DSU Public Meeting: Not AFSPA but Azadi is the Central Question in Kashmir!

 

The recent excavation of series of mass graves in Kashmir was yet another bone chilling and unrefutable evidence of the horrors of the army occupation of the valley by India. It once again sparked off protests and pitched debates internationally. The charred, tortured, mutilated bodies of people who have ‘disappeared’, ruthlessly dumped in those pits, were mute yet eloquent evidences of the horrors with which every single Kashmiri is forced to survive under the occupation. Put into the backfoot in the face of the uncompromising struggle of the Kashmiri people, the Indian ruling class and its Kashmiri agents are forced to make some ‘concessions’ to quell the newly pitched debates and protests. Conveniently they have located AFSPA, the draconian law that provides complete impunity to the horrible Indian army, as the problem. The propaganda that this discourse around AFSPA seeks to create is that the army and para-military, otherwise good, have done some ‘excesses’ taking advantage of this act. However, they are not talking about repealing AFSPA. That remains out of question! They are projecting AFSPA as redundant in some areas and therefore it can be ‘relaxed’. No one suggests withdrawal of troops from Kashmir too. Because that will bring us to the fundamental question of why such massive presence of armed forces is there in Kashmir in the first place? Everyone is aware of the reason behind it. Jammu and Kashmir has been forcefully occupied by India since 1947. To fortify this occupation the valley has been turned into the most militarized zone of the entire world. The Kashmiris, right from the beginning, have never accepted this unjust and brutal occupation and have been fighting tooth and nail against it. To quell and suppress their heroic fight for independence, the number of Indian forces multiplied and AFSPA became a necessity for the forces and the ruling class. To see AFSPA as the central problem in Kashmir is simply to put the cart before the horse. It is simply another smokescreen to cover the REAL issue, which is the historically denied and militarily suppressed independence of Kashmir!

It is not AFSPA but the occupation of Kashmir by India which is providing the main impunity to the bloody Indian army in Kashmir. Historically world over the occupying forces always sustain their coercive rule through brute forces. In Kashmir and North East, AFSPA has given unlimited power to the army to ruthlessly suppress all attempts of strike back by the people. But the army has been sent there to secure the occupation with the consent and active execution by the entire ruling class of India. And time and again we have seen the ruling class machinery safeguard all acts of miscreants and brutality of the armed forces. The innumerous illegal torture chambers in Kashmir run by the same armed forces are not unknown to the Indian ruling class or their Kashmiri counterparts. The routine ‘crackdowns’ in the villages, the daily harassment of people, the severe restriction on mobility, the fake encounters, the tortures, the rapes, the murders, the ‘disappearances’ are all done with the active support and complicity of the same ruling classes. In Kunan Poshpara around 50 women were gang raped by the army in front of the men who were tied up. It led into an international outcry of protests but the judiciary and the entire ruling class machinery ganged up to give complete clean-chit to the rapists. Same story was repeated in Shopian where the ruling class version suggested that Asiya and Nilofer were not raped and killed by the army but had drowned in a knee-deep canal! In every case of grenade attacks on civilians, the people of Kashmir routinely have alleged that the armed forces are behind it. But the ruling class versions, faithfully parroted in the corporate media, hold ‘militants’ responsible for the attacks. It is simply impossible in Kashmir to lodge any case against the atrocities of the armed forces, not because of AFSPA but because the state machinery squarely refuse to acknowledge atrocities. Everything is ‘legitimized’ by the occupation. Will all this change if AFSPA is merely ‘relaxed’ from some areas?

Each and every parliamentary party in India has been complicit in the ruthless occupation of Kashmir. For all of them Kashmir is an ‘integral part of India’. And for all of them the movement for Azadi in Kashmir is Pakistan backed ‘Islamic’ movement which must be suppressed for the sake of ‘national integrity and security’ of India. By portraying the debate such, what they completely displace out of the picture is how historically Indian forces occupied Kashmir through subterfuge, deceit and military strength. Way back in 1948, the first Indian Prime Minister Nehru himself had spoken in favour of a plebiscite in Kashmir. However, such promises, specially in the context of Kashmir have always been meant to be broken by the Indian ruling classes. ‘Democracy’ remains a fry cry in Kashmir, and a country which administers the world’s largest military occupation cannot continue to call it such. One cannot forget the completely rigged 1987 elections, in which Kashmiri patriots were replaced by Indian puppets.

The Kashmiris, however, have not remained passive victims of Indian repression. To cast them such would be to elude their uncompromising struggle for Azadi, which right now has drawn sharp lines between their friends and enemies. In the campus also, these lines are sharply drawn and the two pseudo-left organizations, SFI and AISA stand completely opposed to the right of the Kashmiri people to self determination including the right to secede. In the past few days, the campus has seen these two organizations trying to offer ‘perspectives’ on Kashmir in the light of this ‘renewed’ debate. While AISA, notorious for not taking positions on any people’s movement, wants a political solution acceptable to the Kashmiri people to be ‘found and sought’, as if there is STILL any unclarity as to what the Kashmiris want; SFI on the other hand, much like the puppet chief minister of Kashmir, wants a partial revocation of AFSPA! However, the Kashmiri people have seen enough of stooges of the Indian state to even take these two spent, irrelevant forces seriously. The flames of liberation struggle in Kashmir shall wipe out all these stooges of the Indian state, and all Marxists, as Comrade Charu Mazumdar pointed out, should stand in solidarity with the valiant fighters of Kashmir.

DSU Public Meeting

Not AFSPA but Azadi  is the Central Question in Kashmir! 

Speaker:  Dr. Sheikh Showkat Hussein

Dept. of Law, Kashmir University        

9.30pm | 13th November | Kaveri Mess  |  JNU