1. Resistance Unto Freedom
kashmircivitas.com
A monthly collection of significant
developments related to Kashmir
Memories of Commander Burhan
Rejuvenate Hope Amid Indian-Imposed
Suffocation in Kashmir
Reckoning for Kashmiri Home as
Demographic Change Looms
Twitter Blocks
Kashmir Civitas Again
Volume 1, Issue 8
J u l y 2 0 2 1
3. CONTENT
Islamophobia in India: The Diabolical ‘Fake Incarceration’ of Kashmiris
Politicization of Private Lives: Criminalizing Interfaith Love and Marriage in Kashmir
Memories of Commander Burhan Rejuvenate Hope Amid Indian-Imposed
Suffocation in Kashmir
Reckoning for Kashmiri Home as Demographic Change Looms
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Topics
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Quisling Kashmiri Politicians Meet Modi: No Integrity. No Moral Spine. 09
6.
UN Calls for Protection of Kashmiri Children against Indian Military's Pellet Onslought 1 0
7.
Twitter Blocks Kashmir Civitas: Leading Political Advocacy and Civil Society Group
4. In a clear violation of the principle of freedom of
expression, Twitter has blocked the account of
the Canada-based, leading international politi-
cal advocacy and civil society organization,
Kashmir Civitas. This is the second time that the
organization has been targeted, alongside
several other Kashmiri activists and platforms.
Clearly, the Hindutva Indian state is easily
rattled, and consequently fumes and frets when
Kashmiris present their own narrative to count-
er Indian propaganda. Nothing unnerves them
more than for all people to repeat that Kashmir
is not India. As such, the Indian state wails and
moans going into panic mode placing pressure
upon the social media giants. However, much
more should be expected from Twitter. Essen-
tially, Twitter is capitulating to the Hindutva
playbook and doing its bit to choke Kashmiri
voices.
Can they not stand up to this type of bullying?
Considering the scarcity of Kashmiri voices being
given space on mainstream international news
channels and media, social media has been a
godsend in which Indian crimes in the occupied
territory of Kashmir are put forth. Now, under the
fanatical BJP-RSS Indian government has been
trying hard to pressure the social media organiza-
tions to curb Kashmiris’ representation on the
platforms. Therefore, the continued ban of Kash-
mir Civitas, which has been a vocal defender of
Kashmiris’ human rights and has vehemently
spoken against Indian military atrocities in Kash-
mir, is part of India State paranoia and Twitter’s
bias. Kashmir Civitas has been behind release
many UN reports on Indian State political, mili-
tary and legal abuse in Kashmir.
Also, Twitter has, without cause, suspended the
account of Kashmir Civitas’ Secretary-Gener-
al—one of the Kashmir’s leading global voic-
es—Farhan Mujahid Chak (@fchak). Recently
Chak wrote an article about social media bias
against Kashmir: “Following the Indian govern-
ment’s abrogation of Kashmir’s special status on
August 5, 2019, and the imposition of a brutal
lockdown, social media platforms were quick to
censor content on Kashmir once again. As Kash-
mir was cut off from the world, with the internet
and mobile communications suspended, Face-
book, Instagram and Twitter started to remove
posts, block videos and shut down accounts
trying to shed light on the dire situation in the
region.”
