Only a day's drive from Srinagar yet we could not go. Political turmoil, riots, stone-pelting women and murdered young college students - this was what summer brought to the Kashmir Valley. But why should heartland India care when Ladakhis, a few 100 kms away, shake their head and return to work? So newspapers, TV channels and Tweets showed snippets of the violence while the Indians faked concern in the most apathetic way possible, detached from the problem.
We can blame a multitude of factors for this detachment - the Kashmir Valley is geographically isolated from the rest of India, the economic busy-ness of day-to-day life in urban India is growing, communal issues such as these are part of a past history that the youth now don't identify with...the list can go on. But these are excuses for the laziness and ignorance in engaging in an activity that is much needed for the preservation of our democratic nation, our secular identities and our opinions of ourselves as a growing power - the act of participation.
The diversity of India continues to humble me. The fact that we can't grab onto one distinct factor to establish a sense of national identity fascinates me, partly because it is the perfect representation of the postmodern world that we live in and partly, because I continue to feel a sense of national identity without knowing what to attribute it to. Yet, the collective consciousness of the nation believes that the Kashmir conflict is one of religion, that the Kashmiris are fighting for independence because they recognize themselves to be part of the Kashmiriyat culture, the Muslim community, a group of people who require freedom. How can we pay allegiance to the rhetoric of such identity politics when every other part of India denies it solely through existing as a part of the Union?
If each part of India was to claim its own culture and heritage to be reasons for independence, India as a nation would break down. At the end of the day, what India means is what we have imposed on it - me as a liberal teen growing up in Bombay and all over the world, a young man growing up in a village on the border of Bihar and Maharashtra who does not know his home is on 'Indian soil', the Kashmiri jihadist trained in Azad Kashmir. The constant back and forth between all these entities and their environments helps in creating INDIA. But there is one more variable to this equation: the state.
So what if I make this somewhat radical claim that in fact what has caused or rather created the current environment within Kashmir is not necessarily Kashmiris or their beliefs but instead, the political movements that have instigated the projection of certain identities? What if I claim that the Kashmir issue is not a religious, cultural or ethnic one, that in fact, it is the state that has made it into all of these? This may seem alarming, given that common sense does not allow for the belief that the state could voluntarily spark these issues. But the current situation tells a different story.
For Kashmiris to strongly believe that Islam is crucial to their independence and identity is to reiterate to them the history of Partition. It isn't to say that conflicts between Hindus and Muslims didn't exist prior to Partition; instead, I claim that the exacerbation of what may have been the lack of cooperation, which we must admit is common between people regardless of their ethnic or religious backgrounds, and thematically confining it to better understand it, is what has led to this Kashmir crisis as well as the global one. It is exactly this confining and the dependence on a certain identity that empower political entities. For what rhetoric is easiest to use but that of an extremist opinion, one that can manage to shake the hearts and minds of the people being addressed? Religion, culture, gender - these terms that we can grab onto are prime candidates for this kind of rhetoric. It is what Jinnah used to create a Muslim nation, it is what Nehru used to create a secular one, it is what Geelani uses to empower Kashmiris to vouch for separation from India. It is what drives each one of us to create our own opinions, those that we can be bound to.
Ultimately, India needs Kashmir to preserve its secular identity while Pakistan needs it to secure its Muslim identity, thereby viewing Kashmir solely as a region with a majority Muslim population. How is it then avoidable for the Kashmiris themselves to wake up to the identity that is being imposed upon them by the political entities? A Muslim child views Islam as a practice, as a ritual, as something he must do. But if he grows up in an environment that forces it to become crucial to his identity, how is he to deny it? Shall he then be blamed for fighting to preserve his own identity?
But perhaps the most important tangled issue is then self-determination. How are Kashmir and its citizens to decide their future if the basis of their self-understanding is the result of a political game between the complex states of India and Pakistan?
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