<nettime> Arundhati Roy on Balakot, Kashmir And India

[Patrice Riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl>]

01/03/2019

Our Captured, Wounded Hearts: Arundhati Roy On Balakot,
Kashmir And India

By deploying the IAF, Narendra
Modi has ensured that Kashmir
is conclusively
internationalised.

By Arundhati Roy

NEW DELHI -- With his reckless "pre-emptive" airstrike on
Balakot in Pakistan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has
inadvertently undone what previous Indian governments almost
miraculously, succeeded in doing for decades. Since 1947 the
Indian Government has bristled at any suggestion that the
conflict in Kashmir could be resolved by international
arbitration, insisting that it is an "internal matter." By
goading Pakistan into a counter-strike, and so making India
and Pakistan the only two nuclear powers in history to have
bombed each other, Modi has internationalised the Kashmir
dispute. He has demonstrated to the world that Kashmir is
potentially the most dangerous place on earth, the
flash-point for nuclear war. Every person, country, and
organisation that worries about the prospect of nuclear war
has the right to intervene and do everything in its power to
prevent it.

          On February 14 2019, a convoy of 2,500 paramilitary
          soldiers was attacked in Pulwama (Kashmir) by Adil
          Ahmad Dar, a 20-year-old Kashmiri suicide-bomber
          who, it has been declared, belonged to the
          Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad. The attack that
          killed at least 40 men was yet another hideous
          chapter in the unfolding tragedy of Kashmir. Since
          1990, more than seventy thousand people have been
          killed in the conflict, thousands have
          "disappeared", tens of thousands have been tortured
          and hundreds of young people maimed and blinded by
          pellet guns. The death toll over the last twelve
          months has been the highest since 2009. Associated
          Press reports that almost 570 people have lost
          their lives, 260 of them militants, 160 civilians
          and 150 Indian armed personnel who died in the line
          of duty.

Depending on the lens through which this conflict is viewed,
the rebel combatants are called "terrorists", "militants",
"freedom fighters" or "mujahids". Most Kashmiris call them
'mujahids' and when they are killed, hundreds of thousands of
people -- whether they agree with their methods or not--turn
out for their funerals, to mourn for them and bid them
farewell. Indeed, most of the civilians who were killed this
past year, are those who put their bodies in the way of harm
to allow militants cornered by soldiers to escape.

In this long-drawn-out, blood-drenched saga, the Pulwama
bombing is the deadliest, most gruesome attack of all. There
are hundreds, if not thousands, of young men in the Kashmir
Valley like Adil Ahmed Dar who have been born into war, who
have seen such horror that they have become inured to fear
and are willing to sacrifice their lives for freedom.

Any day there could be another attack, worse, or less-worse
than the Pulwama attack. Is the Government of India willing
to allow the actions of these young men to control the fate
of this country and the whole subcontinent? By reacting in
the empty, theatrical way that he did, this is exactly what
Narendra Modi has done. He has actually bestowed upon them
the power to direct our future. The young Pulwama bomber
could not have asked for more.

Indians who valorise their own struggle for Independence from
British Rule and virtually worship those who led it are for
the most part strangely opaque to Kashmiris who are fighting
for the same thing. The armed struggle in Kashmir against
what people think of as "Indian Rule" is almost thirty years
old. That Pakistan has (at one time officially and now mostly
through non-government actors) supported the struggle with
arms, men and logistics is hardly a secret. Nor is it a
secret that no militant can operate in the war-zone that is
Kashmir if they did not have the overt support of local
people.

          Who in their right mind could imagine that this
          hellishly complicated, hellishly cruel war would be
          solved or even mitigated in any way by a one-off,
          hastily executed, theatrical "surgical-strike,"
          which turns out to have been not-so-surgical after
          all? A similar "strike" that took place after the
          2016 attack on an Indian Army camp in Uri achieved
          little more than inspiring a Bollywood action film.
          The Balakot strikes in turn seem to have been
          inspired by the film. And now the media reports
          that Bollywood producers are already lining up to
          copyright "Balakot" as the name of their next film
          project. On the whole, it has to be said, this
          absurd waltz looks and smells more "pre-election"
          than "pre-emptive."

For the Prime Minister of this country to press its
formidable Airforce into performing dangerous theatrics is
deeply disrespectful. And what an irony it is, that while
this irresponsible nuclear brinkmanship is being played out
in our subcontinent, the mighty United States of America is
in talks with the Taliban forces whom it has not managed to
defeat or dislodge even after 17 years of straight-out war.

The spiralling conflict in the subcontinent is certainly as
deadly as it appears to be. But is it as straightforward?

Kashmir is the most densely militarized zone in the world,
with an estimated half a million Indian soldiers posted
there. In addition to the Intelligence Bureau, the Research
and Analysis Wing and the National Intelligence Agency, the
uniformed forces -- the Army, the Border Security Force, the
Central Reserve Police Force (and of course the Jammu and
Kashmir Police) each does its own intelligence gathering.
People live in terror of informers, double agents and triple
agents who could be anybody from old school friends to family
members. Under these circumstances, an attack on the scale of
what happened in Pulwama is more than just shocking. As one
pithy Twitter commentator put it, (she was referring to the
increasingly popular Hindu vigilante practice in North India,
of tracking down and lynching Muslims accused of killing
cows), how is it that the BJP "can trace 3 kg of beef but
cannot trace 350 kg of RDX"?

Who knows?

          After the attack, the Governor of Jammu and Kashmir
          called it the result of "an intelligence failure".
          A few intrepid media portals reported the fact that
          the Jammu and Kashmir Police had indeed raised an
          urgent alert about a possible attack. Nobody in the
          media seems overly worried about why the warning
          was ignored, and where, in the chain of command,
          the breach took place.

Tragic as it was, the Pulwama attack came as a perfect
political opportunity for Narendra Modi to do what he does
best -- grandstand. Many of us who had predicted months ago
that a BJP that was losing its political footing would call
down a fireball from the skies just before elections, watched
with horror as our prediction came true. And we watched the
Ruling Party adroitly parley the Pulwama tragedy into petty,
political advantage.

In the immediate aftermath of the Pulwama Attack, as enraged
mobs attacked Kashmiris who worked and studied in mainland
India, Modi kept dead quiet and reacted only after the
Supreme Court said it was the Government's duty to protect
them. But after the air strikes he was quick to appear on TV
to take credit, sounding for all the world as though he had
personally flown the planes and dropped the bombs.

Immediately India's roughly four hundred 24/7 news channels,
most of them unapologetically partisan, set about amplifying
this performance with their own personal "inputs". Using old
videos and fake facts, their screaming anchors masquerading
as frontline commandos, orchestrated an orgy of crazed,
triumphalist nationalism, in which they claimed the air
strikes had destroyed a Jaish-e-Mohammad "terror factory" and
killed more than three hundred "terrorists". The next
morning, even the most sober national newspapers followed
suit with ridiculous, embarrassing headlines.

The Indian Express said: 'India Strikes Terror, Deep in
Pakistan'. Meanwhile Reuters, which sent a journalist to the
site in Pakistan where the bombs had actually fallen,
reported only damage to trees and rocks and injuries
sustained by one villager. Associated Press reported
something similar. The New York Times said "Analysts and
diplomats in New Delhi said the targets of the Indian
airstrikes were unclear, as any terrorist groups operating
along the border would have cleared out in recent days after
Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India vowed retaliation over
the Kashmir attack."

The mainstream Indian media did not carry the Reuters report.
So, for the bulk of India's voting people who don't read the
New York Times, their Prime Minister -- with his famous 56"
chest--had dismantled terrorism forever.

For the moment at least, it looked as though Modi had
completely out-maneuvered his political opponents, who were
reduced to tweeting in praise of India's brave pilots.
Meanwhile he and his men were out electioneering. Doubters
and dissenters were terrorized by Hindutva trolls, charged
with being anti-national, or just debilitated by the fear of
the on-call lynch mob that seems to lurk at every street
corner in North India.

          But things can change in a day. The sheen of false
          victory faded quickly after Pakistan struck back,
          shot down a fighter plane and captured a pilot of
          the Indian Air Force -- Wing Commander Abhinandan
          Varthaman. Once again, the BJP's see-sawing
          electoral prospects have begun to look distinctly
          less rosy.

Leaving aside the business of electoral politics and the
question of who will win the next elections, Modi's actions
are unforgiveable. He has jeopardized the lives of more than
a billion people and brought the war in Kashmir to the
doorsteps of ordinary Indians. The madness on television, fed
to people like an IV drip morning, noon and night, asks
people to lay aside their woes, their joblessness, their
hunger, the closing down of their small businesses, the
looming threat of eviction from their homes, their demands
that there be an enquiry into the mysterious deaths of
judges, as well as into what looks like the biggest, most
corrupt Defense deal in the history of India, their worries
that if they are Muslim, Dalit or Christian they could be
attacked or killed--and instead vote, in the name of national
pride, for the very people that have brought about this
devastation.

Leaving aside the business of electoral politics and the
question of who will win the next elections, Modi's actions
are unforgiveable. He has jeopardized the lives of more than
a billion people and brought the war in Kashmir to the
doorsteps of ordinary Indians.

This government has wounded India's soul so very deeply. It
will take years for us to heal. For that process to even
begin, we must vote to remove these dangerous,
spectacle-hungry charlatans from office.

          We cannot afford to have a Prime Minister who, on a
          whim has broken the back of the economy of a
          country of a billion people by declaring overnight,
          without consulting anybody that 80 percent of a
          country's currency is no longer legal tender. Who
          in history has ever, done this? We cannot have a
          Prime Minister of a nuclear power who continues to
          shoot for a movie about himself in a National Park
          while a huge crisis befalls the country and then
          airily declares that he has left the decision of
          what to do next to the "Sena" -- the Army. Which
          democratically elected leader in history, has ever
          done this?

Modi has to go. The quarrelsome, divided, unstable Coalition
government that might come in his place is not a problem. It
is the very essence of democracy. It will be far more
intelligent and far less foolhardy.

There remains the matter of the captured Wing Commander.
Whatever anybody's opinion of him, and whatever Pakistan's
role has been in the Kashmir conflict, Imran Khan, the Prime
Minister of Pakistan has acted with dignity and rectitude
throughout this crisis. The Indian Government was right to
demand that Varthaman be accorded all the rights that the
Geneva Convention accords a Prisoner of War. It was right to
demand that the International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC) be given access to him while he was in Pakistan's
custody. Today Prime Minister Imran Khan has announced that,
as a gesture of good will, the Wing Commander will be released.

          Perhaps India can offer the same courtesy to its
          political prisoners in Kashmir and the rest of the
          country: protection of their rights under the
          Geneva Convention, and access to the ICRC?

Kashmir is the real theatre of unspeakable violence and moral
corrosion that can spin us into violence and nuclear war at
any moment. To prevent that from happening, the conflict in
Kashmir has to be addressed and resolved.

The war that we are in the middle of, is not a war between
India and Pakistan. It is a war that is being fought in
Kashmir which expanded into the beginnings of yet another war
between India and Pakistan. Kashmir is the real theatre of
unspeakable violence and moral corrosion that can spin us
into violence and nuclear war at any moment. To prevent that
from happening, the conflict in Kashmir has to be addressed
and resolved. That can only be done if Kashmiris are given a
chance to freely and fearlessly tell the world what they are
fighting for and what they really want.

Dear World, find a way.

Arundhati Roy
Author, *The God of Small Things*, *The Ministry of Utmost
Happiness*, and the forthcoming collection of essays, *My
Seditious Heart*.

(Bwo Goanet News Service)





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