Twitter Blocks Kashmir Civitas:
Leading Political Advocacy and
Civil Society Group
Mazahmat
03 Mazahmat
References:
Farhan Mujahid Chak: March 27, 2021
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/3/27/why-is-twitter-silencing-kashmiri-voices
AA: April 05, 2021
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/twitter-accused-of-silencing-pro-kashmir-accounts/2199115
5. Islamophobia in India: The Diabolical
‘Fake Incarceration’ of Kashmiris
Mazahmat
04
Azaan Javaid: June 30, 2021
https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/kashmiri-man-walks-free-af-
ter-12-years-of-wrongful-imprisonment-in-india-47952
Rifat Fareed: July 28, 2019
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/7/28/after-23-years-of-wrongful-imprisonment-kashmiri-men-return-home
Sheikh Saaliq: March 09, 2017
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2017/3/9/wrongly-jailed-mohammed-rafiq-shahs-story
Bilal Kuchay: July 02, 2021
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/2/india-terror-law-uapa-muslims-activists
Islamophobia in India is as old as the imagined
community of Indian nation. Kashmirophobia is
intricately connected to the false imaginary of a
monolithic India and was evident even amongst
the Hindu/Secular elites. This imagined communi-
ty of India as a Hindu/secular nation began to be
realized from 1930s onwards, and was uncomfort-
able with the actual reality of Kashmir not being
part of India. For that reason, ever since the diabol-
ical and fragile imagined Indian State took control
of the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir,
the Muslim majority population has been used as
punching bag. Precisely because Kashmiri Mus-
lims by their presence epitomize the deep struc-
tural, and cultural flaws of the imagined communi-
ty of India. As a result, the Indian state vents its
frustration of failing to build a community through
imprisonment, occupation, apartheid and mili-
tarization. Worse, the frightened Indian state
indulges in thought control. Over the decades,
many Kashmiris, while travelling or working
outside Kashmir across different Indian states,
have borne the brunt of Indian political, military
and police sadism whenever the situation suited
the state. Thousands of Kashmir have been impris-
oned for decades on fake terrorism charges – for
‘thinking’ out loud, and released years later, after
destroying their youth and families.
One latest case is that of Srinagar resident Bashir
Ahmed Baba. He is 44 years old now. Baba was
captured by Indian police in February 2010 – in a
random pick-up of Kashmiris and only now acquit-
ted of all the fake charges. In a recent interview
with a news channel, Baba expressed his pain of
being incarcerated on fake charges and his
thoughts of home while in prison.
References:
During his 12-year long incarceration in the Indian
state of Gujarat, he missed the streets and
by-lanes of Srinagar's Rainawari, the place where
he was raised. This is how Baba expressed his pain
to a reported: “I spent 12 years in prison because I
was accused falsely of a crime I didn't commit. But
this too must be a test from Allah or maybe even
better. Maybe I was meant to go through some-
thing even more terrible. Maybe I would have met
an accident and spent the next 12 years in a
comma. Who knows, maybe this was Allah's way
to protect me.” Kashmiri faith is unbreakable, not
so the tentacles of the Indian occupation.
6. Mazahmat
05
References:
Rifat Fareed: July 01, 2021
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/1/interfaith-marriages-trigger-controversy-between-muslims-sikhs
Sagrika Kissu: June 30, 2021
https://www.newsclick.in/We-Are-Not-Anyone-Property-J%26K-Wom-
en-React-Hurried-Marriage-Sikh-Woman-Kashmir
Vijayta Lalwani: July 03, 2021
https://scroll.in/article/999052/we-are-not-children-a-kashmi-
ri-couple-recall-their-marriage-ordeal-amid-conversion-controversies
Mazahmat
In the false imaginary of the Hindutva Indian state,
whose nationalist thoughts are based on insecurity
and historical inferiority complex, every freethinker
becomes a potential threat. This was true of Nazis,
and has been proving true of every fascist regime in
the world ever since. In the context of the disputed
Jammu and Kashmir, this is an everyday story—oc-
cupying State’s unabated desire to take control the
everyday lives of the people under occupation
includes criminalizing thoughts and mere sugges-
tions of different opinions.
As a case in point, two women from minority Sikh
community in Kashmir converted to Islam and fell
in love with Muslim men whom they married. Since
news of this occurrence, for a few months now,
every institution of Indian occupational forces in
Kashmir has been in uproar.
From political parties pouring in from different
regions of India, to police, legal apparatuses and
community groups, all have been engaged in a
campaign that have not only vilified Kashmiri
Muslim men and the women, but they have turned
a private affair into a national tragedy. More worri-
some, several lies were peddled about the matter.
