Durham; London: Duke University Press, 2017. xxvi, 227 pp. (B&W photos.) US$23.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-8223-6289-0.
In the preface to this fine book Suvir Kaul traces its origin to his “disquiet with what I, an Indian and Kashmiri Pandit, saw on the streets of Srinagar and elsewhere in the Valley” (xvi). He writes how frustrating it has been for him to witness that the documented evidence produced on the suffering of the Kashmir population appears to have had little or no impact at the decision-making level in India or Pakistan. The policy makers are locked into the prevailing nationalist discourse and guided by geopolitical considerations. Kaul’s frustration resonates with me and no doubt with other scholars whose analyses of the Kashmir conflict have, at least in the policy community, fallen on deaf ears. Suvir Kaul’s impressive volume, bringing poems and photographs along with interpretative essays on the politics and history of Kashmir, tells us what has gone wrong (and is still going wrong) in Kashmir and how the security concerns of the state take precedence over the daily suffering and trauma of ordinary people.
The book consists of four essays written at different intervals of Kaul’s observation of the events in the Valley, each accompanied by photographs and poems in the Kashmiri vernacular (with English translation) by Muslim and Hindu poets, expressing their divergent experiences and sometimes talking to each other. Javed Mir’s black-and-white photographs of ordinary people living within a militarized framework, protesting, and trying to recapture the streets which have become sites of contestation between the security forces and the public at large, are as poignant as they are revealing. The poems and photographs are intended to help us develop, as Kaul suggests, “an intellectual and critical position demanded by our times” (xxii). In this regard it might be better for the uninitiated reader on Kashmir to start with essay 2, “My Paradise is burning,” as it provides a brief historical background on the state of Jammu and Kashmir, and then proceed to read the book as it is laid out.
For Kaul, the Kashmir conflict must be viewed within the larger context of inherited legacies of the empire, how “the logic and history of the colonial state inform the structures of postcolonial governance” (189). He argues that postcolonial states typically retain their inherited territorial and military legacies, using precisely the policing and administrative arrangements that the colonial state had employed against them during anticolonial movements. The postcolonial state’s cartographic anxieties about preserving territorial integrity result in constant and pervasive surveillance of both its borders and the citizens who inhabit the state, particularly its periphery. The militarized control of dissenting voices which challenge the territorial integrity of the state becomes the norm in the name of maintenance of law and order and the security of the nation. Kaul tells us that all this is being played out in Kashmir. While Kashmiris employ the same anticolonial language which the Indian nationalists had used against the British, the “Indian state has confirmed and enhanced the doctrines and methods it had inherited from the British colonial law and policy” (179). Kaul expands on this theme in essay 4, “Indian Empire (and the Case of Kashmir),” a particularly insightful presentation of current Indian practices as a postcolonial state in dealing with the people of Kashmir.
The predominantly Muslim Kashmir Valley has been in turmoil since the late 1980s. The beginnings of its troubles can be traced to the integration of the Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir into the Indian state by virtue of the Treaty of Accession (and a promise of plebiscite) signed by the Hindu ruler in late October 1947 in direct response to a tribal invasion emanating from the North Western province and aided by the newly formed Muslim state of Pakistan. Much water has since flowed under the proverbial bridge: a de facto partition of the state into two parts, two-thirds with India and one-third with Pakistan, with China controlling a small Northern territory; four wars between India and Pakistan reflecting irreconcilable positions on Kashmir (for India, Kashmir is an integral part of India whereas for Pakistan, it is a disputed territory and Kashmiris should be allowed to exercise the right of self-determination as mandated by the Security Council); an electoral-based regional government with rigged elections, a denial of space for dissent politics and the final eruption of a mass-based nationalist/secessionist movement accompanied by political insurgency in 1989 (most of the militant groups involved were trained in Pakistan’s Azad Kashmir); the exodus of the minority Hindu community from the Valley and a constant presence of the Indian security forces, an insistent daily reminder to the Kashmiris that they live in a militarized zone.
In the wake of these developments during the past sixty years, Kashmiri public discourse has incrementally progressed from the demand for autonomy to that for aazadi (freedom). Aazadi carries within it multiple meanings: the right to self-determination; the protection of the special status granting internal autonomy to the state; and the protection of Kashmiri identity. In this battle, each subsequent generation introduces new motives and intentions to the discourse, and reinterprets it based on multiple sets of memories, with multiple layers of experiences. In the changing contexts of the Kashmir conflict, collective memories of subjugation have come to be reconfirmed as well as redefined during India’s association with the state.
In essay 3, “The Witness of Poetry,” Kaul brings to us two poems, one by Muslim poet Mohiuddin Massarat and the other by Pandit Brij Nath Betaab, each linking trauma, history (particularly the loss of home and displacement) and politics through a textured and intricate analysis. We are reminded that the human tragedy in Kashmir is indeed vast: some 15,000 civilians killed since the early 1990s (estimates by human rights groups are much higher), the disappearance of 10,000 young men, the discovery of 5,000 unmarked graves (2,900 in 2009 and another 2,080 in 2017). The displaced minority Hindu community is still trying to come to terms with the loss of their ancestral homes, lands, and their lived history. Kaul’s text is dramatically highlighted as we witness firsthand this human tragedy through the poems and photographs of this magnificent book.
Reeta C. Tremblay
University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada