By Mazdoor Inquilab (India) and Mehnat Kash Tarik (Pakistan)
On the afternoon of 22nd of April, nearly 26 civilian tourists were gunned down by militants claiming to be of the ‘The Resistance Front of Kashmir’ (TRF), an offshoot of the Lashkar-e-Taiba. The tourists were mostly visitors from the Indian mainland, and mostly Hindu. Eyewitnesses have claimed that the militants asked for the tourist’s names and religion before killing them. Those who were Hindu and could not recite the Islamic Kalma (prayers taught to children in South Asian Islamic traditions), were killed on the spot. This aspect of the attack has been hyped up by a right wing media ecosystem to emphasize the religious nature of the attack and its perpetrators. Forgotten is the heroic sacrifice of a guide who fought the militants and saved a dozen of the tourists and many other local Kashmiri Muslims who helped bring injured tourists to hospitals.
Since this ghastly incident, social media has been flooded by right-wing Hindutva propagandists demanding the genocide of Muslims, targeting Kashmiri Muslims. The studios of private mainstream news channels are calling for war with Pakistan. Within the political establishment, both the ruling party’s leaders and the leaders of the bourgeois opposition, have called for ‘unity’ behind ‘any action taken in retaliation’. In this jingoistic din, any calls for accountability are being lost.
It is important to question how such militant attacks can keep happening in one of the world’s most militarized regions. Modi had claimed that terrorism had been ended by demonetization, and the abrogation of Article 370 nullifying Kashmir’s autonomy, yet attacks have kept happening! We must ask, how is it that no security personnel were present anywhere near the site of the attack, and why did it take 3 hours for any help to come?! Were it not for the locals risking their lives to save the tourists more would have died from injuries.
Even as the attack was unfolding, Modi was cutting deals for his cronies in Dubai. On his return, he was in full election mode, promising to retaliate against Pakistan from Bihar, a state which is set to go to elections soon. West Bengal, another state which will see elections the next year, has also been targeted with anti-Muslim propaganda by Hindutva forces.
On the Pakistani side, reactionary military leaders like Asim Munir invoked Islamist sentiments, aiming their vitriol at India and Hindus. Pakistan-occupied Kashmir has witnessed massive protests against the exploitation of their people and resources by the military and the bureaucracy of the Pakistani state. The Baloch people also continue to struggle against the dominance of Pakistan, the resistance is taking the form of protests, strikes, and sometimes in violence against the Pakistan military. The rulers of Pakistan hold no sympathy for the people of Kashmir and do not hold their best interests.
Both India and Pakistan view Kashmir as an object of conquest. Kashmir has enormous hydroelectric power potential, it has one of the world’s largest lithium deposit, and it is one of the prime saffron-growing regions of the world. Kashmir can become a gateway to Central Asia for India. For these reasons, both states rule Kashmir in an undemocratic and militaristic manner. The ruling elite of India and Pakistan are more than willing to exploit their own people, who barely live above poverty level, to fund massive bureaucratic and military infrastructures.
The truth is that Kashmir is a frontline of the contest between two greedy, exploitative, bourgeois countries. Tens of thousands of Kashmiris have been killed by the toxic contest between Pakistan and India. Both sides want the land of Kashmir, but not their people. The capitalists sitting in Delhi and Islamabad have turned the Paradise on Earth into a killing field.
WE STAND FOR KASHMIR’S SELF-DETERMINATION!
The land of Kashmir belongs to the people of Kashmir, along with its resources, rivers, and heritages. Neither India with its invocation of ‘Akhand Bharat’ nor Pakistan with its ‘Two nation theory’ hold any claim to it. Delhi and Islamabad have taken it upon themselves to decide what is best for Kashmiris, but in reality only act for the best interests of their own elites, whether it’s the military and bureaucracy of Islamabad or Adani, Tata and Ambani groups in India. Both countries silence the voices of Kashmiris.
Since the abrogation of Article 370, India has turned Kashmir into a prison for its people. The illusion of normalcy fed by rising tourism, and investments from corporations, masks the reality of thousands of people locked up by the police and paramilitary forces that act with impunity and which are immune to prosecution. That this oppression has failed to bring any kind of real peace to the valley, has been made clear by the attack on the 22nd.
