‘My Nationality a Matter of Dispute’: Basharat Peer

Basharat Peer always felt that Kashmiris living under Indian rule needed to tell their story like the Palestinians, Bosnians, Kurds and other people in conflict zones around the world. That led to his first book “Curfewed Night,” an evocative account of Mr. Peer’s years growing up in Kashmir as an armed insurgency against the Indian government gradually took root from the late 1980s. In that book, he writes of friends crossing the Line of Control to train in Pakistan for azaadi [freedom], of his identification card becoming a part of his being, of schools being turned into army camps, of lost childhoods.

In the early years of the new millennium the region seemed calmer but now nearly two decades after the conflict erupted, the youth of Kashmir have taken to the streets and about 50 people have died over the past two months. The aspirations remain same, the protest mode is now different—it’s the most primitive form—stone pelting.  Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in an address Tuesday tried to reach out to the Kashmiri youth, urging them to give peace a chance.

Mr. Peer, a fellow of the Open Society Institute in New York, a George Soros initiative, is now working on his second book which deals with Indian Muslims. In an e-mail interview to India Real Time, he talks about Kashmir—a land of immeasurable beauty where “homecomings are fraught with danger.” Edited excerpts:

Your book deals extensively with the rise of the armed movement in the 1990s. How are today’s protests different?
Mr. Peer: The main question remains unchanged. Militancy was a political response to the erosion of Kashmir’s autonomy and democratic political space by the Indian government and hence the demand for azaadi. The stone throwing is a continuation of that demand and also a reaction to the excessive militarization of Kashmir and the unabated human rights violations by the forces, mostly civilian killings in the name of counter-insurgency.

What do you think of stone-pelting as a form of protest?
Mr. Peer: Stone-pelting is an old form of political protest in Kashmir and elsewhere. Although today’s Kashmiri boys are inspired by the Palestinian intifada, the historic precedent is the protests against the despotic rule of the monarch Hari Singh in the 1930s. My job as a writer is to write about it, place it in a context, explain what motivates the stone throwers and where do they come from. I have a long piece on the subject forthcoming in the next issue of Granta.

Full interview here WSJ