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Burhan Wani and Beyond: Indias Denial, Kashmirs

Defiance
Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal (anusaba@gmail.com) is Executive Editor, Kashmir Times
The anger of people in Kashmir and their political aspirations are legitimate rights. Since 2008,
attempts by civilians to organise themselves peacefully against their oppression or even for their
day-to-day needs including water, electricity and jobs have been met with brute force, even
murders. Post 2010, Kashmir has moved in circles from periods of unrest - to calm - and then back
to unrest. Burhan Wanis death was just a small spark that was needed to break the pretence of
normalcy thrust on its people. The government should realise that the stone pelters on the streets
are neither Pakistani nor paid agents. Kashmir, today, needs a political intervention that is
unconditional.
Kashmir Valley is under siege, turned into a prison inside out since July 8 when unrest erupted
after the death of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen Commander Burhan Wani. A local from Tral, Wani was laid to
rest amidst a huge gathering of anywhere between an estimated one to 3 lakh people attending his
funeral and giving him a heros farewell. While Burhan Wani was being buried amidst the eerie
calm and conspicuous absence of security men and police on the streets of this obscure town of
Tral, the rest of the valley was tearing into chaosprotestors pouring out in the streets, some
marching peacefully, while others went on a rampage, attacking police stations and security camps
with stones or whatever they could lay their hands on. The security personnel and police were
quick in jumping to the occasion with lethal weapons and vengeance as if a war had been
wagedno distinction made between peaceful protestors and the ones with stones in hand. The
tone of this war was set in the first three days with 30 civilians shot dead during street protests.
The number ever since has risen to 46 (as on July 21) and over 2200 have been injured with severe
bullet or pellet injuriesa vast chunk of them physically impaired, and more than 130 blinded
partially or fully.
How does this vicious cycle of violence and death, triggered by the death of Burhan Wani, (all of 22,
who joined the ranks of militants six years ago) make its trajectory in Kashmir? What is it that made
him so significant and powerful for the masses? Was he such a threat to security that it had become
so crucial to kill him? Were the government and its security apparatus aware of the repercussions
his death would evoke? There are media reports to suggest that the pros and cons were being
weighed by security agencies and the opinion remained divided. PDP parliamentarian Muzaffar
Beig has also thrown his weight behind the argument, maintaining that chief minister Mehbooba
Mufti had not endorsed the killing. Such reports, if true, are a shocking indictment of the security
grid and of the patronising political and official hierarchy, showing that the possibility of militants
being killed or arrested depends on the whims of some, not on the need of the situation. This
reveals the ugly nature of militarisation with the impunity to kill people, militants or civilians in
custody. Burhan Wani may have similarly been shot dead in, what is proudly being claimed by some
army officers, a 3 to 4 minute encounter? The details may have made no difference to the present
situation.
The outrage this time has resurrected from Burhan Wanis grave, his death, not why he was killed
or how he was killed. The allegations and theories of a staged encounter remain inconsequential for

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people who poured out on streets. His death alone gave a boost to the uprising. It is not just driven
by anger and alienation, and not by the usual demands for justiceit is also driven by passion and
the slogan of azadi. It is not easy to decode Burhan Wani, called the poster boy and an icon for
Kashmiri youth. On the surface he symbolised the gun and was commander of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen,
which has a particular ideology. His appeal, however, transcends that ideology. Reports point out
that Burhan was not involved in any killings and there were no major cases against him but he was
a raging success on social media with his videos and messages to motivate the youth to pick up
arms. His messages did not use religion or jehad as a metaphor but occupation and oppression.
But what made him unique within the Hizb-ul Mujahideen was his recent call to not attack
Amarnath yatris or civilian areas and to welcome Kashmiri Pandits, whom he described as part of
Kashmiri society, back to their homes.
His appeal is best personified by his own story. It is now well documented that Burhan picked up
the gun after he and his brother were humiliated, harassed and beaten up by security forces in
2010. His brothers death by security forces over a year ago strengthened his resolve. He operated
without fear, moving freely in South Kashmir, mingling with people and recently circulated videos
of him showed him playing cricket. His own personal narrative makes him a metaphor of both the
oppression that Kashmiris have suffered at the hands of security forces and the defiance against it.
When he is held in reverence by the masses, he becomes a personification of their collective
oppression, of collective anger, of a collective memory and a history of repression and also their
collective dream of defiance against that oppression. It is for the same reason that security forces
felt he needed to be annihilated; their psychological war against the oppressed was under threat
with such walking symbols of defiance. His killing instead of becoming a prized catch for security
men has inspired a rebellion.
The Burhan Wani phenomenon cannot be decoded without a re-reading of the entire history of
Kashmir, of which this manat the centre of focus nowhas become just another chapter. One way
of recalling history is to go backwards. In the post militancy period of Kashmir, 2008, 2009, 2010
and 2013 are important markers, preceding which there was a relative period of calm between
2002 and 2007. During this period of calm, one prime minister promised to resolve the Kashmir
dispute within the paradigm of humanity and democracy, and another held a series of round table
conferences that culminated in reports, recommending confidence-building measures pertaining to
human rights and governance, which continue to gather dust on the shelves of government offices.
Both, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh, during their respective tenures met and held
consultations with select leaders of the Hurriyat who represented the separatist ideology. But there
was no follow up during these years that also coincided with the peace process between India and
Pakistan, and that would inspire hopes in Kashmir, by then disenchanted by guns and militancy, of
getting a space on the dialogue table. The political lethargy and hesitation to do so was making the
masses impatient and restless. Between 2002 and 2007, fed up with the guns of both militants and
security forces, Kashmiris reposed faith in a peace process. But patience soon ran out when
confidence building measures did not translate beyond the symbolic opening of the Line of Control,
and dialogue remained confined to a few photo opportunities between select separatists and two
successive prime ministers. Instead of initiating a meaningful peace process for which conditions
were quite conducive then, the ruling class went on the binge of celebrating the increased
participation of people in elections and misconstrued it as victory of Indian democracy. For
Kashmiris, caught in the most militarised area in the world with a miserable track record of human
rights, this democracy does not extend beyond the right to vote.
In 2008, when people poured out on the streets in peaceful assemblies over the Amarnath land row,

