The Kashmir Resistance Day

February 3 was observed as the Kashmir Resistance Day in the Indian Occupied Kashmir to protest a Kolkata court's decision awarding death sentence to a 29-year-old Kashmiri teacher, Muzaffar Ahmed Rathor, from IOK's Kulgam district. Terming the sentence miscarriage of justice, the Hurriyat Conference leadership noted that "while New Delhi is adopting aggressive and oppressive policies against the people of Kashmir, communal and extremist elements are harassing, threatening and beating up Kashmiris studying and working in various Indian states." And at the same time, Indian judiciary is targeting Kashmiris with its biased approach. The Indian government, administration and judiciary, said the Hurriyat, have colluded to push the Kashmiris against the wall. It may be recalled that the worst example of bias was set by India's highest judicial forum, the Supreme Court, when it sentenced a Kashmiri leader, Afzal Guru, for the 2001 attack on parliament. Even though the court had acknowledged that the evidence against the accused was only circumstantial, still it decided to pronounce the death sentence ignoring the fundamental principle of justice that calls for evidence which is beyond reasonable doubt. Letting a prejudicial emotion get the better of it the court said, "the incident, which resulted in heavy casualties, had shaken the entire nation, and the collective conscience of society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender." Soon afterwards, ie, 2013, Guru was secretly hanged to avoid Kashmir reaction, and buried inside Delhi's Tihar jail. In the present case, the Kolkata court seems to have acted on that unconscionable precedent to satisfy the 'conscience of society' rather the demands of justice.
But the Kashmiri people have consistently demonstrated that such tactics will not dampen their urge for freedom from Indian rule. Since the present uprising began in 1989, an estimated 100,000 Kashmiris have lost their lives, some 10,000 have 'disappeared', and tens of thousands subjected to extreme torture, leading in many cases to death. Respected international rights groups have also recorded the use by Indian security forces of rape as a weapon of war. And countless homes in the occupied state have been demolished. Yet the freedom struggle stays resilient in the face of half a million troops (one to every four Kashmiris). Last July's killing of the young freedom fighter, Burhan Wani, triggered a widespread uprising that refuses to die down. After months of brutal killings, use of pellet guns blinding more than a hundred unarmed protesters, the protest strikes and demonstrations have gone on. Unfortunately, the Modi government refuses to recognize the reality, and to cover its crimes continues to point the finger at Pakistan. The Kashmiri youth would not be confronting the might of the Indian army with mere stones unless they have an inner push to vent their anger at occupation. The scale and the nature of the resistance shows it is essentially a homegrown movement and increasing in intensity, as confirmed by a team of India's concerned citizens' led, on two fact-finding missions, by a former foreign minister, Yashwant Sinha. The team recently released a revealing report on various aspects of the situation, including a warning about things to come. According to the report, "what happened in 2008 and 2010 was of moderate intensity. The 2016 events were of a higher magnitude. What happens next will be of a much higher intensity if the Indian state does not take the right steps."
What those steps might be, are also suggested - all of them are important. The team having held exhaustive discussions with all sections of Kashmiri opinion, including Hurriyat Conference leaders, has concluded that New Delhi needs to do three things. One, it should improve the human rights situation. Second, it should start a multi-dimensional dialogue for settling the Kashmir issue between India and Kashmiri leaders, and between India and Pakistan (something earlier initiated by the Atal Behari Vajpayee-led BJP government with positive results). And third, institutionalize the process of interaction between civil society groups from the rest of India and Kashmiri leaders by involving more opinion-makers and concerned citizens. One can only hope the Modi government will listen to its own concerned citizens to resolve the Kashmir issue according to the wishes of Kashmiri people.