{"id":35128,"date":"2013-10-21T12:00:11","date_gmt":"2013-10-21T11:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=35128"},"modified":"2015-05-05T22:21:21","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T21:21:21","slug":"blood-and-tourism-in-kashmir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2013\/10\/blood-and-tourism-in-kashmir\/","title":{"rendered":"Blood and Tourism in Kashmir"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Tourists<\/a>

Tourists on a water taxi in Kashmir (draskd, 2011, Flickr creative commons)<\/p><\/div>\n

Last summer, during an overnight bus trip from New Delhi to Srinagar\u2014the summer capital of the Indian-controlled state of Jammu and Kashmir\u2014I met a young man, with non-branded aviator sunglasses perched on his head, accompanied by two Canadian male backpackers about his age. He responded to the questions of his traveling companions in English with a mix of British and American accents. \u201cYou\u2019ll love this journey,\u201d he assured them. \u201cYou are going to heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n

He gave them two bottles of mineral water and some biscuits before retiring on a seat beside me. The bus was crammed with people from across North India: Punjabis, Biharis, and a handful of Kashmiris. As we drove out of Delhi, the man with the aviators tapped me on my shoulder. He asked me in Hindi if I was interested in trading my window seat for his aisle seat. I declined curtly.<\/p>\n

In return he offered a handshake. He switched to Kashmiri. \u201cAre you Kashmiri?\u201d he asked me.\u201c Your accent sounds Kashmiri.\u201d<\/p>\n

This man was Amir Bashir, a twenty-year-old tour operator from Srinagar who\u2019d worked in Delhi for three years. When I meet Kashmiris outside of Kashmir, the resulting conversations follow a familiar path: we briefly discuss our professional life before quickly identifying the Srinagar neighborhood where we grew up and figuring out who we know in common. These conversations almost always reveal a mutual connection, some distant cousin. In our case, there was no one.<\/p>\n

But we quickly found common ground as Kashmiris in Delhi. We discussed how the city is faster-paced and more developed than Kashmir; the ease of commuting on the subway; how expensive clothes and restaurants have become. The conversation soon veered back to familiar ground among displaced Kashmiris: we agreed that if the valley had jobs and economic opportunities, neither of us would have left.<\/p>\n

In Kashmir it\u2019s inappropriate for men to talk about their girlfriends or even to speak to them in someone else\u2019s presence, but Bashir immediately opened up to me, discussing how a difficult situation he\u2019d encountered in Delhi had made his Japanese girlfriend very concerned for his safety. \u201cShe is very paranoid these days,\u201d he said, slowly edging away to make a phone call. I only caught bits and pieces: \u201cHello sweetheart. Oh my god. Fuck me. I am sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the call Bashir apologized and explained why he needed to speak to her so urgently. A few weeks earlier, he\u2019d come to blows with a friend from Delhi who was hosting a dinner, after Bashir had unconscionably expressed his hatred toward the Indian cricket team. He was asked to leave the table but instead launched into a scathing anti-India rant, criticizing the Indian army and questioning its presence in Kashmir. \u201cHe hit me with a large spoon,\u201d Bashir told me. \u201cI pushed him away and ran off. Then he called my girlfriend and told her I will be hunted down soon. Now she is concerned about my safety.\u201d For the rest of the journey, Bashir explained his fears about living both inside and outside Kashmir.<\/p>\n

In tourism, guides play a crucial role. Apart from leading tours, the guides also prospect for tourists and sell them packages. Then they ferry them in a pattern where the cash flows from travel agents to transport companies to hotels\u2014a loose confederation of natives from various Indian tourist destinations. Travel agents from Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh, two of India\u2019s most visited states, dominate North India\u2019s tourism industry.<\/p>\n

Kashmiri tourism is still haunted by the two-decade-old conflict. In 1990 the United Kingdom issued a travel advisory that warned British citizens about Kashmir\u2019s insurgency\u2014a guerilla war waged by separatists and those who wanted to join Pakistan. Though Kashmir is relatively calm compared to the 1990s\u2014the number of militants has plummeted and fighting is mostly confined to remote areas near the Indo-Pak border\u2014the advisory remained in effect until 2012.<\/p>\n

