Liberation from ‘Kashmir’,
Saroop Ijaz, 8 Feb 15
This February 5, the State-ordained ‘Kashmir Day’ makes one
reflect on the time before cable television and 24/7 news channels, when the
final broadcast of the day on Pakistan
Television(PTV) was the 9pm “Khabarnama”. There was a special
segment every evening on the atrocities in Jammu and Kashmir. Every evening,
it was inescapable. Now, those look like peaceful days, a bit of State
propaganda perhaps, but no real war, at least domestically. Yet, there is
nothing peaceful about calling for open war; nobody felt the need to deny the
support for the Kashmiri ‘Mujhiahdeen’ in those days.
The ‘liberation’ of Kashmir was what an entire generation (perhaps
generations) was brought up on; the TTP’s ‘liberation’ of Pakistan lay well in
a bloody future then. The State’s primary foreign policy imperative was
uni-dimensional, ubiquitous and unrelenting, in the mosques, on PTV, in schoolchildren’s
textbooks and of course on the ground in Kashmir.
The
world changed and we sluggishly and perhaps unwillingly followed; the level of
involvement of the ‘Mujhiadeen’ in Kashmir has very significantly dropped,
other ‘Mujhiadeen’ have since entered the building and have us in their thrall.
The days of Kashmiri ‘freedom fighter’ being sent across the border were
simple; the State had a narrative and had engineered societal convergence on
the point. The freedom fighters demanded no implementation of Sharia in the
heartland; and the land of the pure was the fortress of Islam. ‘Jihad’ was
still bloody but a State-controlled enterprise. How far have we and the State
come?
The TTP attack us on not being ‘Islamic’ enough, for being
‘infidels’; from the Fortress of Islam to being ‘heathens’. This journey has
left many, many thousands dead on the way, starting from the sectarian killings
of the 1990s to the ongoing tragedy that is the APS Peshawar and Shikarpur.
We
are told, APS Peshawar changed everything. We see that it hasn’t. This February
5 like most, belonged to Hafiz Saeed, the JuD, the HuM and friends. The defence
put up is that these are pro-Pakistan groups; essentially meaning that they do
not attack the Pakistani State or citizens. One can admit for the time being
they might not. Yet, the National Action Plan (NAP) is about “zero
tolerance for militancy”, is it not?
More fundamental is the implicit basic norm of the NAP that
violence will not be privatised to militias and the business of governing the
state and conducting its foreign policy will not be outsourced to armed, jihadi
militias. The key question determining the success or failure of the NAP is:
can the business of enforcing ideologies by the use or threat of force be
allowed to be conducted or worse delegated to private actors by the Islamic
Republic of Pakistan? The answer after this past February 5 is yes.
Jammu and Kashmir has incredible levels of human rights abuses,
enforced disappearances, extra-judicial killings, mass graves and repression by
the State of India; that is not under dispute. To refresh, one can recommend
watching Haider, a very powerful adaptation of Hamlet in
modern-day Kashmir; the movie minces no words on the repressive policy of the
Indian State in Kashmir and it baffles the mind why the Pakistan censor board
decided to ban it in the land of the pure. Our right to highlight and condemn
the violations in Jammu and Kashmir is also unexceptionable (please, the
argument of look at xyz at home first is not persuasive; that would require one
to condemn everything before one condemns anything, etc.).
However, why are we obsessed with the ‘Kashmir issue’? Note, we
are not really obsessed with the plight of the ‘Kashmiri people’. Kashmir is about politics and it is
now about domestic policies and politics. Why is the major advocacy for Kashmir
domestic, and done through mosque loudspeakers and jihadi megaphones in the
streets? Surely, the people of Pakistan are sold on the idea. Shouldn’t the
advocacy for the Kashmir cause be done in the UN and other international
forums? Why is the Kashmir issue framed only in terms of religion and jihad?
The answer is because Kashmir is as much about foreign policy as
it is about domestic control. The Taliban went rogue and are ‘bad’, however,
‘ideological’ states not only have ideologues but also have foot soldiers
acting on those ideologies. To give up on ‘Kashmir jihad’ is to give up on
‘jihad’; isn’t that what the NAP is about?
Kashmir Day and jihad, etc. is not about the Kashmiris; it is
about us. It is about ceding space; both physical and of narrative to armed
militants with rhetoric of martyrdom and killing. It is about keeping the
ideology of jihad and the State conducting it through proxies alive.
The prime minister doubling up as the foreign minister is the
side show on Kashmir Day; it is Hafiz Saeed who is the show-stopper. In the
speeches of recent years, even Kashmir is becoming a marginal issue; it is an
opportunity to display muscle; both ideological and physical.
We declare a National
Holiday on Kashmir Day. How does shutting down the economy and the entire
business of the State for a day display solidarity with the Kashmiri people?
How does it display intent to India, etc.? It doesn’t and that is not the point of it.
The point of it has become giving the platform to the religious right, often
armed to talk about Kashmir, xenophobia, but above all, the ideology of
violence. What providing of open mic for one entire day does is that the ASWJ
holds rallies and shows of strength ostensibly in favour of the ‘Kashmiris’
while actually simply making the Shias of Pakistan feel less secure than they
already are.
The argument is not that
the Pakistani State should give up Kashmir as a ‘foreign’ policy issue and not
argue that case in appropriate forums. The Pakistani State has long lost the
will to do that. The Kashmir issue is the domain of the government and the
audience should be international. Kashmir now is a prop, an opportunity for
assorted jihadi outfits to make their presence felt. We do a great disservice
to the persecuted people of Kashmir and their genuine suffering by using them
as mere gimmicks for domestic narrative power grabs; we do a disservice to
ourselves by ceding the few inches of narrative space captured after APS
Peshawar. ‘Kashmir jihad’ is the original sin; the convergence of religious
militancy with hyper-nationalist patriotism. ‘Kashmir Day’ today makes a
mockery of the NAP. We need to be ‘liberated’ from ‘Kashmir’ in our imagination
before we talk about us, the NAP and perhaps even Kashmir.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 8th,
2015.
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