kashmirissueWho can miss noticing the anguish in Kashmir is boiling over?! After three months and 95 dead, all that India’s political parties have agreed to do for the state is to send a delegation to visit it.

Affronted by this callousness, a lot of Kashmiris are renewing their cry for “azaadi”. When commenting on my previous blogs many have declared how they are fed up with India and want to secede.

To them, to the young Kashmiris born into strife and drawn to the idea of “azaadi”, I can say only one thing to ease such anger – join the gang.

You must realise Kashmir is not a particular target of New Delhi’s indifference, violence and incompetence. The Indian state is degenerating into one of the politicians, by the politicians, for the politicians. The people don’t register or matter, except when it is time to ink their fingers with a spot of navy blue.

If Kashmir is without water, electricity, food, and care, so is more than half of India. If Kashmiris dread even walking past a man in uniform because he can beat, arrest and even shoot them without real accountability, so is it for millions of Indians, for whom the policeman is the symbol of oppression, state-controlled violence, political intimidation and naked crime.

There are people in jail for years without trial all over India, not just in areas where the Public Safety Act is enforced. There are innocents killed in encounters all across the country. Women are being raped by cops all over India.

Yes, in Kashmir there is a unique historical overlay to these problems. But numerous Indian regions and groups – Dalits, tribals, Manipur, Telangana, Jats, and many more – bear their own historical crosses, and carry their own feeling of political umbrage, against our clumsy and often cruel state.

Some of the marginalised suffer their torment in silence. Some fight the state, as Naxals, human rights activists, journalists, lawyers etc. Some just leave India in disgust, and settle abroad.

Some Kashmiris want their state to leave India, and this invokes great anger and fear in most Indians. But even if I look at this totally dispassionately and from the point of a Kashmiri, I worry about this reactive approach.

Someone leaving India with their passport can go to America, Australia or Canada. Where will Kashmir go?

Pakistan may have a romantic appeal to some Kashmiris. But it is one of the few states that are more cruel, corrupt, and clumsy than India. Just ask people living in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. Just ask the Balouchis. Punjabi-dominated Pakistan will be the worst fire into which Kashmir can jump if it tries to flee the Indian frying pan.

An independent Kashmir is an even more impossible dream. Even if created, an independent Kashmir with no real economy or military will last all of 3 days. Because the Islamic fundamentalists and Taliban scouring about for countries to devour, particularly in this region, will eat an independent Kashmir for dinner; no sorry, an independent Kashmir will the tasty snack they devour after consuming Pakistan. Goodbye Kashmir’s syncretic culture. Goodbye Kashmir as we know it.

And if any Kashmiri even dreams of China being his protector, he should cast a glance at Xinjiang province, perhaps the only place in the world where a Muslim society is being actively shredded as a policy of the state.

So I say to all Kashmiris – beware of those beckoning you. They only see you as dinner. Beware of flighty fantasies born out of anger. They will crash in the face of reality.

Yes, an autonomous Jammu and Kashmir within the Indian state is a dream worth pursuing, a dream many Indians will step forward to help you achieve.

Yes, for 20 years you, like many parts of India, have borne the brunt of our heavy-handed state. But for 40 years before that you prospered within India.

It is now a matter of historical record that the trouble that erupted in Kashmir in 1989 was the result of political gamesmanship by New Delhi. But it was also gleefully provoked by Pakistan – a Pakistan less interested in Kashmir and more interested in avenging 1971. (Of course, Bangladesh is another good example of how Punjabi-dominated Pakistan treats other ethnicities politically, socially and militarily.)

Truth and reconciliation can come to Kashmir, if people will it. Today, Kashmiris are collectively showing their political anger. But if they direct their energy and angst into political will, truth and reconciliation, thing will change.

All over the world, from South Africa to America, great wrongs have been corrected, and people with historical grievances and political divergences have learned to live together.

So a special appeal to Kashmiris – if you hate the abuse of the forces and the gamesmanship of politicians, don’t allow them to get you to throw yourselves to the wolves, and destroy what is best about yourselves, Kashmir’s syncretic culture. Or that will be their ultimate victory and your ultimate loss.