Normalcy, a democratic daydream. Everyone who uses the word, journalists included at some point realise the social energy the word carries. A lot happened on 5th August, 2019, quickly and with a casual finality. Even as they were getting their mind around what was happening to them as it was happening, people came out on the roads and shopped ahead of Eid.
“I heard it on the radio with my grandfather,” 19-year-old Asif said. He was sitting with two boys outside a closed meat shop in Batmaloo in Srinagar, waiting for the owner to come. All three were staring into their phones even though there was no connection, not looking up while answering.
In Kashmir, nothing is a binary choice.
“We don’t know what has happened,” another one said.
What did your grandfather say when he heard the news on the radio?
“Nothing, he turned it off and went to sleep,” Asif said. He shut down after that, making it clear no more conversation was welcome. There was no way of knowing whether Asif was his correct name or how much he knew of what had happened.
What’s normal in Kashmir, anyway?
“Normal” is one of those words self-evident, not needing a definition.
What All is Normal in Kashmir?
In Kashmir, normalcy is when tourists come at the end of a bloody season, or if people drive to markets causing traffic jams when restrictions are relaxed. Or, where combat fatigued armed men and civilian clothed men and women co-exist in every corner. Sometimes casualties that remain in double digits can also be perceived as “normal”. In 2013, a letter to inform that Afzal Guru’s mercy petition had been rejected and he would be executed on the 9th February, reached his family in Doabagh in Sopore, two days late. The jail in-charge said it had been sent by normal post, like all communication.
Normalcy, it is very normal for Kashmir.
In 2019, choking off communicaton for an entire population, irrespective of their guilt is also argued as an effort towards avoiding violence and bringing back normalcy—it will make all the difference between being killed by the state and not being killed by the state. What is also normal here is for parents to lock teenagers in their rooms’ so that they don’t go out pelting stones. As it is for groups of stone pelters to stand outside homes of those who don’t join, in a bid to shame and pressurise them.
In Kashmir, nothing is a binary choice.
Only Bad Choices
Just minutes before entering the lane where Asif was sitting, a young man, a student from Bangalore who refused to give his name, dropped me on his scooter at a street corner. Children, barely in their teens had blocked the entrance with stones, carved from breaking the road divider. Residents pleaded to let scooters and cars pass but the children didn't relent. People either turned their vehicles around or simply walked the stretch. If it was any other place you would mistake it for youngsters playing a prank and elders cajoling them but the threat of a stone coming from far beyond and hitting someone was real.
“You have left us with only bad choices,” the Bangalore student said.
“By you, I mean India,” he said.
“Apna time aayega,” a young man shouts from across the room hitting the door with his foot.
India’s power to impose its will on Kashmir unraveled completely, silently in the days prior and post 5 August. The government relied on principles of parliamentary supremacy over anything else to remove even the most rudimentary procedural rights of those suspected of any remote political, even a street offense.
J&K Police Policy: Better Safe Than Sorry
In North Kashmir’s Sopore, the bastion of hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, a police official said, “a few, the chronic ones” had been taken in. He meant chronic stone pelters. It was clear we were going to speak in code.
Double digits?
“Yes, more or less,” he said and added “No maatchis”, essentially to underline that anyone fomenting even the slightest bit of trouble had or could be picked up. It was better to be safe than sorry, he was trying to say.
“I think whatever has happened is good. It’s now clear. There is no confusion. Everyone knows this is it. There is no aadha yahan, aadhan wahan, aadha India, aadha Pakistan, aadha Azad Kashmir,” he said. “It’s good.” he added.
The Jammu and Kashmir police, ordinary Kashmiris at the forefront of fighting insurgency have borne the brunt of this confusion. “Forget stone pelters, forget arresting, we would just stop the bike of an overground worker and we will get a call,” the Sopore official said to illustrate the free reign separatist elements and propaganda had under every political regime.
“They have killed so many of us,” the Sopore police official said.
This peddling of anti-India, pro-separatist sentiment that the Sopore police official mentions could not exist without a wilful blindness and complicity, cultivated for decades, and whose roots undoubtedly predate the existence of this government itself.
