Hypocrisy of Distant Cheers

Beyi sund dod chhui bemaane/ Yas akkis banih te sui zaane

(Another’s pain is without meaning/ Only the sufferer knows what it is like) – A Kashmiri saying

Ms. Mridu Rai sent her piece to Open first. But as per her own admission, my piece angered her so much that she didn’t care whether my magazine would publish it or not (“Just writing it is proving to be a soothing balm”, she wrote on Facebook). Nevertheless, even after she was soothed, and without waiting for Open’s response, Ms. Rai’s piece was published in Kafila by one of its administrators – a little boy whose idea of activism is getting a picture clicked in front of a photoshopped board that reads: Screw India.

It took me some time to pick up from Ms. Rai’s academic hubris the questions she has asked. She begins by questioning my right to express my views on a literary festival that was to be held in a land where I was born and where I would have spent my life had we not been driven out by religious extremists in 1990. Like other authors, and publishers, and artists, I was also a part of the advisory committee of the Harud festival. Of course, my interest was to make the festival a success. But how does it amount to conflict of interest, as Ms. Rai thinks it is? Suppose, as a member of the government’s National Advisory Council, Jean Dreze expresses his view on something counter-productive done by the rural development ministry or any other power on the NREGA, does that amount to conflict of interest? Just how?

The other problem Ms. Rai has is with my assertion that in the festival, I was going to talk about ‘everything.’ By ‘everything’, I was only referring to the range of issues whose one end simply doesn’t exist for Ms. Rai and many others like her. There are barbed wires, unmarked mass graves and red-eyed CRPF troopers in Kashmir. But there is also the mass untruth about the killings and the subsequent exodus of a small community called Kashmiri Pandits who became the Tutsis of Kashmir in 1989-90. Those who were killed amidst slogans of Assi gacchi panunuy Pakistan, batav rostuy batinen saan (We want our Pakistan, without Pandit men, but with their women) included poets, academics, teachers, doctors, old men and women, and infants (Please search #OtherGraves on twitter for details of some of these gruesome murders). Not a single person responsible for these killings has ever been convicted. Does Ms. Rai ever raise this issue in her numerous writings or in the seminars she attends? Forget the Kashmiri Pandits for a moment. Has she ever even put up a Facebook message on other killings of innocents in the valley, for instance, of the brutal murder of two young sisters in Sopore in February this year?

Then Ms. Rai goes on and refuses to acknowledge even my hangnail Kashmiri identity as someone who has been in exile for 21 years now. She wants to know what I mean when I say I am “a writer who is from Kashmir.” Well, Ms. Rai, no beating around the bush. I am a Kashmiri Pandit. That makes me a ‘writer’ who is from Kashmir, and not a ‘writer’ who is from Delhi. And that coupled with the fact that I have extensively reported from Kashmir gives my voice the unique legitimacy irrespective of whether you recognise it or not.

Yes, I know that the police clamped down on some of those who expressed their dissent through cyberspace (I will return to it towards the end). But it is also true that the reporter, who broke the story of unmarked mass graves, and many other important stories, continues to live in Kashmir. Those Kashmiris who had accepted the invitation to be a part of this festival also live there: Rahman Rahi, Naseem Shafaie, Shahid Budgami, Shujaat Bukhari, Zareef Ahmed Zareef, Anjum Zamrud Habib, and many many others like the journalist Iftikhar Gilani, whose jail diary “Tihar ke Shab-o-roz” won him the Sahitya Akademi Award (He was to speak at the Kashmir University session but will now attend the forthcoming Jaipur literary festival).

I stand by my usage of the word ‘sabotage’ in my previous piece because I know that some of these writers were called and dissuaded from attending (not necessarily by those who signed that letter against Harud). And they couldn’t say No because they were silenced in the name of the ‘cause.’

Ms. Rai and others had problems with the so-called apolitical nature of the festival. Had Anjum (who was charged under POTA and has written a book, Prisoner No. 100) attended the festival, what would have she spoken about? Houseboats and carpets? The festival, by the way, was to begin with a session titled: Conflicts and Contradictions (Tehelka’s Shoma Chaudhury, writer Omair  Ahmad and myself). And, suppose, for argument sake, even if the festival were to be apolitical, who is Ms. Rai or others to decide what the Kashmiris who live in Kashmir want? If a young Kashmiri wants to meet Chetan Bhagat or get a book signed by Shobha De, who is Ms. Rai to decide otherwise?

