More on Kashmir, and the dark clouds of war

While the web has made it possible to follow events from thousands of miles away, it is equally possible to be misled because of that very distance.  Which is why I feel better--even when discussing awful developments--when I find that I am not the only one worried about, in this case, Kashmir.  Here is Tariq Ali writing in the London Review of Books:

An ugly anti-Muslim chauvinism accompanies India’s violence. It has been open season on Muslims since 9/11, when the liberation struggle in Kashmir was conveniently subsumed under the war on terror

I second his view that in India it has been open season on Muslims.  I was too shocked to make any comment when watching a television show during one of my trips there.  It was on NDTV, I think, and seemed to be an Indian version of the American talk-fest among pundits, with audience participation.  The question they were discussing?  "All Muslims are not terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims."

I was shocked at the topic itself, not to speak of the comments that were made.  This in a country where two prime ministers had been assassinated not by people with Islamic faith--Indira Gandhi was felled by bullets from her bodyguards who were Sikh, and Rajiv Gandhi was brutally exploded by a Sri Lankan Tamil suicide bomber.  Of course, Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi was killed by a Hindu zealot.

Ok, these were before 9/11.  But, all contemporary terrorists being Muslims is contradicted by, for instance, the Maoist rebels who seem to strike and kill at ease, which has the government responding by deploying paramilitary forces in large numbers.  And, of course, the communal terror launched by the BJP and Shiv Sena .... Or, how about Gujarat's Modi coordinating the violence that killed and terrorized Muslims in the state in which he was elected chief minister to protect and serve those very people?

That TV show was no exception.  Maybe one needs such an outsider's perspective to see through all these ...

Very depressing all the developments in Kashmir have been ... Ali concludes:

Now a new generation of Kashmiri youth is on the march. They fight, like the young Palestinians, with stones. Many have lost their fear of death and will not surrender. Ignored by politicians at home, abandoned by Pakistan, they are developing the independence of spirit that comes with isolation and it will not be easily quelled. It’s unlikely, however, that the prime minister of India and his colleagues will pay any attention to them. And just to show who’s master, the Indian army flag-marched through the streets of Srinagar on 7 July in an awesome show of strength.

I have problems with many of Tariq Ali's takes on the world ... but, in this case, I agree with him.

Successive Pakistani governments continue to capitalize on the Kashmir issue, and the explicit and implicit anti-Muslim tendencies in India--and they screw the country and the people in the process.  I mean, this is a no-win for anybody involved.  Bloody hell all around.

In the immortal words of Rodney King, why can't we all get along?

I wonder if I might never get to see Kashmir's famous Dal Lake that I thought I would visit some day--it was in the textbook for the "social studies" class a long time ago (what was that teacher's name? I can kind of picture her even  now! Was it Sitalakshmi Ramaswamy?) that I came across a photo of Dal Lake.  And then there were so many Hindi movie song/dance sequences from that lake and the state itself.  My graduate school mate, Gazala, who was from Srinagar, added to my interests with her descriptions of Dal Lake ...
Here is one of my favorite Hindi film songs--this one is from "Kashmir Ki Kali" (lyrics translation here)