When the great poet Firdausi composed the lines "If there is a heaven on earth it is here, it is here, it is here," he would not have imagined that a day will come when Kashmir will be referred to as a Valley of Death. Kashmir has been engraved in our minds as a bleeding valley today.

Today 12 killed here, yesterday 19 killed there, and a day before 25 killed somewhere else. This has been the routine for years. Stinking flesh smells of the gunpowder. Chinars are laden with torn up pieces of human flesh and not leaves. Slit abdomens of young men lie scattered close to beautiful water springs. Indian and Pakistani blood trickles down from the naked snowy peaks and summits. All around, the wails of women rant the air. The valley is raped and ransacked. Wood houses burn like dried up forests throwing up flames into the sky. Ice-cold iron bolts and triggers bop in the dance of death. It is hell on all sides in Kashmir today. A hell with the sight of a death-chamber that make you shudder. A scream comes out of you suddenly and says: If there is a heaven here, where is it, where is it, where is it?

The firangees drew a line on the body of the sub-continent and partitioned it into two parts in 1947. The new rulers went all out to grab and pillage. States were usurped either through bribe or through force. On this side, Nehru ordered his armies to roll over the State of Nizam Hyderabad and decided to crush the revolutionary peasant revolt of Telangana region.

On the other side of the border, the Pakistani armies took up the task of capturing Kashmir in the name of religion and to crush the democratic movement led by Sheikh Abdullah’s National Conference. Lest Pakistan should overrun Kashmir, the king Hari Singh made a plea before Nehru. Nehru demanded a pound of flesh from the Maharaja in a way a Bania takes in mortgage the land and all the household things from a peasant before giving him a loan. He took Kashmir in the form of mortgage from Hari Singh and sent his armies.

Though the Pakistani rangers were stopped in their tracks yet Nehru neither called back his armies nor returned the mortgaged land. UNO asked both the countries to pull back their forces so that it be known through plebiscite whether Kashmiris want to be Pakistanis or remain as Indians. Pakistan and India both put their initials on the resolution. But neither India honoured the agreement nor Pakistan respected the accord.

Those who had inherited the legacy of the firangees honoured their masters by stepping into their shoes and marked up the land of Kashmir with a line of division. One occupied one part the other subjugated the other one. One asserted, "Kashmir is mine," the other declared that Kashmir was his. No one entertained the idea that, may be, Kashmir would like to live as an independent being. This side incarcerated Sheikh Abdullah, the other started putting their own men, one after the other, as Sadr-e-Riyasat-e-Kashmir.

A storm of religious fervor and chauvinism was fanned by the politicians in such a way that most of the people forgot that Kashmir could only belong to the Kashmiris and not to the Indians or the Pakistanis. The man even whose forefathers had never seen Kashmir nor would he himself ever, also started saying, "Kashmir is ours." As if Kashmir did not constitute a people, as if Kashmir were not a land of a people, but only constituted a piece of territory that had no claimants!

One could understand the attitude of those who only indulge in extravagance and use everything for their self-indulgence that they would want to reserve this beautiful land for their profligate instincts. Because for them Kashmir is not an alive sensuous being but merely an enchanting hill for fulfilling gratifying desires, a land to be grabbed with might and deceit. But the common person! Why he/she thinks in the same vein?

The rulers on this side are happy that they have deceived a billion people and made idiots out of them. The ones on the other side are cheering that they have been able to distract ten crore people through religious fanaticism. The Kashmiris are baffled that why there is not a single person in the crowd of billions and crores who is able to make out that, primarily, Kashmir belongs to its own people. Whether they chose to merge with one or remain independent, it is THEIR right.

As a peasant wants to be the owner of the land he tills, in the same way the Kashmiris too want to be the masters of their own soil. Those who come to shed blood of one another in the snowy hills of Kashmir too are sons of the soil in their own lands. Why don’t they understand the worth of land and its profound relationship with the human beings? Why do they come here to be turned into sewing machines for their mothers and widowed wives?

The rich and the political elite never come here to die. They never feel the fire of explosives; never smell the offensive stench of the burning flesh. Their refined and debauched bodies never experience deprivation. They remain secure on both sides of the 1947 line. Those who die there never go for pleasure, and those who go for pleasure never come to die.

