Yasin Ma­lik’s jour­ney for Kash­miris con­tin­ues de­spite his de­ten­tion, de­te­ri­o­rat­ing health and an in­dif­fer­ent state ap­pa­ra­tus.  11 years ago in April 2008, WSN Ed­i­tor Jag­mo­han Singh wrote an Open Let­ter to Yasin Ma­lik af­ter meet­ing the Jammu and Kash­mir Lib­er­a­tion Front leader in New Delhi on the side­lines of the screen­ing of his doc­u­men­tary and ex­hi­bi­tion -Jour­ney to Free­dom. The au­thor raised ques­tions about ini­tia­tives to win the bat­tle for self-de­ter­mi­na­tion in Kash­mir and else­where.

Dear Janab Yasin Ma­lik:  Aadab! Last week, it was a pleas­ant op­por­tu­nity to in­ter­act with you at the quiet en­vi­rons of the In­dian So­cial In­sti­tute at Delhi to watch the doc­u­men­tary Safri-e-Azadi -Jour­ney for Free­dom and pho­tographs of your 114-day on-foot tour of the length and breadth of Kash­mir.

I keenly watched the movie and saw the pho­tographs in the ex­hi­bi­tion.  I also ob­served that you are a quiet man. You in­ter­min­gled with peo­ple but were a man of few words.  The years of soli­tary con­fine­ment in prison and a one year de­ten­tion in a lu­natic asy­lum in Agra may have brought about this char­ac­ter­is­tic in you.  I am keen to speak to your mother some­times to learn more about your child­hood. My hunch is that you must have been an ebul­lient child forc­ing your way through things. The dili­gent man­ner in which you are es­pous­ing the cause of Kash­mir is com­mend­able.

I write this open let­ter to you to share my thoughts with you on the sub­ject of Peace­ful Con­flict Res­o­lu­tion in South Asia in the con­text of Kash­mir.

It is in­ter­est­ing to see that the strug­gles in Pun­jab, Kash­mir and North-east are grad­u­ally be­com­ing peace­ful and de­mo­c­ra­tic.  Key play­ers in the in­sur­gency move­ment have come over ground and are now part of the process seek­ing a peace­ful so­lu­tion to the ques­tion of rights in re­spec­tive ar­eas.

The peo­ple of the world need to see the par­tic­i­pa­tion of women in the meet­ings that you held in var­i­ous re­gions.  When wom­en­folk turn out on the streets for seek­ing rights or re­dress of wrongs, it is time for the re­pres­sive na­tions to change their tac­tics.  Alas, it would not be so in case of In­dia. 

I would like to ac­claim you for your dili­gence to walk through 7,000 vil­lages all over the state, lis­ten to peo­ples’ woes and pro­vide them with hope, suc­cour and sup­port.  What you said in your brief talk while in­tro­duc­ing the doc­u­men­tary is im­por­tant, ‘the peo­ple of the world need to see the par­tic­i­pa­tion of women in the meet­ings that you held in var­i­ous re­gions’.  When wom­en­folk turn out on the streets for seek­ing rights or re­dress of wrongs, it is time for the re­pres­sive na­tions to change their tac­tics.  Alas, it would not be so in case of In­dia.  As we are wit­ness­ing, though the Kash­miri guns are silent, the In­dian Armed Forces con­tinue their of­fen­sive, vi­o­lat­ing hu­man rights with im­punity.

It was re­mark­able to see in the doc­u­men­tary and at the ex­hi­bi­tion, vol­un­teers and lead­ers from all walks of life –Hin­dus, Sikhs, trade union lead­ers, and other com­mu­nity lead­ers par­tic­i­pate shoul­der to shoul­der with you.  The mes­sage was clear though the doc­u­men­tary and the ex­hi­bi­tion could have been care­fully edited and bet­ter or­ga­nized.  The graphic de­signer in me urges me to re­quest you to adopt a more slick and pro­fes­sional ap­proach while us­ing this medium.

 Read also Yasin Ma­lik’s health wors­ens –Kash­mir shuts down, world silent

In your speech at the In­dia To­day con­clave held re­cently, you have said that the time for Kash­mir is now.  To­mor­row may be too late.  Sadly, no one in In­dia is lis­ten­ing.  Your jour­ney of peace did not find much men­tion in the main­stream me­dia even though you came to Delhi to tell the world about it.

All of this and the cur­rent events in Ti­bet made me think about the role of peace­ful meth­ods in con­flict res­o­lu­tion. I would like to share with you the thoughts that came gush­ing to my mind while I was watch­ing the scenes from Kash­mir in the au­gust com­pany of oc­to­ge­nar­ian leader P. N. Dhar, Jus­tice Ra­jin­der Sach­har, Gand­hian Nir­mala Devi, In­dia TV host Ra­jat Sharma, and many new civil rights ac­tivists whose names I do not know.

Do the me­dia in In­dia re­act to any peace ini­tia­tive? Any­where? Think about it.  The guns went silent in Pun­jab and most em­bassies that had set up Pun­jab desks, wound it.  All re­li­gious and po­lit­i­cal par­ties of Pun­jab protested the blas­phemy in the movie, Jo Bole So Ni­hal for weeks to­gether.  The state sim­ply ig­nored it.   While the peace­ful protests were on, there was a vi­o­lent in­ci­dent in a cin­ema hall show­ing the movie. The next day, the movie was out of cin­ema halls all over the coun­try.

