Azadi - Arundhati Roy

York Times, and the Washington Post . The reporters, mostly Kashmiris, working in an information vacuum, with
none of the tools usually available to modern-day reporters, traveled through their homeland at great risk to
themselves, to bring us the news. And the news was of nighttime raids, of young men being rounded up and beaten
for hours, their screams broadcast on public address systems for their neighbors and families to hear, of soldiers
entering villagers’ homes and mixing fertilizer and kerosene into their winter food stocks. 28 The news was of
teenagers, their bodies peppered with shotgun pellets, having to be treated at home because they would be arrested if
they went to a hospital. 29 The news was of hundreds of children being whisked away in the dead of night, of parents
debilitated by desperation and anxiety. 30 The news was of fear and anger, depression, confusion, steely resolve, and
incandescent resistance.
But the home minister, Amit Shah, said that the siege only existed in people’s imaginations; the governor of
Jammu and Kashmir, Satya Pal Malik, said phone lines were not important for Kashmiris and were only used by
terrorists; and the army chief, Bipin Rawat, said, “Normal life in Jammu and Kashmir has not been affected. People
are doing their necessary work. . . . Those who feel that life has been affected are the ones whose survival depends
on terrorism.” 31 It isn’t hard to work out who exactly the government of India sees as terrorists.
Imagine if all of New York City was put under an information lockdown and a curfew managed by hundreds of
thousands of soldiers. Imagine the streets of your city remapped by razor wire and torture centers. Imagine if mini
Abu Ghraibs appeared in your neighborhoods. Imagine thousands of you being arrested and your families not
knowing where you have been taken. Imagine not being able to communicate with anybody, not your neighbor, not
your loved ones outside the city, no one in the outside world, for weeks together. Imagine banks and schools being
closed, children locked into their homes. Imagine your parent, sibling, partner, or child dying and you not knowing
about it for weeks. Imagine the medical emergencies, the mental-health emergencies, the legal emergencies, the
shortages of food, money, gasoline. Imagine, being a day laborer or a contract worker, earning nothing for weeks on
end. And then imagine being told that all of this was for your own good.
The horror that Kashmiris have endured over the last few months comes on top of the trauma of a thirty-year-old
armed conflict that has already taken seventy thousand lives and covered their valley with graves. They have held
out while everything was thrown at them—war, money, torture, mass disappearance, an army of more than half a
million soldiers, and a smear campaign in which an entire population has been portrayed as murderous
fundamentalists.
The siege has lasted for more than three months as I speak. Kashmiri leaders are still in jail. The only condition
under which they are offered release is if they sign a document affirming that they will not make public statements
for a whole year. Most have refused.
Now, the curfew has been eased, schools have been reopened, and some phone lines have been restored.
“Normalcy” has been declared. In Kashmir, normalcy is always a declaration—a fiat issued by the government or
the army. It has little to do with people’s daily lives.
So far, Kashmiris have refused to accept this new normalcy. Classrooms are empty, streets are deserted, and the
valley’s bumper apple crop is rotting in the orchards. What could be harder for a parent or a farmer to endure? The
imminent annihilation of their very identity, perhaps.
The new phase of the Kashmir conflict has already begun. Militants have warned that, from now on, all Indians
will be considered legitimate targets. More than ten people, mostly poor, non-Kashmiri migrant workers, have been
shot already. (Yes, it’s the poor, almost always the poor, who get caught in the line of fire.) It is going to get ugly.
Very ugly.
Soon all this recent history will be forgotten, and once again there will be debates in television studios that create
an equivalence between atrocities by Indian security forces and Kashmiri militants. Speak of Kashmir, and the
Indian government and its media will immediately tell you about Pakistan, deliberately conflating the misdeeds of a
hostile foreign state with the democratic aspirations of ordinary people living under a military occupation. The
Indian government has made it clear that the only option for Kashmiris is complete capitulation, that no form of
resistance is acceptable—violent, nonviolent; spoken, written, or sung. Yet Kashmiris know that to exist, they must
resist.
Why should they want to be a part of India? For what earthly reason? If freedom is what they want, freedom is
what they should have.
It’s what Indians should want, too. Not on behalf of Kashmiris, but for their own sake. The atrocity being
committed in their name involves a form of corrosion that India will not survive. Kashmir may not defeat India, but
it will consume India. In many ways, it already has.
This may not have mattered all that much to the fifty thousand cheering in the Houston stadium, living out the
ultimate Indian dream of having made it to America. For them, Kashmir may just be a tired old conundrum, for