There is an online campaign to make #FreeGeelani trend for at least one evening on Tuesday 6 August on twitter. While it is easy to dismiss cyberactivism as not the real thing and as having no impact on the actual lives of people, what this cynical attitude ignores is that the boundary between the virtual and the real is blurred, that on-street activism has limited impact, that online activism so long as it does not claim to be the main form of change is complementary to and not a replacement of on-street activism. Why should those who do not see Mr SAS Geelani as their leader care for #FreeGeelani? Why should Indians for that matter care about Geelani or #FreeGeelani?
One does not need to agree with SAS Geelanis ideology and politics to seek his personal freedom and an end to this undignified cycle of house arrests. Those who may disagree with him should challenge his ideas but not forget that decency and humanity entails a principled opposition to his de facto incarceration. Indian citizens need to ask what happened to the basic democratic principle of allowing for dissenting voices and fighting for their rights? Is Burmese military junta that put Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrests for many years the model for India?
The #FreeGeelani is about an individual SAS Geelani, respectfully referred to as Geelani sahab, and by many youngsters affectionately as Bab for his grandfatherly age. Geelani sahab is respected by a significant section of Kashmiri population, including those who may not agree with his politics. Indians need to respect that and at the very least oppose the government tactics of putting him under perpetual house arrest and treating him with indignity. If India is to be imagined as something beyond a jingoistic nation where inhabitants are brainwashed into parroting my country right or wrong, it has to be imagined as a genuine democracy. British colonialism was challenged primarily because the foreign rulers were seen as not representative of Indians and as not respecting the rights and dignities of Indians.
When it comes to Kashmir, postcolonial India behaves more like a coloniser as it ignores the liberationist impulses of its own anti-colonial history, militarises the state, brutalises its people and despite the absence of conspicuous militancy, denies fundamental rights and freedoms to Kashmiri people. How else should one understand the perpetual house arrest of Geelani sahab, frequent house arrests of other pro-freedom, represented by India as separatist, leaders including Yasin Malik and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, and much more importantly, the denial of freedom of assembly to ordinary Kashmiris?
#FreeGeelani however goes far beyond Geelani sahab. It is a reminder to India and to the rest of the world that there is no dignity under militarised rule even if there are regular elections where only a minority of electorates participate. How many political prisoners are incarcerated in the jails of Kashmir? How many have effectively lost their fundamental right of freedom of movement? Freedom of movement along the freedom of speech and assembly are constitutionally protected rights. This has been erased in Kashmir in the name of national security and territorial integrity. It seems as if the constitution, rights, freedoms have no tangible meaning for Kashmir. That many Kashmiris may reject Indian constitution is no rationale for this denial of rights. As a statement (mis)attributed to Voltaire makes it clear: I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
A corollary to this denial of democratic rights in Kashmir is the denial of security clearance for passport for tens of thousands of ordinary Kashmiris. Security clearance is often not provided to children or relatives of ex-militants though this clearly goes against all international laws, norms and basic democratic rights. Under what law can a young girl be denied a passport because her uncle used to be a militant more than a decade ago? How is it fair to deny security clearance to a young man whose father is an ex-militant? Which democracy can claim the right to punish a young person for the politics of their elders? No one can. Most Indians are not even aware of the draconian and complicated bureaucratic hurdles that exist to prevent thousands of Kashmiris from getting security clearance to get a passport and thus have the right and ability to travel abroad that Indians with means normally enjoy. Unless one has the clout or the money or ones case gets picked up by mainstream media, he or she is likely to wait endlessly for the clearance and give up their aspirations, dreams and study and job opportunities abroad. The uncertainty that such a state of limbo imposes on individual unprivileged Kashmiris and the resultant psychological, social and economic disenfranchisement alienates more people without adding to the security of India.
In a democracy, citizens possess freedoms as a matter of rights and not as a privilege or a reward for being loyal. A state where a significant proportion of population undergoes collective punishment, is made to feel as traitorous and thus undeserving of basic citizenship rights such as the passport, and is deprived of rights is a state where emergency security provisions that are meant to tackle a temporary crisis become normalised thus offering impunity to coercive forces and this is not a democratic state.
#FreeGeelani is a reminder to everyone that the current state of repression in Kashmir cannot be reconciled with the idea of India as a democracy. #FreeGeelani is about freedom in Kashmir not because one leader personifies Kashmir (far from it and the plurality of voices will prove to be a long term strength for Kashmiris) but because his treatment is a symbolic reminder of how the so-called democracy of India functions in Kashmir – always under de facto suspension.
Dr Dibyesh Anand in an Associate Professor of International Relations at Londons Westminster University and an expert on majority-minority relations in China and India.
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