“If one harbors anywhere in one’s
mind a nationalistic loyalty or hatred, certain facts, though in a sense
known to be true, are inadmissible. The nationalist not only does not
disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a
remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.” – George Orwell
A private
university in Meerut suspended all Kashmiri students when a sub-section
of them celebrated Pakistan winning a recent Cricket match. According to
reports in leading Indian newspapers [1], the authorities initially
decided to suspend only the people who had shouted slogans, but later
decided to suspend all Kashmiri students according to the
recommendations made by a three-tier inquiry. The vice-chancellor told
reporters that the students' gesture was completely unacceptable.
Comments about this incident on social media ranged from aggressive and
farcical (some variant of mailing the suspended students to Pakistan),
to tacit acceptance of the policy but disapproval of its universal
application to all Kashmiri students. A few people called for the arrest
of the students, and a ban on ever being employed by the government. A
few others called for their execution as terrorists.
The unifying emotion to all the responses
was, unsurprisingly, an overflow of misplaced nationalism. A few
students celebrating in a corner of the country, somehow, dealt a blow
to the national identity of a billion people. Never mind the absurdity
of the notion that pride in one's nationality is of paramount social and
cultural importance, since the nation one belongs to is determined
purely by luck, as a consequence of the accident of birth. Never mind
the constitutional assurance provided to every citizen that their
freedom of speech will be unimpeded.
One tweet regarding this incident
remarked, “This is why the right to free speech has restrictions.”.
Ironically, this is exactly the scenario where an absolute right to free
expression, without restrictions, is direly needed as, popular speech,
by definition does not need to be protected. It is unpopular speech,
which might be offensive to some section of society, that needs
protection. These ideas, are by no means either original or profound,
and has been expressed at different points of time by many notable
people including Søren Kierkegaard, Salman Rushdie, Kurt Vonnegut,
George Carlin and Stephen Fry among others.
There can be no ethical
justification for arbitrary boundaries on a map determining whether an
expression of joy is worthy or unworthy.
In the rest of the article, I will try to
place this incident in historical context. In 1846, the Muslim majority
region of Kashmir, with a distinct language and culture was 'sold' to
King Gulab Singh for Rs. 7,500,000 in return for acceptance of absolute
British sovereignty. Throughout the next hundred years, the Hindu ruler
kept the Muslim population poor, illiterate and oppressively taxed [2],
and faced mass agitations that he brutally suppressed using State
forces.
In the spring of 1947 King Hari Singh orders the police to fire
on demonstrations in favor of joining Pakistan, burns whole villages and
massacres innocent people [3]. In retaliation, Pashtuns from North West
Frontier Province in Pakistan with Poonch rebels invade Kashmir . The
King decides to ask for help from India, who agree to send the Indian
army only on Kashmir's accession to India. King Hari Singh agrees to
this, contravening all previous accession regulations which called for a
plebiscite to determine whether princely states would join India,
Pakistan or be Independent.
It is important to note that at that point
of time, and since then, all opinion polls suggest that a majority of
the people in the region want Kashmir to be independent, a lesser number
want Kashmir to accede to Pakistan and a minuscule number want to
maintain status-quo. At that time, Pandit Nehru, the Indian Prime
Minister, and Sheikh Abdullah, the first Prime Minister of the state of
Kashmir gave assurances that the accesion of Kashmir was ad-hoc to be
resolved by a later plebiscite. The United Nations Security Council
Resolution 47 called for a similar plebiscite. India, for a while,
maintained that a plebiscite was imminent and then in an Israel-esque
U-turn decided that the requirements for a plebiscite were obsolete as
the “geography and demographics of the region are permanently altered”,
since 1947.
Meanwhile, most investigations carried
out by international agencies show that forced disappearances,
extra-judicial killings torture, rape and sexual abuse, by the Indian
army to sustain dominance in the region fueled by the Armed Forces
Special Powers Act (AFSPA), are widespread [4]. For some time, the
number of civilian deaths attributed to the Indian Army in the region
are higher than those attributed to Islamic militants [5].
Indian
authorities routinely deport internationally reputed journalists, like
David Barsamian and threaten the others for trying to pry into Kashmir
[6]. The few investigative journalists who manage to escape the net have
uncovered horror stories, completely unreported in the Indian media, of
the army's atrocities. A few of them are particularly scarring like
that of the 60-year-old man (6), kept in solitary confinement by the
army for one month. During that time, he wasn’t given anything to eat,
but his own flesh. They cut the flesh from his body and served it to
him. This was all he was given to eat for a month.
In July 2011, the
State Human Rights Commission of Jammu and Kashmir (SHRC) released a
report documenting 2,156 unidentified bodies in 38 unmarked graveyards, a
relic and testament to the last 50 years of forced disappearances.
Kashmiri children have grown up watching
unexplained graveyards populate their villages and with macabre stories
like the above. And when these children become young adults and
celebrate Pakistan's victory, the rest of the Indian population calls
them thankless and undeserving of this country. They are right.
Kashmiris do not deserve constant torture, confinement, unexplained
deaths that India has provided them with for the last two hundred years.
They deserve to exercise the right of self-determination which is the
cornerstone of modern democratic society and be independent. At the very
least, they deserve the minuscule amount of freedom to cheer for the
opposing team at a sporting event.
“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.” - Howard Zinn
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