Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Unequal Citizens
Geographic Separation
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August 3, 2013
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NOTES
divided families indicates, entire families and even on occasion entire villages
continued to flee across the border.
Following the fencing of the border,
an estimated 30 villages in these
border districts were left straddling the
fenced border.
Twice in two wars, in 1947 and 1965,
the people of Rajouri and Poonch
succumbed to the lure of Kashmir
banega Pakistani and its brutal consequences. That moment of disruption and
uprooting gets reconstructed as territories and people shift due to vagaries of
crossfire shelling, endemic wars and
negotiated settlements. In 2004, when
there was a buzz about Pakistan president Gen Pervez Musharrafs proposals
for settling the Kashmir dispute, the
people of Rajouri and Poonch, especially
the Hindus, were haunted by the fear
of territorial adjustments once again
unsettling them. The border remains an
active participant in their lives. For the
people of the fenced out villages, moving across the border is an ever-present
circumstantial option, but it renders
their loyalty suspect. The border is
full of such narratives, like in Manjakote
in 2001, when overnight, 22 families
melted away across the border due to
intense shelling.
Overlapping Identities
Whereas in the Valley you have a homogeneous Kashmiri-speaking population
and 95% of the people are Muslims,
while the Jammu division is characterised by overlapping identities. It has a
Hindu majority but these border districts
have a Muslim majority Rajouri 60%
and Poonch 91%. The towns have nonMuslim majorities Poonch 66% and
Rajouri 59%. Markers of identity are
more on the basis of caste, tribe and
language rather than religion. Caste is
a pre-eminent category having continuity across the religious divide, e g,
Muslim-Rajputs. The divide between
tribal and non-tribal categories has got
entrenched following the Indian governments decision to accord the GujjarBakerwal communities scheduled tribe
status, thus disadvantaging the Pahadis.
There is a common linguistic and
cultural linkage across the four major
132
Divisive Propaganda
If Kashmiri nationalism gets positioned
in competition with Indian nationalism,
Jammus nationalism gets positioned as
pro-India and its Gujjar and Pahadi
Muslims as pro-India. In such popular
ideological constructs lie the seeds of
communal partitions. Commonly voiced
in Rajouri by elected panchayat members
was the refrain, We are the ones who
hold aloft the tri-colour, we work shoulder to shoulder with the army, yet we
the nationalists get neglected. The state
has deliberately ignored the tourism
potential here, lavishing all attention on
the Valley. The right to information (RTI)
activist Shahbaz Khan complained that,
In Kashmir they reap the benefits of both
militancy monies and the [S]tates appeasement policies. Unka toh roza aur namaz bhi
farzi hai! They have the power to bring
Kashmir to a halt with their hartals, but that
doesnt stop them from accepting the
governments rich doles. If they are against
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NOTES
India, why do they accept all this? All we get
is the dregs, like haathi ke mooh mein jeera,
despite our suffering being greater.
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August 3, 2013
it was not safe for us. Through this differential development and neglect the
government was creating divisions
between regions and communities
Hindu, Muslim, Gujjar and Bakerwal.
Today in J&K we are facing the terror of
division and communalisation of social
relations, and not so much the terror of
militants or the army, said a Bakerwal
student leader. It was less Armed Forces
(Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) that he was
concerned about and more the states
Public Safety Act under which hundreds
of students like him were jailed.
Many Faces of Militarisation
The hill districts of Rajouri and Poonch
present a mirror to the Valleys future
face as active militancy is contained, the
ubiquitous bunkers dismantled and
thickets of troops withdrew to discreet
but permanent camps and militarisation
gets normalised as a way of life.
Take the road from Rajouri to Buddhal,
on the crossroads to the Valley, once
militancy affected hub with heavy troop
deployment, the Assam Rifles battalion
encamped in Buddhal is being withdrawn. But entire hillsides on both sides
of the road have been taken over by
permanent, sprawling camps of the
Rashtriya Rifles (RR). The strategic
significance of these border districts has
been demonstrated in the three wars
producing permanent entrenchment of
military encampments. The challenge
of militancy has multiplied troop deployment threefold. Estimates for RajouriPoonch are not available. According to
the state government of J&K, as stated
on the floor of the legislative assembly
in 2007, overall army deployment was
6.34 lakhs. Since then, six battalions each
of central paramilitary and army have
been withdrawn.1 According to the then
union minister Ashwani Kumar, 86,260
paramilitary forces were deployed in 2011.
In Surankote or little Kashmir as this
notorious epicentre of militancy in the
hill districts was called, there was often
firing at night across the LOC and
commonly, families huddled in their
homes as bullets flew overhead. It was
the site of the 1998 Sailan massacre in
which 19 women and men were killed
to take revenge against the family of a
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NOTES
Smita M Patil
Varsha Ayyar
Rekha Raj
Anandhi S
Manisha Gupte
Swathy Margaret
Meena Gopal
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NOTES
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August 3, 2013
NOTES
References
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