The Spectre of Kashmir Looms on the Ruling Classes of India as a Nightmare
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Handwara is now haunting the Indian ruling classes like a spectre that cannot be exorcised. Actually, the whole valley is haunting the ruling classes and their upper caste Hindu elite lackeys, the hypocrite brigade of fanatic chauvinists who would allow the valley to bleed rather than exercising its right to self-determination.
The operating procedures of the eulogised sentries of Indian democracy, the armed forces, in the valley itself proves that despite all Bollywood B grade jingoistic rhetoric mongering on Kashmir, the Indian establishment treats the valley as an occupied territory and its people as a colonised people. A simple accusation of sexual assault against a security personnel in India would mean that the cops will lodge an FIR against the perpetrator, arrest the accused, present the accused in the court for a prosecution. When the teenager in Handwara accused an Indian Army personnel of sexually harassing her, the police detained the girl first, shot the people protesting against the crime, and shielded the accused in every possible way, including leaking a video with the girl's identity not protected to the media, to pressurising the girl and her father, both under protective custody of the police, to parrot the police version in the court. Despite repeated pleas from the mother of the teenaged victim, the police and the entire state apparatus has denied her meeting the girl and the teenager and her father are kept hostage by the police, who called it protective custody without clarifying for whom.
The Indian ruling classes ordered more reinforcement to baton charge and kill the protestors than taking any action against the guilty soldier enjoying immunity under the draconian AFSPA. This behaviour exhibited by the ruling classes and the state machinery clarified their standpoint vis a vis Kashmir and other militarised zones like Manipur, Nagaland, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, etc. The ruling block of Ambani, Adani, Tata, and other comprador capitalists along with their feudal landlord allies consider the people of Kashmir and other militarised regions as colonised people, a population that should be only dealt with guns and tanks.
The Kashmiri people of Handwara could normally see this act as an aggression of the Indian state and its allies on their dignity. The numerous rapes of Kashmiri women by the Indian security forces, including the most heinous Kunan Poshpora of 1991- where the army raped more than 100 women between the age group of 12-70, still haunts the Kashmiri people and their conscience. Though the same rapes are hyped by the Indian ruling classes and their upper caste elite lackeys as the domination of Indian patriarchy, or upper caste Hindu manhood over the ostracised Muslim women of Kashmir.
The Handwara firings and the killing of the protestors in Kupwara were not done to curb a movement seeking merger of Kashmir with Pakistan, rather people, including teenagers, were killed because they dared to oppose the sexual assault of the pious Indian force on the Kashmiri women in a territory considered as a fiefdom of the Indian Army. The defiance of the established norm of remaining subjugated beneath the Indian Army jackboots by the common people caused a furore among the police and paramilitary. The killings went on as the Hindutva groups celebrated the spilling of Kashmiri blood alike the killing of Mahishasura, no media questions, no trials on TV shows by loud mouth anchors, no crocodile tears were shed, and there was absolute apathy from the elite urban middle class of the country who would voice their concern loudly whenever a sentry will die in the highest war zone of the world, but not when fellow people are brutally exterminated by a fascist military regime.
Raising questions about Indian state repression in the Kashmir valley amounts to sedition and is termed anti-national by the upper caste Hindu elites, whom the corporate media calls people. While the fact is that the Kashmiri people are oppressed by the very force that is trying hard to sell India to big foreign monopoly and finance capital. The same military and paramilitary forces that are on a rampage in the valley killing teenagers and raping women are maintaining a total unbiased nature when it comes to killing the Tribals of Central India, villagers of Eastern India, and the people of North East India. The armed forces on whose name the elite upper caste citizens pledges their patriotism are those forces who are now working as an outsourced mercenary force of the mining corporations, foreign and domestic, in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Telangana, Maharashtra, etc.
The Handwara incident is a clear signage that the Indian state machinery, which is essentially a Brahminist fascist state machinery, is intolerant even to protests against sexual harassment of women in the militarised zones. Their democracy and democratic values, just like the democracy and democratic values of their master US-led Western block, flows out essentially from the barrels of the gun. Yet, the managers of this state machinery blame every organisation that opposes its violence with counter-violence, the likes of P Chidambaram and Rajnath Singh will deliver sermons to those taking the militant route - calling them to shun violence and enter the democratic process- unless they want themselves butchered by the democratic state, the very state in which only the rulers are allowed to hold the gun and the people hostage at its gun point. So, political power p grow out from the barrel of the gun, as Chairman Mao Zedong, the late Chinese maverick, once said!