In an already hyper-Islamophobic atmosphere
everything that the Indian state projected was
taken as truth. This continued until the women
themselves came into public and revealed how they
converted to Islam on their own will. Clearly, they
were not forcibly converted, and they wanted to
marry the Muslim men according to their own free
will. However, the Indian state and its radical ideo-
logues have criminalized interfaith love and mar-
riages, but only when it involves Kashmiri Muslim
men.
Politicization of Private Lives:
Criminalizing Interfaith Love and
Marriage in Kashmir
7. Mazahmat
06 Mazahmat
On July 08, 2016 the young Commander Burhan Wani became a martyr, inspiring
hundreds of fellow Kashmiri youth to yearn for a dignified life and death by fighting
Indian occupation in Kashmir. In life, the commander brought a paradigmatic shift to the
resistance movement in Kashmir. He integrated youthfulness, modern internet and social
media technology, and Kashmir’s beautiful geographical space that had been hijacked by
Indian Bollywood and media. He brought the Kashmir’s resistance, which had remained
hidden behind the Himalayan peaks for so long, to the global gaze by publicly posing him-
self through videos and photographs.
On the day of 21-year-old Commander Burhan’s martyrdom at the hands of Indian military
forces, hundreds of thousands of Kashmiris marched towards his village to participate in
the funeral prayer. The widespread mobilization of Kashmiris after the martyrdom of the
Commander also triggered a brutal response from the occupying forces in Kashmir,
breaking the façade of democracy behind which India had concealed its occupation of
Kashmir. The Indian State imprisoned thousands of Kashmiris, tortured them, banned
social media and cracked down on Kashmiri civil society and media. The situation ever
since has been getting worse in Kashmir. However, Commander Wani’s memories keep
rejuvenating the hopes in Kashmir amid the suffocation imposed by the Indian State.
Memories of Commander Burhan
Rejuvenate Hope Amid Indian-Imposed
Suffocation in Kashmir
8. Mazahmat
07
Referen
Copied from The Nation
ces:
Mazahmat
As demographic change looms large on Kashmir,
Kashmiri artists, writers and journalists are articulat-
ing their reckoning for home through different
modes of expression. A Kashmir’s renowned journal-
ist Muzamil Jaleel wrote of the value of a house in
Kashmir and the changing reality:
“In Kashmir, people make big houses, bigger than
they should, and often bigger than they can afford.
Big enough to host wedding feasts for their
children, big enough for mourners to gather when
the time comes. For sorrow and for joy, Kashmiris
say.”
“In Kashmir, home is also the place to hide. For the
past thirty years, it has been the last refuge from the
violence that runs mad on its streets, and over its
lush meadows and hulking mountains. It isn’t really
safe, of course, what with random midnight raids
that often end in an inhabitant’s arrest, torture, and
sometimes death. And if a militant is found holed up
in one, it’s almost invariably blasted into rubble. Yet,
home is where Kashmiris feel the safest. It is an
island of life in a deluge of violence, which, in its
newest form is being inflicted through the blunt
instrument of demographic change, a deluge
brought to drown Kashmiris once and for all.”
Muzamil Jaleel: June 24, 2021
https://www.inversejournal.com/2021/06/24/kashmir-meet-af-
ter-two-years-of-ruin-a-reckoning-or-a-new-tack-by-muzamil-jaleel/
Usaid Siddiqui: August 13, 2020
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/8/13/meet-kashmiri-cartoonist-taking-a-dig-at-indian-rule
Nidhi Suresh: November 11, 2017
https://www.newslaundry.com/2017/11/11/kashmir-political-cartoons-bala-censorship
Reckoning for Kashmiri Home as
Demographic Change Looms
Cartoon by Mir Suhail
9. Mazahmat
References:
Muzamil Jaleel: June 24, 2021
https://www.inversejournal.com/2021/06/24/kashmir-meet-af-
ter-two-years-of-ruin-a-reckoning-or-a-new-tack-by-muzamil-jaleel/
Usaid Siddiqui: August 13, 2020
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/8/13/meet-kashmiri-cartoonist-taking-a-dig-at-indian-rule
Nidhi Suresh: November 11, 2017
https://www.newslaundry.com/2017/11/11/kashmir-political-cartoons-bala-censorship
08 Mazahmat
“Home and land, like political aspirations, are central
to the conflict in Kashmir. On August 5, 2019, when
India unilaterally removed Jammu and Kashmir’s
semi-autonomy, split the state into two territories
ruled directly from New Delhi, and repealed the law
that safeguarded the native population’s residency
and property rights, it launched the final assault on
the homeland of Kashmiris. The plan is, and always
has been, to rob Kashmiris of their land, flood it with
settlers, and eventually render the natives into a
disempowered minority that’s not fully human, but
human object, a thing.”
