Kashmir: The Silence And The Shame

Men are hard-wired to protect women and children from harm. It is an age-old instinct, probably as old as the earth itself. He permits no one to upset or threaten his wife, daughters and sisters. In every conflict it is the men who stand up as shields for their families beseeching to the world, ‘Leave us alone….leave our families alone’. Recent scientific studies have shown that there is physical evidence to prove biological connections even between fathers and their babies; that their brains release hormones to build and strengthen the bond to love, to cherish and to protect.

Imagine then, if you are a man, what you must feel like when you and your family are sound asleep in your house unaware of what lies ahead. Outside it is bitterly cold. Suddenly there is a forceful knock on the door and a few strange men clad in army uniforms burst into your homes taking you away. They do that in every house in that village till all the men are forcefully brought out to a nearby bus-stand. The women and children and locked inside with the soldiers. You wait for the sound of screams but instead there is an eerie silence which is much worse. Are there any words to describe what goes on in your mind when your women are trapped helplessly inside and there is nothing, absolutely nothing you can do?

You may shudder and think this will never happen to you. But in-fact this scene is not imagined, it is stolen from a very gruesome reality. It occurred 22 years ago on 22 February 1991 in Kunan-Poshpora, a small village in the north of Kashmir, the northernmost Indian state that has witnessed much violence and turmoil since 1947. On April 7, 1991, the New York Times reported the Kunan-Poshpora rape incident under the headline, “India Moves Against Kashmir Rebels.” According to the report, on March 5, 1991, villagers complained about the incident to the then-Kupwara District Magistrate, S.M Yasin, who visited the village two days later to investigate. “According to a report filed by Yasin,” the article reads, “the armed forces behaved like violent beasts.” He identified them as members of 4th Rajputana Rifles and said they rampaged through the village from 11:00 pm on Feb 23 until 9:00 am the next morning.

The Indian authorities have dismissed the mass-rape charges as “groundless.” No further investigations have been conducted. The Kunan-Poshpora rape case has been buried like thousands of other cases of rights abuse by men in uniform in Kashmir.

The place that Kashmiris call home is a land that stood the wrath of time and history. It has been marched over by the mighty conquering steps of Alexander the Great, it has heard and watched helplessly the anguish of a people when their very identity was being torn apart 66 years ago, it has bled dry from the millions of unreported massacres that have taken place ever since and has watched silently as number upon number of unmarked graves have been dug.

That civilians are being tortured in Indian-occupied Kashmir and that the Geneva Convention of 1949 is being violated is not an assumption. A documentary titled ‘Kashmir’s Torture trail’ aired on channel 4 on 10^th July 2012 highlighted the struggles Kashmiris face including daily curfews, torture and systematic victimisation. In 2010 Wikileaks  cable highlighted that in 2005, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) privately briefed US officials about the widespread torture in Kashmir. In 2011, India’s Home Ministry even acknowledged that a majority of Kashmiri people want freedom from the Indian occupation of their land since a survey conducted by them had shown them the results. The survey showed that 54 percent identified azadi (the term used by the Kashmiris for liberation from India) as their preferred final status for Jammu and Kashmir and that the general political awareness of the Kashmiri youth was very high.

Despite these facts, there is the belief that Kashmiris are ‘happy’ with their present status. This was very clearly accentuated in an article by Manu Joseph, ‘Also, what Pakistan has become, politically and economically, has ensured that accession to that country is not part of popular sentiment here anymore. In fact, there is even relief in Kashmir that historical circumstances saved the Valley from being a part of Pakistan’

As a human being, do you think it is relief people feel over the daily curfews? When the women are assaulted and men are taken away? When unmarked graves are dug and continue to be dug for the dead?

We can turn our backs to Kashmir with the excuse that our country is suffering too. That we are too busy licking our own wounds to try and heal theirs. But such excuses could have been given years ago when we gained independence. Weren’t we suffering too then, as a new country? Was not our economy in shackles? If we stood up for what is right back then are we going to back down now?

“I won’t tell your father you have
died, Rizwan, but where has your
shadow fallen, like cloth on the tomb
of which saint, or the body of which
unburied boy in the mountains,
bullet-torn, like you, his blood sheer
rubies on Himalayan snow?” Agha Shahid
Ali