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Kashmiris want `more than autonomy'

Rasheeda Bhagat

SRINAGAR, July 3

WHETHER it is an unemployed youth in one of the most backward villages in Baramulla district or a senior bank officer in Srinagar, a medical graduate or the executive committee member of the All-India Hurriyat conference, an average Kashmiri in the valle y is not too enchanted by the ruling National Conference's successfully piloting the autonomy resolution through the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly.

``Okay, autonomy is fine, but they cannot fool us with it. They will only be returning to us what they had snatched from us,'' is the common refrain you hear in Srinagar. `They', referred to with total indifference, if not dislike, is the Government of I ndia.

``Autonomy is only something that you had snatched away from us. Don't expect us to jump like excited children just because you're returning this toy which you shouldn't have taken in the first place. And anyway it is too late. Thanks to the misinformati on campaign by the Government of India, particularly the RSS and the BJP, and the total biased picture given by the media, not to mention the zulm (atrocity) by the security forces, the rest of India today looks with suspicion at a Kashmiri,'' says an em bittered bank manager in Srinagar.

His colleague chips in, ``Let us not blame the people of India. they are innocent. How many of you people are aware of the kind of harassment and humility we Kashmiris are subjected to at the hands of the security forces, and harassed under the guise of checking militancy in Kashmir?''

The anguished man describes how senior and innocent people like him are ``asked to leave our offices, made to sit on the roads with our peons and subjected to an identification parade like common criminals. We have to walk through a convoy of jeeps or va ns with the informers inside given the task of identifying militants. Now if that man has a personal grudge against me, he will just honk the horn and I might be whisked away and subjected to torture.''

At a poolside party in a five star hotel in Srinagar, a young female MBBS graduate poses the question, ``How do you like it when your handbag is opened and checked when you're boarding a flight to Srinagar or entering a public building in Srinagar?''

Of course I hate it, I reply.

``Then imagine how an ordinary citizen feels when his clothes are searched not once or twice, but five times, when he is travelling in a bus.''

Your argument about infiltration and militancy and bomb blasts does not cut much ice with her. ``If the security forces, including our very own STF (Special Task Force) is so sincere about checking militancy, why do they whisk away people and then demand a fortune, of course through pimps and touts, to release them. And how many journalists have investigated custodial killings?'', she asks angrily. Perhaps next to the security forces, journalists are the most disliked lot in Srinagar. ``You people don't do your home work, are too scared to really go around and talk to people and write all kinds of things against us. Please take the trouble to talk to teenagers, and young graduates like me. The GOI and the J&K Government totally failed in bringing thing s under control here. The result was that all educational institutions remained closed in 1997 and 98 and I lost two precious years of my education,'' she adds.

It is not only the unemployed and the poor but the educated elite like her, who vote for `azadi' with one voice.

Would they prefer independence to joining Pakistan?

``Who wants to go to Pakistan. Jo khud bhookey mar rahey hei, woh hamey kya dengey (what can, those who are themselves starving, give us?)'', asks Mr. Abdul Majid, a shopkeeper in Hailjagi village, about 45 km from Srinagar. And this is the stock reply y ou hear. Obviously, there is not much love lost for Pakistan.

But how will an independent Kashmir, which has hardly any industrial infrastructure or any other worthwhile economic activity, survive, you pose the question to the bank manager.

``Doesn't Nepal survive, doesn't Burma survive? Why do you take it for granted that we Kashmiris are so useless?'', is his reply.

The Hurriyat Executive Committee member and former J&K Education Minister, Mr. Abdul Gani Lone, breathes fire and brimstone, when he is asked in an interview about a solution to the trouble torn Kashmir. ``The Kashmiris would like to go to hell, but not remain with India,'' he thunders.

When asked if and when he expected he and his struggle for azadi bearing fruit, he said, ``We will continue to remain in a state of statelessness. Let the pot boil. We may not see azadi, but our children will. Meanwhile Kashmir will bleed, but please rem ember, the rest of India will bleed much more.

``As for your query on how we will survive, please tell me what will happen if the World Bank and the IMF stop their loans to India or Pakistan, Sri Lanka or Nepal. What will their financial position be? Instead of begging India for a share from what it gets from the World Bank/IMF, we will beg directly to those funding agencies''.

But the senior J&K politician and former Union Minister, Prof. Saifuddin Soz, cautions you to take the numerous voices on `azadi' in the right perspective. ``Right now the alienation of the people of Kashmir is complete. Custodial killings have increased , innocent people have been harassed, and after Kargil, the catch-and-kill policy of the security forces has only increased. Plebiscite is not possible, but short of plebiscite, there are many methods to give the people of Kashmir their say.''