Cartoon by Mir Suhail
10. If there was any dignity left after the diabolical
Indian State’s hideous maneuvers in the occupied
territory of Kashmir since August 2019, Kashmir’s
opportunistic, turncoat politicians’ earnestness to
meet Modi buried that. Weak, quisling politicians,
including Farooq Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti
who have been facing a total irrelevance in Kash-
mir, were eager to pounce on the opportunity. This
was nothing more than a photo-op to convince the
world that India is reaching out to Kashmiris and
engaging in discussions to bring a false normalcy
back to the region. Of course, that will never
happen. The Indian spin doctors, however, were
quick to use this opportunity to express how great
everything is. In reality, the meeting turned out to
be another wound in the body of Kashmir or a twist
of the knife stabbed in Kashmir’s back.
By participating in Modi-led meeting in New Delhi,
desperate pro-India politicians in Jammu and
Kashmir have normalized the abrogation of the
region’s decades-old autonomous status carried
out by the Indian government on Aug. 5, 2019.
Prior to the meeting, it was widely speculated that
the Statehood of Jammu and Kashmir, which is
directly ruled from New Delhi at the moment, will
be on offer. However, statehood was never on
agenda. While its restoration was raised by attend-
ees, Modi stressed on reviving grassroots democra-
cy by completing delimitation exercise for the
Jammu and Kashmir Assembly seats followed by
elections to set up an elected government. The
Modi government aims to use statehood as a lever-
age to force the acceptance of Article 370 abroga-
tion as a fait accompli and create new ground rules
for politics in Jammu and Kashmir. That people of
Kashmir will not accept it.
Mazahmat
09
References:
Hilal Mir: June 24, 2021
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/pro-india-kashmiri-politicians-draw-flak-over-meeting-with-modi/2284536
Sreemoy Talukdar: July 02, 2021
https://www.firstpost.com/india/narendra-mo-
dis-meet-with-jk-leaders-a-calibrated-move-shows-pm-holds-all-aces-in-valleys-political-process-9772361.html
Mazahmat
Quisling Kashmiri Politicians Meet Modi:
No Integrity. No Moral Spine.
11. UN Calls for Protection of Kashmiri
Children against Indian Military's
Pellet Onslought
Mazahmat
10
References:
UN: May 06, 2021
https://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2021/437&Lang=E&Area=UNDOC
Aljazeera: June 30, 2021
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/30/un-chief-pellet-guns-kashmir-children
Mazahmat
The effects of Indian occupation and its physical and mental effects have been wide-
spread in Kashmir. All Kashmiris, across gender and age have been affected. Children are
no less victims of the occupation. The latest weapon that Indian military has used against
Kashmiris is the usage of pellet guns that have blinded thousands of Kashmiris. Indian
army’s usage of pellets against Kashmir have drawn large international condemnation.
United Nations has recently expressed concern over “grave violations” in Indian occupied
Kashmir and has asked the Indian government to end the use of shotgun pellets against
children.
“I call upon the government to take preventive measures to protect children, including by
ending the use of pellets against children, ensuring that children are not associated in any
way to security forces, and endorsing the Safe Schools Declaration and the Vancouver
Principles,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in the UN Report on
Children 2021.