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the residue of that growing impatience was there. The Indian government chose to use jackboots
and bullets to fuel that impatience and pushed the youth to find in stone pelting, their new
metaphor of resistance. In 2009, the campaign for justice in Shopian rapes and murders, by and
large peaceful, disciplined and methodical, unnerved the government. The latter responded not
with compassion but by using its legal justice system to subvert the truth through botched up
investigations and lies, revealing to the masses the ugly arrogance of brute power emanating from
the corridors of power in New Delhi and their loyal powers in Jammu and Kashmir. In 2010, when
cries for justice again erupted over the Machchil fake encounter killings, the street unrest was met
with brute force resulting in 120 deaths within a span of 5 months. The impatience had fully
transformed into anger.
Since 2008, attempts by civilians to organise themselves peacefully against their oppression or
even for their day-to-day needs including water, electricity and jobs have been met with brute
force, even murders. Afzal Gurus secretive hanging was the last nail in the coffin, convincing
Kashmiris that peaceful means of resistance and dialogue were not going to happen; the incident
metamorphosed even the status quo-ists into skeptics, if not pro-azadi seekers. Playing in the
backdrop as a force multiplier was a history of denials, unfulfilled promises, betrayals, dilution of
autonomy and rigged elections right since 1947. Post Afzal Guru, the rise of the pro-Hindutva
forces, their ideology of communalism and politics of beef and love jehad, and the historic
formation of the PDP-BJP alliance in Jammu and Kashmir were only add-ons.
Kashmir was already a catastrophe in the making, ready to explode anytime. Post 2010, Kashmir
has moved in circles from period of unrest to calm and then back againevery time, the venom of
the unrest is far more bitter and lethal; the manner in which jackboots and bullets are employed
even more brutal. Kashmir moves in vicious circles. Crackdowns, raids and whimsical arrests have
become the norm and crimes like facebook terror have been invented to legitimise such arrests.
Separatist leaders continue to be arrested or are placed under house arrest almost on a weekly
basis, with hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani having spent the last six years virtually under house
arrest. Any call for protest, political or otherwise, is sure to be responded with heavy restrictions,
unannounced curfew imposition and brutal police action. Locals continue to brave unpredictable
curfews, crackdowns, arrests, torture, fake encounters and other kinds of influences of heavy
militarism. These are indicators of a serious abnormality. The periods of calm at best reflect
fatigue, which is arrogantly mistaken for normalcy, and ultimately such misinterpretations only add
to the humiliation of an already battered population. A simmering volcano has been breathing in
recent years beneath the calm surface of tulip gardens, robust tourism and better business
prospects, punctuated by the few odd militancy related incidents on the rise nonetheless.
All that was needed to enflame Kashmir was just a small spark, breaking that false narrative and
pretended picture of normalcy thrust on its people. Burhan Wanis death provided that. It could
have been anything else. The security forces fueled this fire with brutal methods of crowd control
that finds no parallels anywhere else in the country. The civil administration went into deep
slumber, occasionally waking up with rhetoric of appealing people to maintain calm but gave a free
hand to the security men to kill and maim people, attack ambulances, raid peoples homes and drag
random men out to be arrested or shot at. In a land ruled by brute power and perpetuation of lies,
lethal weapons are deemed non-lethal and stones treated as weapons of mass destruction in
official circles. Such a mindset allows for liberal doses of brutality and use of disproportionate force
against civilians. Everything follows a familiar pattern. Yet, this summer, Kashmir has made a new
statement.

