Arundhati Roy, Kashmir, Obama's Visit to India

Kashmir’s Fruits of Discord
Op-Ed
By ARUNDHATI ROY
November 8, 2010, The New York Times Nov. 9 in print)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/opinion/09roy.html?scp=1&sq=Arundhati%20Roy,%20Op-Ed&st=cse">http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/opinion/09roy.html?scp=1&sq=Arundhati%20Roy,%20Op-Ed&st=cse (My italicized and boldface comments follow below the line at end of piece)

New Delhi:
A WEEK before he was elected in 2008, President Obama said that solving the dispute over Kashmir’s struggle for self-determination — which has led to three wars between India and Pakistan since 1947 — would be among his "critical tasks." His remarks were greeted with consternation in India, and he has said almost nothing about Kashmir since then.

But on Monday, during his visit here, he pleased his hosts immensely by saying the United States would not intervene in Kashmir and announcing his support for India’s seat on the United Nations Security Council. While he spoke eloquently about threats of terrorism, he kept quiet about human rights abuses in Kashmir.

Whether Mr. Obama decides to change his position on Kashmir again depends on several factors: how the war in Afghanistan is going, how much help the United States needs from Pakistan and whether the government of India goes aircraft shopping this winter. (An order for 10 Boeing C-17 Globemaster III aircraft, worth $5.8 billion, among other huge business deals in the pipeline, may ensure the president’s silence.) But neither Mr. Obama’s silence nor his intervention is likely to make the people in Kashmir drop the stones in their hands.

I was in Kashmir 10 days ago, in that beautiful valley on the Pakistani border, home to three great civilizations — Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist. It’s a valley of myth and history. Some believe that Jesus died there; others that Moses went there to find the lost tribe. Millions worship at the Hazratbal shrine, where a few days a year a hair of the Prophet Muhammad is displayed to believers.

Now Kashmir, caught between the influence of militant Islam from Pakistan and Afghanistan, America’s interests in the region and Indian nationalism (which is becoming increasingly aggressive and "Hinduized"), is considered a nuclear flash point. It is patrolled by more than half a million soldiers and has become the most highly militarized zone in the world.

The atmosphere on the highway between Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar, and my destination, the little apple town of Shopian in the south, was tense. Groups of soldiers were deployed along the highway, in the orchards, in the fields, on the rooftops and outside shops in the little market squares. Despite months of curfew, the "stone pelters" calling for "azadi" (freedom), inspired by the Palestinian intifada, were out again. Some stretches of the highway were covered with so many of these stones that you needed an S.U.V. to drive over them.

Fortunately the friends I was with knew alternative routes down the back lanes and village roads. The "longcut" gave me the time to listen to their stories of this year’s uprising. The youngest, still a boy, told us that when three of his friends were arrested for throwing stones, the police pulled out their fingernails — every nail, on both hands.

For three years in a row now, Kashmiris have been in the streets, protesting what they see as India’s violent occupation. But the militant uprising against the Indian government that began with the support of Pakistan 20 years ago is in retreat. The Indian Army estimates that there are fewer than 500 militants operating in the Kashmir Valley today. The war has left 70,000 dead and tens of thousands debilitated by torture. Many, many thousands have "disappeared." More than 200,000 Kashmiri Hindus have fled the valley. Though the number of militants has come down, the number of Indian soldiers deployed remains undiminished.

But India’s military domination ought not to be confused with a political victory. Ordinary people armed with nothing but their fury have risen up against the Indian security forces. A whole generation of young people who have grown up in a grid of checkpoints, bunkers, army camps and interrogation centers, whose childhood was spent witnessing "catch and kill" operations, whose imaginations are imbued with spies, informers, "unidentified gunmen," intelligence operatives and rigged elections, has lost its patience as well as its fear. With an almost mad courage, Kashmir’s young have faced down armed soldiers and taken back their streets.

Since April, when the army killed three civilians and then passed them off as "terrorists," masked stone throwers, most of them students, have brought life in Kashmir to a grinding halt. The Indian government has retaliated with bullets, curfew and censorship. Just in the last few months, 111 people have been killed, most of them teenagers; more than 3,000 have been wounded and 1,000 arrested.

But still they come out, the young, and throw stones. They don’t seem to have leaders or belong to a political party. They represent themselves. And suddenly the second-largest standing army in the world doesn’t quite know what to do. The Indian government doesn’t know whom to negotiate with. And many Indians are slowly realizing they have been lied to for decades. The once solid consensus on Kashmir suddenly seems a little fragile.

I WAS in a bit of trouble the morning we drove to Shopian. A few days earlier, at a public meeting in Delhi, I said that Kashmir was disputed territory and, contrary to the Indian government’s claims, it couldn’t be called an "integral" part of India. Outraged politicians and news anchors demanded that I be arrested for sedition. The government, terrified of being seen as "soft," issued threatening statements, and the situation escalated. Day after day, on prime-time news, I was being called a traitor, a white-collar terrorist and several other names reserved for insubordinate women. But sitting in that car on the road to Shopian, listening to my friends, I could not bring myself to regret what I had said in Delhi.