No political dispensation has a monopoly on blindness, certainly not the BJP with its unnatural alliance with the PDP. “But the BJP is the party with by far the largest freedom of action and the greatest potential to bring about change, serious change, whether you want it, agree with it or not is a different matter,” said another top police official not wanting to be quoted.
The government had feared violent disobedience by sections of uniformed personnel in the aftermath of the move to abrogate 370. Point number 15 under the category of law and order in the document Home Minister Amit Shah was holding when he arrived in Parliament on 5th August, 2019 said as much.
Since then, the CRPF and the police have been working closely at the station level. “I feel sad they [government] thought so, we lost everything here, in this service. We don’t go home, don’t see our family. If we do, we leave our phones, our identification cards behind. They have killed so many of us,” the Sopore police official said.
370 or not, the reality of state and non-state terror shaping the lives of nearly all Kashmiris does not change.
“We Don’t Care for Article 370”
In Sopore, the downtown market is shut but the main bazaar just opposite the police station was busy. At the entry of the town, oustide a gas agency, people lined up with empty gas cylinders. The line snaked around half a kilometre.
“This is what our Eid has been reduced to,” a man shouted from one end of the queue. On the other side a young man sitting by his cylinder abused the Indian media. The camera had to stop rolling. We move indoors. Their eyes filled with old anger and new hate. The mood, not of defeat but loss of dignity.
“We have always been kicked around, now you have kicked and thrown us to other other side,” one among the group said. He stood at the door and didn’t want to talk. “We never believed in 370, 380, 390. Leave us alone, akela chorh do bus,” a 38-year-old garmernt shop owner said. Within a short span, 370 was forgotten and the communication stranglehold seemed to be instigating the very violence it was trying to control.
“Apna time aayega,” a young man shouts from across the room hitting the door with his foot.
About 30-odd kilometers from Srinagar, on the Pattan Road, close to the village of Narbal, a Shia dominated village, a Quick Response Team (QRT) of the 29 Rashtriya Rifles hems us in. “It’s a friendly village,” the Major leading the QRT says. 30-year-old Mohd Akbar from Chainabal walked everyone into a small room. “They have decided, what is there to do now. Khudai aur hukumat ek hi hai. Jo faisla liya wo liya,” Akbar said, adding he was speaking for everyone. The room filled up quickly. Young men stood listening, unconvinced, while elders spoke.
“We are Shia Jaffreys, we have always been with India. We never got anything. Whatever jobs came went to the Sunnis,” the numbardar of the village Ghulam Rasool said. A slight murmur erupted, the younger men leaning against the wall shifted their weight agitatedly.
“To be honest I have never used the word 370 in my life, we started hearing it only two three years ago when they (political parties) started using it. My only fear is loss of land,” Ghulam Ahmed, an elderly of the village said. Later as he was leaving he whispered in my ear, “Saare jahan se accha Hindustan hamara.”
The QRT team was still in the vicinity.
“This Is No Civil Resistance”
“You are free to go wherever you want, it’s a free country,” a Colonel posted at the Srinagar based 15 Corps is telling a young reporter inquiring on places he could/should visit. Even in “normal times”, the “free country” rule does not always apply to Kashmir, certainly not to Kashmiris.
Outside the Batwara Gate in Srinagar, where the 15 Corps is headquartered a few civilian vehicles are standing on the opposite side. Some drivers have hidden their number plates with black tape. Even in normal times, the force is a polarizing presence. Proximity to it can bring you in the line of fire from terror groups. 370 or not, the reality of state and non-state terror shaping the lives of nearly all Kashmiris does not change.
“This is false equivalence, those who come out on the streets is not only a mob, not only innocents. You have to stop treating this as some civil resistance. By you I mean, the leftist types. Nothing is civil here,” an official from the Army’s Victor Force which takes care of South Kashmir said.
The Duty of Telling the Truth
In 2016, soon after the Hizbul commander Burhan Wani was killed, a 16-year-old from Kulgam in South Kashmir sitting with four other boys, faces hidden recounted to me how “five litres of semen were found inside the body of Neelofar Jan during post mortem”. He was convinced that Jan was raped and murdered.