The guns are silent in Kash­mir, yet in­spite of your best ef­forts, hardly any peo­ple from the diplo­matic corps of Delhi was pre­sent to lis­ten to you.  Chanu Sharmila is on fast for the last six years in Ma­nipur. Does any­body in the me­dia even re­port about her health con­di­tions and the rea­sons why she is on fast?  The Dalai Lama is peace in­car­nate, but had his peace­ful Bud­dhist fol­low­ers not re­sorted to re­sis­tance and of­fen­sive in Lhasa, would the world have taken no­tice? As far as the Ti­betan move­ment is con­cerned, since the last six decades, it has come into pub­lic purview, when­ever there has been an up­ris­ing, as in 1959, in 1972 and now in 2008.  Had there been no Bha­gat Singh, would any­one have lis­tened to Mo­han­das Karam­c­hand Gandhi?

Had there been no Bha­gat Singh, would any­one have lis­tened to Mo­han­das Karam­c­hand Gandhi? 

Am I sug­gest­ing re­lin­quish­ing peace ef­forts? No, far from it. All I say is that  the world is be­com­ing in­creas­ingly dif­fi­cult for eth­nic na­tion­al­i­ties seek­ing their ba­sic rights.  Coun­tries have crossed the bound­aries of re­spect for hu­man rights and hu­man­i­tar­ian con­sid­er­a­tions.  Every­thing is sub­ject to the geo-po­lit­i­cal in­ter­ests of coun­tries and the grow­ing mar­ket econ­omy needs.  An­nual re­ports of Hu­man Rights Watch, the Amnesty In­ter­na­tional and Spe­cial Rap­por­teurs of UN bod­ies are al­ways rub­bished by the per­pe­tra­tors of crimes against hu­man­ity and their cre­den­tials ques­tioned.

On March 3 2008, in the open­ing ses­sion of the United Na­tions Hu­man Rights Coun­cil meet in Geneva, UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­eral, Ban-Ki-moon said, “No coun­try, how­ever pow­er­ful, should es­cape scrutiny of its record, com­mit­ments and ac­tions on hu­man rights.” He fur­ther said that it was im­per­a­tive to meet the high ex­pec­ta­tions of the in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity which in­cluded the ap­pli­ca­tion of hu­man rights val­ues with­out favour, with­out se­lec­tiv­ity, with­out be­ing im­pacted by any po­lit­i­cal machi­na­tions around the world.”

“We must en­sure that the world’s con­flicts are ef­fec­tively and sin­cerely re­solved through se­ri­ous and in­clu­sive ne­go­ti­a­tion processes and cre­ative prob­lem-solv­ing.” 

If the Sec­re­tary Gen­eral of the United Na­tions, Ban-ki-Moon had to say that the UN Hu­man Rights Coun­cil needs to be­come more proac­tive, the writ­ing is on the wall that even the United Na­tions has been un­able to tame gov­ern­ments which are gross abusers of hu­man rights.  Ei­ther through the aegis of the Un­rep­re­sented Na­tions and Peo­ples’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion or through any other new fo­rum, we need to seek a state­ment from the UN Sec­re­tary Gen­eral about re­spect for the right to self-de­ter­mi­na­tion in In­dia.

 Read also Yasin Ma­lik’s health wors­ens –Kash­mir shuts down, world silent

An­other sig­nif­i­cant point that you made in your speech at the con­clave should be en­light­en­ing for all na­tion­al­is­tic move­ments.  You have pointed out that the grow­ing youth­ful pop­u­la­tion in South Asia may be seen as an op­por­tu­nity and a chal­lenge.  In­dia and the world should be wary of “de­fer­ring a con­flict like the Kash­mir Dis­pute to in­creas­ingly younger pop­u­la­tions in a re­gion plagued by in­equity, in­tol­er­ance, ter­ror­ism, poverty and dis­ease.”

So what do we do? What should you do af­ter a 114 day tour of your home­land?  I guess there are no easy an­swers.  The power of the gov­ern­ments and even sec­tions of civil so­ci­ety to “en­gage and ex­haust” –as you rightly put it is tremen­dous.  Still, what you stated at the In­dia To­day con­clave is timely, “we must en­sure that the world’s con­flicts are ef­fec­tively and sin­cerely re­solved through se­ri­ous and in­clu­sive ne­go­ti­a­tion processes and cre­ative prob­lem-solv­ing.”  Notwith­stand­ing what In­dia and Pak­istan say to each other, the right of the peo­ple of Kash­mir to them­selves de­ter­mine their des­tiny is in­alien­able.

“We must pro­vide pos­i­tive and cre­ative al­ter­na­tives to the path of vi­o­lence and must en­sure a global cul­ture of non-vi­o­lence and tol­er­ance of dis­sent and that we don’t need to wait any longer be­fore try­ing to do so.”  

Yasin Ma­lik, JKLF leader at the In­dia To­day Con­clave, 2008

Per­haps the an­swer lies in what you have sought.  “We must pro­vide pos­i­tive and cre­ative al­ter­na­tives to the path of vi­o­lence and must en­sure a global cul­ture of non-vi­o­lence and tol­er­ance of dis­sent and that we don’t need to wait any longer be­fore try­ing to do so.”

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To de­velop the cul­ture of non-vi­o­lence is not an easy task.  William Gold­ing in Lord of the Flies and George Or­well in An­i­mal Farm tell us that the in­trin­sic ten­den­cies of man to dom­i­nate can­not be wished away.  Yet, as you say, hope should not be lost. With the world in­creas­ingly an­swer­ing only to other op­tions, I pray that the world re­sponds to peace than to war.

With best wishes and prayers,

Jag­mo­han Singh