In a way, the thing is so simple to understand but for a curtain that prevents a billion people from seeing the reality. Otherwise, they should have understood it when vast crowds of young men were beaten black and blue and even fired upon by the security forces at Bharatpur, Nagpur, and Bihar during the "limited war" in Kargil. The poor souls, fired with "nationalism" and suffering from chronic unemployment had gone there to enlist themselves in the army to serve the country! Dozens of them were served with death warrants even before they were able to reach the border to face the "enemy" bullets.

One could have understood at that time even that those who rule over the country have nothing to do with something called patriotism.

Perhaps there is a thick wall and not a thin curtain that prevents the reality from reaching the people! Or there is something eerie that cuts down all the limbs of reality, mutilates it in accordance with the wishes of the rulers, and then offers the stuff to the people to take it for genuine and authentic. When reality does not appear in its naked form, it gets adulterated like brass enameled as gold. It loses its real essence. This enameling has been skillfully done on both sides of the border by the intelligentsia and pen pushers. They have beatified the manoeuverings of the rulers in a thousand ways and have painted such an abstract picture of reality that the truth has become unrecognizable. It is this artistry of the writing community that has eclipsed the beauty of Kashmir.

On our side, we hear only that as Pakistan did not pull back its forces to fulfill the precondition for a plebiscite then, so it is of no use now, it has become redundant. Not body ever says that our own government too had turned dishonest and it too did not honour its own commitment and refused to vacate the land. Here everybody would write the Pakistan occupied Kashmir as "Maqbooza Kashmir" or PoK, but no one ever says that our "own" Kashmir is also Indian Occupied Kashmir, that is, IoK. On the other side, the Pakistani papers would term "their" Kashmir as "Azad Kashmir" and the Indian forces in Kashmir as "Occupation Forces." On whose side is the truth? Either the writers on this side are right or, on the other?

If Nehru declared that from Kashmir to Kanya Kumari "India is one," nobody questioned him that how he could say that. How dare he hitch Kanya Kumari with Kashmir without asking the Kashmiri people? No one raised a voice here. Neither in the Parliament, nor on the outside. Here the pens didn’t write that the Indian rulers were in the wrong. They only accused Pakistan of perfidy. The Pakistani papers and intellectuals always characterized the Indian attitude as high-handedness, as Indian aggressiveness. But no intellectuals from the other side described their own ruler’s high-handedness as aggression and their position as a lie, a fraud.

The task of an intellectual is to know the truth and become its messenger and propagator. But one wonders what has happened to the possessors and carriers of truth! Nobody says here, "Oh Indians! Get to know the reality and beware of your leaders’ treachery, they are deceiving you!" Nor from the other side a voice says, "Oh Pakistanis! Wake up! The truth lies somewhere else and not in the statements of our leaders."

If whatever Ganga Ram says is right for the people of India and everything on the other side of the Ravi is deception and dishonesty, and if for the people of Pakistan whatever is said on this side is erroneous and immoral while everything on their side is sacred and correct, then, we must admit, that about one billion and twenty-five crore people of the sub-continent have been carried away by the demon who makes the rulers chuckle.

The question arises: Can intellectuals on both sides be right? Or can they be considered right in their own earnest? Either one of the two sides is right or both of them are in the wrong. Both cannot be right and the truth must be lying somewhere else.

To blindly follow and repeat the rulers is no patriotism, nor one should refuse to accept the truth in the name of Namak Halali. The nationalism that refuses to recognize the freedom of other nations is national chauvinism, a blind attitude that has nothing in common either with nationalism or patriotism.

The Baluchis, Pakhtoonis, Sindhi, Kashmiri, Nagas, Mizos and many other peoples feel that they are kept in national bondage and have to live as slaves in both of these "free" countries. If both the countries are free then the peoples living in these countries must also be feeling free. The Kashmiris on both sides of the LoC must be considered free. Then why the trouble? North Eastern states too must feel free. Then why the nuisance? Why one after the other people rises up to demand freedom? Why all this "foolishness?" But this "foolishness" continues in spite of all the terror and oppression, all the "democratic exercises," and all the accords and agreements.

The plight of the Kashmiris is worse. There, Amanullah Khan faces the canes and jailing; here, the terror and oppression has crossed all limits. In both lands the people say, "Oh God, be merciful!"

