AIPSG
CONDEMNS THE USE OF MASSACRES AND WAR AS TOOLS OF POLITICS AND DIPLOMACY IN
SOUTH ASIA
New York: March 23 2000
The Association of Indian Progressive Study Groups (AIPSG)
joins all the concerned people in condemning the horrible murder of 35 innocent
civilians in Kashmir on 20th March 2000, and demands that those in positions of
power in Srinagar and Delhi must immediately (i) rehabilitate the survivors and
(ii) investigate, prosecute and punish those responsible for the crimes.
The AIPSG notes that the failure of the Indian state to
investigate, prosecute and punish those guilty of similar massacres in the past,
especially since Operation Blue Star in 1984, makes this demand an urgent one,
and its fulfillment the first step to end the criminalisation of Indian politics
and to politically empower the Indian people.
The AIPSG condemns the Indian government for its callous and
calculated attempt to play its political and geopolitical cards on the backs of
such a tragedy, by rushing to blame the incident upon "Muslim
militants" and "cross border terrorism" before any facts or
supporting evidence have emerged.
The information available so far says that the killers were
dressed in combat uniforms and spoke Urdu. It is also known that in the past,
this particular village had been visited by both Indian military personnel and
the militant groups. Given the patterns of violence in Kashmir in the last
decade, especially the revelations that the Indian state itself has been
responsible for training and deploying numerous counter-terrorist assassination
squads who have terrorised the population, the available information is
insufficient, to say the least, to establish who the perpetrators of this latest
crime may be, rendering the hastiness of the Indian government most suspect.
The massacre took place on the eve of the official talks
between US President Bill Clinton and Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihar Vajpayee.
No sooner was the first news of the atrocity released than Indian officials and
local police sources hastily declared that the massacre was the result of
Islamist groups linked to Pakistan. Not surprisingly, following the massacre,
the issue of "cross-border terrorism" became one of the
prominent issues in the ensuing discussions between the Indian Prime
Minister and the US President. Mr. Vajpayee is said to have pressed Mr. Clinton
to raise this issue with General Musharraf during his stopover in Pakistan.
The timeliness of the massacre for the Clinton-Vajpayee talks
was widely reported in the Indian media. The day after the talks, a government
official in Delhi is quoted in Rediff on the Net as saying: "the killing
occurred in the nick of time when Clinton is still here in our country."
The Times of India of 22 March 2000 wrote: "it has pushed the United States
another step towards endorsing India's stand on Kashmir and talks with Pakistan
and that "[the perpetrators] do not quite realise the extent to which their
act has helped nudge Washington closer to India." The Hindustan Times of 22
March, 2000 wrote: "last night's massacre of 35 Sikhs in the Valley also
seemed to have played its part in the US endorsing the Indian position".
All in all, the Indian government used the massacre to place
"cross border terrorism" on the agenda, in its dialogue and
propaganda, and the US acceded to it so that it could proceed with its own
economic and strategic agenda to formalise its post Cold War policy in South
Asia.
The massacre and the accompanying propaganda is playing
directly into the latest US doctrines of "fighting terrorism" and
"defending human security." It
has also played into the evolving US doctrine on Kashmir and South Asia. The US,
after five decades of insistence that Kashmir problem must be solved within the
UN resolution of 1948, has shifted its stand to treat it as a bilateral issue
between India and Pakistan, and has accepted the legitimacy of the Line of
Control (LoC). Mr. Clinton has called for maintaining the sanctity of the LoC
and just before leaving Washington for this trip, declared South Asia as
"the most dangerous spot in the world today." The US has started
presenting India as its "partner in peace" and the massacre has helped
to highlight the dangers in what Clinton has called "that troubled part of
the world" in a direct way, giving credibility to the emerging alliance.
The pattern of this latest massacre suggests that it is
neither a mindless criminal act, nor a spontaneous communal act but a calculated
political massacre, similar to the atrocities in Delhi in 1984, in Ayodhya in
1992, in Mumbai in 1992-1993, and in Coimbatore in 1997, to name a few. It is
yet another instance of politics by the gun that the Indian state has come to
rely on more and more in the face of rising popular struggles against the
present economic policies and political arrangements. The fountain-head of the
politics by the gun is the refusal of the Indian state and successive
governments in Srinagar and Delhi to deal with the problem of the rights of the
Kashmiri people politically and instead treating the Kashmir issue as a matter
of law and order. The responsibility for this massacre and all such past and
future atrocities can be traced to this serious flaw in the Indian political
system. Besides the continuation of the tension in Kashmir it has been of
fundamental assistance to the rulers of India, Pakistan and other big powers of
the world to justify their anti-democratic policies of the past and to
camouflage their activities in the present.
The AIPSG considers that the question of the hour to dwell
upon is this - who is helped by these massacres? Clearly, the massacre has
neither helped the Kashmiri people to place the aim of their struggle on the
forefront of public discourse, nor has it helped the Indian people, who are
opposing Clinton's visit to India in their millions, to put their agenda for
empowerment on the forefront. The massacre has helped the Indian and US
governments to define Clinton's visit in the most narrow and self-serving manner
by drowning out the opposition of the people to the US economic and military
engagement in India and South Asia, on the one hand and to the anti-social
offensive of the Indian ruling circles, who have put the resources of the
country up for grabs on the other. It has effectively eliminated the people of
Kashmir and the people of India from any role in solving their problems.
The AIPSG calls on people to demand that the government of
India immediately stop playing politics through massacres and address itself to
the solution of the flaws in the political system so that it does not convert
all political demands of the people into law and order problems. The massacre
and the disinformation surrounding it have become the means for the officials
and the media to deny the people that they have any reason to oppose the visit
of Clinton or the close relationship the Indian ruling circles are cementing
with the US as part of their collusion and contention to dominate Asia.