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| Welcome to Kashmir Image courtesy - IBTimes |
The story of Kashmir is
complicated and there are no immediate answers to the problem, especially when
Pakistan is illegally occupying almost a third of the territory. This blogpost
is not an attempt to find solution to the Kashmir problem or to assign blame
for the mess the place is in today. This is in response to a recent article
that appeared in The Economist. Titled “Kashmir in stasis – Rough sleeping”,
the article is an attempt to highlight the recent bout of violence that
resulted in five people losing their lives.
The article, full of rhetoric and
very little substance seems to be an attempt at “covering India” in each of its
issues. The Economist wants to increase its subscription base in India and
hence gives extra coverage to stories from the country. No harm in that. With
dwindling subscriptions in mature markets in the West, India is the obvious
market. China being a tough nut due to its extremely strict media censorship.
Back to the article. The article
begins with, “MUSLIMS know the parable as
the story of the People of the Cave: some men fall asleep and find, on waking,
that centuries have passed and the world is transformed. The people of the
Kashmir valley in the lush uplands of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir
have their own version”.
Well, it’s not just the Muslims
of the valley who know this parable, the Hindus of the valley, who were
systematically murdered of forced to flee their homes in hundreds of thousands
are equally aware of that.
“Ever since 1947, when they found themselves east of an active frontline
between the two new states of India and Pakistan, valley folk have watched the
world evolve”.
The Kashmiri people did not find themselves between two new states. The
state of Kashmir acceded to India (just like the 550 princely states did after
1947), after Pakistan attacked the territory by infiltrating tribal people and army
men without insignia.
“And still the valley’s 7m people, who speak their own unique language,
are nearly all Muslim and generally disdain India and Pakistan alike, remain
hapless pawns in a vicious game between those rivals”.
Kashmiris speak a unique language just like millions of other Indians
speak theirs. There are 22 scheduled languages in India. The population of
Kashmir is 96.4% (census 2011) Muslim, largely because the Hindus were kicked
out of their homes or murdered by the Kashmiri people in 1990. As far as the “disdain”
is concerned, The Economist should recall that 65% eligible Kashmiris turnedout to cast their votes in the 2014 state elections. Not sure where the
statistics for “disdain” were dug out from.
“Some facts are clear. Anger at the Indian army’s heavy presence is
explosive”.
Of course people will not like to
live in a virtual army barrack all their lives. But then what exactly are these
people doing to come out of this? Waving Pakistan flags or IS flags will
definitely not help the army in reducing their presence. The recent events in
Paris & Brussels are case in point where a handful of terrorists unleashed
mayhem in an otherwise peaceful city.
“Security forces are quick to shoot, and keen to divert attention from
their misconduct”.
This is what is known as a “motherhood statement”. Where are the facts?
Where is the source? On the contrary here is a video evidence, which suggests
that the security forces actually put their own lives in danger and get beatenup by the locals instead of randomly firing at protestors.
“Few in Kashmir doubt which version is closer to the truth. They have
too often heard of sexual abuse by soldiers, and of police framing scapegoats”.
Again The Economist reports like a gossip column quoting hearsay instead
of credible sources. People can read The Sun if they want gossip, why bother
competing with it?
“Incidents like this often lead to escalating protests and shootings,
and end in inquiries with no result”.
Another motherhood statement without any source.
“Some 40,000 people, by official count, have died in the valley since
1990, when a bloody insurgency covertly sponsored by Pakistan provoked a brutal
Indian crackdown”.
After carefully establishing that the army in the valley is cruel and
brutal and the peaceful, stuck-in-between Kashmiris are the victims, the
article come up with a figure of 40,000 dead, subtly implying that these were people
killed by the army. This is called “misleading” the readers. The 40,000
includes civilians killed by terrorists & terrorists killed by security
forces. Also The Economist should give some editorial space to the fact that
the “quick to shoot” security forces came to the valley only after the locals
took to insurgency.
“In recent years Pakistan has throttled the flow of arms”.
This is the most ludicrous statement made by The Economist in the entire
article. Well if Pakistan has “throttled” the flow of arms, then where exactly do
the terrorists get the arms before they try to sneak in across the Line Of Control?
There is no evidence of the terrorists having a 3D printer where they can print
their assault rifles.
“Dependent on income from tourism, the wider public has scant appetite
for jihadist heroics against India’s massive might”.
This is true but then the wider public has never really made these
feelings public. There are more rallies and shutdowns in support of theterrorist separatists than against them.
“It’s been 26 years since militancy peaked, but there is more anger and
alienation among the youth now than then,” says Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, a
separatist leader”.
What else does one expects to hear from a “separatist leader”?
“We want to keep resistance peaceful, but it’s very hard when India bans
every outlet for protest or debate, and in fact doesn’t even acknowledge that
there is a problem.”
Of course India
will not recognize the problem, i.e. the problem of Kashmir seceding from India
(azadi as they call it), because there is no legal basis for that.
The
separatists want to move away from India only because they think Muslims cannot
live with a Hindu majority India. They sincerely believe in the two nation
theory proposed by Jinnah, which led to partition of India. What Mirwaiz doesn’t
acknowledge is that the theory has been proved wrong, many times over, in the
country Jinnah created. Pakistan has been a hotbed of ethnic and religious
unrest ever since it was created.
The
Islamic state of Pakistan has a simmering insurgency in Balochistan, where the
Pakistani army randomly picks up men, women and children and dumps their
mutilated bodies along highways. Read here, here and here. The North Western region of Pakistan has long
been a secure hideout for Al-Qaeda and Taliban. The Provinces of Punjab and
Sindh witness regular terror attacks carried out by the Pakitani Taliban. Ahmadiand Shia Muslims are brutally massacred on the streets and their places of
worship blown up. So much for the two nation theory.
To sum up,
the story The Economist is trying to tell is one that of rhetoric and extremely
poor research, even gossip masquerading as hearsay in some cases. We understand
that you want to improve your subscription base in India (which has more
English speaking people than the population of United Kingdom), but to merely
fill the “India section” you should not resort to reducing yourself to a
Tabloid.
