Oh Kashmir

Today morning I sat on the dining table for my breakfast and Jispa was reading the newspaper. One the page was this brilliant and lovely photograph which won the MCC Wisden photo of the year award. This was shot in the beautiful fall of Kashmir, and it captures the moment and its environment so beautifully.

This is the magic of Kashmir, I told Jispa. Then I explained the plight of the Kashmiri Pandit to her. Kashmiri is a place like no other. It is extremely beautiful and magical. The valley has snow and autumn fall. The weather in summer is lovely and the trees and lake all add to the magic that is like something never seen before. It is no wonder that Pakistan and India fight to retain this lovely piece of land. My personal suspicion when I have met people from Kashmir, both Hindu and Muslim is that they always considered themselves to be Kashmiri first and then accustomed to reality or religion as a state identity moved to be an Indian or a Pakistani. I think our geography and history strongly affects our culture and our sense of identity. Kashmir with its unique geography and its isolation form the rest of the country before modern rail and roadways meant that they tended to be different from the rest of the country with its own uniquely different identity. They managed to carve out a sub culture for themselves. The case in point being the Kashmiri Pandit. You can recognize them anywhere thanks to their typical facial features and the of course the Kashmiri nose. They were learned and educated. They prized education and were keen to inculcate this in their young ones as well. They were in seats of power in the Hindu Dogra kingdom that ruled Kashmir. They were amongst the few Saraswat Brahmins to freely eat non-vegetarian food, as they ingrained themselves with the local cuisine and culture. They are known to be foodies and connoisseurs of non-vegetarian cuisine. Then the insurgency took ground in Kashmir and terrorism and violence became an integral part of the Kashmiri life. Then on one ill-fated day – 19^th January 1990 when insurgency was at its peak, the Kashmiri Pandits were asked to leave Kashmir immediately.  They left in large droves leaving their houses and their lives behind. I have spoken to so many of my Kashmiri friends who where kids as they left. They speak about their wooden houses, two floors high with wooden cabinets and beautiful rugs. They speak about the beautiful chinar trees and the apple tree that they had in their plot of land on which they lived. They speak about letting them all go as they left the valley to other parts of India. Some of them left the houses on a ‘as is where is’ and the others left it to their Muslim neighbors and friends. Some of hem were burnt, the others forcibly occupied. These Pandits then ran away and many took refuge in Jammu in camps where they were given bivouacs, where they thought it would be temporarily before they could get back home. There was also a sudden mass clandestine exodus under the watch of the controversial Governor Jagmohan. After this exodus, no Pandit ever returned back to his home. The violence increased and ebbed, but now the Pandits set up their home across the country and rebuilt their lives. You have colonies in large cities like Delhi and Mumbai where you will pockets of Kashmiris as they settled down.

Once you spend ten years or more outside rebuilding your life, how can you go back? The government tried various incentives to get them back and supposedly only one has returned. With it an important part of history and culture was lost to Kashmir forever.

Now a new kind of violence in increasing in the valley. As the youth get educated, they need jobs and income. There is none being created. In Kashmir the land is fertile and plentiful. No one will die of hunger but people will die of subjugation, propaganda and unfulfilled ambition. When I went there the last time, around 12 years ago, the tourism industry had just started and the people were recovering from the terrors aftermath. I realized it then, that the people will now need industry and commerce to grow and live peaceful lives. They need to be more connected to the rest and not so insulated. Right now, the youth has picked up the ultimate weapon in its fight against the government. Not the gun or the knife – but the humble stone. A gun can be fought with a bullet and the person can be killed in response, brutally. But when the protestor is an unarmed youth with nothing but a stone, then any act of retaliation by the forces will be seen as excessive. The democratic foundation and moral high ground of the country rests on its ability to treat its populace with care and collective concern. Stone pelting is something that started the revolution in Egypt and the Arab Spring. Here it is creating a problem unknown to the forces who have historically dealt with the gun. With excessive media outreach, cell phone camera and instant news, can a democratically elected government be seen shooting at youth armed with a stone.

A new chapter is being written yesterday as I saw an image that completely caught me. An image of young school girls throwing stones at the armed forces.

Oh, my god. If young men pelting stones was bad enough, this is the ultimate sign of revolt. You can still fight through and lathi charge a gang with stones but can any government do anything with a bunch of school girls throwing stones at the security forces. What moral right will the government have in this case. What is its standing? This defiance cannot be quelled by might but only by discussion, dialogue and what I really believe – economics. Religion, freedom, beliefs, rebellion come from idle minds and poor pockets. As long as ambition is given freedom, these can be managed within structures without rise to violence. Trading nations don’t fight wars. Commerce abhors a war. This the same reason why in spite of the vice seen on every street corner in Bangkok, you will still find it relatively safe as a tourist. I walked around the streets at night and I saw illicit bars and rampant prostitution, I was solicited by every taxi guy but still I felt safe. It’s also one of the reasons that people suggest when you talk about the low crime rate in Tokyo. There is a debate – whether its effective street level policing or its the crime lords who ensure petty crime is at bay and the citizens feel safe while they extract money from the business. But if commerce is good to quell crime then it’s also equally awesome for quelling insurgence. If the adage that no war can be won on an empty stomach is true then the corollary is that no insurgence can be sustained in the land of plenty.

