Yet another bystander died recently at the hands of stone pelters, this time in Srinagar. Once again, anger was directed against those who resorted to this form of violence and the separatists. A few months ago, the Jammu & Kashmir government invoked Section 121 of the IPC (waging war) against 15-18-year-old pelters. At least 300 young men have been picked up and booked under J&K’s Public Security Act for two years. But the decision to charge them for high treason, which invites the death penalty, raises several issues. For one, there is the issue of proportionality. Stone pelters, like the Palestinian youth who used sling-shots, were met with armed security forces who carry AK-47s, SLRs, tear-gas shells and water cannons. Not to mention the extraordinary powers they have under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (J&K), 1990. For another, no distinction is made between the juvenile among them and adults. And there is no attempt to explain what compels young men to pelt stones at the security forces.
The J&K chief minister has opined that these young men are paid by “forces” which will be soon exposed. Perhaps. But he would still need to explain why there is anger in J&K if the government’s claim that elections and the decline of militancy have diminished the appeal of separatists and has turned the tide against the demand for self-determination? Why would young men risk their lives to throw stones, even if they get money for it? In the make-believe world occupied by the state, cocooned by layers of security and fed the daily diet of intelligence briefings, the reality of the public mood, the sense of frustration and the seething anger is somehow not taken seriously. Or perhaps it is, which is why the state has stepped up the attack on unarmed protesters. Clearly, stones are no match for the lethal weapons of the security forces.
It was Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who, on September 15, 2009, told DGPs and IGPs that “secessionist and militant groups within the state are once again attempting to make common cause with outside elements and have embarked on a series of protest movements.... We must not, and I repeat we must not, allow such a situation to develop. It is imperative that these disruptive efforts are contained, controlled and effectively checked.” Now, certain coercive operative steps flow from the PM’s exhortation to the security apparatus. Sure enough, 46 days later, on October 31, 2009, the GOC-in-chief of the Northern Command, Lt Gen B.S. Jaswal, the senior officer represented in the Unified Command for J&K, claimed that it is “agitational terrorism”, not militancy, which is the issue in Kashmir. Evidently, that is how the PM read the 2008 agitation over land transfer to the Amarnath Yatra shrine board and the 2009 protests over the Shopian twin rape and murder case. So, in a way, the general was upping the ante and equating non-violent resistance with “terrorism” and thereby underlining the need for suppressing all forms of protests. Sure enough, the media, by and large, remained once again a mute witness to all this. So much so that this January, a senior crpf official labelled protests and stone-pelters as “gunless terrorism”. No one in the media took objection.
But then Kashmir is unique. The electronic media was not allowed to broadcast more than 15 minutes of news every day in the name of ensuring that they remain “responsible”. TV channels had to furnish CDs of their daily telecast to the police and the information department. Media-watcher Sevanti Ninan was told by the DCP of Srinagar that these restrictions would remain “till they (the cable operators) discover their proper professional role—they should not show activities of the Hurriyat aimed at secession”. One assumes that the lifting of these restrictions implies that the operators have learned their lesson the hard way. Of course, this is a throwback to the controlled media of totalitarian states where people were/are fed propaganda. Because truth scares the authorities, myths are manufactured. Therefore, we have a control of news flow, censorship of ideas and ban on political and academic debates in J&K. In this purported “elected democracy”, control, containment and checking of protests becomes necessary because the military controls the territory but does not have the allegiance of the people. Is it a coincidence that a sensible effort to allow people who had crossed the LoC and gone to the other side in the past 20 years is called “surrender”? Yes, Kashmiris have to surrender to allow them the right to return home. Just as 60,000 people have to demonstrate their loyalty to allow them to get their travel documents. After this, for anyone to expect Kashmiri youth to feel that they can live with dignity and freedom is like believing that the moon is made of cheese.
(The writer is consulting editor with the Economic and Political Weekly.)