We were on our way to visit a man called Shakeel Ahmed Ahangar. The previous day he had come all the way to Srinagar, where I had been staying, to press me, with an urgency that was hard to ignore, to visit Shopian.

I first met Shakeel in June 2009, only a few weeks after the bodies of Nilofar, his 22-year-old wife, and Asiya, his 17-year-old sister, were found lying a thousand yards apart in a shallow stream in a high-security zone — a floodlit area between army and state police camps. The first postmortem report confirmed rape and murder. But then the system kicked in. New autopsy reports overturned the initial findings and, after the ugly business of exhuming the bodies, rape was ruled out. It was declared that in both cases the cause of death was drowning. Protests shut Shopian down for 47 days, and the valley was convulsed with anger for months. Eventually it looked as though the Indian government had managed to defuse the crisis. But the anger over the killings has magnified the intensity of this year’s uprising.

Shakeel wanted us to visit him in Shopian because he was being threatened by the police for speaking out, and hoped our visit would demonstrate that people even outside of Kashmir were looking out for him, that he was not alone.

It was apple season in Kashmir and as we approached Shopian we could see families in their orchards, busily packing apples into wooden crates in the slanting afternoon light. I worried that a couple of the little red-cheeked children who looked so much like apples themselves might be crated by mistake. The news of our visit had preceded us, and a small knot of people were waiting on the road.

Shakeel’s house is on the edge of the graveyard where his wife and sister are buried. It was dark by the time we arrived, and there was a power failure. We sat in a semicircle around a lantern and listened to him tell the story we all knew so well. Other people entered the room. Other terrible stories poured out, ones that are not in human rights reports, stories about what happens to women who live in remote villages where there are more soldiers than civilians. Shakeel’s young son tumbled around in the darkness, moving from lap to lap. "Soon he’ll be old enough to understand what happened to his mother," Shakeel said more than once.

Just when we rose to leave, a messenger arrived to say that Shakeel’s father-in-law — Nilofar’s father — was expecting us at his home. We sent our regrets; it was late and if we stayed longer it would be unsafe for us to drive back.

Minutes after we said goodbye and crammed ourselves into the car, a friend’s phone rang. It was a journalist colleague of his with news for me: "The police are typing up the warrant. She’s going to be arrested tonight." We drove in silence for a while, past truck after truck being loaded with apples. "It’s unlikely," my friend said finally. "It’s just psy-ops."

But then, as we picked up speed on the highway, we were overtaken by a car full of men waving us down. Two men on a motorcycle asked our driver to pull over. I steeled myself for what was coming. A man appeared at the car window. He had slanting emerald eyes and a salt-and-pepper beard that went halfway down his chest. He introduced himself as Abdul Hai, father of the murdered Nilofar.

"How could I let you go without your apples?" he said. The bikers started loading two crates of apples into the back of our car. Then Abdul Hai reached into the pockets of his worn brown cloak, and brought out an egg. He placed it in my palm and folded my fingers over it. And then he placed another in my other hand. The eggs were still warm. "God bless and keep you," he said, and walked away into the dark. What greater reward could a writer want?

I wasn’t arrested that night. Instead, in what is becoming a common political strategy, officials outsourced their displeasure to the mob. A few days after I returned home, the women’s wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party (the right-wing Hindu nationalist opposition) staged a demonstration outside my house, calling for my arrest. Television vans arrived in advance to broadcast the event live. The murderous Bajrang Dal, a militant Hindu group that, in 2002, spearheaded attacks against Muslims in Gujarat in which more than a thousand people were killed, have announced that they are going to "fix" me with all the means at their disposal, including by filing criminal charges against me in different courts across the country.

Indian nationalists and the government seem to believe that they can fortify their idea of a resurgent India with a combination of bullying and Boeing airplanes. But they don’t understand the subversive strength of warm, boiled eggs.
______________
Ms. Roy has included many facts in this piece that I have no way of verifying, though some of these "facts" made my stomach turn, and here are a few of them:
*The youngest, still a boy, told us that when three of his friends were arrested for throwing stones, the police pulled out their fingernails — every nail, on both hands.
*The militant uprising against the Indian government that began with the support of Pakistan 20 years ago is in retreat. If so, is it possible that it’s because of the presence of the Indian troupes in the region?
*Kashmir is patrolled by more than half a million soldiers and has become the most highly militarized zone in the world. This lament is preceded by: Now Kashmir, caught between the influence of militant Islam from Pakistan and Afghanistan, America’s interests in the region and Indian nationalism (which is becoming increasingly aggressive and "Hinduized"), is considered a nuclear flash point.

