It has been about seventy years of Indian rule in Jammu and Kashmir, but miseries of the people are not heading for any end. No agreement, No plan, No accord worked to ease the agony of the people. Many efforts were made to persuade the Kashmiris but all in vain. The partition paved the way to both India and Pakistan to claims the territory of Jammu & Kashmir for their own purposes.The ongoing conflict resulted in the instability of both the states and the main victims are the people of Kashmir. Thousands of Kashmiris have been killed, injured, disabled, disappeared, hundreds of women have been raped and property worth billions has been destroyed. Kashmir has become a playground for proxy wars for the both sides and unfortunately both appear to be totally bent upon destroying each other.
In May,1998 both India and Pakistan tested their nuclear devices and it added more oil to the fuel and the ray of hope got distracted and finally Kashmir got stuck into the unfinished battlefield. To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction and the Kashmiris are also doing the same by calling ‘Strikes’. World order is changing and the nature of the states also changes but Kashmir is still trapped in ‘Strikes’. Irony is that there is no evidence of strikes in Muslim history and the very concept is adopted from the community who were fighting for equal wages in the factories. There is not any significant correlation between strikes and successful liberation movements across the world.
Few days back, I was traveling in a cab and unfortunately there was strike in the same area. The cab was on its way , passing through a village and it was stopped and the driver was threatened and beaten into pulp. I raised few questions about their misbehaviour, a woman passenger who was boarding on the same cab had to admit that his four year old son was undergoing treatment in Children Hospital Srinagar. It does only happen with us but it is a daily routine,how can we demand justice when we are the perpetrators of injustice. Unfortunately we were not allowed to move our destinations and we came back home.
Now my question is ‘Whom we are punishing here and how does India get affected if we boycott economic activity and work?. History is witness that no country or nation has achieved freedom by abstaining from the work. There are hundreds of families in Kashmir who earn their livelihood on daily basis and feed their families. The families of the street vendors and daily wagers might be starving during strike days. Students are the worst sufferers as their studies got severely affected by the Strikes. Can’t we learn a lesson from Cuban struggle, when it was hit by economic crisis and the rights of its citizens were suppressed, but at the same time it invested heavily in areas like education and healthcare? Nations aspiring freedom have to be economically self-reliant. By calling unnecessary strikes, our economic dependency on India increases every day. Strikes have never been able to attract international attention towards Kashmir.
TAIL PIECE: Now it has been long time struggling for our freedom, but do we have counter structure or institutions like hospitals, schools, colleges, banks? And the answer is NO. What is the condition of Baitul Maals, which can help us to strengthen our movement during Strikes. We can’t deny the fact that as a society we have failed.We doesn’t have built any toilet yet, how can we go for a bigger approach. Leadership is in desperate need of a strategy. Simply hartals, protests, sacrifices can’t help us any more; we have to take a pause and think. We need a mission statement, a clear demarcation of short term, midterm and long term objectives to make a dream true.
(The author pursuing Masters Degree in International Relations (Peace and Conflict Studies) at Islamic University Of Science and Technology Awantipora Pulwama Kashmir.writes on topics of greater public concern exclusively for “Kashmir Horizzon”. His views are personal)