The politics of insurgence is wonderfully understood by those fueling it in Kashmir. They successfully got the youth involved in pelting stones and now this. Now we wait for the Indian government to revert. The army in the middle did something weird. They were in a situation where they had to go in and get their people who were stuck in a mob that was pelting stones. They did something quite innovative. They got one of the pelters and tied him to the front of the jeep as a human shield. 

Yes. The tactic seemed to have worked. You got out of the situation without firing a single shot, no one was harmed and the day was saved. But this is not war, this is a fight over ideologue over your own people. Can you do that with your own populace? Can the government so brazenly kidnap its own citizen and use him as a shield. That too a person picked up from the street without a trial. It’s not about what’s right or wrong at the time. It’s about how these instances can be used to fuel further hatred and the feeling of them versus us. In the battle of ideologue, PR is extremely important. You may have quelled the situation but you gave rise to a few more revolutionaries, a few more girls who were emboldened to throw stones.  What are the long term implications of your actions?

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In the backdrop of this, look at the lovely picture of a the youth of Kashmir playing cricket, again. It suddenly has so much more meaning.

rearranging our prejudices

I have many times talked about this. The best experience in reading is when you get two books to read as a set. Sometimes they are complimenting each other, sometimes one takes the learning of the other forward and sometimes… sometimes they are actually two points of view of the same history. Right now I am reading Rahul Pandita’s book – Our Moon has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits. Rahul has written a book called Hello Bastar (about the naxal movement) in the past and he writes well and I have felt that he does try and be objective about what he writes about. This time he writes about his childhood and his growing up as a Kashmir Pandit who was forced to leave the Kashmir valley with his family while he was still a boy. The book may have many flaws but it does bring alive some of the horrors of the terrorism in Kashmir that forced the pandits to leave the valley.

Some time back I read another book. This one was called Curfewed Night by Basharat Peer. Similarly this is also a memoir but from the opposite point of view. Basharat is a Kashmiri Muslim and he sees the same situation so differently. He is also a very balanced and objective writer. He talks about how as a young boy he idolized the Kashmiri Fighters who crossed the borders over and received training. And how it was to be a Kashmiri under constant threat from the Indian Armed Forces.

The same situation but the villains are the opposite parties. Who do you believe? I would assume that both are telling the truth. I don’t think either would really dispute the other’s point of view. But the contrast is telling. There is never an absolute truth. I would like to gift these two books in unison to Jispa when she grows up. What is the truth always depends on what you have been exposed to. Your knowledge no matter how vast is colored by your own experiences. Truth is relative. Muslims were killed and so were the Pandits. One believed in fighting for freedom and the other believed that freedom was already achieved. Both the authors were touched at am impressionable age by the fundamentalist forces and both wanted to take arms and exact revenge but were taken by their fathers to a land free from this racial animosity. And both seemed to have grown up to be largely secular. They realize the futility of violence but bear such deep scars that it may be impossible for them to be completely neutral.

Can one ever be neutral? For life to go on one must take a strong stand in one direction. These choices are made every day. We take a stand basis the information and experience we have. I am not saying to not take a stand. That is stupid and a complete waste. Devil’s advocate is a nice term for it and as one of Devdutt’s piece on this explains (link) this is many times the wrong way to discuss. Just a few days back, at the gymkhana where I got active with the swimming department, we were presenting the budget. Most of the office bearers were understanding and practical. One fellow was completely irritating. He kept switching sides and said, yes, that’s a good idea to every point and on both sides of the same point. Yes it was nice and diplomatic but it just prolonged the meeting and got nowhere. Endless argument and recognition of both sides got no one anything.

It is important to see both sides, to hear both sides to recognize both sides, to understand that both exist and that both are right in their own way. But at the end life and reality is that you have to take one side and move on. You have to take a stand while being polite and accommodating of the other. Its easy to be brusque about the other side. I have been guilty consistently about this. I have tried my best to change. From merely brushing them off to thinking actively from the other side I have understood another point of view. Now instead of brushing the other side I try and make an argument to convince the other. But that itself creates another sense of pressure on the opposite side. A convincing argument is so difficult for the other to accept, possibly more difficult that a brush off. One can be forced to accept defeat to power but not to reason. Oh dam!

