Manufacturing silence: Kashmir’s long tryst with coercion

 Inam ul rehman

“What would you say to militants if they enter your house,” asked a commandant of paramilitary forces to my father after finishing the search of our house. It was the first crackdown in our area. My uncles and cousins also lived in the same house and were all gathered in our residential compound.

“We,” replied my father to the commandant, “can neither deny you nor them as both of you hold guns.” The commandant looked at my father, smiled, nodded, and walked away with his troops.

As an 11-year-old, I realised that in front of the barrel of a gun we become nobody.

 

Pattern returns

On 10th January of this year, the daily Kashmir Uzma Urdu newspaper published two public announcements, in which former members of the Jamaat-i-Islami Jammu and Kashmir (a right-wing extremist Muslim party similar to the Bharatiya Janata Party) publicly disassociated themselves from the religio-political party. While reading it, I had a wry smile. 

When the armed insurrection started in late 1989, the National Conference workers became primary targets of the Kashmiri militants. For the militants the NC, was not “a” but “the” traitor party which, according to them, bartered the plank of an independent Jammu and Kashmir for a mere formation of government.

As the killings of NC leaders continued, its panicked members started to publicly disassociate themselves from the party. From January 1990, some of its members published resignations in newspapers and some announced it in masjids. Not only the NC but workers from other political parties were also threatened.

In our area a stove bomb was put inside a shop owned by a Congress worker. Fortunately, the bomb was defused. The frightened shopkeeper didn’t open his shop for many, many months and later switched to some other profession.  As the violence started to swelled many political party leaders and members fled the Valley. 

Both the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, a militant organisation advocating independent J&K, and the Hizb ul Mujhaideen, which demanded merger with Pakistan, carried out political assassinations.  While the JKLF killed Pandits, it was the Hizb which issued a diktat to Pandits to leave the Valley.

An ideology is challenged with a counter-ideology and the people repose their faith toward an ideology which they identify with. But in the 90s, a violent politico-religious ideology—either you are with Kashmir, which meant Independent Kashmir or merger with Pakistan, or with India—took root. Kashmiri bodies became a playground for it.

Anyone labelled pro-India or an Indian agent meant near certain death. Anyone who dared to raise questions on Pakistan or on militants was declared anti-Islam, Indian agent and hanged to death. Here also the sword cut the poor mostly. The rich and influential could barter their death for money. The rhetoric of Tehreeki leaders that their fight was based on morals was never practised on the ground.  

Weaponising ideology

Those who complained of political suffocation in the early 80s started killing any expression or opposition when they had a gun on their side. Suddenly a powerless peasant, labourer, artisan with a gun in his hand became inflated with toxic power and began to take everything as a fair game. The ideologues used these people to weaponise monopolisation of an ideology.  Whatever political plurality we had collapsed under enforced unanimity, dissent was not being debated but eliminated.

Before the insurgency the state institutions were culpable of silencing any contrarian voice. In the 50s and 60s anyone listening to Radio Pakistan in Kashmir was vulnerable to policing, where only one political party had to win elections. Those who refused to comply with the Government of India then were pressured by the state institutions to bow. Political figures including Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and his close associates were entangled in legal cases. Only when they agreed to the conditions laid down by the Congress government were their reins loosened.       

In conflict zones, what everyone forgets, change is the only constant.

 

The counter-insurgency and the rise of parallel systems

This silencing by force was used by the Indian state to build a powerful entity that created havoc. Encouraged and supported by the state, the counter-insurgent members decided to form an organisation and ironically named it Ikhwan. These counter-insurgents had received the worst treatment from the pro-Pakistan militants of Hizb.

Their actions against the Hizb militants, its ideologues, members and sympathisers demoralised the JI so much that by 1997, its leaders for the first time publicly announced that it has nothing to do with any militant organisation. In order to bolster the Hizb ranks the Pakistani state sent its hardcore trained militants to eliminate the fear of these Ikhwanis from the hearts of pro-Pakistan militants and ideologues.  

