By
INSHAH MALIK
When I first heard
about the death of 22-year-old Kashmiri rebel Burhan Wani,
I was on my way to a friend’s place. Unexpectedly, his death brought a feeling
of extreme doom and a sharp pain in my ribcage. I went on to finish my day, all
the while scrolling through news updates on my mobile phone.
As a Kashmiri,
feeling sorrow over death is a natural response, as killings are not
dehumanised in popular Kashmiri culture. There is a social demand that one
must, at least, say a few words to express sadness.
This sadness is in me
despite the fact that there is a long trail of deaths that mark the public
memory and one more won’t do so much for the historical cause of freedom. Yet,
the feeling of absolute doom reigns over my analysis.
I spent the rest of
the evening with my housemates in suburban Tehran, engaged in conversations
about Burhan and protestor deaths that had begun to mount.
To be honest, I had
never watched any of his videos or taken the Indian media's coverage about him
seriously, because I couldn’t trust the construction of his political formation
in the sensationalised reportage.
As a scholar, my
research in Kashmir has taught me to discredit sensationalism around Kashmiri
political figures. Thus, from my conversations in Kashmir, I was aware that
Burhan has come to dominate the popular imagination because of his moral
challenge to the Indian state.
The romance around
his personality and its charisma swaying the young in Kashmir is an
all-too-real and ignored aspect of his political figuration.
It is interesting
these aspects of the discussion are considered irrelevant, foreign or mere
extrapolations of the "terrorism" inducing thinking of Pakistan.
An extraordinary Kashmiri response on the streets shows I was not the only
one to grieve. Kashmiris felt enormous grief, and the mammoth commemorations
that followed were in line with the traditions of grieving in the Valley.
This grieving, which
seemed unwarranted or unauthenticated from the state's point of view, must be
presenting some grave challenge to the Indian state that it chose to resort to
gunfire and pellets in response, which have killed more than 49 civilians and
blinded 30 others at last count.
By the time I reached
home that night, I was exhausted in forming coherent lines about what is
transpiring in Kashmir. Only now has this event begun to create some very basic
questions in me; most of these questions, perhaps, are a historical repetition,
and need to be answered from a holistic point of view.
The Parliament
session held on July 19, 2016 saw home minister Rajnath Singh reiterating the current
problem in Kashmir was Pakistan-sponsored, that Kashmiris were misguided about
their rights and that he would ensure the Valley was guided the right way.
From this assertion
arise two important questions: Why should Kashmiri political figures be treated
as "misguided"? And how does the civilian grieving become a threat to
India’s sovereignty claims in the Valley?
These two questions
can evoke even more important questions such as should civilian grieving prompt
the state to kill, maim, rape and sensor Kashmiri people? Why should the
majority in India simply lap up these claims the state makes about Kashmir?
Right-wing
politicians in India will have you believe India’s sovereignty is in grave
danger in Kashmir, and their Left-wing counterparts will invoke the law to hold
the state’s sovereignty accountable. This farcical sense of Kashmiris'
relationship with sovereignty emerges from a lack of understanding of how
India’s sovereignty works in Kashmir.
The sovereignty of
India, historically, has functioned through exclusions or exceptions.
The Indian political
culture is thus fraught with debates about Kashmir (see, for instance, in
mainstream media) without allowing Kashmiris to enter such debate. In some
exceptional circumstances, the debates that Kashmiris bring to the fore are
often the debates that have to be sanctioned by the law of the Indian state.
Therefore, the
question of Indian sovereignty becomes more basic than the question of law.
Consequently, in the case of thousands of human rights violation cases, it’s
the state that ultimately decides whether the law applies or not.
Take, for example,
the cases of the Kunan and Poshpor mass rape, or the Gaw Kadal massacre that remain uninvestigated despite
being documented by human rights organisations.