The congenital illness of the Indian ruling classes is that it considers the people of the country subjects of a monarchy. The ruling block of comprador crony capitalists and feudal landlords consider the people of the country a bunch of beggars or worst, who will be pleased with bread crumbs and will loyally sing a paean to the lord. Therefore, whenever the people of a territory rebels against the injustice laden on them by the regime of the big landlords, comprador capitalists, and their foreign masters, the rulers of the land try to suppress the masses and their aspirations with guns and shells on one hand, and by playing the development card on the other hand. They have adopted the same principle everywhere from Nagaland to Maharashtra, from Chhattisgarh to Kashmir. It's their most boorish thinking that the aspiration for socio-economic and moreover political liberty can be substituted with a hand pump water tap, a concrete street, and an occasional distribution of poor quality food grains at a subsidised price to the people who are extremely poor. At a time when the people agitate for ending police and military repression on them, when people aspire for a political change and socio-economic transformation, installing a hand pump tap will not blur the vision of an aroused people who have seen their near and dear ones fall to bullets sprayed by the state machinery or have found their women raped by an army cheered by jingoistic upper caste cheerleaders.
This illness and myopic vision of the ruling classes has prolonged the struggle for democracy everywhere, from Kashmir to Chhattisgarh, from Manipur to Maharashtra, where people are looking for salvation from the repressive state machinery and its agents perpetrating the most inhuman and barbaric crimes on humanity. The majority of the nation clearly doesn't want the development model peddled by both BJP and Congress as the invincible model for the national welfare. The people of Kashmir have repeatedly shown their defiance to the Indian state whom they consider as an occupation army, nonetheless what the Zionist Israeli occupation force is for a Palestinian teenager, the Indian security forces will be for the Kashmiri youth. The Hindutva doctrine of a nation state, artificially imposed on the diverse people by a bunch of upper caste Hindus cannot be accepted by the Kashmiri people who had a different history, tradition and social engineering than the different nationalities that were brought within the ambit of the nation state.
The developments in the political sphere in the recent years have proved beyond doubt that the ruling classes have grown apprehensive about the growing urge of the people for a democratic and equitable society that values justice and equality. The state machinery and the ruling classes have uncovered their unholy alliance and the fascist clutches are more clearly visible than ever. This compulsion to manifest the fascist self of the Brahminical ruling classes comes from its utmost frustration from controlling the rebelling people all over the country to the growing fear among the comprador crony capitalists and their foot licking dogs in the political arena for the security of their investments in the stakes of the neo-liberal economy. The naked communal rhetoric mongering, the extreme right tilt of the state machinery, the public manifestation of allegiance to Brahminical fascism by the bureaucracy, and the growing violent assaults on dissenting forces everywhere is exhibiting the immense fear the ruling classes are living with, it manifests that they are trying to get rid of a nightmare by resorting into more violence and bloodshed, however, that bloodshed is begetting more discomfort for the ruling classes. Kashmir is one of the grotesque spectre that will keep on haunting the ruling classes until their inevitable collapse ahead.
The violence on Kashmiri people by the Indian state has caused more than 90,000 deaths since the beginning of the 1990s. Numerous women were raped, thousands were displaced, including the Kashmiri Pandits, there are thousands of half widows in the valley who have no idea whether their spouse, picked up by the Indian state and never returned home, are alive or dead. The martial law that rules Kashmir could have been overlooked by the international community because India is a market-friendly economy, immune from all prosecutions for human right violation. But these adverse situations couldn't discourage an average Kashmiri to dream about independence, seek their right to self-determination, fight with a heavily armed army with pebbles. This courage comes from an aspiration to be free from the shackles of enslavement, from the basic human urge to be free, "Azad", a concept that the RSS goons will never understand due to their inherent qualities of servility. The forces that have never battled for the liberation of the people from exploitation and oppression ever will never comprehend the feelings of the people and will continue to exhibit their apathy to the cause of Kashmiri people. Hence, it will be an act of idiocy to believe that the Brahminical fascism will ever show empathy to the demands for freedom and liberty. It is only the democratic struggle of the people, a sincere political effort by all progressive and democratic forces, and a collective international movement for peace, justice and freedom in Kashmir valley that can really bring substantial changes in the valley, which is seeking a way out of the suzerainty imposed by the Indian state and the ruling classes that has only one intention - to exploit the land, resources, people, and geographical-strategical location of Kashmir to farther its political-economic and military interests.
Unless the people of India, the broad masses of peasants, workers, toilled people, lower middle class wage earners, students, youth, and oppressed masses stands in solidarity with the cause of the Kashmiri people, against the military oppression meted out by the Indian state machinery, the struggle of the Kashmiri people will see no positive outcome, it will either keep on roving in total disarray or get hijacked by the extremist Islamist fundamentalist, who have been trying hard to take the liberation struggle of Kashmiri people into the blind alley of sectarianism and bigotry. Today, the enemy of the Indian people, the majority of them, and the people of Kashmir is the same clique, which is trying to milk in extreme profit and wealth from the miserable lives of people. Hence, it is imperative that alike brothers and sisters the toilled people of India shoulder with their comrades from Kashmir in their struggle to usher in an era of democracy, national salvation, and social welfare for the people. Only then victory will be invincible.