The Indian government has not only erased Kashmir’s limited autonomy, it has also erased its existence as a separate state, separating Ladakh from Kashmir, and converting the state into a Union territory, placing it under the direct authority of the capital. Kashmiri’s rights are being trampled, helped on by a pliant comprador bourgeoisie in the likes of Omar Abdullah and Farooq Abdullah. To this we call for all the rights of Kashmir to be restored, along with its statehood and the reinstatement of Kashmiri autonomy as was held in Article 370!
Rather than hold the rulers accountable, Hindutva forces online and in media houses have been harping on the fact that the militants profiled the religions of the victims. They have been using this incident to incite people against Kashmiri Muslims. They are blind to the rallies of Kashmiris calling for peace and communal unity, they have tried to bury the stories of Kashmiri Muslims helping the tourists, saving their lives. They try to justify the continued domination of Kashmir.
We say let the people of Kashmir decide Kashmir’s destiny, whether it should remain independent or join either India or Pakistan, and we say this for Kashmir in both Indian-occupied Kashmir and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir! It has been nearly 8 decades, Kashmiris have seen the true face of both ‘democratic’ India and the Pakistani military regime which claims to see Kashmiris as brothers, only to exploit them as brutally and harshly as the Indian side.
The workers and peasants of India and Pakistan have no interest in seeing their class brethren in Kashmir being exploited and suppressed. It is our duty to rally the working class to support the cause of self-determination, and stand against the divisive hatred peddled by the bourgeoisie of both Pakistan and India.
WE DENOUNCE THE CALLS TO WAR!
The bourgeoisie in India have rushed to hide their own failures. They cannot guarantee basic amenities for their own people, they cannot improve the livelihoods of the vast majority of Indians, and their lies are constantly punctured by reality. To hide their failures, they thump their chests and call for war with Pakistan. In retaliation to the militants’ attack, India has unilaterally suspended the Indus Waters Treaty, a treaty which already heavily in favour of India. To this, Pakistan has decided to shut its airspace for India and shut trade.
In the morning of the 25th artillery shelling has been reported across the India-Pakistan border. All the while, the BJP and RSS’s army of Hindutva goons on social media keep crying hoarse against Muslims and Pakistan. They want to punish all Muslims for the actions of a handful of fanatics. The foreign ministry of Pakistan has gone on record to state that any action from India will face ‘massive retaliation’. Both India and Pakistan are nuclear-armed countries, and field massive armies and air forces. A war between the two would be disastrous, not just for the people of the region, but for the world at large.
We denounce this warmongering! The bourgeoisie that cannot feed their people wish to play games with the lives of workers and peasants. It is not enough that they have exploited us into poverty, they now wish to satisfy their bloodlust with the deaths of working class and peasant sons and daughters on the battlefield. The ruling classes of both countries will now cry about ‘National Unity’ and drive the exploited to slaughter one another. Sitting in their air-conditioned rooms, they will watch the carnage from afar, while workers and peasants die, killing each other in a pointless war.
All the while, the war will become an excuse for the rulers of both countries to implement state terror. Dissidents will be arrested, minorities will be displaced and terrorized, and what little remains of bourgeois democracy in either country will be torn down. All will be justified in the name of nationalism, and religion.
FOR WORKING CLASS UNITY AGAINST BOURGEOIS REACTION!
When the bourgeoisie goes to war, it is the working class and peasantry who suffer. The poor die for the wars of the rich. This becomes brazenly clear over Kashmir, where Indians and Pakistanis have been whipped up into nationalist frenzy for the wars of the generals and corporations, all of whom want to suppress Kashmiris and exploit their land.
Every act of bourgeois war is an act of violence against the working class. To this, we must respond with working class unity.
Today, as the threat of nuclear war looms on the subcontinent, only the working class can bring about peace, and by that we mean a just peace. Self-determination for Kashmir is the cornerstone of such a just peace.
We must march united, against the schemes of the Modi government wishing to divide us between Hindu and Muslim, and against the schemes of the Pakistani military which whips up reactionary sentiments to wage war.
DOWN WITH WARMONGERS!
HINDU-MUSLIM UNITY!
NO TO WAR! LONG LIVE CLASS UNITY!
FOR KASHMIRI SELF-DETERMINATION!
DOWN WITH HINDUTVA! DOWN WITH THE PAKISTANI ARMY!