The problem with the likes of Ms. Rai is that they suffer from what a friend the other day termed as “Nelsonian vision”. Factor this: Ms. Rai calls the holy Amarnath Yatra a “militarily enabled jingoistic exercise”. What does that mean? That the yatra cannot happen without the military taking over it? (Not true at all since the pilgrims have been welcomed by the locals even at the peak of the 2008 Amarnath agitation). And why is the pilgrimage to one of the holy abodes of Lord Shiva a ‘jingoistic exercise?’ Because Hindu pilgrims from all over the world come there, singing paeans to the almighty, chanting Har Har Mahadev. What should they exult in to win Ms. Rai’s favour? Yahan kya chalega, Nizam-e-Mustafa?

Further, Ms. Rai urges us to use our ‘influence’ to “prevail on publishing houses” to print the story of many Kashmiris. How much influence has Ms. Rai used herself for making their stories heard – in publishing, or at least in seminars and conferences that she attends, from Delhi to Dublin?

The truth is that Kashmir has, to quote another friend, turned from war economy to intellectual economy. And it is in the interest of the likes of Ms. Rai that this cheering from distance should go on. A young Kashmiri, Junaid Azim Mattu makes it clear to Ms. Rai in a response to a different matter:

“Looking at conflicts and occupations through lenses of liberal academic thought and theory makes us oblivious to certain core realities. When mobs driven by emotions do so, it’s understandable. When grieving families driven by grief do so, it’s justified but when the ideologues of chronic and default anti-statism in New Delhi, Calcutta and elsewhere cheer thirteen year old kids to face automatic weapons with stones – it’s blatant hypocrisy”.

On Ms. Rai’s Facebook post, someone called ‘Rumuz E Bekhudi’ responded by writing: Rahul Pandita shouldn’t be alive. “You mean he should die of shame?” Ms. Rai quips.

Ms. Rai, I will die when I have to, and God willing, it will not be of shame. But I will tell you a story of ‘cyberspace dissent’ that perhaps only you may not feel ashamed of: Last year, on Independence Day, Mumbai’s Free Press Journal carried Vox pop of young Kashmiris on what they felt about India. A bright Kashmiri girl, a Srinagar-based budding artist, spoke about the concerns of ordinary Kashmiris, and then also went about praising chief minister Omar Abdullah. After that, all hell broke loose. Through a Facebook group called “Bekaar Jamaath” (Idle group), and on e-mail and phone, she was threatened and abused by fellow Kashmiris. She was so scared and intimidated that I believe the article had to be removed from the cyber space. Did you, Ms. Rai, know of it? Perhaps not. Had you known of it, would you raise your voice? Not at all, because it doesn’t fit in your vision of ‘freedom of speech’.

And the question of freedom of speech brings me to a question that I want to ask Ms. Rai:  Suppose for a moment that Salman Rushdie was indeed invited to the festival, and that he had accepted it. What would her stand be? And those of others who signed that letter?

But, as of now, I believe, Ms. Rai is tired. On Kafila, she has asked the 14 original signatories of that letter to return her ‘soul’ and ‘individual agency’. “They were only on loan, you know!” she writes.

What does that make Ms. Rai? An intellectual mercenary? 


Previous Post: The Autumn of Hypocrisy

The Autumn of Hypocrisy

Tonight, they will raise a toast. Tonight, they will pat one another’s backs, and, in the confines of their apartments in New Delhi and elsewhere, may even take out victory marches. Someone might even hurl an imaginary stone, declaring that finally, the Internet Intifada has been successful. Congratulatory messages will flood Facebook and Twitter. After all, a sinister design has been defeated. The Harud (Autumn) Literary Festival, scheduled to be held in Kashmir Valley in the last week of September, has been cancelled. It was a State conspiracy, as they would like everyone to believe.


The truth is that the festival has been sabotaged. A letter circulated on the internet condemned the literary festival, claiming that it would portray a false sense of normalcy in the state. The group circulating the letter also had issues with the organisers’ terming the fest an ‘apolitical’ event.

As a writer who is from Kashmir, and who was invited to be part of this festival, I didn’t care how this festival was being described. I was going to be there to talk about everything I felt strongly about: the killings of the past few summers, the unmarked mass graves, the unfortunate spectacle of an old man being made to frog-jump in front of his son by a CRPF trooper, the untruth about the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits, the hypocrisy of the mainstream media when it came to reporting on Kashmir. I also felt the festival would enable young Kashmiris to interact with prominent writers and artists, and also serve as a platform for them to learn about literature and the process of writing. But saying even this much is apparently taboo. How dare someone teach anything to Kashmiris? After all, young Kashmiris now read Edward Said and Dostoevsky.

