A recent New York Times report from Srinagar mentioned that the Kashmiri freedom fighters now realise that their struggle cannot be won by force of arms and have thus ‘sunk into a sullen standoff with New Delhi’. Just a few days later the freedom fighters came openly out in Srinagar streets and fought pitched battles against paramilitary forces, killing some and wounding many. The paramilitary men in retaliation killed 29 civilians and put to torch 750 houses in the area. That is hardly a ‘sullen standoff. Whether anyone from among the freedom fighters actually believed that the Indian occupation forces, numbering more than 300,000 heavily armed men, could be defeated by a largely unarmed civilian population, is difficult to imagine. A guerrilla struggle is never aimed at defeating a regular army, it is aimed at raising the price of occupation by alien forces, higher and higher. That the freedom fighters too have to suffer casualties and many civilians die while supporting them, is clearly a price that is expected to be paid. So long as the will to pay that price remains, no occupation army, howsoever big and strong, can succeed.
The way to look at the struggle in Kashmir, therefore, is not to see whether the Indians can enforce curfews, but whether they can rule without army contingents at every street comer and without their functionaries living in heavily fortified hostels and moving about under army escorts. The hope, still cherished in New Delhi, that all this is a temporary phase and after the freedom fighters have been killed off or terrorised into submission, normalcy can be brought to the Valley, shows that the Indians have no awareness of the mood in Kashmir nor of the history of freedom movements. They have even forgotten the history of their own freedom struggle. They never did defeat the British Army in India. They only preserved till the British were left with no option but to leave. All the Kashmiris have to do, therefore, is to persevere. As it is they are steadfast and will remain so. India will find that out soon enough, if it has not found it already.
Article extracted from this publication >> November 9, 1990
