Youth lead resistance to Indian occupation

Beginning in 2008 and greatly intensifying in June of this year, growing resistance in the Indian-occupied part of Kashmir has created a major political crisis for the ruling class of India.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told an all-party meeting in New Delhi on Sept. 15, while being covered on India TV, that dialog is the only way out to ensure peace and to resolve the unrest in the Kashmir valley. As recently as August, however, speaking to a conference of police chiefs on the situation in Kashmir, Singh took a harder line. He said at that time, “We need to revisit standard operating procedures and crowd control measures to deal with public agitations with nonlethal, yet effective and more focused measures.” (AFP, Sept. 19)

Despite Singh’s talk of peaceful measures, the online Indian news service SIFY reported Sept. 19 that 101 Kashmiris had been killed by Indian civilian police and Indian military police, called gendarmes, since June — three of them on Sept. 15, the day the prime minister spoke. CNN updated the death toll later that day, since another three young men and one woman died after the SIFY report.

Kashmir, a mountainous area in the lower Himalayas, borders on India, Pakistan and China. Three-quarters of its inhabitants are Muslims and its main industries are agriculture and tourism.

At the end of direct British rule of the entire subcontinent, it had been partitioned mainly along religious lines between Hindu-dominated India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. After a war and ceasefire between India and Pakistan in 1947-1948, the United Nations at India’s request drew up what was supposed to be a temporary Line of Control dividing most of the Kashmir region between those two countries. The rest — a small, sparsely inhabited piece on the border — went to China.

A promised plebiscite in the area of Kashmir under India’s control, where at least three-fourths of the people are Muslims, never happened. Instead, India claimed it as a state and called it Kashmir and Jammu. This is the area that has long been the scene of a militant struggle for self-determination.

A 24-hour curfew imposed Sept. 13 on parts of Srinagar, a large city in the northern part of Indian-controlled Kashmir and a center of resistance, was lifted for a few hours on Sept. 18 for families to buy food, medicine and water. (Al-Jazeera, Sept. 19) The curfews are so strict that people have been arrested just for looking out their windows during curfew time. (Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 3)

Since Sept. 13, when 18 people were killed, tensions have reached a fever pitch and demonstrations have challenged the curfews. The Indian army has started patrolling some of the hot spots where both police and gendarmes have lost control.

For all the stringency of the Indian forces and their tendency to shoot live ammunition without warning, Kashmiris have protested frequently during the curfews, in villages and in cities, especially to protest what they say have been atrocities.

According to the Christian Science Monitor (Aug. 2), this uprising appears to have no links to Pakistan. It is led by unarmed Kashmiri youth who defy the curfews and throw rocks to protect themselves and their communities.

An all-party delegation of Indian leaders, including Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Home Minister P. Chidambaram, in addition to representatives from the main opposition party and other parties, is going to Srinagar on Sept. 20.

The delegation most certainly will meet leaders of various pro-India parties, based mainly in the non-Muslim communities of Kashmir. However, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the public leader of the Kashmir resistance, has already announced his decision not to meet the delegation, saying, “The mandate of the delegation is limited to talking within the framework of the Indian Constitution.”

Unless India makes some real concessions to the Kashmiri people and lightens the repression, the political situation can only grow more unstable.