2 – i am not amazed. because i half expected you to read whatever you want to in my name, but i do not consider myself a muslim when i say what i do. neither do i identify with the kashmiri muslim. i cant, its as simple. there’s no point to my mind in me trying to feel some brotherhood on the basis of religious identity. so please dont pigeonhole what i have to say by calling it some kind of muslim discourse where ‘we’ always only look at the concern of ‘our community’ and brainwash and dont care about what other communities feel.
in an sensible discussion i would not need to declare my atheism or even anti-theism to claim legitimacy for what i’m saying, because i have not made a single point on the basis of any kind of religious affiliation or communitarian identification. please try and understand also in all of this the violence we often commit by reading people through such particular identities, which often they do not associate with or even oppose. i dont need to be a muslim to talk about kashmir, and even if i am i dont need to be treated as a representative of “the muslim community” when weighing my arguments.
the points i have made previously are solely in the capacity of being a citizen. i.e. drawing from my membership of a particular nation state – India. and i believe i can make a claim from that position that i think that an army that acts in my name must not be allowed to treat a given set of people (those in kashmir, whoever they be) in the way they have treated them and continue to as well, that the AFSPA is a bad idea, etc.

and as far as the question of azadi goes, i by no means suggested that we should not think about it. or not criticise it. what i did is to criticise a tendency i often have encountered, with others and with myself. which is when we are faced with the situation as it is our concern becomes “what does azadi mean, and what do they want?” i dont think all kashmiris even know what they want. but a clear sentiment – brought out in sanjay kak’s film – is there against what they see (and i wouldnt criticise this) as the occupation of the indian army. so all i said in my previous reply to you on this point was that as an indian the question of kashmir BEGINS WITH our obligation to account for what is happening in our name. we need to resolve that question before – and my position on that is that i do not want the army (which acts on orders of a government that acts in our name) to brutalise the lives of kashmiris – we can talk about what is the azadi they want. then we can think of us as even having a right to be party to the discussion about azadi, and disagreeing to it even. we can resolve the question of our obligation while even disagreeing with the question of what azadi entails. just because we dont agree with the idea of azadi (which in my understanding does not exist as a very coherent and fully laid out idea even for a majority of kashmiris) does not mean that we let the domination of the army over a people that resents it continue.

Therefore I strongly agree with you (an academic). That’s really true.

Library Genesis. Nowhere near as good, but at least its something. Has a lot of books re-uploaded from library.nu.

“Let the Pandit men leave Kashmir , but let them leave their women behind”….

I fully agree with you. You are very right, the lyrics

Main toh aashiq hoon raat kii syaahii kaa
Shamaa din ko jale toh main aataa nahin
Shamaa paigam hai merii tabaahii kaa

are from the movie “Shadi” and penned down by Janaab Amir Rajendra Krishan Sahab. I sincerely regret for the error.

However, recently, I came across something written by Sahir Sahab which touched me a lot. I am sharing it here to let people know of the depth to which Sahir Sahab was involved for the cause of the society.

ग़ज़ल – बहु जलाने का हक

ऊँचे ऊँचे नामों की तख्तियां जला देना,
ज़ुल्म करने वालों की वर्दियां जला देना |

दरबदर भटकना क्या दफ्तरों के जंगल में,
बेलचे उठा लेना डिग्रियां जला देना |
…
मौत से जो डर जाओ तो ज़िंदगी नहीं मिलती,
जंग जीतना चाहो तो कश्तियाँ जला देना |

फिर बहु जलाने का हक तुम्हें पहुँचता है,
पहले अपने आँगन में बेटियाँ जला देना |

India is well ahead in this respect. A country with as many as over 3600 large dams within its belt can never be the exceptional case regarding displacement. The number of development induced displacement is higher than the conflict induced displacement in India. According to Bogumil Terminski an estimated more than 10 million people have been displaced by development each year.

Athough the exact number of development-induced displaced people (DIDPs) is difficult to know, estimates are that in the last decade 90–100 million people have been displaced by urban, irrigation and power projects alone, with the number of people displaced by urban development becoming greater than those displaced by large infrastructure projects (such as dams). DIDPs outnumber refugees, with the added problem that their plight is often more concealed.

This is what experts have termed “development-induced displacement.” According to Michael Cernea, a World Bank analyst, the causes of development-induced displacement include water supply (dams, reservoirs, irrigation); urban infrastructure; transportation (roads, highways, canals); energy (mining, power plants, oil exploration and extraction, pipelines); agricultural expansion; parks and forest reserves; and population redistribution schemes.