If tourists pour into Kashmir, other states anticipate a decline in their share. So guides from other states often exploit this fear to discourage tourism to Kashmir. Last winter, when foreign skiers thronged Gulmarg, a world-class ski resort in Kashmir famous for its powder, the government of Himachal Pradesh began an aggressive television campaign. \u201cThey even resorted to rumormongering,\u201d Bashir complained in Kashmiri. \u201cThey scare expats by saying that Kashmiris are terrorists and are in the business of kidnapping foreigners. They will never let us live happily.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a twenty-two-hour-long journey, I exited the bus in Srinagar. Bashir climbed on the roof of the bus and released two travel bags into the laps of his clients. After that, he bummed a cigarette from one of them. He wasn\u2019t carrying his own backpack, he said, because he is always on the move.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am going back now, back to that hell,\u201d he said, blowing smoke rings from his cigarette in the air.<\/p>\n

**********<\/p>\n

Until 1989, before the start of the armed rebellion against Indian rule, foreign and Indian visitors flocked to the valley. In 1987, according to a government survey, Kashmir welcomed 700,000 tourists. Three years later, as violence gripped Kashmir, the number fell to just 6,000. The gun-toting militants became a common sight near butcher shops and corner stores. Almost every other day, grenades were lobbed on army convoys and gunfire was exchanged in dark hours. The Indian security establishment came down heavily on the citizenry, turning a land often called \u201cheaven on earth\u201d into the world\u2019s most militarized zone, with a ratio of one Indian soldier to every ten civilians. Those who survived on tourism ate their savings and scraped together different work; some became shawl vendors, while many left the valley to look for jobs in Delhi or Bombay.<\/p>\n

In response to the insurgency, India has refused to budge from the position that Kashmir is an integral part of its territory. On the other side, Pakistan, also party to the dispute as per a 1949 United Nations resolution that calls for a referendum on Kashmir\u2019s status, continues to send fighters backed by Pakistani intelligence services into the valley. Though the armed insurgency has decreased in the last few years, perpetual police atrocities\u2014juvenile detentions, denial of court trials, imposition of draconian laws\u2014have inflamed Kashmiris, turning them hostile toward India. Youths often throw stones at police and security forces.<\/p>\n

With people stuck between hope and hopelessness, it\u2019s hard to imagine Kashmir\u2019s tourism industry flourishing. Among the region\u2019s 4 million Muslims, most of the younger generation is jobless and uncertain about the future. The middle-aged and elderly remain psychologically wounded from the 1990s, when their society seemed to fall apart. They still hold painful memories of army sieges when men were asked to evacuate their homes while soldiers searched for weapons. They can\u2019t forget moments when even children were interrogated for hours on end about the possible locations of militants.<\/p>\n

Having grown up in this atmosphere of fear and suppression, Kashmiris have trouble identifying as members of India\u2019s mainstream middle class, which has watched its fortunes rise since liberalization in 1991. Bashir, even though he works and lives in Delhi, still feels like an outsider.<\/p>\n

**********<\/p>\n

On June 8 I thought of Bashir after reading a news report that Kashmir was again India\u2019s \u201cmost visited\u201d tourist destination. A few months earlier, in February, anger over the secret hanging of Muhammad Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri man convicted of masterminding a 2001 attack on India\u2019s parliament, made a return to massive pro-independence demonstrations a possibility. Most Kashmiris regard the Afzal trial as unfair. After the hanging, the valley observed a strict shutdown for several days and stone-throwing protests were reported in various districts. Kashmir\u2019s state government has campaigned for the revocation of the Armed Forces Special Power Act, which allows Indian soldiers to effectively kill anyone on mere suspicion, but Indian police still employed heavy-handed tactics against \u201cpotential stone throwers\u201d and separatist leaders, who were either detained in prisons or in their own houses. To tackle stone throwers, the police adopted a carrot-and-stick policy. The protesters are lured to join the police force or detained without trial; teenage stone throwers are asked to spy on one another. But much to the surprise of people inside and outside of Kashmir, tourists continued to flock to the valley. With hotels and resorts overwhelmed by visitors, room rates and the price of plane tickets skyrocketed.<\/p>\n

