In the West, India is masked in the dull gauze of invention. It is that "spiritual" place; the land of Gandhi, where movies are made about lovers who never kiss. India is also the country that has killed 50 or more Kashmiris in the past sixty days. Young men mostly, almost all of whom were of such age that they'd only been kissed by their mothers.
Kashmir is only a part of India much as Tibet is a part of China. It is occupied by a substantial military force. Yet outside of Central Asia, policy wonks, and overseas Kashmiris, little of this is known. The West has never been particularly interested in the developing world; even less so when it is a Muslim state.
But stone by stone, this is changing. A new generation has emerged in Kashmir to force a political evolution. They were raised with occupation and beatings and cell phones and the Internet. They never knew what it was like, before, and they don't care. These guys are happy to write history with their blood. They are Generation S. and they were born after 1989.
1989 marked the year that India began flooding Kashmir with Indian troops and security forces, this in response to a series of terrorist actions. The terrorists, or freedom fighters – depending on where you buy your newspapers – were mostly of Pakistani provenance. Kashmiri militants were also involved. Over time the violence was contained. Brutally contained.
Indian forces would routinely descend on Kashmiri villages and round up as many young men as they could find. The youths would be savagely beaten and accused of being terrorist sympathizers. Many were shot, others taken into custody and eventually disappeared.
And there were countless alleged rapes; one such incident is particularly chilling.
If terrorism is the use of violence and intimidation to achieve political aims, then the Indian army is a paradigmatic example of that term.
Generation S. was born into this environment. Everyone knows someone who has been beaten or humiliated by the security forces. It's easy to find families whose homes have been ransacked by the military and relieved of valuables. And there is a special rage reserved for the murder of children.
In early August, press reports suggest that nine year old Sameer Ahmad Rah was beaten to death by paramilitaries from India's Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF). According to his father, the boy was on his way to visit his uncle's house about 100 metres from his family home. Neighbours said they saw CRPF men grab Sameer and beat him without provocation. One officer allegedly pushed his lathi [iron-bound bamboo stick] into the boy's mouth. CRPF spokesmen have denied the story and said the boy was trampled in a stampede.
No one's buying it.
The stone pelters, as they are known, are becoming more defiant by the day. Whether they are foolhardy or fearless is immaterial: they won't be intimidated. To stop now would be to dishonour the dead.
Occasionally, Delhi tries to float the notion that Generation S. are tools of Pakistan, stones for hire, if you will, in the service of Islamabad.
Put demotically, that's a load of bollocks. Anyone who has spent any time on the ground in Kashmir knows that this is a spontaneous national uprising.
Since partition, India and Pakistan have been playing soccer with Kashmir. Generation S. just got tired of being kicked around. The one thing that every Kashmiri generation agrees on is that the Indian army must leave the cities. If they need to stay in Indian controlled Kashmir at all then they would best be deployed on the frontier. After that consensus becomes more uneven. The majority prefers independence, but ultimately would rather entertain a sovereignty solution with India than merge with Pakistan according to recent polling data. [1] However, that creates another problem. You'd have to get the pols involved.
South Asia's political classes have more in common with organized prostitution than public service. Graft and corruption are practiced on a scale that is best described as Homeric. Pakistan' president, Asif Ali Zardari, is openly referred to as Mr. Ten Percent. I have even heard it quipped that India's first political family, the Gandhis, would convert to Islam en masse if they were offered equity in Mecca. And while Kashmir's own dynastic upstart, Omar Abdullah, has not been caught with his fingers in the till, he has suffered the ultimate cultural humiliation, by a former police officer no less.
As much as Generation S. rails against the CRPF and the organons of oppression, they do not hold the political process in high esteem. If I had a rupee for every time I've heard, "Those bastards are only playing politics", I could buy the Taj Mahal. But the stones continue to fly. Generation S. will try to dislodge the Indian army from its murderous perch. After that they'll become more vocal about who they want to represent their interests.
[1] Link. The report requires "membership". Its findings are referred to extensively in the Indian press.