There’s an eerie homology between Firefox’s “can’t establish a connection to the server at library.nu.” and Horace Smith’s: “I am great OZYMANDIAS..The King of Kings/ this mighty City shows The wonders of my hand.” In both cases, “Nought [remains] to disclose The (web)site of this forgotten Babylon.” I think we tend to experience the finest aspects of the internet as if its annihilation is imminent. We downloaded as if we were going to be the future hunters who would encounter the sign and “stop to guess/ What powerful but unrecorded race/ Once dwelt in that annihilated place.” It was us.

Absolute despair is not out of place. I know I haven’t downloaded as many books as I could have. Why *didn’t* I just spend all my time downloading simply *everything*? :)

There problems with both current publishing/film industry model and the large scale piracy ‘solutions’.Lessig’s piece does not address the issues.

secondly you again-like most (intellectuals too) muslims- do not talk about the reasons for the state of affairs, namely too much security forces, i agree, in the valley.and what the indian state has to sacrifice in terms of resources, both human and financial, to give security to the muslims in the valley.

and you want to junk the question of azadi, why? whom do you have in mind? the non-Muslims too? the ladhakis, the dogras, the sikhs etc. etc.? no, you have only your own community in mind. this is the problem with you people, you are too self centered, muslim madrassas, muslim orphanages, Muslim function halls (even in viollages here)and even muslim tv channels with 24 hours brainwashing on Islam and the like.

think for a moment what this reacts in the other religious people. to me or you it may not be making a difference, but the average Indian is a rather religious minded person.

so what i want to try happen is that we also try to listen to and understand what the Hindu fundamentalists like in ABVP are saying and why. cant we be civilized enough to talk to each other rather, rather than just amongst ourselves, the progressive lot.

i agree that i am more concerned about the impacts of islamic fundamentalism, al quaida, joshe mohmd, islamic brotherhood of even the arab spring movement and the negativities for women in islam, which is why i cannot leave your azadi discussion to itself. whom will they give azadi? think about it too.

the women’s view may also be included in the debate, so do read my latest

http://www.indiaresists.com/azadi-slogan-in-kashmir-exclucivist-kashmiri-women/

i also want to briefly respond to your comment on the ‘sanjay kak film that you’ve seen.’ it is not anyone’s problem if you think the idea of martyrdom and/or azadi, etc. is ‘a dangerous thing’. it is your problem. what jashn-e-azadi shows, and its not a boisterous film at all as i see it, is that there is a strong sentiment of ‘azadi’ in the valley, which even after kashmir being converted into the most heavily militarised zone in the world (over 7,00,000 soldiers of the indian army are deployed there), continues to live on. the film was completed by 2007 when there was seeming calm in the valley. 2008 onwards we have witnessed this sentiment manifest itself through various acts of public protest and resistance (recall the stone-pelting incidents widely covered by the media). so if anything the film deserves our attention.

it is not my intention to ridicule you, but i will stick with my statements because i feel blunt statements are required. it is also our responsibility to see the part we are playing in inflicting upon the kashmiris what are unquestionably inhumane conditions. the indian state (and hence the army) acts in your name and mine. when we Indians think of kashmir we often ask the seemingly kind question – ‘what is it that THEY want?’ . its high time we junk this question. kashmir, before anything else, for us indians is a question about ourselves. about how we decide to live and act together. i am quite sure there are many of us who do not want the army to brutalise lives of kashmiris in our name. once we understand that we can think about what ‘THEY’ want.

(I am a student at the department of sociology at DU, and was present for the screening of ‘jashn-e-azadi’)

“And so, understand this before you colour victims as perpetrators, and perpetrators as the saviours of India’s forests”, Aruna writes, “it is not indigenous communities that are razing India’s canopy to the ground. It is because the Indian government refuses to recognzse and continues to violate customary rights and every progressive law in the book to favour of an economic policy that puts profit over people and their environment”.

So bloody true.

In this context, I can do no more than draw all your attentions to Praful Bidwai’s book, The Politics of Climate Change and the Global Crisis – Mortgaging Our Future (Orient BlackSwan, 2012). It is well worth a read. I post below, a review of the book I have just written for a publication:

For those who’ve seen him go from brilliant, rebellious student to icy cool, impassioned journalist, polished critic of the establishment to scholar activist still obsessively focused on the issues of justice and equity, Praful Bidwai’s recent book was just round the corner.

