Views of the wall of separation near the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem. Richard Gray EMPICS Entertainment. Press Association Images. All rights reserved.The
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in one of his recent chest-thumping speeches, compared the Indian
forces with those of Israel.
Modi’s comparison came within the context of the
Indian Army claiming to have carried out “surgical strikes” across the LoC and
dismantling launch pads used by the Pakistani-sponsored militant groups to
infiltrate across the de facto border that divides India and Pakistan held
Kashmir.
Now,
if we bend-over backwards and accept this claim, dismissing the scepticism that
various international media agencies, such as CNN, BBC and Washington
Post – establishments that usually spare no chance portraying Pakistan as a
virtually rogue state – expressed over these strikes, the question that still
begs an answer is, even from the Indian point of view, did this act induce any
substantial change in the vexing political scenario of Kashmir?
The
scale of India and Israel’s cooperation is underlined by the Indian President
Pranab Mukherjee’s welcome speech to his Israeli
counterpart during Reuvin Rivlin’s visit to the country. "India admires the
people of Israel for all that you have accomplished," Mukherjee said in his
pre-dinner speech.
Coming
back to Modi’s Freudian slip, the Israeli treatment of Palestinians might serve
as an ideal vantage point to scrutinize Indian rule over Kashmir. Besides being
one of Israel’s largest defence customers, Indians in the past have sought
Israeli expertise to quell mass street protests in Kashmir.
Occupation
While
there is a near unanimous stand within the international community over the
status of post-1967 West Bank – a pervasive military occupation that needs to end
for any sustainable peace – Kashmir does not hold the same designation.
With
more than half a million Indian forces spread across the region’s landscape, in
recent days, powerful voices across the ideological spectrum have not shied
away from assigning a similar label to India’s reign in Kashmir.
Whether
it be the liberal corporate Time Magazine that, in a recent commentary, called Indian rule over
Kashmir a de facto military occupation, or far-left public intellectuals like Tariq Ali of the New Left Review
and Vijay Prashad of Connecticut’s Trinity
College. The counter-argument that can be advanced against this stand is that
Kashmir has an “elected civilian government.”
However,
elections do not always equate to a just arrangement. The Judenräte or Jewish Councils in Nazi-occupied
parts of Europe were elected bodies too, as is the Palestinian Authority in
Occupied West Bank. Plus, the military occupiers in modern times prefer to
project a civilian face and steer clear of their responsibilities under
international law.
Moreover,
if a ruling dispensation survives 134 days of widespread protests and
all-encompassing strikes, it is safe to conclude that they derive their
legitimacy from a source other than the people. In the case of Kashmir, the
source of course is the metropole of New Delhi.
Apartheid
The
Isreali treatment of its Palestinian (Arab) citizens and residents of occupied
territories is often compared with the South African apartheid system.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, UN Special Rapporteur on
Palestine Richard Falk and even the US Secretary of State John Kerry made this analogy.
In
the light of Armed Forces Special Powers Act, a law that gives the Indian
forces deployed in Kashmir sweeping powers over the life, liberty and property
of Kashmiris and renders them immune from prosecution; Public Safety Act, an
archaic law similar to Israel’s Administrative Detention, under which a person
can be detained without trial for up to two years and other discriminatory,
rights-robbing legislations, Indian conduct in Kashmir has to be probed within
the same framework.
However,
since the racial factor doesn’t apply between India and Kashmir, the situation
can be described as a more subtle, undetectable form of apartheid. A system of
neo-apartheid.
Nakba
The
1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine and subsequent formation of the state of
Israel is viewed as a massive catastrophe (Al-Nakba) in the entire Arab world.
In recent times, even Israel’s own “new historians”, such as Avi Shlaim and Ilan Pappe have written authoritative
accounts on how Israelis expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians,
destroyed Palestinian towns, villages and constructed their Zionist project on
the ruins of historic Palestine.
Kashmir’s
“accession” to India, the validity of which remains hotly disputed, was also
surrounded by a ferocious intensity of death and displacement. While the Indian
narrative maintains that its troops landed in Srinagar to “rescue Kashmiris
from the destruction unleashed by tribal raiders from Pakistan,” the reality
presents a different picture.
