By: Azam Inqilabi
Every sensitive humanist, while commenting on Kashmir upheaval and turmoil, gives vent to his aggrieved feelings through scathing and vitriolic philippic and declamation against the haughty Delhi rulers who are hell-bent on muzzling and muffling every voice of dissent in Kashmir. Prashant Bhushan, the renowned Supreme Court lawyer, does not mince words when he, through candour and straightforwardness, anatomizes the fallacy of Indian democracy. “No Kashmiri is safe in India. AFSPA, the draconian law, is the source of every human rights abuse and violation in Kashmir. We should accept and recognize Kashmir issue as a stark reality which seeks attention for a peaceful settlement.â€
This is how the distinguished lawyer comments on Kashmir imbroglio and cataclysm. It is incumbent on every Kashmiri to respect the Indian luminaries like Prashant Bhushan, Gautam Navlakha and Swami Agnivesh for their uprightness and righteousness; all of them are prompt in empathizing themselves with Kashmiris, who feel strangulated, mortified and victimized because of the tyrannical and barbarian attitude of the authoritarian imperialism of Delhi. “Atoot ang†monotone and monomania of Delhi chauvinistic and imperialistic rulers has converted Kashmir into a veritable hell.
Kashmiri scholar Mudasir Kamran was assassinated in Hyderabad on March 3-2013 for no fault of the victim except that he, like any committed Kashmiri patriot, expressed his grief and sorrow over the custodial killing of Afzal Guru in Tihar jail on Feb. 9-2013. Mudasir had the privilege to lead a funeral rally where the participants, in their epicedium and monody, paid tribute to martyr Afzal Guru for his exemplary sacrifice. Kashmiris were busy in mourning the dastardly murder of martyr Mudasir when army personnel, after ransacking dozens of houses in Baramulla on March 5- 2013, killed one more Kashmiri scholar Tahir Rasool with immunity and impunity. The draconian law, AFSPA, indemnifies them against accountability. This is what all human rights activists grumble about.
Indian authoritarianism and totalitarianism canonizes erring soldiers; and that is why every Indian soldier is eager to act like Gen Dyer with dictatorial martial prerogative. People who believe in canonical norms of democracy, right to dissent and altruistic objectivity in governance feel aggrieved, spooked, rankled and agonized due to the administrative rowdyism and overbearing demeanour of hawkish rulers of Delhi.
It is the perfidy and betrayal of Indian rulers which triggered off intricacy and insurgency here. Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru, the former Premier of India, addressed a gathering of about twenty thousand people at Lal chowk on Nov. 11- 1947 and declared in unequivocal words that India, as a democratic country, would like to assure Kashmiris of a fair and free referendum and plebiscite in Kashmir so that they would determine the political future of Kashmir in a peaceful democratic way. It is deplorable that Indian rulers reneged on their pledge and promise. Their Chanakiyan and Machiavellian mindset allured them to adopt the policy of ‘deceit in dispensation’. Their militarism, dictatorial and despotic activism in Kashmir resulted in mayhem and carnage. They vandalized and ravaged Kashmir thereby excelling Chengez and Halaku in scourge. They smashed up the democratic resistance institutions here relentlessly. Freedom zealots, who reminded New Delhi rulers of their promise and ‘vachan’ regarding Kashmir, were subjected to humiliation, victimization and torture. They were arrested and lodged in concentration camps.
Leaders and activists of Plebiscite Front remained languishing in Indian prisons for over a decade. So it was the arrogance and ruthlessness of Delhi colonialists which forced Muhammad Maqbool Bhat, the political and militant genius of Kashmir, to think in terms of an armed revolt and rebellion in Kashmir. Thus Kashmir insurrection, after passing through gradual evolutionary stages of perfection, assumed the dimensions of a mass uprising in 1988 when Kashmiri youth made up their mind to requite for the custodial killing of freedom icon Maqbool Bhat who was gibbeted on Feb. 11- 1984 in Tihar jail. The past 25-yeard old insurgency consumed 150 thousand Kashmiris and about forty thousand Indian soldiers as well. Still the arrogance of egocentric Delhi rulers does no ebb.
Delhi imperialists, who superciliously bulldozed the democratic political resistance institutions in Kashmir, should not feel worried about the unpredictable militant bulge in Kashmir. They should try to understand that carnage could not corner the resistance movement here. And instead, it reinvigorated the resistance forces and revitalized the resolve of Kashmiri freedom votaries to resist the onslaught of India without swerving, wavering and vacillating in the path of sustained freedom struggle. The Delhi liege lords demonized and diabolized the political resistance leaders and activists. Today Indian rulers feel jinxed due to what they did in jitter and rash and brash proactive administrative assertion on Feb, 9- 2013 when they hanged Afzal Guru to remind us of the hanging episode of Feb. 11- 1984 when Kashmiri freedom icon Maqbool Bhat faced the gallows in Tihar jail.
Now you cannot contain what is cropping up here as an aftermath and repercussion of your dictatorial hooliganism. Have patience to await the paroxysmal, cathartic and volcanic eruption of pent-up feelings and emotions of the two million chivalrous youth of Kashmir that straddles the Loc. Delhi hawks should bear in mind that strategic aspects of Kashmir issue will indispensably add to the vulnerability of your system in Kashmir. Remember that:
Kashmir is not Junagarh, Hyderabad or Bangladesh. They helpless freedom loving people of these geographically besieged states could not withstand your military onslaught. You were unnecessarily jubilant in displaying your triumphalism in 1971 war; you could not consign the two-nation theory to Indian Ocean. Present anti-India aversion in Bangladesh turmoil is vividly conspicuous. Inhospitable mountainous terrain of Kashmir is contiguous with and abuts on the equally inhospitable mountainous terrain of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Taliban Mujahedeen of Pakistan and Afghanistan had the guts to take on you in Afghanistan which you tried to use as a launching pad for your anti-Pakistan subversive activity. These Mujahedeen have already expressed their resolve to resist your expansionistic onslaught in Kashmir as well. Military strategists of Pakistan are not oblivious of your nefarious designs to convert the paddy fields of that country into barren deserts by diverting the course of rivers which originate from Kashmir. China, the Asian giant considering Arunachal Pradesh a bone of contention, may feel relieved and relaxed when Mujahedeen with exogenous origin will start asserting in Kashmir.
Muslim Countries, which are watching your cumulative military build-up with care and suspicion, would want to see you entangled and entrenched in Kashmir quagmire simply to checkmate your expansionistic obtrusion in and outside South Asia. And Western Countries, which feel worried about their future economic comfort while coping with their present dwindling economic dazzle, may feel jealous of your sprawling stature as a growing economic power; so they may not feel like going in for proactive diplomatic peripatetic engagement in South Asia to facilitate breakthrough in Indo-Pak peace process.
Kashmiris, the victims of your malignant malice, are therefore, circumstantially constrained to live with the unwholesome developments unfolding in days to come. Kashmiris, who are on the receiving end, find themselves sandwiched between the two polarized nuclear power of South Asia. Kashmiri political resistance leaders should work in unison to make Muthidah Majlis-e-Mushawarat (MMM) a broad-based consultative forum by roping in and co-opting all the resistance leaders. MMM, through sustained political and diplomatic campaign can create a situation where Indian intransigence and obduracy will give way to objectivity, rationalism and pragmatism; that is how you can find a way out of present state of uncertainty and stalemate. And that is the desired course you should adopt to salvage and safeguard the struggle for Azadi and hypostasize the right to self-determination.
M. Azam Inqilabi
Patron JK- Mahaz-e-Azadi