The operating procedures of the eulogised sentries of Indian democracy, the armed forces, in the valley itself proves that despite all Bollywood B grade jingoistic rhetoric mongering on Kashmir, the Indian establishment treats the valley as an occupied territory and its people as a colonised people. A simple accusation of sexual assault against a security personnel in India would mean that the cops will lodge an FIR against the perpetrator, arrest the accused, present the accused in the court for a prosecution. When the teenager in Handwara accused an Indian Army personnel of sexually harassing her, the police detained the girl first, shot the people protesting against the crime, and shielded the accused in every possible way, including leaking a video with the girl's identity not protected to the media, to pressurising the girl and her father, both under protective custody of the police, to parrot the police version in the court. Despite repeated pleas from the mother of the teenaged victim, the police and the entire state apparatus has denied her meeting the girl and the teenager and her father are kept hostage by the police, who called it protective custody without clarifying for whom.
The Indian ruling classes ordered more reinforcement to baton charge and kill the protestors than taking any action against the guilty soldier enjoying immunity under the draconian AFSPA. This behaviour exhibited by the ruling classes and the state machinery clarified their standpoint vis a vis Kashmir and other militarised zones like Manipur, Nagaland, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, etc. The ruling block of Ambani, Adani, Tata, and other comprador capitalists along with their feudal landlord allies consider the people of Kashmir and other militarised regions as colonised people, a population that should be only dealt with guns and tanks.
The Kashmiri people of Handwara could normally see this act as an aggression of the Indian state and its allies on their dignity. The numerous rapes of Kashmiri women by the Indian security forces, including the most heinous Kunan Poshpora of 1991- where the army raped more than 100 women between the age group of 12-70, still haunts the Kashmiri people and their conscience. Though the same rapes are hyped by the Indian ruling classes and their upper caste elite lackeys as the domination of Indian patriarchy, or upper caste Hindu manhood over the ostracised Muslim women of Kashmir.
The Handwara firings and the killing of the protestors in Kupwara were not done to curb a movement seeking merger of Kashmir with Pakistan, rather people, including teenagers, were killed because they dared to oppose the sexual assault of the pious Indian force on the Kashmiri women in a territory considered as a fiefdom of the Indian Army. The defiance of the established norm of remaining subjugated beneath the Indian Army jackboots by the common people caused a furore among the police and paramilitary. The killings went on as the Hindutva groups celebrated the spilling of Kashmiri blood alike the killing of Mahishasura, no media questions, no trials on TV shows by loud mouth anchors, no crocodile tears were shed, and there was absolute apathy from the elite urban middle class of the country who would voice their concern loudly whenever a sentry will die in the highest war zone of the world, but not when fellow people are brutally exterminated by a fascist military regime.
Raising questions about Indian state repression in the Kashmir valley amounts to sedition and is termed anti-national by the upper caste Hindu elites, whom the corporate media calls people. While the fact is that the Kashmiri people are oppressed by the very force that is trying hard to sell India to big foreign monopoly and finance capital. The same military and paramilitary forces that are on a rampage in the valley killing teenagers and raping women are maintaining a total unbiased nature when it comes to killing the Tribals of Central India, villagers of Eastern India, and the people of North East India. The armed forces on whose name the elite upper caste citizens pledges their patriotism are those forces who are now working as an outsourced mercenary force of the mining corporations, foreign and domestic, in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Telangana, Maharashtra, etc.
The Handwara incident is a clear signage that the Indian state machinery, which is essentially a Brahminist fascist state machinery, is intolerant even to protests against sexual harassment of women in the militarised zones. Their democracy and democratic values, just like the democracy and democratic values of their master US-led Western block, flows out essentially from the barrels of the gun. Yet, the managers of this state machinery blame every organisation that opposes its violence with counter-violence, the likes of P Chidambaram and Rajnath Singh will deliver sermons to those taking the militant route - calling them to shun violence and enter the democratic process- unless they want themselves butchered by the democratic state, the very state in which only the rulers are allowed to hold the gun and the people hostage at its gun point. So, political power p grow out from the barrel of the gun, as Chairman Mao Zedong, the late Chinese maverick, once said!
