Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal
The inability of successive Indian governments to grapple with truth and deal with the conflict in a civilized manner rather than through perpetuation of false promises and by pedaling lies right from the days plebiscite was promised makes the State its own biggest enemy.
By failing to learn lessons from successfully tried models of conflict resolution and instead viewing conflict zones simply as territorial appendages for asserting its might, not as places where people live, breathe and have their own aspirations, the Indian state is not only destroying the conflict zones it is dealing with, it has embarked on a course of self-destruction.
In world history of the last over a century, propaganda has played an effective role in making wars popular among the masses by invoking stereotypes deeply embedded in nationalist sentiments to justify wars. In recent decades, when wars between countries have become old-fashioned and are deemed uncivilised, the powerful states continue to wage wars against the people - others or their own - by another name. The same methods of justifying these wars continue to be employed with strong doses of similar propaganda and a pack of lies. India is no exception to this rule.
It is a modern liberal democratic country that wages wars, on a huge scale, against its own people and hopes to tame them militarily till eternity. The nagging question is why is India unable to resolve its armed conflicts; why does it continue to manage them by squandering money on defence and security expenditure, doubling up the security forces and stationing a hugely disproportionate size of its armed forces and think of the most imaginative methods of oppression which can ultimately be celebrated through its propaganda machinery as 'nationalistic' and 'valorous'.
Kashmir has been in the centre of focus in the past one week and is one of the deadliest conflicts. The north-eastern seven states have been bleeding since eternity. Many more armed conflicts have been added to its kitty in recent years - in Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa and other tribal dominated states. All these conflicts stem from economic or political deprivation, or both. To continue to deal with them by crushing rebellion militarily will not only not yield results but it will also eventually bleed the country. India's inability to deal with its conflict sprouts from a policy of denial and is fed by packaged lies pedaled by the State and through complete control of the media.
A convenient tool in the hands of the Indian state is to find a convenient enemy and blame an insider or an outsider for perpetuating the conflict. In the case of Kashmir it is anything -opposition parties, religious radicalization, Hurriyat and Pakistan. But the state refuses to do any serious introspection and see how years of its own mistaken beliefs and flawed policies are contributing to the conflict. According to an old African proverb, "When there are no enemies within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you." The inability of successive Indian governments to grapple with truth and deal with the conflict in a civilized manner rather than through perpetuation of false promises and by pedaling lies right from the days plebiscite was promised makes the State its own biggest enemy.
The Indian government has done everything under the sun to prolong the crisis and feed it through a vicious cycle of repression and brutalities and then concoct more lies to justify such brutality and criminalise the masses' yearnings and desires for liberty, freedom and equality (muffling all peaceful ways of assembly and expression till masses resort to low key or large scale violence) - which are also the core principles of the Indian constitution. The same is true of the other conflicts that the Indian state is dealing with. Such brutal methods are sometimes punctuated with promises of resolving disputes, very rarely half hearted and directionless efforts but never followed through. Conflict resolution is replaced by conflict management militarily that damages Indian interests, costing huge sums of money, manpower, loss of lives of soldiers who do not count but for oiling the State's propaganda machinery. Besides, such a policy of feeding conflicts murders the basic spirit and inspiration of the Indian constitution as the state decides to cling on to troubled territories by bulldozing its people and damaging the very essence of Indian democracy and its cherished values of liberty and equality.
In comparison to the modern states of the modern civilized world, India's graph of human rights violations and its penchant to keep the territory intact through ruthless means and propaganda is phenomenally high. Far from having its legal justice system in place that can hold persons guilty of torture and abuse accountable, the entire system works methodically to annihilate and criminalise the victim through lies and misplaced justification of brutality. For 26 years in Kashmir and over 60 years in the north-east, the Indian public has been fed with the 'patriotism' and 'nationalism' of this abuse "so essential or unavoidable for fighting insurgency" even when the insurgency is decimated to a negligible level. In recent years in Kashmir, the street protests are being dealt with strong armed tactics. A wrongful impression is created as if the protestors suffer from some pathological defect that makes them take recourse to violent stone pelting without even a word about how peaceful protests are also similarly dealt with brute force including killings and without talking about the fact that methodical squeezing of space for peaceful means of protest has inspired both the stone pelters and led to the re-glamourising of the gun. A picture is painted as if all protests are uniformly and lethally violent, which is not the case. A picture is also projected as if such brutal methods are the only ways of controlling such mobs not violation of Standard Operating Procedures. In the more peaceful areas of India, protests sometimes turn violent, sometimes extremely uncontrollable but such methods of crowd control that are aimed to kill and maim people are not employed. Does Kashmir, the oft parroted integral part of India, have different set of SOPs that allow security personnel to shoot above the waist for controlling mobs, not in the air or at ground level? In defence of such indefensible moves, if one statist retired army general on television channel in 2010 spoke about all lethal bullets and teargas shells turning into projectiles even when the personnel aim at the ground, another of his counterpart now wishes the Indian public to believe that this year people have mostly been shot in the eyes and face, not because the personnel were gunning for their face but because the protestors were all bending down to pick up something towards the ground at the time of being shot. (Magically, the bullets spare the back of the head which should be facing the bullet in that bent position). What is shocking is that the Indian public is gullible enough to digest such nonsense that is fed to them, thanks to a loyalist media, which dutifully does the job of covering for the State's follies, instead of questioning them. Malcolm X famously said, "The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. They control the minds of the masses."
America, which is considered to be the biggest bully in the world, and the source of inspiration for ruthlessly powerful state for triggering wars against countries and their people - whether it is Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan or now the Arab world, also does not behave so brutally against its own people. Earlier this month in Dallas, after Black Americans and liberals started protesting against wrongful and racial murders of Blacks by cops, a Black war veteran used his gun to shoot dead five white cops in retaliation of series of murders of Blacks by cops in the recent years. The American State has not begun to criminalise the movement of 'Black Lives Matter'. Nor has it begun mowing down rest of the community. Instead, it allows them to protest peacefully and is constantly engaging diplomatically with the Black community leaders.
The European way of tackling their conflicts, if not perfect, is far more dignified. The Aland Island and Tyrol conflict resolutions through grant of territorial autonomy are some of the classic examples of how the scale of violence was brought down at the very initial stages. Territorial self-governance has been tried with some degree of success in Montenegro, Corsica and to a lesser extent in Bosnia, Herzegovenia and Kosovo but atleast there is a regular and constant process of introspection and engagement through peaceful means not military might. Britain realized the worthlessness of managing its Northern Ireland and Scottish conflicts militarily years ago. Despite much bloodshed and violence in Ireland, it has a roadmap of peace-making and despite all its short-comings, Ireland model continues to be a participatory conflict resolution process in which people are central to the peace process.
By failing to learn lessons from such successfully tried models of conflict resolution and instead viewing conflict zones simply as territorial appendages for asserting its might, not as places where people live, breathe and have their own aspirations, the Indian state is not only destroying the conflict zones it is dealing with, it has embarked on a course of self-destruction. As Abraham Lincoln said, "Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves."
This was first published as an editorial for the Kashmir Times on July 17, 2016.
Source: http://www.kashmirtimes.com/