In India’s political
culture, the Kashmiri is reduced to bare life. Law doesn’t apply and political
action is termed "misguided". Instantly, a Kashmiri becomes one who
can be killed, but not sacrificed.
The Kashmiri comes to
signify the process of brainwashing: a mere body that has no capacity to think
and reflect, and is full of vengeance but cannot be patriotic. It is a body
that can be corrupted, but not trusted.
Burhan Wani’s body is
where the war of India’s claim of Kashmir being an "integral part" of
its Union is being played.
It is here that the
state gives itself the ultimate power to determine who can be killed, and how
that killing cannot be called a sacrifice.
When the state makes
such a decision about the dispensability of people for strengthening its
political claims, it assigns grieve-ability to such bodies. Thus, the media and
political class in defence of the state create the distinction of who is to be
grieved (soldiers) and who we mustn't grieve for (in this case Burhan).
In some cases, the
extreme nature of such defence is visible. Take, for instance, a statement from
Kashmiri Hindu activist Sushil Pandit, who regretted the state’s decision to
return Burhan’s body and wished instead that it was "burned along with garbage".
Grieving Burhan is so
wrong because the state tells me he is not grieve-able, and if I do grieve him,
I will be shot or maimed or killed; even be used as a body on which the war of
sovereignty will be played with the complete backing of the political class and
media. Therefore, the questions I began to ask, seem even more urgent as
the entire population of Kashmir now seems to be in the line of fire.
As is visible on the
12-day siege that has crippled the Valley. Why must the entire population be
under siege if only Burhan Wani is a problem?
Does the analysis
about Burhan Wani’s body extend to the entire population in Kashmir? And what
is the nature of this sovereignty claim, if the entire population of say the
Valley of 6.5 million people are outside its fold?
The investigation of
India’s sovereignty claims over Kashmir leads one to think in a more effective
way about the relation between politics and morality. In the milieu of the bare
life that a Kashmiri is reduced to being within the Indian structure, Kashmir’s
mourning cements its moral position in challenging India.
This has been the
reality of Kashmiris in their alternative, repressed world, where the body of
Sheikh Abdullah (the former-prime-minister-turned-chief-minister of the state)
becomes a "sell-out" from being the Lion of Kashmir.
The bodies of Maqbool
Bhat, Ashfaq Majeed Wani, and Afzal Guru represent the symbolic grieve-able
witnesses of India’s war on the Kashmiri. Both Afzal and Maqbool were denied to
Kashmiris to ensure Kashmiris do not mount on a memory of resilience against
the Indian state's sovereignty.
It is important to
understand that India’s sovereign oppression on Kashmir is historical, and so
is the grieving in the Valley. Ashfaq Majid Wani was the 23-year-old commander
of Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF). His death invoked even more public grieving on March 30, 1990. Even then Kashmir's
political reality was mocking India’s self-congratulatory analysis on the
Valley.
In its historical
response to Kashmiris, India's wish to not return a rebel's body has actually
been fulfilled in the past and failed. Maqbool Bhat, a Kashmiri revolutionary
known both in India and Pakistan as a double agent, was hanged and buried in
Tihar Jail in 1989 so as to disallow Kashmiris a chance to grieve.
The Kashmiris who
wanted to grieve Maqbool then were not even a handful, as is the case with
revolutionaries; but by 1989, Maqbool was a revered political figure in every
household. With the armed revolutionary Ashfaq Majid Wani coming to the fore,
Maqbool was immortalised as a witness and Ashfaq as a martyr.
In recent public
memory, Afzal Guru’s hanging, a widely debated event, although
remembered as an isolated incident in India, was seen as a continuation of the
repressed history of Kashmiris. Thus, the grieving that follows Burhan’s death
is not merely about Burhan, but about hundreds of such Burhans who were killed
while they rejected their state-induced bare life.
By killing some more,
India is only strengthening Kashmiri bodies to reject its sovereignty and
become struggling witnesses to the war that is being played out against them.
No comments:
Post a Comment