But we all need to understand the other side. See that it exists, acknowledge it and try to live in that shoe. Possibly then we realize that the demons on the other side aren’t that demonic after all. They too were just acting on their prejudices. That’s all.

Like this quote my friend showed me “A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.” - William James

Side note – I was talking to a colleague who happened to be a Kashmiri Pandit who too left when he was 9 yrs old. I urged him to read both the books. HE ordered one. Rahul’s book. He was reading it and he said a lot of that was the truth. He was pretty excited. It was going to be the first book he has ever read. On any topic! That’s a good start. I asked him if he ordered the one by Basharat. Nopes, he dismissed it. Later. Possibly.

I guess we only know what we want to know

power here power there

What’s better than one good book? Simple – two good books. And when they seem to complement each other I truly enjoy the experience. While many times you get to read books that complement each other, very rarely do you get the chance to read them in quick succession. I was lucky recently.
I normally don’t pick Indian non-fiction, but I was lucky to pick two books by Indian authors discussing home grown Indian union issues. One was Curfewed Night by Basharat peer and the other was Hello, Bastar by Rahul Pandita. The first book is about Kashmir and the second is about the Moaist / Naxal movement in India.
I have learnt over many years that India is not the ideal democracy that we grew up believing it to be. The newspapers and the media are not really interested in showing any real side of the truth. The closest I seemed to have gotten to the truth has been thanks to the Tehelka magazine.
These two books, despite all their flaws in writing style are interesting in the fact that according to me they are courageously trying to unmask the government. There is a clear idea of two Indias. One is the urban shining India and the other is the rural India untouched by the growth and modernisation. These books are revealing that there is a third India, the oppressed, raped and pushed under the carpet India. This is the place where the government not only does not care but is actively involved in oppressing and raping its own populace.
When I was much younger I always wanted to join the army. The notion of patriotism had been drilled into my head. Not that it required much drilling by external parties. I managed to drill that into my own head by own will. I wanted to pick up arms and serve the country. That was dream that lasted till very late. Only tons of reading and understanding real stuff later made me realise the false bloated notion of the nation. I refuse to now honour and respect these man made lines.
As regards Kashmir, my first experience with it was as a child with parents visiting the paradise on earth. I don’t remember it being particularly beautiful as much I remember it being arrogant. A people who knew that the world wanted to see them. I then saw it as an adult in the year 2003, and I saw no progress in the intervening 20 years. I saw people shattered, their egos broken, the desperation writ large in their eyes. While I was able to put the two together, only after reading Basharat peer was I able to live the horrors of the people of Kashmir. We could naively say that Kashmir has only itself to blame but the atrocities of the Indian forces and the rape by the powers that be, have also massively contributed to it. While there might have been a fire we managed to really add fuel to it.
Jump to the Naxalite movement in India and you realise that it is nothing but a rebellion against the state that is busy pillaging our resources at the expense of the tribal livelihood. Oh god. It’s horrific on how we manage to do it.
These are also case studies on power. While its clear that for those oppressed the state is the culprit and for those in the comfort of modern air-conditioning the rebels are to blame, to my mind both are completely totalitarian regimes corrupted by power. It is both that extract their meat from the populace. The rebels who pick the gun are reluctant to drop when they realise the power they wield. Power corrupts and is an addiction like no other. And it works at all levels. Even I look at the grass root, as a father the power I wield corrupts my thinking. Sometimes Jispa get the unnecessary brunt of rage which is nothing but a power equation. Surely I think I do it far less (I think, I hope) that what I might have faced; but hand on heart, the power is what manifests on my child.
This power equation is crazy and it is this that makes us cling on to our status quo. We are afraid of change, we forget the reason and the power itself becomes the motive. Like the book on social entrepreneurs I was reading, one do gooder realised that he could not go into get into Maoist bastions and uplift the people. The Maoists have a vested interest in keep the area underdeveloped.
I see this in offices as well. I see too many bosses having a vested interests in keeping their employees only happy enough. How much should I pay him, for him not to go? WTF? They actively supress any learnings and actively ensure stagnancy. As growth inevitably is followed by demands and market forces that put a price on the persons head which the organisation does not want to pay. Why should it? Why should I develop a person only to lose him or her? I have only in the past learnt one thing. Keep pushing the person to grow and learn. The bigger he gets the more the space he pushes around him. The wider his span of vision gets. This only benefits the organistaion, and if he leaves, be happy that he has created a big enough void, so that the new person will have to first fill that void and then try to do some more. I don’t know why the organistaions can’t see this, why the bosses can’t see this, why we can’t this?
Power lies in letting go. Yet we hold on. I so want to let go. I will try at every opportunity but dam it. I don’t see it. I only see it in hindsight. Dam.