The possibility that the two women found dead in a rivulet in Shopian in May 2009 could have drowned was downright unacceptable, even in the face of several inquires and investigations revealing that evidence was fabricated. Perhaps sensing some twitch on my face, the teenager removed his scarf and calmly said to me, “they kept raping her even after she was dead, that’s how.” He had been told about it at a gathering in the village and reminded of his duty to “spread the truth”.
The “truth” was being spread via school, whatsapp groups, videos, voice messages. The boys showed little fists of determination, chanting the name of former Hizbul commander and the the head of Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind, an affiliate of al-Qaeda Zakir Musa. Their belief was they were fighters for an Islamic cause. Azaad Kashmir or democracy were not high on the list of cherished values.
What Burhan Wani Brought to Kulgam
In the aftermath of Wani’s death youngsters like the boy from Kulgam, came out in large numbers pelting stones, often at encounter sites. They co-ordinated, mobilised in matter of minutes, alerting terrorists and forcing the Army to abandon many operations over the course of the next few months.
In 2019, the road to Kulgam seems as picturesque and poignant. Young men, in small groups stood on the road side, watching every movement. “This is normal for Kashmir, this tension, confusion. I called many numbers trying to get in touch with my family in Kulgam, I must have made 200-300 calls,” said Parvez Wani, a banker working in Delhi. “You know Wani, we are famous, all militants are Wani” he added, smiling while introducing himself. Unable to get in touch with his family he landed in Srinagar on the 10th of August. “Let’s see when I reach Kulgam, they are saying traffic is normal on the news,” he told me at the Srinagar airport.
Parvez managed to reach Kulgam in two hours, taking the help of a cousin who worked at the Anantnag Medical College. In the ten days he spent there, Wani stayed at home mostly, met his grandmother and other relatives and played cricket with his old mates. On his return to Delhi, he moved to Punjab on a bank project. “Just open phone lines, rest is all yours,” he sent an SMS.
“By yours, I mean India”.
Srinagar: A Sad and Scary Place
A television camera is recording visuals just outside the office of the 79 Battalion of the CRPF in Srinagar. There is easy traffic of cars and bikes. The opposite road has been shut by concertina wires and a check post. “Lies, lies,” shouts the pillion rider of a passing bike.
A similar scene is repeated outside the office of the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) which several camera crews used as a backdrop while filing their reports. The visuals were uplinked via Outdoor Broadcast (OB) Vans stationed behind strong gates of the Hotel Sarovar, which days later became a media facilitation centre.
This time the driver in the car slows down, shouts expletives in Kashmiri at the reporter. By the time these visuals were scrimmed and transmitted, it seemed there was a pervasive atmosphere of “normalcy”, the narrative most disturbing to the ones who it was about, but gratifying to many others.
These days Srinagar is a sad and scary place. Much of the city has new crossing points, blocked off by concertina wires, cordoned off. The red Kashmiri flag with a plough and three vertical stripes that flew next to the Indian tricolour, a trifle lower is no longer hoisted. “It’s like a gaping hole in the sky,” the Bangalore student now back from Srinagar called to say.
When did you last see someone hold it? “Never,” he replied.
No Large-Scale Violence, No Normalcy
Everyone expected that there would be large-scale violence. But the trauma of near violence is in the air. “True, no major violence. You can almost mistake it for paradise,” he added, the anger crackling through.
Many non-Kashmiris, supportive of the government’s move––though not fully aware of what 370 entailed––expressed surprise at why development, peace, cafes and cinema halls would not be a strong enough attraction for young Kashmiris.
“Why do you think this won’t work?”
“This is a bold imaginative move.”
“Will things get worse?”
“What do they want?”
The young are the same everywhere,” a wholesale retailer of saffron based in Kolkata said.
I took the questions to Parvez and the Bangalore student.
“Why should things not get worse? You have integrated us with India, and you do this. And then you ask why we hate India? How foolish is everyone,” the Bangalore student said.
Parvez is calmer. He had answered this question at his work place many times. “It is a bold, imaginative move. It’s not a failure of imagination. You have shown imagination. It’s not your mind. It’s your heart that is hard and worthless”, he said.
“Not you, I mean India.”
(Anubha Bhonsle is an independent journalist. She tweets @anubhabhonsle. Views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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