Later in June I drove to New Delhi\u2019s Connaught Place, a tourist hub comparable to New York\u2019s Times Square, to see how Kashmiri travel agents were reacting to their long-awaited season of prosperity.<\/p>\n

Yasir Iqbal, a twenty-seven-year-old tour guide from Srinagar, was bantering with two small-time hustlers selling \u201coriginal\u201d wristwatches clasped in fancy velvet boxes. A stout man with flushed red cheeks, Iqbal spoke impeccable Hindi, even employing the snarky street-smart vocabulary of a Delhi native.<\/p>\n

\u201cTourism is in my blood,\u201d he told me, \u201cWe are boat people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iqbal was four years old when the militancy began. His father had supported the family with modest earnings from rowing a boat on Dal Lake, Kashmir\u2019s most famous tourist destination, but when tourists began abandoning the valley he struggled to make a living. His family moved to Khajuraho, a medieval temple town in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh famous for its erotic sculptures. His father sold Kashmiri shawls on the streets frequented by tourists.<\/p>\n

Iqbal\u2019s parents enrolled him in a local school. For the next sixteen years, he lived a relatively normal Indian life: he played cricket with his neighborhood friends and watched Bollywood movies. He idolized Sanjay Dutt, the Al Pacino of the Indian film industry.<\/p>\n

In 1999, when Iqbal had just turned fourteen, India and Pakistan went to war over Pakistani incursions into Kashmir\u2019s Kargil district. In every corner of Khajuraho, Iqbal heard people talking about the war. When one of his best friends asked him what he thought of Kashmiris killing Indian soldiers in Kashmir, Iqbal said he regretted any loss of lives. His answer wasn\u2019t convincing enough. \u201cTraitors,\u201d his classmates roared. \u201cKashmiris are traitors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iqbal began to feel vulnerable. He separated himself from his Hindu friends and tried to befriend Muslim classmates. He still couldn\u2019t fit in. \u201cIndian Muslims are too religious,\u201d Iqbal explained. \u201cThey can\u2019t take jokes well.\u201d Iqbal was confused: he felt neither Indian nor Kashmiri.<\/p>\n

After finishing high school, Iqbal lost interest in his studies. In 2003 he joined his father\u2019s business, moving to a remote district in Madhya Pradesh to sell shawls door-to-door. After some time, he sensed communal tensions brewing between Hindus and Muslims. A few months later, they culminated in a low-intensity two-day riot. His parents asked him to return to Khajuraho.<\/p>\n

Like many Kashmiris, Iqbal entered the tourism industry. In Khajuraho, he worked as a daily wager for a local tour company. For the next six years, he traveled across the country, navigating routes for foreign tourists. \u201cI have memorized the entire map of India, state by state,\u201d he told me. \u201cI can walk through the Taj Mahal blindfolded,\u201d he added, laughing.<\/p>\n

In the winter of 2010, he moved to Delhi to earn a better living. Like other Kashmiris, he found renting an apartment difficult in upper-middle-class neighborhoods. Even his permanent residency in Madhya Pradesh made no difference. \u201cI thought the landlords would take me as a proper Indian citizen,\u201d he said. \u201cI was ready to pay the rent in advance, but everywhere I was asked to disclose my ancestry because they somehow figured out that I was a Kashmiri.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iqbal gave up on the idea of living in a fancy neighborhood. He tried not to hold any grudges, preferring to view the discrimination as a larger Muslim problem. He simply moved to Okhla, one of Delhi\u2019s Muslim ghettoes.<\/p>\n

**********<\/p>\n

In the early summer of 2010, a teenage student was shot dead by police in Kashmir. The boy was returning home from a private tutor. The next day Kashmir exploded in anger. Thousands of young men took to the streets, shouting slogans of independence. In response, Indian troops and police opened fire on them. Over the next three months, the police and paramilitary shot dead 112 young Kashmiri protesters.<\/p>\n