As a journalist, every visit to an army officer’s house, draped as it was like a mini Kashmir Arts Emporium, would leave me seething with anger. Here I was, a Kashmiri in exile, who hadn’t even been able to salvage his ancestral shawls and carpets when forced to leave home one cold January night in 1990. And, no, it was not because of Governor Jagmohan.

I feel the same anger now at those who have turned Kashmir into their personal fiefdom, into a monopoly nobody else can touch. All those who opposed the fest—and this includes some of my friends—will get other platforms to present their work. But for many Kashmiris, that opportunity is lost. As a writer friend who was to attend the festival said: “The call for boycott means that those who can express their opinions without being under threat are the only ones who will get a chance to speak. The rest, especially those in Kashmir who have never been part of the conversation before, will find themselves forced to take sides even before the literary festival has begun, silenced in the name of ‘the cause’.”

The process of boycotting this festival has also exposed some severe fault lines in the Kashmir narrative. Somewhere, a careless journalist reported that Salman Rushdie had been invited to attend the festival. This prompted someone to create a ‘Boycott Harud festival’ page on Facebook. Some of the comments here are chilling and one major factor why the organisers decided to call off the festival. One of the members of the organising team, Minhal Hasan, wrote a post on the page denying that Rushdie had ever been invited. She added: ‘We seek support for the spirit of the festival which is plural, inclusive and aims to be a platform for free speech and expression.’ One Adil Lateef responded to her post, writing: ‘Just come here, we will behead you.’ Another wrote: ‘Whoever defends a blasphemer is a blasphemer and should be stoned to death.’

When two of my writer friends took a stand against the festival, I was flooded with calls from journalists of both the national and foreign press for a counter quote. In one of my earlier statements to a news agency, I mentioned how this summer had been peaceful in Kashmir and how I hoped that the fest would bring further intimations of peace. In an hour, the agency reporter called me back. He wanted me to elaborate on ‘peace’. That is when it struck me: I had stepped on a land mine. I immediately made my stance clear. I said: “The festival will not make CRPF soldiers disappear from the streets. The fundamental issues about Kashmir will remain the same. But the festival should be held since I personally know so many Kashmiris who are keen to tell their stories. We need to hear them out.”

We need to hear the young MBA graduate who connected with me on Facebook, and then again, by sheer coincidence, in a protest outside Kashmir University last summer. We need to hear journalist Suhail Bukhari, who was forced to take refuge in Delhi after he was booked for waging ‘war against the nation’ because he had simply chosen to report the truth. We need to hear political activist Anjum Zamrud Habib, who was wrongly declared a convict and sent to prison. Anjum was supposed to attend the festival, but backed out once the battlelines were drawn, forcing everyone to take stands.

Some of those opposed to the festival had also called some invitees in order to dissuade them from attending it. They issued veiled threats as well. “We will be launching smear campaigns against those who decide to attend this festival,” one of the invitees was told. For me as well, I am told, they had devised a strategy. They had plans of dubbing me a ‘right-wing fascist’ who is also a member of the Kashmiri Pandit group Roots in Kashmir (RIK). I laughed when I heard this. The fact is that because of my position on Kashmir, I am hated by every RIK member, except one, a young man called Aditya Raj Kaul who remains a friend despite our ideological differences. I am sure even my friend Yasin Malik, against whom the RIK had initiated many campaigns, will be amused. Will the general-secretary of the party for whom one of those opposed to the festival used to make revolutionary posters in his student days call me right-wing? Well, best of luck, mates.

This reminds me of a musical a group of students had wanted to organise at Kashmir University some time ago and were forced to call off. The future of Kashmir will also depend on who emerges a winner in such battles: those who opposed this musical or who were for it. Unfortunately, those who opposed Harud have ended up strengthening radical voices in Kashmir.

To my Kashmiri friends I say this: we need to fight our own battles. The Twitter messiahs will come and go. They have no stake in our story. For them, we are just case studies. For another article. Or a film. Or white paper. It is time we owned our stories. The story of Fancy Jan, who received a bullet in her heart. The groom whose henna-dyed little finger went lifeless. The old poet in whose forehead they drilled a nail in place of his tilak. Or the young Kashmiri who travelled from Delhi to Jammu in June 1997, and, at the Punjab-Jammu border, saw a photo of his brother’s bullet-ridden body splashed on the front page of Daily Excelsior.

I will tell that last story. Harud or no Harud.



+++
Rahul Pandita is a Kashmiri writer. A staffer with Open, he was a member of the advisory committee for the Harud literary festival



.