Until My Freedom Has Come. Sanjay Kak

to visit my mother, who is spending a long summer in our ancestral home, away from the heat of Delhi. At Delhi airport, I am startled by the number of army men waiting to catch the hopper flight to Srinagar via Jammu: I had not thought that jawans flew on commercial airlines, but there they were, their presence a foretaste of things ahead. My flight is made up of Kashmiri families, many visibly settled abroad, visiting home, and several Amarnath yatris. Three of them, all young men, large tikas on foreheads, are thrilled when they share the bus to the airplane with four European women tourists—they chuckle, nudge each other, and fondle themselves in sheer joy at this early payoff on their pilgrimage.

      Srinagar has turned into a city of shutters. The taxi home makes quick progress as there is virtually no civilian traffic on the streets. We pass a four-vehicle army convoy—my taxi driver makes careful eye-contact with the gun-toting jawan at the back of the last jeep in order to get permission to overtake. A nod in reply allows us to zoom ahead, and I make desultory conversation while reading the occasional hand-written wall-slogan that says ‘GO INDIA GO’ or the harsher ‘INDIAN DOGS GO BACK’. That makes me an unwanted visitor, I suppose, but then, not fifteen minutes ago, as I walked to the airport taxi-stand, one driver called out to his compatriot who had taken charge of me: ‘Haiyo yi chui local’ (‘Hey you, he’s a local’). Poised between an Indian citizenship I wear with pride in my professional life abroad, and a ‘localness’ which has learned to fear the cynical might of the Indian security apparatus in Kashmir (and elsewhere), I wonder what my time in Srinagar will bring.

      Watching television in the evening reminds me of the fundamental absence of interest in the Indian media in the situation in Kashmir. Major news channels report on protests here, particularly if protesters are shot or property is damaged, but there is no attempt whatsoever to ask if these protests are a continuation of two decades of political unrest, and not simply random acts of violence instigated (as our Home Minister would have it, by the Lashkar or some such convenient scapegoat). Last year’s assembly elections, and the installation of Omar Abdullah’s government, were celebrated as a reminder that Kashmiris were not alienated from Indian democracy. Thus no political initiatives were necessary to address their demands, articulated now for five decades and supposedly guaranteed by Article 370, to define for themselves the forms of their autonomy.

      But the last few weeks have seen renewed protests in Kashmir, with stone-pelting and demonstrations recurring in Srinagar, Sopore, Anantnag/Islamabad, and elsewhere. The military has been called out once (only, a ‘flag march’ is the official word), but the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and the Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) police have fired upon and killed protesters already, and are in any case on edge in the streets. The Hurriyat announces a weekly calendar of protests, but there is widespread awareness that they no longer initiate or control these demonstrations, which seem less orchestrated and planned and more the product of rising anger amongst people brutalized by the daily humiliations of living under a security regime.

      Television this evening also brings a reminder of the ways in which public debate within Srinagar is censored. Two channels, Sën Channel and Sën Awaaz (‘sën’ means ‘ours’ in Kashmiri), are off the air, and the former broadcasts the legend: ‘The Transmission of Sën Channel has been Banned by Government, under order no: DMS/PS-MISC/10/840-52, Dated: 29-07-2010.’ I ask my mother if she knows why these channels have been banned. Her answer is succinct: they discussed local political events, covered street demonstrations and told the truth.

      Every evening at 7 p.m. we turn to ETV, an Urdu-language channel, to listen to their half-hour news bulletin on Kashmir. This is the fullest and most accurate account of all that happens here, and their local correspondent, Manoj Kaul, is measured in his reportage without omitting major details. Kashmiri news channels have been coerced into trimming their news bulletins into vapid coverage of government events, and it is ironic—but precisely symptomatic—that the best source of information operates out of Hyderabad.

      In the evening, my neighbourhood is preternaturally quiet, and I cannot help thinking of the silence of a mausoleum.

       Friday, 30 July 2010

      The authorities have banned the weekly jumma namaz at the main Jama Masjid, and several other large masjids, for five weeks now, and each Friday brings about a declared or undeclared curfew. Today is no different. My mother tells me that the local paper has not been delivered for several days now—it is being printed, but the delivery man lives in Maisuma and cannot make his rounds. Maisuma is a neighbourhood that has seen sustained public protests and is thus kept under virtual curfew at all times. Only government employees who carry appropriate identification and those who have curfew passes are allowed on the streets, and even those passes are not always respected by the police or CRPF constables who patrol Srinagar’s barricaded streets. Government employees have been told that they must report for duty, but the government offices in our neighbourhood are more or less deserted. (Incidentally, a house close by sports a signboard that would be witty if it was not an example of the growth of high-level bureaucratic offices: Office of the Chairman, Committee for Examination of Demands for New Administrative Units).

      To my mind, these empty administrative offices represent one of the worst forms of collateral damage suffered by Kashmiris over the last two decades. An astonishing number of Kashmiri men (and some women, of course) are on government payrolls, and here I do not include the many (some estimate up to 100,000) who receive regular stipends from various intelligence agencies and secret services. Civil services and local administration have been systematically hollowed out over the past two decades; there is virtually no accountability at any level, and receiving a government salary is tantamount to being on the dole. If nothing else, the Indian state has revenged itself on Kashmiris by teaching them how not to work while still drawing salaries. This salariat functions as a vast buffer between the Indian state and the elected J & K government and the mass of people whose livelihood depends on daily work and trade, and, like government servants everywhere, they constitute a bulwark against political movements that mobilize common people. This is not always the case, and there have been times when some sectors of government employees have taken to the streets to protest against different facets of Indian rule, but they are, for the most part, at peace with their salaries.

      By the evening, reports of demonstrations and the shooting of protesters are confirmed: three dead (two in Sopore) and many injured, including a score wounded by bullets. It is now clear that tomorrow, a day on which the Hurriyat calendar encouraged people to resume normal activities and stock up on supplies, is going to be another day of curfews and mounting tension. There seems to be no official response other than the police action on the street; no ministers or any other government officials are on television to explain the day’s events and to offer some account of plans to de-escalate violence. In the absence of official explanations, rumours provide information: a substantial number of the dead and injured sustain head and chest wounds, and it seems that the security forces are shooting to kill rather than to injure or maim. Conversations about cynical politics abound: is it possible that these street protests are not being halted because their random, unsupervised quality undercuts the Hurriyat’s claim to being the political leadership of the mass of Kashmiris angry with life under military occupation? Some argue that precisely because there are no known leaders of these demonstrations, can they really be said to serve a partisan political purpose? Some weeks ago, a group of young men in Sopore—leaders of street action—ignored Geelani’s call to avoid stone-pelting and rejected the appeal made by Syed Salahuddin, the Pakistan-based head of the Hizb-ul-Mujahidin, to not precipitate confrontations and disruptions that will get in the way of a longer, more sustained struggle. But there is also the crucial fact that the largest mass of people respond to the Hurriyat calendar, and Geelani is the man with the greatest public heft here.

      I read a local English-language newspaper that, on its front page, prints in Urdu a revolutionary poem by Sahir Ludhianvi under the caption, ‘Bol ki labh azad hain tere’ (which, incidentally, is the title of a Faiz Ahmed Faiz poem). The final lines of the Ludhianvi poem are worth transcribing here, for they take on an uncanny urgency in Srinagar—this most progressive Indian poet now speaks for those subject to the unthinking muscularity of the regime:

       Yeh kis ka lahu hai kaun maraa,