Iqbal watched this bloodshed on YouTube: an unarmed cleric shot in the leg while walking to a mosque; the body of a nine-year-old boy with a bullet hole in his head; the body of another nine-year-old who was beaten to death.<\/p>\n

The macabre images severed his allegiance to mainstream India. His suspicion of the Indian state grew steadily with the killing of each civilian. Every night, as he tried to sleep, he felt filled with a rage that he couldn\u2019t articulate to anyone else. Protests were followed by killings and killings followed by protests. A few days later, he ran into an acquaintance named Imran Jeelani in a bustling alleyway in Connaught Place. He felt comfort in being able to talk about Kashmir. \u201cIt\u2019s painful to be far away and watch our brothers getting killed mercilessly,\u201d Iqbal said.<\/p>\n

Jeelani, a thirty-eight-year-old tour operator, and Iqbal became friends. They looked out for each other and openly discussed their insecurities as Kashmiris in India.<\/p>\n

Jeelani\u2019s shop, tucked away from the crowds of Connaught Place, was furnished with teakwood chairs and tables demarcated by glass fences. Paintings of Hindu gods hung on the whitewashed walls and a poster map of India was spread on a large desk where Jeelani worked. He seemed uninterested in talking about the return of tourists to Kashmir. \u201cKashmir is very uncertain,\u201d he explained. \u201cAnything can happen and everything will come to a halt. So let\u2019s not get carried away.\u201d<\/p>\n

A graduate of the London School of Economics, Jeelani has lived in Delhi for about eight years. He spoke slowly with measured sentences that seemed to match his serious face. He has read many historical accounts depicting Kashmir\u2019s recent and ancient history. When I asked him what brought him close to books, he said, \u201cTragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n

In April 2004, during the Indian parliamentary elections, his cousin Aasiya Jeelani, a reporter at a local English newspaper, drove out of Srinagar with two of her colleagues to verify reports of bogus voting being carried out in north Kashmir. The Indian government was making desperate attempts to engineer a new victory rather than suffer another humiliating defeat to separatists. The country\u2019s leading newspapers and television channels repeatedly showed long queues of voters at polling booths to validate the claim that Kashmiris had joined the Indian mainstream and were transitioning from militancy to democracy. Apart from a few hundred workers of pro-India political parties, however, the people of Srinagar avoided the polls and obeyed the separatists\u2019 calls to boycott the elections. But in far-off districts away from the media glare, the army forced villagers to vote for their candidates.<\/p>\n

Before Aasiya could reach any of those voting locations, a landmine explosion ripped apart her car, killing her and injuring several colleagues.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was in Dubai at that time,\u201d Jeelani said. \u201cMy mother called me and said Aasiya is dead. I couldn\u2019t believe it. All I could do was cry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jeelani\u2019s personal response to Kashmir\u2019s unresolved conflict is now mostly confined to social networking sites. One of his Twitter feeds reflects his growing frustration toward both India and Pakistan. On January 16 two Indians discussed the beheading of an Indian soldier on the Kashmir border, allegedly by the Pakistani army. A conversation ensued in which one commenter belittled the Pakistani army; the other wanted to \u201ctry to speak peace\u201d between the two countries. Jeelani felt he had to respond: \u201cWhat do you mean by speaking peace?\u201d<\/p>\n

A few minutes after telling me the story, Iqbal shepherded a tall white turbaned Sikh man to his desk. The man enquired about the cost of a three-day visit to Kashmir. Iqbal showed him the prices and the man asked for a discount. The negotiations started. In the end, Jeelani agreed to a 20 percent discount.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou must see Kashmir,\u201d he told the man. \u201cIt\u2019s beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n

______________________<\/p>\n

Mehboob Jeelani<\/i> is a staff writer at the <\/i>Caravan, a monthly magazine published in New Delhi.<\/i><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 dissentmagazine.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Until 1989, before the start of the armed rebellion against Indian rule, foreign and Indian visitors flocked to the valley. In 1987, according to a government survey, Kashmir welcomed 700,000 tourists. Three years later, as violence gripped Kashmir, the number fell to just 6,000. The gun-toting militants became a common sight near butcher shops and corner stores.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}