It couldn’t have come at a better time in the history of this troubled planet that elites of the world, India included, have come a century closer to destroying in the name of ‘development’ (read ‘more luxurious lifestyles’), and ‘economic growth’ (read ‘even more money to consume even more’).

Bidwai does to climate change what Miles Davis did to modern jazz, leaving Friedman’s unduly optimistic, US-Centred Hot, Flat and Crowded atonally plonking the white keys.

No one seized of the rapid damage to the environment therefore, or the urgency of developing equitable policies and practices to protect increasingly disenfranchised peoples whose livelihoods depend on the earth, its forests and its limited water and energy sources, can afford to not read this book.

The sheer sweep of this rigorously researched study will keep anyone following the wider issues of the environment-development debate enthralled. It is not an easy read. Bidwai goes from the larger geopolitics militating against the earth to the hard but demystified facts of the snows melting and the oceans rising. He exposes the ponziness of carbon credits, argues forcibly for renewable energy alternatives, damns the pro-nuclear energy lobby yet again, and delivers such a stinging critique of the unbridled growth that successive Indian governments have embraced, that readers can be forgiven if they have to repeatedly go back a few pages. Such is horizon the book opens, it defies easy categorization.

While there are those, head in sand, who parrot the imperatives of the free market, Bidwai reincarnates the earlier First World/Third World division to show how the battles to save the planet are not being fought.

In the larger picture, he gives us the new actors, the Global North, like the earlier First World, giving to the rest of the world with one hand while stealing with the other; the Global South (now including the BASIC block, Brazil, South Africa, India and China, which, not surprisingly, now contribute to 55 per cent of the world’s emissions, and now do to earlier Third World nations in Africa what was once done unto them); then the new pariahs on the block, the Alliance of Small Island States, one fifth of the world total of countries and particularly vulnerable to the realities of climate change and rising sea levels; and, finally, the main focus of Bidwai’s attention, the Global Poor.

Reporting from Durban, soon after the book appeared, Bidwai was to chillingly note:
“Durban was the world’s last chance to make global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions peak this decade, and breathe new life into the world’s sole legally binding climate agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, beyond 2012, when its first phase ends. Only thus could global warming be limited to the 1.5-to-2 degree Celsius ceiling (over preindustrial temperatures) that planet Earth can tolerate. That chance is lost.

“The world is now on course to 3 to 4 degree C, perhaps 5 degree C, warming by this century’s end or earlier. This spells destruction of billions of lives. Durban has sealed climate apartheid, under which rich polluters evade responsibility, but underprivileged people suffer the worst effects of climate change for which they are least responsible”.
This is a haunting refrain in the book. Bidwai strips those in New Delhi, politicians, ministers, policy makers, advisors and bureaucrats in no uncertain terms. Not only did they lose the plot in Durban a few weeks ago, they’ve actually had no plan the past many years other than maintaining high growth rates and praying for a trickle-down effect. Strongly recommended reading for them.

As also those in our media who beat the tom-toms heralding the success at Durban and making out that India came out smelling of roses, or our new minister of environment and forests as she sits with templates of Rapid Environment Impact Assessment reports, gavel in her hand.

As Bidwai writes: “The global climate negotiations confront India with a huge challenge: reconciling the objectives of ‘development’ and poverty reduction with the global responsibility—and an obligation to its own citizens—to contribute to the fight against climate change. This entails combining developmental equity with environmental effectiveness imaginatively, a task never before attempted anywhere on such a scale. India has tried to rise to the challenge, somewhat reluctantly, and in ways that are awkward, inadequate, ambivalent, and even negative and obstructionist.”

Delivering the 11th ISRO-JNCASR Satish Dhawan Memorial Lecture in September 2010, reflecting on environment-development Debate, Jairam Ramesh, former environment minister asked us to accept the reality that there was a trade-off between growth and environment.

“In arriving at decisions to untangle the trade-off,” he said, “three options present themselves—‘yes’, ‘yes but’ and ‘no’. The real problem is that the growth constituency is used to ‘yes’ and can live with ‘yes but’. It cries foul with ‘no’. The environment constituency exults with a ‘no’, grudgingly accepts the ‘yes but’ but cries foul with a ‘yes’. Therefore, one clear lesson is this–maximize the ‘yes, but’, where this is possible.”

When he reads Bidwai’s book, he may feel compelled to reassess that somewhat simplistic formulation.