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This time, the fight is not for justice against human rights violations. It is fighting the mighty Indian
state, and a history of repression which has turned a 22 year old boy into a metaphor of rebellion
and defiance. Burhan Wanis videos inspired Kashmiri youth because they showed that he had freed
himself of fear, and the present uprising has incorporated the resonance of that act of breaking
away from fear. This uprising is driven not just by the usual anger and alienation, it is driven also
by passion to free themselves from constant oppression, a passion for freeing themselves from
Indian control. The Kashmiri youth of today are politically awakened and are trying desperately to
fill in the gap left by the disunited and weakened leadership of separatists, owing both to Indias
systemic process of discrediting them and keeping them out of circulation, as well as the
separatists own inability of reaching out to the youth. The Kashmiri youth are driven by ideas of
revolution and liberty that the educated young among this generation have fed themselves with,
through readings of conflicts around the world overrevolutionaries like Che Guevara and Bhagat
Singh and thinkers like Foucault, Voltaire, Sartre, Marx, Kant and Rousseau; ideas that have been
craving for space to be articulated and expressed; ideas that are waiting to be translated into
action.
As of today, many young Kashmiris prefer to romanticise this moment and choose to call it a
revolution, though the only connector is the slogan of azadi which remains ambiguous and unspelt
with revolutionary ideas, passion, anger and religious symbols providing a medley of images that
project many shades and dichotomies, if not confusion. Revolution, if in the making, may still be too
premature. However, there are many Kashmiris who foolishly believe that the time of reckoning has
come and that azadi may be just a year away, if not days and months. Which country has ceded
even half an inch of land only because its people are out on roads in open rebellion?
Amidst this ongoing storm and vicious cycle of violence and bloodbath, it is difficult to bring sanity
to any discourse. But then, it is important for everyone to learn larger lessons, to find a way ahead.
The Kashmiri youth are among the worlds most politically educated ones and are struggling to
reclaim their space. The Indian government is either blind to that or is extremely wary of the power
of a politically conscious generation and thus it constantly pushes them into an alley where gun and
stones become the idioms of a movement. The more they are crushed, the greater is their
resonance; every death provides a new stimulus but it pours out directionless and without a
strategy. Given the rigidity of the government, the space for peaceful resistance does not visibly
exist. But the situation calls for imagination and foresight of the brainier and the talented ones
among the youth for use of creative means of expressing their revolutionary ideas, for a direction,
and for the birth of a new leadership that Kashmir is in need fornot only to pursue their political
dreams and aspirations but also for saving the Kashmiri society from this brutalisation and
dehumanisation by constant exposure to violence. The chances of this are bleak as long as the
government continues to use its massive apparatus of security forces to push them to the wall.
The larger onus, therefore, is on the shoulders of the government. Its constant denial and its
unspeakable acts in Kashmir completely shrink the possibilities of that much-needed space. It
needs to realise and grapple with the fact that anger of people and their political aspirations are
legitimate rights. Their methods of resistance, barring the gun, are not criminal acts. Pakistan and
its agencies may have their own axe to grind in Kashmir but the stone pelters on the streets are not
Pakistani agents and they are not paid agents of anybody else. Kashmir, today, needs a political
intervention that is unconditional, not an offer of dialogue made under pressure, like the one Home
Minister Rajnath Singh made on the floor of the Parliament in a patronising manner, and which was
appended with adjectives like misguided youth. Any intervention has to be made with an open
mind and not by criminalising the youth. But first of all, the government should ensure an end to

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this ongoing violence by reining in their forces, stopping the use of so-called non-lethal weapons
which kill and maim, not just due to poor training but because they are used with an intention to
inflict fatal wounds. Whether it is pellet guns or tear gas shells, they have taken a heavy toll on
civilians because security men and police fired them, at crowds and even inside homes, above the
waist. On the day Rajnath Singh assured that security forces have been asked to maintain restraint,
two people were shot dead, and another one on the subsequent day. Apart from the falsehood of
such assurances, skepticism and mistrust is kept alive by the memory of years of repression and
brutality, coupled with failed attempts at dialogue and interlocution in the past. The sincerity of
New Delhi can be best measured by ending this bloodbath on streets and making the atmosphere
further conducive for dialogue by introduction of genuine confidence building measures like
demilitarisation, removal of AFSPA, and gearing up the legal justice system to fairly probe cases of
violations.
But first of all, New Delhi must come out of the denial mode and change both its mindset and
course on dealing with the Kashmir conflict. The Indian government has done everything under the
sun to prolong the crisis, feed it through a vicious cycle of repression and brutalities and then
concoct more lies to justify the brutality, thus criminalising the masses desires for liberty, freedom
and equality. This conflict management militarily has cost India huge sums of money, manpower,
loss of lives of soldiers who do not count but for oiling the states propaganda machinery. Besides,
such a policy of feeding conflicts murders the basic spirit and inspiration of the Indian constitution
as the state decides to cling on to troubled territories by butchering its people and bulldozing the
very essence of Indian democracy, and its cherished values of liberty and equality. Conflicts have to
be resolved politically and in an enlightened manner.

Tags:
Kashmir
Burhan Wani
Hizb-ul-Mujahideen
Stone Pelters
BJP-PDP alliance
Kashmir Unrest
Separatists
Azadi