, while taking about the atrocities on the Pandits, totally hides out the suppression and atrocities faced by fellow Kashmiri Muslims and gives clean chit to people like Jagmohan who ordered extreme suppression, like the Gawkadal Massacre which precludes the madness inflicted on the Pandits in the 90’s. While that is no excuse for Muslim extremists – the issue was simmering for some time and the atrocities on Hindu Pandits started ebbing from November 1989 - to have inflicted the untold pains and atrocities on the Pandits, who are their fellow Kashmiris, the skipping of that event completely by Pandita to give the Governor and clear him of all wrong doing clouds his motive to certain extent.

“One protest began from a southern Srinagar area where my parents now live, passed the city centre, Lal Chowk, and marched through the nearby Maisuma district towards the shrine of a revered Sufi saint a few miles ahead. Protesters were crossing the dilapidated wooden Gawkadal Bridge in Maisuma when the Indian paramilitary, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), opened fire. More than fifty people were killed.”

…

“He saw an officer walking from body to body, checking whether anyone was alive. ‘I lay still and from the corner of my eye saw him firing more bullets every time he found a sign of life in an injured man.’ Farooq waited for the soldiers to leave. It was getting harder to pretend to be dead. Where he lay, someone had dropped a kangri, the firepot Kashmiris carry around in winter. Embers of charcoal from the firepot were scattered on the sidewalk. His cheek was burning from their heat. Slowly he turned his face to avoid the burn. The murderous officer saw him turn. ‘This bastard is alive,’ Farooq heard him shout. The officer ran towards him, kicked him, and a volley of bullets pierced through his body. He lost consciousness.”

Many vile atrocities by Indian Paramilitary and defence forces alleged and documented do not figure anywhere in the popular narrative. Those atrocities that made the common Kashmiri lives that were broken also fed the embers of separatist anger which was simmering from the 50’s to sufficiently destroy the land and the lives. Many such episodes chill one to the core. It is despairing to see religious bigotry induced horde landing on a hapless Pandit to beat, torture, maime, rape and kill. But the systematic abuse and torture by the authorities is completely another level of attrocity that appales and stuns.

“The BSF officer ordered the passengers to get out of the bus; a round of mass beating followed. Rashid fell on the road and lost consciousness. Mubeena stood along with her bridesmaid and others by the roadside. She was bleeding, when a group of soldiers dragged her and the chambermaid to the mustard fields beside the road. An unknown number of BSF men raped the two injured women. ‘I could not even remember how many they were. I had lost my senses,’ Mubeena said.”

…

“An enquiry was ordered; some paramilitary soldiers were suspended. New personnel took their place: soldiers who did not recognise Rashid and Mubeena. But she still shivers at the sight of a uniform. That night lingers around her like a ghost, refusing to be exorcised.”

...

“Papa-2 was the most infamous torture centre run by the Indian forces in Kashmir.”

“‘How can I forget it? Not even stray cows would eat the food they threw at us there.’ He passed a plate of plum cake to me. ‘That place destroyed most people who were there. You do not live a normal life after that torture. It scars you forever.’ He lit a cigarette and talked about his experience. ‘They beat us up with guns, staffs, hands. But that was nothing.’ His voice had no emotion and he talked as if he was reading from a manual. ‘They took you out to the lawn outside the building. You were asked to remove all your clothes, even your underwear. They tied you to a long wooden ladder and placed it near a ditch filled with kerosene oil and red chilli powder. They raised the ladder like a seesaw and pushed your head into the ditch. It could go on for an hour, half an hour, depending on their mood. ‘It was the beginning. At times, they would not undress you but tie you to the ladder. You almost felt relieved until they tied your pants near the ankles and put mice inside.’ He paused for a while, poured more tea and said, ‘Or they burnt your arms and legs with cigarette butts and kerosene stoves used for welding. They burn your flesh till you speak.’ He rolled up his right sleeve and pushed it a little beyond the elbow. An uneven dark brown patch of flesh sat in an ugly contrast against his pale skin. ‘They tied copper wire around your arms and gave high voltage shocks. Every hair on your body stood up. But the worst was when they inserted the copper wire into my penis and gave electric shocks. They did it with most boys. It destroyed many lives. Many could not marry after that.’”

It is an often-repeated question how a predominantly assertive Sufi society of Kashmir could steep into religious induced madness.

“Nooruddin Rishi is the patron saint of Kashmir. He was mentored by Lalleshwari, a Brahmin woman, who after much suffering at the hands of her in-laws rebelled and became a mystic, preaching oneness of God and arguing against the ancient Hindu caste system.”

