Kashmiri Right To Self Determination

I was more disturbed than I cared to admit when a close friend of mine recently took US citizenship. I had been cool with his decision to move to the United States some ten years ago. But the taking of US citizenship to me constituted an official abandonment of India. It was his private decision, but one that left me rather peeved.

I may not wear my patriotism on my sleeve and I am admittedly extremely wary of the jingoism that goes on in the name of nationalism these days, and you will not see me as part of candle-lit vigils at India Gate, be it for world peace or justice for Jessica Lal.

Make no mistake, though, I take the business of my being Indian most seriously. The blood that runs through my thin, diabetes-affected veins is as much Indian as it is B Positive.

So I was more than upset when I had to witness first hand a group of angry youth first trampling all over the Indian flag and then setting it afire. That, too, on Independence Day.

It is very difficult to remain oh-so-professional at moments like that and calmly film the goings-on. On our way back to the hotel that morning, and on many occasions since then, the flag-burning scene has played and re-played in my mind, forcing me to face the question where do I stand on the vexed issue of self determination of the Kashmiri people.

Like any answer to the complex Kashmir issue, this one isn’t simple either.

In Diglipur, in Andamans, there were no newspapers. My earliest memories of Diglipur are of my father fiddling with the old Murphy radio, trying to tune in to the BBC World Service, and on other occasions, to Binaca Geet Mala, broadcast those days by Radio Ceylon.

My first memories of a newspaper are in Delhi when every morning as I left for school I would see my grandmother reading the newspaper to my near-blind grandfather. As I would get ready for school I would hear stories of American B-52 bombers bombing the North Vietnamese countryside.

Methinks my first political thoughts were shaped by what I heard my grandmother read out to my grandfather. In my eight-year-old mind, I pictured North Vietnamese peasants with their bamboo hats, hiding with their children, amidst the tall grass of their lush green fields as B-52 bombers screamed overhead and dropped napalms. I was in no doubt that the Americans were the bad guys and my sympathies, as those of my grandparents, lay solidly with the Viet Cong.

Later on, in my teens, when I first read books like Exodus and Mila 18 by Leon Uris, and read more about the Holocaust, a part of me almost overnight became a Jew. I couldn’t quite fathom how the world could forgive a Germany that had gassed six million Jews during the Second World War.

Still later as I learnt about the Palestinian freedom movement, I had to re-examine my loyalty towards the Jews. I realised rather sadly that the victims of Germany had turned into oppressors of Palestine, and Yasser Arafat and the PLO became my new heroes.

Point is, I grew up supporting the underdog. Hell, I even rooted for Ivan Lendl to win the Wimbledon.

Under the circumstances, the unsavoury sight of the trampling of the Indian flag, notwithstanding, how does one not support the Kashmiri right for self-determination? A few months ago, I completely identified with the Tibetan cause. I can’t see what is good for Tibet, why can't it be good enough for Kashmir too?

And the demand for this right for self-determination is not being mouthed by AK-47 wielding militants, or Pakistan-backed terror groups, but by 13, 14, 15-year-old boys who aren’t armed with anything more sinister than stones and bricks. Worryingly for the Indian authorities, these school boys are also armed with a fierce determination that bullets wouldn’t be able to quell.

Significantly, during the agitation in the Kashmir valley over the past couple of months, not a single member of the security forces has been killed. The restraint is both a reflection of the maturity of the Kashmiri struggle for self-determination as well as a change of tactics by the Hurriyat leadership which now has come round to the view that an armed struggle against the might of the Indian military might not be the most prudent way to get azadi.

At the same time, on the streets of Srinagar, and in other towns across the Kashmir valley, there is a new determination among the common people – they want azadi. It is not just the old demand for what Pandit Nehru once promised and then reneged – the right to self determination of the Kashmiri people. There is fair a degree of unanimity among the people of the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley. They demand quite unequivocally azadi from India.

As far as I am concerned, this is not even an issue of right or wrong. For too long the whole Kashmir issue has remained a foreign policy debate, and different sides have played verbal ping pong with not just the emotions, but even lives of ordinary Kashmiris. It is not for us to debate whether Kashmiris should get independence, or whether it is in India’s strategic interests to grant even a degree of autonomy to Kashmir.

I simply think it is the birth right of every Kashmiri to exercise his or her right to self-determination. The rest of us should just respect the verdict of that referendum, whatever it happens to be, and ensure its honest implementation.