Devansh Shrivastava In the 1960s, it were the enormous student protests which had widely condemned the atrocities committed by United States during the Vietnam War and found dissent to express solidarity with a nation falling apart. Muhammad Ali emerged as a paradigm of defiance and dissent who not only challenged the contradictions and indifference of a racial state but also the blind nationalism which had obscured visibility of conscience beyond reach. His memorable quote, “No Viet Cong ever called me nigger" echoes stark parallels to the times we live in. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to extrapolate a rebellious philosopher from Ali’s personality since his critical outlook stems an uncritical approach to singing such jingoistic chorus. In the present times, such naked paradoxes find substantial semblance with Barry Hindess’s argument which reads:
Contemporary usage presents an opposition between states and terrorism, as if to suggest that terrorism is not an instrument of the state but something that is used against it. Yet the most influential foundational myths of the modern states suggest that the state’s capacity for terror is the source of peace and order within the territorial community (Hindess 2006: 243).
An important direction from Hindess’s argument is to extend its essence to how the vocabulary is formed regarding in its reportage of armed conflict. Words like “normalcy”, “unrest”, “miscreant”, “gunmen”, “terrorist” and so on attempt to articulate as if to suggest that the state was at “peace” when “unrest” happened. The vocabularies are markers of representation and there perception in the larger public sphere of the nation. Representation of a conflict with state centric vocabulary has often obfuscated our understanding of conflicts and degree of engagement. While trying to understand the complexities of Kashmir, one cannot exclude the fundamentals of Kashmir i.e. the Kashmiris. In the Indian public sphere by and large, the political boundaries (on map) and the Indian Army are synonymous to the Indian perception of Kashmir. A very important distinction is provided by Christopher Snedden who examines the vocabulary of Kashmir. He says:When Pakistanis use the term ‘Kashmir’, they often mean ‘Jammu and Kashmir’. Equally they could mean the Kashmir Valley, or even Azad Kashmir, which region of J&K is under their control. The term ’Kashmir’ also is very important for Pakistanis because the name of their nation, Pakistan, is an acrostic in which the k stands for Kashmir. When the Indians use the term ‘Kashmir’, they generally always mean the Kashmir valley, as invariably do people living in the neighboring regions of Jammu and Ladakh (Snedden2015: 7-8).
Adding to Snedden’s vocabulary, Indian administered Kashmir, Indian Occupied Kashmir, Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and Pakistan Administered Kashmir are also the terms used to discuss the conflict. Also, he shows the growing discontent among Kashmiri peasantry during the times of Dogra King and how Kashmir became a battleground for power struggles. Wheneverthe Kashmir issue arises, nationalistic fervor supersedes the everyday life of Kashmiris and the militarization of Kashmir under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. Taking references from Human Rights Watch report (2006) and many others, Nivedita Mennon and Aditya Nigam argue that human rights violations on a massive scale have been extensively documented- summary executions, custodial killings, torture, “disappearances,” arbitrary detentions, regular warrantless searches usually in the middle of the night, attacks on civilians as retaliation for militant attacks, indiscriminate firing on unarmed demonstrations (Mennon and Nigam 2014: 159). The dominance of pan Hinduness and the dehumanized mobility of narratives and stereotypes against minorities with nationalistic fervor above social and political realities have often engendered episodes of mass scale violence. But those who envision India as a homogeneous, industrialized and military strong state stand defiant to rampant state hegemony in Kashmir, North East India and Chhattisgarh in particular. An emerging thought here is whether we can have space where language humanity, rationality and reason argue for one of the protracted conflicts in the world. To not get caught in the web of what constitutes ‘national’, or its opposite, one needs to revisit and acknowledge a history of violence. Revisiting a difficult past Temsula Ao in her heart wrenching book (2013) narrates the devastation of the Naga lives, tales of horrendous sexual violence by the Indian security forces and growing up amid armed conflict. While talking about human callousness and indifference to empathize she says that when people say that ‘it does not matter’, they mean that there is an inherent callousness in the human mind that tends to ignore injustice and inhumanity as long as it does not touch one directly (Ao 2006: ix). If Ao’s Naga experience compels us to think twice before being indifferent to the Naga history then how doesanother bloodbath in the Indian history i.e. partition mirror our past? The partition of British India exists not only as a horrendous vantage point of carnage and unfinished past but also the nostalgia of belonging lost in an exiled present. It had not only wreaked havoc on both sides but also aggravated everyday struggles of existence by upholding the religious identity above everything. Gyanendra Pandey argues that the legacy of partition remains as a declaration of the natives and the other putting homogenizing, de-classing, dehumanize, demonize and de-sexing as a shadow of partition and the violence which ensued in relation to nationalism and partition (Pandey 2008: 121). Whereas Thomas Blom Hansen’s theorizes concepts such as “nation” and “the people” by saying that the historical trajectories are laid down in the form of ideological knots (Hansen 1999: 25). In the hindsight of partition to contemporary times, various incidents of caste violence, communal pogroms including the demolition of Babri Masjid have dethroned the ideal elements of democracy. A crucial element present in all these incidents is the native-settler discourse as Pandey argues. A critical scrutiny of this discourse directs us to the juggernaut of jingoistic nationalism. The elitist discourse on ambiguous and yet “definitive” terms like ‘national security, national interest, development and national cohesion’, have overridden the national imagination with effervescence of majoritarianism and exclusion of various persecuted identities and everyday life of the people living in militarized states. If the rhetoric of‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ were to become the answer to every state hegemony, sexual violence on massive scale (Kunan Poshpora for instance)and