India’s intentions, at best, are more likely to
be the preservation of the tyrant Dogra regime and, at worst, a straightforward
territorial assimilation.
If
the Indian government of the time would have been genuinely concerned about the
safety of Kashmir’s people, the troops should have landed in Jammu, the
southernmost region of erstwhile independent Jammu and Kashmir state, not
inside the valley because Jammu was the focus of a virtual genocide through the
autumn of 1947.
The
Dogra Maharaja troops, in tacit collaboration with RSS goons – the same
neo-fascist organization that forms the ideological backbone of India’s currentruling
BJP party – killed an upwards of 237,000 Muslims in Jammu according to various
international newspaper reports of the time. Around 123
villages were completely depopulated of Muslims, thereby
altering the region’s demography.
Pertinent
to mention here is that while the Kashmiris observe 27 October, the day on
which Indian troops landed in Srinagar, as a black day every year, numerous
groups in India celebrate it – not unlike the 15 May Israeli celebration of
Al-Nakba as Yom Ha'atzmaut (Independence Day).
Appropriation of land
The
Indian Army and paramilitaries occupy more than 1500 square kilometres of land
in Kashmir. This is three times the total municipal jurisdictional areas held
by settlers in the occupied West Bank or approximately equal to the territory
of Bahrain and Singapore combined. A significant portion of this land is highly
cultivable with the potential of producing cash crops like almonds, saffron and
apples.
The
structures erected by the Indian forces are not confined to the fringe but
operate within residential areas and occupy community spaces like playgrounds,
cinemas, schools hospitals and post-offices.
The
presence of mammoth army cantonments on the foothills of cities shut down any
prospects of upward urbanization forcing the population to build new houses and
business establishments on the flood-prone lowlands that are essentially
catchment areas.
This
not only puts people’s lives and security at risk but also contributes to
disastrous environmental stress. Also, the occupation and minelaying of
numerous hill-stations and resorts by the Indian Army makes these potential
recreational spaces inaccessible.
Kashmiri
and Palestinian conditions can also be correlated on a host of other matters
like military checkpoints, cultural assimilation, abuse of children, torture
and denial of free cross-border movement etc.
Resistance
While
the resistance leadership, during the current phase of mass-uprisings, has
come-up with ingenious ways of protest, such as the use of the 5 PM break in general strike to
express dissent and establish an almost parallel governance structure Kashmiris surely can take away multiple lessons
from the Palestinian experience.
On
the diplomatic front, while far from being successful, Palestine is eons ahead
of Kashmir. Despite the obvious shortcomings of Oslo and Camp David, acquiring
a non-member observer state status in UN against such heavy odds is no less an
accomplishment.
Kashmir,
however, remains to be on the backburner in the international diplomatic
scene. Having a strong diplomatic
outreach shall not only prevent Kashmir from regularly turning into a cold
conflict that is unworthy of a permanent resolution, but will also allow
Kashmiris to be relatively flexible and not entirely dependent on a group of
countries like OIC whose own human-rights records do not even present a decent,
let alone ideal picture.
While
it is impossible to entirely ameliorate the effects of geopolitics, an
indigenous diplomatic front shall ensure that Kashmiris do not solely depend on
the whims of powerful states like Russia, having left a trail of murder from
Grozny to Eastern Aleppo; China, whose abuses from Tibet to East Turkestan are
no secret; and the United States, the mothership of domestic police abuses and
international war crimes.
The
Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is another
powerful mode of protest that can be applied to the Kashmiri setting. Since
India immensely values its international market image, lobbying businesses to
divest from Indian economy, while highlighting the state abuses in Kashmir,
will surely help in putting pressure on the country’s ruling elite to find a
sustainable political solution to Kashmir’s long-pending dispute.
Similarly,
encouraging an educational and cultural boycott of India can prove to be helpful
to buttress the non-violent Kashmiri resistance.
This piece was first published on the blog of Cafe Dissensus Magazine on 22 November 2016.