Not what he expected
That the Kashmir question has been revived on global platforms is no longer news, but I have been surprised that even taxi drivers in the US can bring it up.
“Kashmir seems to be in trouble,” a taxi-driver of Ethiopian origin told me in Washington DC on August 25.
Perhaps the driver had heard about the hearing held on August 22 by a Congressional human rights sub-committee headed by Representative Brad Sherman, Democrat from California, when scholars of South Asia and others concerned about the right of free speech in the region gave their assessments.
The Indian government’s actions over Kashmir appeared to receive poor grades at the hearing. One person whose responses to questions from Members of Congress seemed to spark particular interest was Dr. Nitasha Kaul of the Centre for the Study of Democracy at London’s University of Westminster.
Flying to the Washington hearing all the way from London, Dr. Kaul presented her view that the absence of “consent” and “dissent” constituted a basic flaw in New Delhi’s Kashmir policy. When Kashmir’s special status was ended on 5 August, it was done, she pointed out, without obtaining or seeking the consent of Kashmiris. And no expression of dissent has been permitted thereafter.
Dr. Kaul’s responses are accessible at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-S8xyn1cgY, which is where I found them. Her written testimony to the Congressional sub-committee can be seen at
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA05/20191022/110143/HHRG-116-FA05-Wstate-KaulN-20191022.pdf
The name “Kaul” enables Indians to identify her as a Kashmiri Brahmin (or “Pandit”), and a click on Google brings up the fact that the academic (who seems to visit Kashmir regularly) is a novelist as well. Her first novel, Residue, was shortlisted in 2009 for the Man Asian Literary Prize.
Just as many Israelis speak courageously for Palestinian rights, several Kashmiri Pandits like Nitasha Kaul have been raising their brave voices for the rights of all Kashmiris, a great majority of whom are Muslims. Who would not want to salute such persons’ love of justice?
In her written statement, Dr. Kaul asked the Congressional subcommittee to “urge India to establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate killings of Kashmiri Pandits, Sikhs and Muslims”. Elsewhere, revealing a gift for summarizing a complex political and marketing exercise, she recalls that in 2014 Narendra Modi was “projected as a techno-savvy Hindutva strongman leader who would bring ‘Development’”.
Meanwhile, mounting revelations about Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to damage the 2020 chances of a possible rival, Joe Biden, suggest that Modi’s virtual endorsement of Trump at September’s “Howdy Modi” carnival of Indian Americans might have been the opposite of savvy.
Indians do exceedingly well in the US and also contribute to the US economy. As medical professionals, they assist Americans of all races. As teachers, professors and accountants, they interact with Americans of all kinds.
To the US, they represent all of India, not just its majority Hindus. In the US, they need the goodwill of all Americans amidst whom they exist, including African-Americans and Latino-Latina Americans.
Was it a sound move to link the fate of Indians in the US to the political success of a controversial, wayward individual championed by white nationalists -- one now subject to a process of impeachment?