militarization with utmost respect to men in uniform above everything, then this “sons of the soil”(Mamdani 2001: 14) mechanism will override the existing public spheres like the Nazi understanding of lebensraum(Passmore 2014: 39)suffocating the germination of social change. When one looks back at how the ‘national integration’ and decades of militarization have corroded the justice system (especially in the North East, Kashmir, Chattisgarhetc) and normalized a culture of impunity for the state and non-state actors, the picture becomes miserable for an average Kashmiri, Naga or a Manipuri woman. Dolly Kikon’s poignant work on testimonies of sexual violence in Dimapur (2015) cuts across the widely known impunity enjoyed by the state actors under the cover of law. The very sharp yet resonating narration of testimonies of sexual violence and manifestations of militarization is a marker of how the non-state actors (Naga armed groups) in hindsight of various political changes inside the state have corroded the criminal justice system.In such a debacle of violence entrenched in the xenophobia of nationalism how are we to approach in debate and dialogue? There is an abundance of such incidents in the North East region where violence has devastated people’s lives. In addition to this, Hannah Arendt proposition that no one engaged in thought about history and politics can remain unaware of the enormous role violence has always played in human affairs, and it is at first glance rather surprising that violence has been singled out so seldom for special consideration (Arendt 1969: 8). The complex phenomenon of nations, colonization and decolonization has given impetus to resonance between ethnicity, identity and nationalism closely diffusing the proportionality of religion. The tussle of identity has entered entanglements ranging from national identity, ethnicities and state boundaries to the infusion of religious effervescence resulting in various catastrophes of human destruction. Taking hold of Arendt’s understanding, a prominent question which arises is whether one can argue about the enormous role violence has played in the making and unmaking of the “Indian construct”. In addition to her argument, Frantz Fanon’s argument in Edward Said’s book (1994) becomes crucial:His notion was that unless national consciousness at its moment of success was somehow changed into a social consciousness, the future would hold not liberation but an extension of imperialism (Said 1994: 323).
In consonance with Fannon’s and Arendt’s understanding, some of the emerging thoughts in the Indian context can be-Is talking about the collapse of civic life and its disengagement with the state anti-national? Can the public conscience ever take note the permanent damage done by the ‘least lethal weapons’? Can a sexually violated Kashmiri woman ever hope for legal and social ‘justice’? Can justice ever take note of extra judicial killings and the impunity of power which has corroded authority?
While the national narrative has stayed away from answering some of the most pressing questions, the ‘Indian construct’ definitely invites a revisit. If the national construct has been elusive to these poignant questions then how could the spirit of interrogating everyday life in militarized zones in India become a question of with us or against us? Those who join jingoism of nationalist overtones do not necessarily delve with a critical history of this nation and its states as it has already been deemed buriedand normalized in the greatness of a glorious and brave past. But Hannah Arendt’s thought provoking argument compels us to think beyond. She says: The chief characteristic of the mass man is not brutality and backwardness, but his isolation and lack of normal social relationships. Coming from the class-ridden society of the nation-state, whose cracks had been cemented with nationalistic sentiment, it is only natural that these masses, in the first helplessness of their new experience, have tended toward an especially violent nationalism, to which mass leaders have yielded against their own instincts and purposes for purely demagogic reasons (Arendt 1976: 317). A major learning here is whether the collapse of solidarity, empathy and inclusion in the national narrative excludes the non-elite or the other identities in India. Indoctrination to political realities does not make a person national in any sense. It only diffuses demagogy in exponential forms. A larger engagement with respective histories and demilitarization are crucial to inclusion of identities on the fringes into the larger Indian domain. Finding a ground To engagewith the intricacies of civic life in militarized Kashmirand other states is an extension of national solidarity for Kashmiris.But it serves as a cacophony between the Kashmiri citizens and those who just demand military force to govern people’s lives.More often, the disengagement of national narratives ends up perpetuating stereotypes against the Muslims.If one were to draw parallels between the civic life in Kashmir then militarization and impunity would definitely mirror collapse of citizenry and state relationship. John Hoffman critiques the understanding on democracy by saying that the argument that democracy involves a tyranny of the majority that it suppresses minorities and is capable of authoritarian and totalitarian rule, rests upon the mistaken assumption that democracy is a form of the state (Hoffman 2004: 32). Extending Hoffman’s argument, democracy is the essence of debate, dialogue, communication and extension of argumentative tradition. On communally biased national histories in relation to the Lebanese history, Hannah Ziadeh (2006) argues that in theories of nation and nationalism, common, consensus-building, school history textbooks are considered the element without which no nation-building can be complete. As Ziadeh raises the question of inclusion through educational institutions, if indoctrination and exclusionary practices of otherization can be diluted then we can definitely discern a heterogeneous and cohesive national culture. Henceforth, one has to critique nation-building in its entirety when the understanding on nations tends to exclude its own citizens. The relentless polemics of overriding dissent and perspectives tends to truncate the contemplative dimensions of multiple realities.What remains of the contesting nationalisms is selective and ignoredhistories which disconnect us from the political and social realities in themilitarized states. The way forward for the citizenry is to engage in asking difficult questions, dialoguing and self-criticism along with critiquing the need to democratize and humanizetheir respective public spheres. These discursive spaces shall definitely direct us to empathize with those who get ruled by the military along with the state. Endnotes: -