Sarhadi Gandhi Abdul Gufar Khan remained in the Pakistani jails most of his life but he was honoured and admired as a national hero in India.

The "Indian" Kashmiri Mujahids who live in Pakistan are considered brave warriors but those who live in the Pakistan occupied Kashmir and want to break free from the shackles of Pakistan are considered "anti-national" there. One is forced to think: may be, the atmosphere on both the sides is oppressive and one is struggling to break free of the chains.

Who would tell more than a billion people that why for the British rulers the Indian freedom fighters were detestable extremists and renegades (Gadari) worthy of jails, bullets and guillotines; why for our own rulers the Kashmiris and north eastern guerrillas are extremists and terrorists and for the Pakistani rulers the likes of Gufaar Khan and the Kashmiris who want to establish an independent country are "traitors" and "anti-national" elements only? Why the freedom-lovers face the same attitude everywhere? Why the freedom loving people are raped and burned and killed everywhere?

The rape that has been enacted on the human-freedom on both sides of the border neither falls under the purview of Taziraat-e-Hind nor Taziraat-e-Pakistan. The rapist is beyond the reach of every law. To catch him an entirely new penal code is needed—and that is: Taziraat-e-Awam, a people’s penal code. But, who will write this new penal code?

The glitter that floods the corridors of power in Islamabad and Delhi blurs even a perfect eye. Everything looks upside-down there, or the beholder prefers to overturn oneself to fit into the image. The pen that writes in these flashing lights turns black or caves in. Perhaps, the following example will be enough.

Two years ago, Clinton stated, "Kashmir is not East Timor." One after the other columnist in Delhi jumped to the sky and declared that the king of the world too was on the side of India and was not in favour of giving the Kashmiri people right to self-determination. They turned themselves hoarse by singing the praise of Indian democracy and the imperialist chieftain Clinton.

A country where the ministers never suffer from indigestion even after gobbling down fodder, chemicals, guns, and all the other sundry stuff, and where they have never been put on the operation table to recover these things from their bloated bellies, the clamour about democracy makes you sick and nauseate. Such a democracy really helps every crook and every villain. In such a democracy, all the rights get absolutised on the one side while nothing remains on the other.

However, the Pakistani columnists felt that the Clinton’s statement was like another scandal of his. They believed he had committed a rape against Pakistan. While writing about the right to self-determination of Kashmiris, they never once made the point that Pakhtoons, Baluchis and Sindhis too must have this right.

The defenders of "Great Indian Democracy" worked extra hours a day to prove that the right to vote also encompasses every kind of plebiscite, the will of the people, as if the vote paper were a signed blank paper where any statement could be written. Yes, for the Indian democratic system, the vote is really like the one the police usually extract from the criminals and write on it arbitrarily. [May be, that is why our security forces have made it a habit to check the fingers of every Kashmiri, to ascertain whether they have cast their vote (read: signed the paper) or not, to prove (read: confess) themselves as Indians, in every "democratic exercise."]

One of the famed columnists even argued that wherever there is the right to vote, no right should be given to any nationality to opt for self-determination and secession. A professor of political science of the Delhi University averred that, as the Indian system is a democratic system, therefore, as long as there is the right to vote, no nationality should talk of secession because, in India, the people themselves chose who should rule over them. Such kind of intellectuals, as they are driven by chauvinism in their thinking, forget that the only thing that guarantees the equality of nations and a safeguard from national oppression, is the right to self-determination that they can opt whenever they feel oppressed and cornered by powerful nations.

Only this right can prevent the powerful nations from treading on the path of oppressing the weak and smaller nations. There can be no other guarantee. And, the right to vote is of little help in this respect.

What the ballot does in our sort of democracy? It only ensures the coming to power of Desais, Advanis, Laloos, Kalyans, and Modis and then sees its "worth" in the kabari market as a waste. Were it more valuable and had the power to protect the rights of the people no body would ever take up the gun to defend themselves. Nobody would feel oppressed and seek liberation. There would be no need of sending six lakh guns to control sixty lakh Kashmiris.