The more the issues are brushed under, more lives are pushed through the edge. The darkness of despair and vacuum of hopelessness is filled with religion. Irrespective of being Hindu, Muslim or Christian, this is always the common human phenomenon. One does not exorcise the daemons of religions by being driven to the edges. It is always the contrary.

“The government has refused to set up a commission of enquiry into the disappearances and claims that the missing citizens of Kashmir have joined militant groups and crossed for arms training to Pakistan. Many Kashmiris believe the ‘disappeared’ men were killed in custody and cremated in mass graves. Wives of many such men have given up hope and tried to move on. Others are obsessively fighting for justice, hoping their loved ones will return. The men and women in the park were the parents and wives of the missing men. Dirty wars seem to have a way of bringing mothers to city squares.”

….

“Even the doctors at the crowded psychiatric hospitals recommended a reliance on faith, my doctor friend Shahid told me. God and his saints seemed to have become the psychiatrists with the largest practice in Kashmir; faith was essentially a support system.”

So, asking why the struggle becomes more and more steeped in religion is moronic and foolish. Masses need opium to dull their despair which in this case could be a medicine rather than an addiction.

Once religion became the beacon of hope, it was ripe for pro-Islamic movements to hijack and direct the people.

“By 1993–94, Islamist militant groups had gained the upper hand in the separatist militancy and Kashmiri nationalist groups like pro-independence JKLF had become defunct, surrendered, and adopted the politics of non-violent protest. Pakistan was key to that, being as resolutely against the idea of an independent Kashmir as was India. Pakistan turned towards its old-time supporter in Kashmir: the Jamaat-e-Islami, Jammu and Kashmir, a right wing politico-religious organisation which had had a very small presence in Kashmir since the early fifties. Maulana Sayid Abu Ala Mawdudi, a journalist, founded the Jamaat in Lahore in 1941; Mawdudi hoped to establish an Islamic state and saw reforming individuals, being morally upright, and strict adherence to Islamic convictions as the way to his goal. The Jamaat reached Kashmir around a decade later, and tried to expand its influence by running schools, holding regular cadre meetings, extensively distributing pamphlets and cheaply printed books written by Mawdudi. It remained close-knit, cadre-based, and grew in its self-righteousness, certainty, and political ambition, common to such right wing politico-religious groups.”

…

“The nature of the separatist militancy in Kashmir had changed. The pro-Pakistan Hizbul Mujahideen dominated the pro-independence JKLF by 1994. By the mid nineties, the Pakistani pan-Islamist Lashkar-e-Toiba and, later, Jaish-e-Mohammed, became more prominent presences. The Pakistani Islamist militants mostly kept to themselves and did not mingle with the population like the Kashmiri militants. Lashkar and Jaish believed in suicide bombings, which the Kashmiri militants had avoided. I had never seen a Lashkar or Jaish man except on TV or in the newspaper pictures, which showed the dead militants being dragged by soldiers after a suicide attack on a military camp.”

In the case of Basharat Peer, his family embraced him while he was but a step from taking up arms himself to move him towards the larger world by education. That gave him a way away from the madness. It also opened his eyes that the Muslims in the Rest of India, though sympathetic to Kashmiris, had a completely different view on Kashmir than that of the fellow Muslims in kashmir.

“The university was and remains one of the few politically tolerant spaces in New Delhi.”

“I was also getting to understand the various Indias that existed, Indias that I liked and cared about, Indias that were unlike the militaristic power it seemed in Kashmir. India had opened its economy in the early nineties. Round the clock channels broadcast news and the number of magazines was growing.”

“India was grotesque and fascinating.”

…

“Yet despite their insecurity and despair in an India witnessing the rise of Hindu nationalism, most of my Indian Muslim friends seemed quite patriotic. They disagreed with the Kashmiri ideas of secession from India and saw the secession of a Muslim-majority Kashmir from India as bound to make life worse for India’s Muslims. Whenever a cricket match was screened in the television room of our hostel, my Indian Muslim friends cheered, sang, and rooted for the Indian cricket team. The Kashmiris cheered for Sri Lanka or whoever else was on the opposite team.”

There it opened a hope for him when he met a Kashmiri Pandit Landlady who readily took him in knowing he is a Kashmiri and Muslim, after being shut door in many places because of his identity.

“I fought my tears; after months of suspicion I was being welcomed and treated with respect. ‘Go and get your bags,’ she said. I returned with my bags in an hour and she showed me my room. Over an empty bed hung a big picture of Ganesha. ‘Shall I take it off?’ she asked. It stayed.”

That perhaps could be a beacon of hope, that may offer salvation from this darkness.