The congenital illness of the Indian ruling classes is that it considers the people of the country subjects of a monarchy. The ruling block of comprador crony capitalists and feudal landlords consider the people of the country a bunch of beggars or worst, who will be pleased with bread crumbs and will loyally sing a paean to the lord. Therefore, whenever the people of a territory rebels against the injustice laden on them by the regime of the big landlords, comprador capitalists, and their foreign masters, the rulers of the land try to suppress the masses and their aspirations with guns and shells on one hand, and by playing the development card on the other hand. They have adopted the same principle everywhere from Nagaland to Maharashtra, from Chhattisgarh to Kashmir. It's their most boorish thinking that the aspiration for socio-economic and moreover political liberty can be substituted with a hand pump water tap, a concrete street, and an occasional distribution of poor quality food grains at a subsidised price to the people who are extremely poor. At a time when the people agitate for ending police and military repression on them, when people aspire for a political change and socio-economic transformation, installing a hand pump tap will not blur the vision of an aroused people who have seen their near and dear ones fall to bullets sprayed by the state machinery or have found their women raped by an army cheered by jingoistic upper caste cheerleaders.
This illness and myopic vision of the ruling classes has prolonged the struggle for democracy everywhere, from Kashmir to Chhattisgarh, from Manipur to Maharashtra, where people are looking for salvation from the repressive state machinery and its agents perpetrating the most inhuman and barbaric crimes on humanity. The majority of the nation clearly doesn't want the development model peddled by both BJP and Congress as the invincible model for the national welfare. The people of Kashmir have repeatedly shown their defiance to the Indian state whom they consider as an occupation army, nonetheless what the Zionist Israeli occupation force is for a Palestinian teenager, the Indian security forces will be for the Kashmiri youth. The Hindutva doctrine of a nation state, artificially imposed on the diverse people by a bunch of upper caste Hindus cannot be accepted by the Kashmiri people who had a different history, tradition and social engineering than the different nationalities that were brought within the ambit of the nation state.
The developments in the political sphere in the recent years have proved beyond doubt that the ruling classes have grown apprehensive about the growing urge of the people for a democratic and equitable society that values justice and equality. The state machinery and the ruling classes have uncovered their unholy alliance and the fascist clutches are more clearly visible than ever. This compulsion to manifest the fascist self of the Brahminical ruling classes comes from its utmost frustration from controlling the rebelling people all over the country to the growing fear among the comprador crony capitalists and their foot licking dogs in the political arena for the security of their investments in the stakes of the neo-liberal economy. The naked communal rhetoric mongering, the extreme right tilt of the state machinery, the public manifestation of allegiance to Brahminical fascism by the bureaucracy, and the growing violent assaults on dissenting forces everywhere is exhibiting the immense fear the ruling classes are living with, it manifests that they are trying to get rid of a nightmare by resorting into more violence and bloodshed, however, that bloodshed is begetting more discomfort for the ruling classes. Kashmir is one of the grotesque spectre that will keep on haunting the ruling classes until their inevitable collapse ahead.
The violence on Kashmiri people by the Indian state has caused more than 90,000 deaths since the beginning of the 1990s. Numerous women were raped, thousands were displaced, including the Kashmiri Pandits, there are thousands of half widows in the valley who have no idea whether their spouse, picked up by the Indian state and never returned home, are alive or dead. The martial law that rules Kashmir could have been overlooked by the international community because India is a market-friendly economy, immune from all prosecutions for human right violation. But these adverse situations couldn't discourage an average Kashmiri to dream about independence, seek their right to self-determination, fight with a heavily armed army with pebbles. This courage comes from an aspiration to be free from the shackles of enslavement, from the basic human urge to be free, "Azad", a concept that the RSS goons will never understand due to their inherent qualities of servility. The forces that have never battled for the liberation of the people from exploitation and oppression ever will never comprehend the feelings of the people and will continue to exhibit their apathy to the cause of Kashmiri people. Hence, it will be an act of idiocy to believe that the Brahminical fascism will ever show empathy to the demands for freedom and liberty. It is only the democratic struggle of the people, a sincere political effort by all progressive and democratic forces, and a collective international movement for peace, justice and freedom in Kashmir valley that can really bring substantial changes in the valley, which is seeking a way out of the suzerainty imposed by the Indian state and the ruling classes that has only one intention - to exploit the land, resources, people, and geographical-strategical location of Kashmir to farther its political-economic and military interests.
Unless the people of India, the broad masses of peasants, workers, toilled people, lower middle class wage earners, students, youth, and oppressed masses stands in solidarity with the cause of the Kashmiri people, against the military oppression meted out by the Indian state machinery, the struggle of the Kashmiri people will see no positive outcome, it will either keep on roving in total disarray or get hijacked by the extremist Islamist fundamentalist, who have been trying hard to take the liberation struggle of Kashmiri people into the blind alley of sectarianism and bigotry. Today, the enemy of the Indian people, the majority of them, and the people of Kashmir is the same clique, which is trying to milk in extreme profit and wealth from the miserable lives of people. Hence, it is imperative that alike brothers and sisters the toilled people of India shoulder with their comrades from Kashmir in their struggle to usher in an era of democracy, national salvation, and social welfare for the people. Only then victory will be invincible.
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