However, it couldn’t give a morale boost to the local militants.

After Pakistan failed to get an inch of land from the Indian state in 1999 following Kargil incursions, its militants unleashed suicide attacks on Indian military installations. But even this failed to recoup the local pro-Pakistan militants.

As violent ideologues were trying to impose ideological conformity, it was time to use administrative control to stabilise the same end. The People’s Democratic Party, using all the Muslim United Front symbols—a right wing Muslim party that united all disgruntled leaders against the Congress, and the NC—took the Jamaat and its militant organisation under its flight. It was not a new thing here. The NC had applied the same methods to win disgruntled and firebrand leaders supporting secessionism in the past.

From 1990 to 2019, the Jamaat ran a parallel system in Kashmir through the Hizb, Syed Ali Shah Geelani and coterie. Its armed wing in the 2000s was no longer potent compared to the 90s, but had enough ammunition to go for “headshots” as its militants used to boost.

For the Jamaat, NC was its arch enemy and it tried every ounce—be it killing its members, narrative building against its governance, or conniving with the PDP to eliminate its footprints from J&K.   

The Indian state learning from its past mistakes let this new collision to fructify. This time the state wanted to win over these disgruntled leaders and give them a long rope. Unthinkable things started to happen. The PDP disbanded counter-insurgents’ groups. Kuka Parray, who led this movement, was killed in a mine blast. The then president of Pakistan Pervez Musharaff appeared in the big hoardings throughout Kashmir. A bus service in 2005 from Srinagar to Pakistan administered Muzzaffarabd commenced. However, this alliance fell in 2015 when the PDP formed government with the BJP. During the 2016 street protests ostensibly against the killing of militant commander, but which was more of resentment against the alliance of the “North Pole-South Pole” government, a furious Mehbooba Mufti, who was the chief minister at that time, stated: “Those people, of a particular political party, who couldn’t go to their homes in the Ikhwan period are now conspiring against the peace and government, and are thankless.”

A few years earlier the NSA chief Ajit Doval stated, “You don't fight terrorists, you 'degrade'  them”.

 

State forgets its own lessons

Flustered by 2016 street protests, the Narendra Modi government was not willing to stretch this rope any more. By arresting Zahoor Ahmad Shah Watali, an influential businessman, the government made it clear: either toe the line or go to jail.

The Indian state which was acting smartly before 2016, eroding secessionism by hollowing out all glorified leaders of the 90s Tehreek, started to repeat its earlier mistakes. These mistakes were common during the Congress party rule in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. However, the same party in the 21st century restrained itself from repeating these howlers.

When the Congress party returned to power at New Delhi in 2004, the average fatalities in Kashmir were more than 1500 per annum. During the previous NDA regime, 1998-2004, the South Asia Terrorism Portal reported 19,986 killings in J&K. The Congress party in just two years was successful in bringing down the fatality rates to less than 1000 per year and wean away J&K from the war zone tag. In its 10 year stay at New Delhi, the killings in Kashmir almost decreased three fold.

The strike calls were largely ignored by people. Hurriyat ideologues started to confess that their own militants killed Hurriyat leaders for rivalry and blame was put on the Indian state. Sajad Lone, a brilliant mind and orator, also parted ways from secessionism, as he felt choked there.     

 

Conclusion

But while the parties move from ideology to political realignment, the Kashmir issue stays. Mature and confident democratic states never equate silence with resolution. Militants and Pakistani state failed in Kashmir because coercion doesn’t create belief, force couldn’t manufacture legitimacy, and the Jamaat’s fear driven ideology hollowed itself out.

These announcements of the Jamaat members resemble the NC acts of the 90s, both were less out of conviction and more as compliance to save themselves for the next day. 

J&K’s problem has not been the presence of power but the absence of trust. The future will not be decided by who controls whom, but who lives with the differences without killing or enforcing silencing.

Pandit Kalhan said it centuries ago: Kashmiris cannot be won by force, only political maturity can.

Pic courtesy: Abid Bhat