Rule of the gun in paradise

May 22, 1996
Issue 

By Kathryn Hamilton

Kashmir has been a battle ground for too many years. The peaceful, friendly Kashmiri culture has been destroyed and can never be rebuilt. The only authority recognised is the gun. In a land where one death would have the valley mourning in the streets, there are 600,000 Indian security forces and about 30,000 militants fighting. More than 25,000 people have died in the last five years.

Ramadan, the fasting month for Muslims. In a few days there will be a feast and celebration — but not tonight. I can hear the Koran being chanted and sung outside under the cricket commentary; the West Indies just beat Zimbabwe.

It is the shooting I hear loudest of all, though it seems to be less rapid now, after half an hour of firing. The electricity has been cut again and I write by a hurricane lamp. The singing seems to intensify, passionately trying to mask the sounds of death.

People are dying. I can hear the bullets, but I cannot hear their screams, their fear, their pain. Death is the sound of a bullet. The trucks boom past on the other side of the Dal Lake. It is a valley so all sounds echo around. Or is it my fear distorting, heightening all senses?

Who are the dead? The soldiers across the lake who smile and wave as I eat breakfast on the houseboat, the two truckloads who stopped yesterday just to look at me, the militants who raised their guns at us today? Are they the people praying at the mosque, the little girl with the green shawl who sat next to me in the market, the baby boy with the shirt so big he looked to have no arms or legs? Is it Parvez, the lawyer who must uncover the truth because it is criminal to do nothing? Is it the editor who seeks to report the truth or the doctor who saves the injured militant?

The "innocents" will be caught in the cross-fire, as will those who sought to uncover the truth. Lie will cover lie, blurring all laws and any order. To see suffering and know the injustice is a cage with law as the key. But the key is broken.

"Law" drives through the streets with guns at the ready, just to let us know that power is coming. Move aside, move this way, no that way, upside down ... face down with a bullet in your back. Don't go there, get out of here, we want it. Then they take it.

Questioning of the gun comes only when you have one yourself. So this is what I listen to now. No courtroom, no precedents or legislation. Only bullets. The law is the gun and its orders come from a criminal. There is no recourse, no appeal.

Parvez, the lawyer, was shot, but lived, continuing to fight with his only weapon, the law. The dust-covered case law sits on his shelves, untouched, no longer relevant or useful.

Muktar, the journalist, was set on fire and dumped on the street a few days ago and now lies anonymously in a hospital bed.

Hussein, shot point blank in the head after identifying himself as a lawyer in a crackdown, will not see his young wife give birth to their first child next month.

Naijaz and Aijaz, children, shot in the cross-fire last night — officially.

Truth is in the eye of the gun. If you think you saw what happened, there will be plenty of gun barrels to persuade you of your mistake. As if it will ever be erased.

"Sometimes, my eyes, they hurt so much I have to close them. They hurt to see so much suffering", Kazir, father and grandfather, tells me. He is one of the thousands of houseboat owners suffering as tourists stay away from the war.

Prices escalate. Electricity is rationed and cut at will by the Indian government. The army have generators, but the people need to purchase expensive gas and wood for light and fires — winter in the Himalayas. The people of the valley will be starved out, if they are not shot first.

"When all men can live together in peace without killing, then I will believe in God", says Nazir. With thousands of other Kashmiris, he has come to Delhi, where the tourists are, to sell handicrafts. I remember him speaking to his wife and two young children over the phone to tell them he was coming home soon for the end of Ramadan celebrations.

It is startling to see joy in the eyes of one who has seen so much pain as he speaks of returning home to his beautiful Kashmir, his paradise. His animated and exuberant description of its beauty matched what I now see and feel.

To ride on the Dal Lake in a chakara on a clear sunny day through the thousands of houseboats is magical. The snow covered mountains reflected on the still water moved me almost to tears. Yet it was tears of anger and helplessness that burned when I returned to the polluted streets — bunkers every 100 metres, soldiers every 50.

It is difficult to see past the bunkers and security forces, the patrol jeeps, the guns, the decimated buildings, the mobile "interrogation" trucks which strike terror through the whole valley. The Kashmiris must. The devil has invaded their paradise, and they must let him dine and then feed off his scraps. They must look through him and live with the fear, the loss, the pain.

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