Problematizing Resistance*** The emerging fluidity in the territoriality and sovereignty relationship can be leveraged to build a resolution framework*** BACK TO BASICS ****************** HASEEB A DRABU ******************* In a stimulating article, “The Rhetoric of Economism” published in a local daily, the author has raised three distinct issues -protests, sovereignty and nationalism – in response to my public lectures delivered last month. The link between the three is that the issues of sovereignty and nationalism provide the basis for, and give sustenance to, the protests. In turn, the protests further the cause of sovereignty and nationalism Ideally, that is. While agreeing that “the use of the general strike has outlived its purpose in Kashmiri politics”, the author feels that I am being less than charitable in not recognizing the effort “to evolve a new language of politics”. For whatever it is worth my writings have tried to further this “new language of politics”. Indeed, in the public lecture at Grand Mumtaz, “Aspirations and Anxieties of Youth in Kashmir”, (abridged version Greater Kashmir, June 14, 2014), it was pointed out, “I see a beginning has been made. The greatest change that the youth have brought about is even though our marginalized ethnic identity may or may not enable us to act, it has already enabled us to narrate the story of this resistance. The act of narration is itself political act if not a politically subversive act. At least not yet. The new language of politics will be the dominant expression when the body of work produced by the young Kashmiri writers evolves from “literature of resistance” to “literature as resistance”. What the writer sees as my “impatience with the political idealism” is not impatience but the realization of how the extant forms of resistance stand coopted on the ground. As a strategy of resistance, boycotts are mean to challenge the political process and structure.On ground, these have degenerated into a strategy of election management. The organic link between protests and nationalism/sovereignty can be established only when every act of resistance illuminates the theoretical construct, the historical narrative, and the political characterization of the basic cause. As such to argue that “there are no alternative forms of public protest which are permitted to the people or are likely to be tolerated by the State” is not quite correct.The focus must not been on looking for alternative acts with the existing resistance paradigm but to seek greater clarity on the construct, and characterization of nationalism that engenders it. In the absence of this, an international political issue has overtime been reduced to a bilateral problem confined to the Valley and is now en route to being “down-town” or “five police station” dilemma. The author of the article is struggling with the same set of issues that all of us are in our own ways. This is evident from his statement that “Kashmir lacks sovereignty and the power to take any real decisions, economic or otherwise, about its future. The politics of NC, PDP, Hurriyats, JKLF is unlikely to change that situation”.More significantly, he infers, quite correctly, that “Islam’s understanding of sovereignty along eschatological lines is, in the long run, likely to complicate questions of economy and politics in Kashmir and foreground questions of justice” These rich observations frame the context of the“positivist notion of nationalism” quite appropriately. This is to be understood in the context of the entrapment of the separatist leadership in a rejectionist posture. It should be evident that it is this that has fixated them to the absolutism of one form of the resistance struggle. As a result even the distinction between tactic and strategy is lost. If indeed, 2008 and 2010 was “revolutionary” which many (including the author) believe it was, then the burden of rejectionism should legitimately and tactically be passed on to the adversaries. This is in line with the historically proven fact that rejectionism is alien to the revolutionary thought or tradition. The take away is that alternative strategies must be formulated that would strengthen the idea through pro-active engagement.For which we need to ask ourselves the following questions: Are we fighting only to undo a historical wrong? To reverse a promise that was made and not kept? To protect a constitutional provision? To restore a static status? Are we, forever operating on the politics of the grudge? Or is there a more substantive basis to what we are struggling for? Here it may also be relevant to mention that the territorial limits of the J&K state as it stands today is an artificial construct. In this context, if “identity” and identity based nationalism is ruled out or negated as the prime driver what does the notion of Kashmiri nationalism stand on? In my lecture at the Grand Mumtaz, I had said, “Agreed that the politics of identity based on the enunciation of cultural difference is not the same as political identity, whose formation depend less on difference than on some recognition of uniqueness. What we need to exemplify now is the coming into being of a political identity that is not based entirely on ethnic particularity or the articulation of difference for its own sake, but on the recognition of positivist agendas. The key issue lies in understanding the substantive basis of politicization of ethnicity and its implications on nationalism, sovereignty and territoriality. This understanding can’t be static. One has to be fully on board about the political and ideological changes. It is here that globalization kicks in. Even as territory remains a powerful means for the mobilization of populations, economic integration which includes trans-border politics and cultural exchange, appears to reduce the importance of conventional territorial boundaries created by nation states. In many ways, global economic integration has been eroding or “hollowing out” the role of the nation-state as governance has moved to global and regional international institutions and devolved to sub-national units. In the case of J&K, increasingly, sovereignty is being misconstrued and subsumed into territorial governance. In this framework, the two principal dimensions of territorial governance are border delimitation and jurisdictional congruence. Both are disputed. As such, globalisation has posed and historically unprecedented challenge to the“classic” territorial state. It has managed to disengage, if not separate, sovereignty from territoriality. It is this emerging fluidity in the territorially and sovereignty relationship that can be leveraged to provide a framework for the resolution of the Kashmir issue. It may not be correct on part of the leadership to expect intellectuals or writers to legitimize the nation of kashmir. What they can, and most certainly should do is to problematize the nation; foreground the problems involved in bringing together the high and low within a national framework. For them to be able to do so, there is need to overcome this overly simplistic dichotomy, whic was invented originally by official propagandists. We are, as historian Primo Levi once described, in the grey zone of human existence: situations in which individuals strive to survive through mixture of personal weakness, collective courage, and social dignity; all operating in the context of a history of compromises.
Posted on: Thu, 17 Jul 2014 10:44:40 +0000
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