There’s a soldier in the backyard

The partially burnt-down structure of the Government Hospital for Psychiatric Diseases is set away from the street. The fort that Akbar built can be seen atop the hill nearby, the military bunker there sharply outlined against the blue. In the corridor, men in grimy white uniforms striped with blue squat on the floor, rocking their bodies against the wall. Dr Sadaqat Rahman, who is the only clinical psychologist in Srinagar, is making her rounds. She has an easy, affectionate manner toward her patients, many of whom are gathered at the windows of the wards in which they are locked. They shout out appeals in Kashmiri. They all want to go back home.

Till only a few years ago, there were about 8 to 10 patients visiting the hospital each day. These days the hospital treats anywhere from 100 to 150 patients daily. Dr Rahman is reluctant to relate the increased problems to the violence of the valley. According to her, the malady is worldwide. She tells me that by the year 2008 there will only be psychiatry, no medicine.

Outside the doctor’s wards is parked an ambulance with armed men in it. They are soldiers from the BSF. When they go in to see the doctor, these patients carry their rifles with them. The doctor explains that the soldiers do not trust even the doctors. Four soldiers wait in the truck, talking only among themselves. They have come to the hospital because they suffer from the effects of trauma. Many Kashmiris complain of the aggression of the armed forces; in the hospital, it is clear that violence does not spare the perpetrator either. The local papers that day have carried reports of a BSF commander being shot dead by an Army soldier in Kupwara.

In the BSF truck, a soldier who is from a village near Allahabad—one of the first things he tells me is that he is a Brahmin, and his name is Pandey—asks if I had seen the graffiti on a wall outside saying ‘‘Indian Forces Go Back.’’ It is only when I say yes that he begins to talk about deep-seated suspicion and stress and depression. He feels okay when he is in his village, the man tells me, but feels disoriented outside. It strikes me that for people like Pandey the move from the village to the places outside was also an entry into the ideology of nationalism. Without the idea of the nation, a person like Pandey is lost.

The militant from across the border who carries the idea of the Islamic nation like a gun is a figure that the soldier recognizes. Oddly enough, it is the armed militant who confirms for the soldier everything he believes in. But, what the soldier finds more disturbing, and even incomprehensible, is the ordinary Kashmiri who, unarmed, vulnerable, and in no way committed to Pakistan, will still not grant him the gift of inviolable nationhood.

In Srinagar, a housewife, a driver, a tailor, and an old poet sitting in front of his lovely pomegranate trees, all talk of their desire for an independent Kashmir that is at peace. In Delhi, in Nagpur, or in Patna, such talk is met with rage. As Indians we repeat what we have learned in school: Kashmir is a part of our identity as a nation. The Pakistanis, I am prepared to bet, have the same issues. ‘‘The land under Indian occupation has to be freed from the oppression of the kafirs’’. To the ordinary Kashmiri, their homeland appears to be a battlefield for forces that are alien and distant.

Of course, there is a sad way in which the Indian soldier in Kashmir is no longer distant. The anonymous, painted sign on the road, asking the forces to go back, signifies for the soldier a loss of the self. In the resulting incomprehension, nationalism survives only as a neurosis. The only way out of this neurosis is for the soldier to identify each Kashmiri as a potential Pakistani. This act, full of the violence of negation, fills him with despair.

And the Kashmiris? How do they suffer? In a room bare except for a carpet and plain green sofas arranged against the wall, Hurriyat’s Abdul Gani Bhat tells me that he is stopped by a soldier on the street and asked to show his card. ‘‘A man from Kerala has to verify,’’ Bhat says, ‘‘that I am a Kashmiri on the soil of Kashmir. This is humiliation. At its worst.’’

The sun slants into the room, lighting Bhat’s head from behind. He has a thin, lined face. Before joining politics, Bhat was a professor of Persian. His language is vivid and metaphorical. Gesturing with his hands, he proclaims, ‘‘A soldier sits on each Kashmiri’s head, minus children, and occasionally women and the old. The LoC exists in every room, in every office, in every street, at all levels.’’ I think of what I had seen earlier in the day. The sign outside an Army bunker with its exhausting demand: ‘Please Prove Your Identity.’

A cup of Kashmiri tea is brought for me. The Hurriyat Chairman warms to his theme. He says that the government in Kashmir exists only in bunkers. He says: ‘‘Soldiers rule. Elections are irrelevant. Development is a mirage. We are fighting a war of survival.’’

This could be dismissed as political rhetoric. But what Bhat says is echoed by common Kashmiris who do not want to be cheated of real change by politicians exchanging election slogans. Kashmiris will once again be asked to stuff their dreams into ballot boxes. This will be another occasion lost for genuine dialogue.

Parveena Ahangar is the mother of five children: one of them, Javed, has been missing since the night of 18 August, 1990 when the soldiers picked him up. They were probably looking for his neighbour, also called Javed, who was said to be a militant. Parveena’s son Javed had a bad stammer and when he was disturbed and could not speak he would strike his foot against the ground. How would he have fared during interrogation?

Javed’s mother says that she dreams of him each day. Parveena wants her son back, and she does not see the point in the elections. In broken Urdu, she says, Mera dil jalaa hua hai. Kahan jayega hum vote daalne?

(Amitava Kumar is the author of the recently released Bombay-London-New York)