Resisting Occupation in Kashmir THE ETHNOGRAPHY OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE Tobias Kelly, Series Editor A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher. RESISTING OCCuPATION IN KASHmIR Edited by Haley Duschinski, mona Bhan, Ather Zia, and Cynthia mahmood uNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS PHILADELPHIA Copyright © 2018 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104- 4112 www .upenn .edu /pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978- 0- 8122- 4978- 1 Contents Introduction. “Rebels of the Streets”: Violence, Protest, and Freedom in Kashmir 1 Mona Bhan, Haley Duschinski, and Ather Zia Chapter 1. Contesting the Law, Contesting the State: Jurisdictional Authority of the Majlis- e- Mushawarat in Kashmir 42 Haley Duschinski and Bruce Hoffman Chapter 2. “In Search of the Aryan Seed”: Race, Religion, and Sexuality in Indian- Occupied Kashmir 74 Mona Bhan Chapter 3. The Killable Kashmiri Body: The Life and Execution of Afzal Guru 103 Ather Zia Chapter 4. From “Terrorist” to “Terrorized”: How Trauma Became the Language of Suffering in Kashmir 129 Saiba Varma Chapter 5. Sexual Crimes and the Struggle for Justice in Kashmir 153 Seema Kazi Chapter 6. Police Subjectivity in Occupied Kashmir: Reflections on an Account of a Police Officer 184 Gowhar Fazili vi Contents Chapter 7. The Contingencies of Everyday Life in Azad Jammu and Kashmir 211 Ershad Mahmud Chapter 8. Interrogating the Ordinary: Everyday Politics and the Struggle for Azadi in Kashmir 230 Farrukh Faheem Chapter 9. Epitaphs as Counterhistories: Martyrdom, Commemoration, and the Work of Graveyards in Kashmir 248 Mohamad Junaid Chapter 10. Perturbations of Violence in Kashmir 278 Cynthia Mahmood List of Contributors 291 Index 293 INTRODuCTION “Rebels of the Streets” Violence, Protest, and Freedom in Kashmir mONA BHAN, HALEY DuSCHINSKI, AND ATHER ZIA I’m the rebel of the streets that been eulogized in blood Dramatized in politics duly hated with no love Demonized in the news with their fabricated tales While sodomized young kids are still screaming in their jails Lost and never found in this facade of peace Reflected in thoughts, that Dajjal1 now breathes He speaks to his puppets and silhoets now tremble ‘Cause the brave men are dead and all cowards resemble Satan’s evil empire is reaching out to hold thee Since money can buy out your political theory And your unborn child, is raised as a traitor Livin’ on blood money and he doubts his Creator misleaded by his greed till his soul starts to blacken And he sees his own face in the signs of Armageddon And this earth will shake ‘cause of the crimes he did His bones will break holdin’ the coffin of his Kid They gave us blood and hate then wondered why we all are rebels In the Land of Saints each man raised is called a rebel —mC Kash, Why We Rebels 2 Introduction “Rebel of the streets”: These powerful lyrics by Kashmiri rapper MC Kash reflect a new phase in the politics of dissent in Kashmir, shaped by a long- standing popular struggle against India’s brutal military occupation that has dominated the cultural, social, and political landscape of the region for decades. Since India’s independence from British colonial rule and the sub- sequent partition in 1947, India and Pakistan, both of which claim sovereign control over the region, have fought four inconclusive wars over Kashmir. In Indian-a dministered Kashmir, a series of forced, rigged, and illegitimate elections have installed what MC Kash refers to as “puppet” regimes that have constrained expressions of people’s will for Kashmir’s political resolution while completely ignoring a series of United Nations (UN) resolutions for a free and fair plebiscite to settle the Kashmir dispute. Reinforced by Indian military’s ubiquitous presence in Kashmir, the locally elected governments have turned Kashmir into a “late modern colonial occupation” in which state violence is obscured and justified through claims of humanitarianism pre- mised on principles of democracy, good governance, development, and rule of law (Mbembe 2003, 25–30). In 1989 Kashmiris, long resistant to Indian rule in their homeland, launched a popular armed rebellion against the Indian state. India sought to crush the rebellion through a massive counterinsurgency assault against insur- gent and civilian populations, deploying more than 700,000 military and para- military forces in the region. More than 25 years later this counterinsurgency regime remains, producing a perpetual state of siege that subjects the entire population to everyday conditions of surveillance, punishment, and control. With a population of approximately 12.5 million, Jammu and Kashmir has 1 soldier for every 17 Kashmiris, making it one of the most densely milita- rized zones in the world (International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian-A dministered Kashmir and Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons 2015).2 Indian military, police, and paramilitary forces carry out extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, torture, and sexual assault. These operations have been facilitated by emer- gency and national security laws such as the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), which gives the military supreme powers to kill with impunity (Amnesty International 1999), and the J&K Public Safety Act, which provides for preventive detention without trial (Amnesty International 2001, 2011a, 2011b). International and Kashmiri human rights organizations document that more than 70,000 people have been killed and over 8,000 have been forc- ibly disappeared in counterinsurgency operations, and there are around 6,000 “Rebels of the Streets” 3 unknown and unmarked graves and mass graves in Kashmir (International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian-A dministered Kash- mir and Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons 2015). The armed rebellion transformed into a new mode of resistance in the first decade of the twenty- first century, with widespread anti- India street pro- tests marking the beginning of a new intifada (Kak 2011). Clashes between youth protesters and state armed forces escalated in the summer of 2010, with Indian state armed forces killing 120 civilians, a period marked in Kashmiri consciousness as “the year of killing youth” (Bukhari 2010).3 These young men and women, also called “Kashmir’s new warriors” (Thottam 2010), con- tinued a long- standing struggle against what they viewed as the illegitimacy of India’s “evil empire” through new modes of protest and resistance, mar- shaling strategies of artistic and literary representation, documentary film production, music, sit- ins, candlelight vigils, street marches, and stone pelt- ing, in an effort to secure their aspiration for a free (azad) Kashmir. These popular modes of protest—in which music and literature as well as jokes, rumors, and stone- pelting become potent forms of political dissent—are derived from, not a departure from, the armed struggle of the 1990s; they are part of a longer continuum of antioccupation struggles that can be traced to India’s historic denial of the Kashmiri right to self- determination, traced even to the violent repression of Kashmiri uprisings against the tyranny of the princely ruler in 1931 (Faheem, this volume). Viewed along this continuum, the protests of the 2000s resist any attempt to draw easy distinctions between violent and nonviolent forms of resistance. MC Kash burst onto the cultural scene during this critical time as a popular and powerful voice of defiance, giving expression to the cumulative rage of these “rebels of the streets” who came of age during the armed rebellion of the 1990s. Building on new social media and solidarity networks, MC Kash rose to prominence early in the summer months of 2010 with his song I Protest (Remembrance), which bears witness to the indiscriminate killings of teenagers by the state’s armed forces: “Don’t talk restitution / ‘Cuz the only solution / Is the resolution of freedom.” Drawing links with other occupied and oppressed populations in Palestine, Northern Ireland, and elsewhere, MC Kash’s rap music has given voice to a new generation that has pursued the freedom movement through hybrid forms of opposition, combining local poetry, art, fiction, and literature with global models of cultural production and resistance.4 Kashmiris have consistently challenged—both through armed and unarmed resistance—widespread attempts by sections of the Indian media,