Clinton’s statement in no way did change the reality in Kashmir. If the US has changed its position today then there are other reasons to it. The US seeks to further its own interests and not of the Indians or Pakistanis or of the Kashmiris in any way. Neither the Pakistani intellectuals should have admired the US before Clinton did not do a somersault on Kashmir nor the Indian intellectuals should think of the US sponsorship as something positive for their "national interests."

The US sees the world from its own viewpoint and interests, and thinks of the people of all lands as insects and worthless. It was the US president Ford who gave the green signal to Suharto to carry out the massacres of the East Timorese. Moreover, if today the US poses as a friend of the Timorese it has to be looked in the drivel that falls from its mouth for the East Timori oil. To understand the US character it is sufficient to know of its role in Vietnam, Palestine, Iraq and Yugoslavia.

If the rulers in Delhi enjoy raving about Washington then the writers must think about these leaders. The Octopus of criminalized politics that has gripped the whole country has its main body positioned in Delhi. This monster is not only wrenching up J&K and the Northeast in its tentacles but also crores of unfortunate Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Dalits and ordinary people throughout India.

The "great democracy" of this terrible monster helps no one but the gangsters in Delhi and the likes of Clintons, Bushes and Blairs. If Clintons and Bushes praise this "democracy" then one must conclude that the danger has only multiplied. The pens that sung the praises of Clinton then were not only against the people of Kashmir but also working against the interests of one billion people in India.

But the pens that have not gone astray, that have not turned upside down, that have not started seeing through the blinding lights of the corridors of power, where are they? Why their ink has dried up? Why their voice is so low? Why their reach is so narrow?

In Chittisinghpura, 35 Sikhs were massacred in March 2000. The first reaction of the Sikhs was: Give us guns, we shall teach the Kashmiri terrorists a lesson. Anti-Pakistan feelings reached all high. The rulers in Delhi became overjoyed. They called on the Kashmiri Sikhs to translate their feelings into action by avenging the killings through joining or collaborating with the Indian army. Within three days, the security forces killed five "terrorists" and declared that the "mercenary" killers of Chittisingh-pura have been executed. Everybody thought that the massacre in Chittisinghpura was really a handiwork of the "cross-border gun-wielders."

However, within a few days the people of the area found that the Indian army had abducted five people in a single night from various villages and had killed them in cold blood claiming them to be terrorists. All the five were neither "mercenaries" nor they were from "across the border," nor they were "foreigner gun-wielders." One of them was a cloth merchant, another was a daily wage labourer, and still another was a peasant. All the five had healthy bodies and it was easy to prove them guerrillas.

The people waged a tough struggle to force the authorities to dig out their bodies. Farooq Abdullah had to accept the people’s demand that a DNA test be conducted on them to ascertain their identity. The people identified the bodies from various items lying on their persons. It is very likely that the government DNA report will never come through as it is already more than two years now.

All the dead men were local Kashmiris and used to go to work daily to feed their families. The government stopped its propaganda on the Chittisinghpura with the same swiftness the foreign secretary had shown in announcing the killing of ‘mercenaries.’ Some of the human rights organisations pointed their finger at the government sponsored terrorist organisation "Ikhwan-ul-Musal-meen" as the probable perpetrator of the Chittisinghpura massacre. All the organisations fighting for the liberation of Kashmir had condemned that massacre, and charged that the government agencies were the culprits.

May be, it will be a long time when the real criminals get exposed but one thing is certain that those who benefit from pushing different religious communities into fratricidal holocaust can be none other than the reactionary rulers.

It often happens in Kashmir that when the Indian security forces come in the garb of Mujahids to kill the ordinary people the latter can tell from their modus operandi that it is not the act of freedom fighters. The most notorious example of such secret crimes of the governments is that of the burning of Reichstag by Hitler’s security forces and then passing over the blame on to the communists to persecute them and passing death sentence over their leaders.

Many a journalists and columnists have pointed to the contradictory aspects present in the Chittisinghpura episode and have exposed the standpoint of the government. Many people, like Kuldeep Nayar, have exposed many atrocities perpetrated by the Indian government. But, overall, there is almost no attempt by the Indian intellectuals, social scientists and columnists and the mainstream press to highlight the cause of national rights of the Kashmiri people. In contrast, the Pakistani press has highlighted this aspect enormously, yet mainly from a Pakistani angle. But we are faced with the same old question: Which side holds the truth? Which side has auctioned out its pens? Even Kuldeep Nayar, and many others, stops half way, limiting criticism to the violation of human rights only.