Ms. Roy’s words can be very persuasive because her now-and-then intoxicating prose can fog up one’s thinking abilities. Here are few examples:
*government of India goes aircraft shopping (what a sharp way to express this fact!)
*I worried that a couple of the little red-cheeked children [these kids are among the apple pickers in the valley] who looked so much like apples themselves might be crated by mistake. Nothing is more intoxicating than the image of red-cheeked, cherubic children.
*And then he [the man whose daughter had been killed . . . by who is not quite clear) placed another [egg] in my other hand. The eggs were still warm. "God bless and keep you," he said, and walked away into the dark. What greater reward could a writer want? Indeed, what could be more rewarding? Not a Booker, not the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize, nor the numerous other honors! I’m not being tongue-in-cheek. I can fully relate to Ms. Roy’s sentiments because in life the most spontaneous gestures are really the most rewarding.

Though the article is about human rights abuse in Kashmir and the various officials’ and governments’ "hypocritical" ways in dealing with the Kashmir issue, once again, the article came across as being all about Ms. Roy, ultimately.

Although from different backgrounds, and different upbringings, I share many of Ms. Roy’s sensibilities and admire her writing, yet reading this piece I couldn’t help but feel that governance is a very different ball game from writing. It is a prosaic activity where mistakes lead to ghastly outcomes while writing (in Ms. Roy’s case, prose) too can do this, it’s not the same kind or at the same level. For instance, I found the syntax (I guess, in the case of an icon’s piece, the New York Times doesn’t seem to mind the less forceful passive voice to the more direct active) in "we were overtaken by a car full of men waving us down" jarring. I felt that a crispier construction would have been: "A car filled with men waving their hands overtook us." A writer can get away with such minor aberration. But, since governing has to do with people’s lives there is just no room for error, but, since humans do not have all the answers to all the questions, the quagmire that Ms. Roy laments about in Kashmir as do the rest of us will continue. Ultimately, was the piece about the alleged “fatwah” on her head by the Hindu extremists or about the tortured and dying people of Kashmir? Is she once again being a narcissistic opportunist riding on the most visible and controversial issue of the day, thus increasing her own visibility (I think this thinking was reflected by many during her involvement with the Narmada dam protests—the-then-flavor-of-the-time---by her), or will her involvement truly help this particular group of dissatisfied people and the seemingly never-ending Kashmir saga?

Barcelona, Perpignan, Western Meditteranean Cruise, Mt Vesuvius

I am back! Went to Barcelona for four days followed by a 7-night cruise to Monte Carlo, Florence (docking at Livorno), Rome via the port of Civitavecchia, Naples, Majorca and back to Barcelona for another three nights. Things worked out so perfectly, I had to pinch myself. Everywhere we went the weather was exquisite and having taken the right kind of clothing, I was ready for any kind of weather other than snow. Plenty of that white stuff waits for me in New York in the coming months.

The highlight was probably climbing Mt. Vesuvius (4000 feet high) in Pompeii. A close second was jamming outside the magnificent, 13th century Barcelona Cathedral with a drummer from Brazil. As my friends, and my hubbie and I were walking through the narrow streets of the Gothic Quarter where the Cathedral is, perchance I noticed a young guy setting up his drum set and an electronic tambura right next to the wall of the Cathedral. I was dumbstruck to see the tambura and expressed my surprise to the drummer. Without blinking an eyelid he asked me, "Are you singer?" No more questions asked we jammed then and there though the pitch on the tambura was much too low for me. Out of the blue I picked a song in the supposedly rain-inducing raga amrithavarhsini even as I hoped the gorgeous weather wouldn't be ruined by rain.

Seeing the drummer looking happier by the moment, I decided to finish the whole song running about three minutes, though when I began, this was not the plan. By now a crowd had gathered around us and many of the onlookers began clicking away their cameras. I kept hoping I wouldn't end up on YouTube. At the end of our session, the drummer with a striking resemblance to Christ as many of us imagine the Son of God to be, gave me a CD of his. I was truly blown away by the whole experience. His name is Pedro Collares and the CD is titled, "Organic Healing Sound." I can't wait to hear it.

Oh, yes, another fabulous experience was the train ride from Barcelona to Perpignan, France. While making my plans for my trip, I had wanted to visit a border town in France on my own other than Eze and Menton that were included in one of our land excursion organized by the cruise ship. I also wanted it to be a just a one-day trip. Bingo, Perpignan showed up on my radar screen and further research revealed this town to be a must-see place. After my visit, I could see why. The artist Salvadore Dali called the Perpignan railway station the center of the world. Apparently, he found some of his greatest inspirations at this station: "Following a visit in 1963, the Catalan (Spain) surrealist artist Salvador Dalí declared the city's railway station the centre of the Universe, saying that he always got his best ideas sitting in the waiting room." Personally, I didn't find anything inspiring about the station except that it was quaint.

Photos and videos and other interesting details of the trip to follow soon.

Ciao!
Ro.