Opinion What is to be done?
I went on my first Civil Rights March in Berkeley,California,in 1963.
I went on my first Civil Rights March in Berkeley,California,in 1963. We were all told to dress properly,not provoke the police and sing,We Shall Overcome with enthusiasm if not talent. Within a year,Kennedy and Martin Luther King had died. The Black Panthers emerged and then came Black Power. Many joined the Nation of Islam,became Black Muslims (Americans then were not aware of what colour the rest of the two billion Muslims were). The mood became ugly. There was no talk of being nice to the policethe Pigsbut only of provoking them and then alleging police brutality. In the 1968 Olympic Games,a gold medal winning US athlete gave the Black Power salute while the US national anthem was playing. The alienation of black youth from the American Dream was complete. It took forty years before an Obama could become President.
I remind you of all this as a key to understanding Kashmir. The anger of young people is,and has always been,beyond the understanding of the older people. When the young demand power,the older people offer dialogue. They demand human rights; they are offered promises of future jobs but only after they have gone back to their homes quietly. The older generation cannot fathom what desperation makes young people face bullets rather than waiting for that good job. In Kashmir,I am told,mothers no longer tell their boys to stay put,but to go out and run rampant.
This is neither irrational nor artificially inspired. It is the result of months of being ignored when the boys and girls were making reasonable demands. Shopian rapes,the killing of boys framed to be Pakistani terrorists by the Army,the BSF killing a bystander for showing disrespect to them,the blocking of demonstrations to protest against these insults and then curfew and the steady diet of deathsthese are the burdens the youth is carrying on its back.
They call it azadi. But they dont mean autonomy,which their own older leaders may want. They are not worried about Kashmir being an integral part of India. They want RESPECT. They want what any other citizen in any state in India would get if scores were dying. There is no need to say in Mangalore that Karnataka is an integral part of India so why the repeated assertion about Kashmir? At the all-party meeting in Delhi,there were 44 parties of which only about four have seats in J&K assembly. I gather that every one of the 40 non-Kashmir parties chanted the mantra about Kashmirbeinganintegralpart etc. Not one expressed sympathy for the dead or injured. I hope I was misinformed,but I doubt it. For the rest of India,J&K exists only to prove Indias secularism. Dont ask for pity or sympathy; fall back in line and surrender.
The stone throwers wish that when they protest they would not be automatically branded traitors in the pay of Pakistan. Throughout the Civil Rights movement in the US,the Establishment always complained about outside agitators since they knew their own blacks were happy. Only outsiders came to cause trouble. Kashmir,sadly,has few outsiders from the rest of India coming to visit them.
The delegation which will go to Kashmir is unlikely to come back demanding proper investigation of the human rights violations over the last six months. It must give us a true account of the number of dead and injured many handicapped as a result. There must be proper compensation for such hurts as would be the case anywhere else in India. Curfew prevents medicines being brought to the sick or the injured being taken to hospitals. Can families buy milk for babies?
Someone somewhere in Kashmir must know the true nature of what is happening and what would begin to assuage the hurt. What would make us to bring Kashmir up to Indian standards (such as they are) of respect for human rights of its citizens. When will J&K truly become an integral part of India?
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