The point, however, is to take the thing to its logical end, to take the right and the wrong theses into all the aspects of the problem, to do away with all the ambiguities and to clear all the haziness, and to arrive at a correct and just conclusion. — And this will definitely take us all the way to support the cause of liberation of the Kashmiri people.

Sometimes the Indian papers write that when the Indian forces get panicky due to a guerrilla attack, they resort to "indiscriminate firing." Even our own government has conceded that about 2600 ordinary people have died in "cross-firing" from 1989 to 1999.

We can conjecture that the victims of these "cross-fire killings" are almost the ones who die at the hands of Indian security forces in "indiscriminate firings." Government statistics (year 1999) concede that there have been 6400 other civil casualties. While the Pakistani papers abound in reports of Indian atrocities in Kashmir, on our side generally, the government handouts get into the press. These handouts mostly contain the "cries" and "attempts" aimed at the "rehabilitation" of orphaned Kashmiri children and widowed women, or the "money distribution" programmes for the victims. This is displayed in the newspapers in a rude manner where the government tries to paint its face for a humanistic look.

We all agree that the people of intellect should be the messengers of truth. Naturally, questions would arise: Why the intellectuals, the enlightened brain of the society, stand in so glaring an opposition and contradiction on both sides of border? Is it that the intellect too has become a commodity and intellectualism another profession? Why independent journalism is losing the fight for its own liberation?

The independence of the pen too has become a mysterious thing like the independence of the country. The burning down of houses, rapes, disappearances, deaths, and an environment of oppression in Kashmir is only taken up in the newspapers in an informal way. As hell has no limits, criminals know no bounds to their criminal mind-set, in the same way, the "Heaven on Earth" is witnessing a dance of death and destruction and is burning without an end in sight.

If it is impossible to fathom the agonies of the families of the killed security forces men, it is equally impossible to make a graph of the agonies and woes of those Kashmiri women who have faced the atrocities at the hands of the security forces or of those who have lost their sons, brothers, husbands and near and dear ones. In a seminar in New Delhi on "The Human Security in the New Millennium," Asma Jahangir, the famed human rights activist from Pakistan, said, "Before resorting to firing the security forces should ask itself, ‘whether I am right in starting a war and to kill and getting killed?’"

Asma knows that the armies are not raised to pose such questions to their conscience. She says, "the Indians always talk of cross-border terrorism in Kashmir and the Pakistanis talk of human rights of the Kashmiris and both forget about the real causes of the prevailing situation." She wants that the war should stop and the rule of peace be established. She stresses about the participation of the people in a peace process. Like all other intellectuals, she too talks in a mysterious way where there is no demarcation about a just and an unjust war, no mention of the real cause. Nor she suggests a solution for the Kashmir question.

Same type of voices sometimes echo on our own side too: Stop war! Establish peace!

Without going into the causes of war and without laying the concrete political basis for peace, the peace cannot be established through mere calls for establishing a peace. Both the governments have their own notions and solutions for a ‘peace’ settlement. The intellectual section of the society has fast abandoned its attempt to rise above the realm of hazy argumentation and to take up the task in clearly defined lines. Perhaps, it is the influence of neo-liberalism that is pushing them into the abyss.

Now, there is a word going on that the LoC should be declared a sacred line, that it should be turned into an international border. The US too supported this original Indian proposal, and also, there are some in Pakistan, now including Musharraf himself, who have started talking about this. Conversion of the LoC into a permanent border or a bit of "give and take" cannot settle the problem at all.

A permanent division of Kashmir on communal lines will only deepen the gash that has been inflicted on it. A bifurcated or trifurcated Kashmir will remain miles away from peace and stability and will explode again and again. These explosions will also involve the whole of India in their wake. Already, we have paid much due to the British conspiracy to partition the sub-continent on the basis of religion.

Can peace be established without a correct political solution? Can the intellectuals afford to remain aloof and be content with being ambiguous, talking only abstract peace, or continue to only repeat what the rulers say? And all this in the guise of pseudo nationalism?

Can they come out on both sides of the border and say that Kashmir belongs to the Kashmiris and not to India or Pakistan? This kind of voice will enlighten the minds of the people of the sub-continent more clearly than the light of the candles. The attempts to expose Indian atrocities and Pakistani games need to be taken further, to the real thing that can help the cause of the people and alleviate their sufferings in an enormous way. Only, we have to reform our understanding of nationalism and patriotism.

Years ago, Khushwant Singh had written that Kashmir should be given freedom. However, after that, he never found time to think over it, as he remains occupied in matters ‘that are more important.’ Moreover, the Indian mind is not used to hear such kind of speak. The people of Britain too were incapable of listening to the discourse of independence of the colonies. They never gave serious attention to the dreadful acts of the British colonialists throughout the world. The Kashmiri people think that the Indians too are of the same mould.

A few years ago, there was a seminar in Bombay questioning the independence of India. Some of the Kashmiri leaders too had reached there. When they were introduced on the stage the hall gave them a standing ovation for more than five minutes. The Kashmiri leaders watched this in utter astonishment. They had never expected such a warm acknowledgment.

Later, they told the audience that they had a very different opinion about the Indian people. They used to think that there was no one in this country of a billion people who could understand their situation, their agonies and their convictions but now they were extremely happy that they were not alone in their struggle. Indeed, for the Kashmiri leaders this was a unique experience to be in the company of such a gathering. There had assembled activists from among miners, tribals, fishermen, representatives of trade unions and democratic right organisations.

The assembly also included many of the famous from the upper crusts of the intelligentsia, majority of whom was from the Hindu background. All these people had questions and doubts about India, that whether it was a genuinely independent country or not. The Kashmiri leaders felt that there was some thread that united them with these people.

One man’s terrorist is a freedom fighter for the other. This cliché is usually heard in the newspapers these days. What does it indicate? Same person can be defined in two different ways, from two different angles. Why would the British refer to Bhagat Singh as a freedom fighter? But, for the Indians, he was. If the British did not refer to him what he really was, it made no difference. The Indians were right and the British wrong. One was just, the other unjust. There lay the truth of the whole thing. And the history proved Bhagat Singh and his comrades right, not the British.

It will make no difference even now, if the Indian rulers don’t accept the Kashmiri militants as freedom fighters. It won’t turn the truth upside down; it won’t make the Indian position as one on the side of justice. Here India replaces the British as the oppressor and in the wrong. Nothing can change the reality — either the noise around "cross-border terrorism," or the "democratic process," or the misleading term of "war against terrorism."

This in no way dilutes the cause of the Kashmiri people and turns it on the side of untruth. The truth shall prevail in spite of all the lies and ambiguousness. Guns can be of little help in suppressing the truth. These only show how unjust the Indian rulers are and how tyrannical they have become!

When an Indian securityman stops some Kashmiri and after frisking him asks for his identity, what the Kashmiri thinks of him? This has been beautifully captured by a writer in these words:

Sartre had the acumen to understand the mind of the Algerians that how they felt about the French. In the preface to Frantz Fanon’s world famous book, "The wretched of the Earth," he writes:

Are we Indians better than the French or the British colonizers in any way?

Or, we all know of the age-old saying:

Ages have passed. We must catch the delicate sliver of this belief. Can we? They say that when a desperate person is pushed to the extremes he picks up the sword and the dead human being within him comes off alive. He kills two birds with one stone: First, the oppressor; second, the dead-being in him who is accustomed to tolerate oppression. The first is killed, the second is resurrected. You cannot stop the resurrected being from snatching away the victory. The whole of human history is a testimony to it. Kashmir is also trying to add another chapter in these annals.

The Kashmiriyat and Kashmiris have been persecuted since the times of Akbar, the Great Mogul. Akbar’s lieutenants used to dishonour the Kashmiri women. Though Kashmir had turned to Islam in the 8th and 9th century the Kashmiri women turned to the veil only during the Mogul times just to conceal themselves from the lustful eyes of the tyrant armymen. They are being dishonoured since Akbar’s times. Our rulers are continuing that shameful tradition. We, a billion people, too are a part of this ignominy.

Either we should renounce and forget about our legacy of Birsa Munda and Shaheed Bhagat Singh or we must stand by the Kashmiris who are fighting to put a stop to this disgrace.