To be or not to be (with India)

Haider is the first Hindi movie that tells the story of life during the worst phase of militancy in Kashmir and the equally strong response of the Indian army. The fact that Vishal Bharadwaj adapts Hamlet to tell this story is a testament to his skill. Every aspect of Hamlet from his quest of revenge, his stress induced insanity, the sexual tension with his mother was present in the movie. But what I loved the most about this movie was that the point of view of Kashmiri separatists was not mellowed down. In fact, it was so in you face, that I am surprised the sanghis and their goons haven't gone about doing their usual drill of throwing black ink at Vishal Bharadwaj's face or demanding that the movie be banned.

I have always held a view that people should have the right to determine their destiny and nothing should be forced upon them. I have never articulated this in the Kashmiri context and this is a nice opportunity to do so.

Living in constant fear is one of the worst ways to live. And for those ten odd years the Kashmiris lived extremely horrible lives. On the one side the militants were going about terrorizing people and to compete with them the Indian state basically laid siege on the entire state. Random ID checks, restricted movement, nightly curfews, rounding up of entire villages were the norm. People the army had the least amount of suspicion on would 'disappear,' with their families having no clue of what happened to them. And these were not isolated cases. Obviously the militants were no saints, but if torture and more violence was the only response the Indian state had, there isn't much to differentiate the two.

All these are pretty much old stories. But given the passive whitewashing our media gives the situation we never hear the actual narrative. Most poeple in India in this day and age of the internet still tend to believe that most most of Kashmir as depicted in the stupidly erroneous maps that we see in our textbooks or newspapers to be Indian territory and only a small portion is in Pakistan or China's control. The fact though is about 1/3rd of that territory has not been in Indian control since our independence. A fact that is not going to change by drawing maps as we wish. We even forced google to represent it in this way and not to even use a different legend to show the disputed borders. And all this to pacify a hard-line constituency that thinks that shouting out your opposition and taking other people's freedom is super macho. So even beginning to criticize our army or  our government for forcing our army onto Kashmir is just asking for trouble.

The only people who should have a say in all this are the Kashmiris including obviously the pandits. The pandits were a group of people who actually looked to us for support and we could not defend them when the militants began terrorizing the state. And unfortunately most pandits today don't see Kashmir as a home. Its associated with too much negativity and hate. If this changes,it would probably be a prominent silver lining to this fucked up situation.

Both India and Pakistan have obviously reneged on the promises made to the people of Kashmir. Forget a plebiscite, Kashmir continues to remain a heavily militarized state. When I visited Kashmir in 2010 this stood out clearly, especially around Srinagar. There would be armed personnel(I cannot remember if they were army, paramilitary or the police) every 100 metres or so. Compare this to the rest of India where even finding a pandu with just a lathi is not the easiest thing. If you let the military decide they are always going to say that we need greater control else we will go back to terror.

Unless there are huge causalities a military does not walk out voluntarily. The Indian army may be disciplined but armed forces by default exist to put fear into people. They are not some cuddly teddy bear that protects. And however disciplined they are given the power they enjoy there will be excesses. Also once you have the taste for power who will give it up? I mean why is AFSPA(Armed forces special powers act) even a thing. Even if somebody makes some crazy argument for it in Kashmir how can it be justified in the north east. Decades after insurgency has died down there it continues to give the army a free get out of jail pass. Its like we want to alienate people there. Every now and then a home minister will say we need to remove AFSPA from there only for the army and the defense ministry to say nothing doing.

The argument that Kashmir is a special case also does not hold. Punjab saw intense militancy during the Khalistan movement. K.P.S Gill did everything the army did in Kashmir and probably more to root the militants out. But once the extremists were rooted out thing went back to being normal. People in punjab don't live in the shadow of the gun. Why should people in Kashmir and the north-east have to.  Also we share a super long border with Pakistan. Why is it that only Kashmir is so heavily militarized?

Keeping the militarization aside for a moment a lot of people in India love to make the argument that Indian tax payers have funded a lot of development activity in Kashmir. How we have constructed roads and dams and bridges and the railways. I don't know if they pause to think once in a while. But these are classic arguments provided by colonial powers. The British provided almost the exact same arguments when they colonized us. Heaven, without the freedom of choice, is not heaven after all. A lot of people died to help us achieve freedom. For us to then turn around and use this freedom to colonize another set of people is extraordinarily fucked up.

Given the economic growth India as a whole has seen and the goodwill generated by the inflow of most tourists from India, all you know, Kashmiris, at least in the parts that have been controlled by the Indian state, will choose to throw in their lot with us. If people in India really think Kashmir is that important then we should convince them that aligning with us is the sensible thing to do. Subjugating the people by force is not how this should be achieved. This will only produce the opposite of your aims. Eventually, I submit, it is for the people themselves to determine their future.

Sell dreams to win elections

When a movie is made about the current Indian elections, something that can serve as a great reference point would be a Chilean movie called No. This was nominated for the Best foreign film Oscars last year. The major theme of the movie was that you cannot fight a message of hope and happiness especially if you are running a reactive campaign. The movie, which was inspired by true events, was set in the context of the Chilean referendum in the late 80's to determine fate of the then dictator Augusto Pinochet. The campaign trying to defeat him was initially focused solely on the wrongdoings of Pinochet and the atrocities he committed in trying to win the battle. A lot of their efforts were being censored by the government and they were finding it difficult to get their message across. At this point they brought along a media expert to run their campaign who completely changed the face of the campaign. The focus of the campaign was instead changed to selling hope. This was their central campaign advertisement. It is nothing more than a catchy tune with happy people all of whom are saying if no is chosen, happiness won't be far behind. With this and the rest of their campaign they steered the imagination of their country to start associating a happy future with the No campaign. The No campaign eventually won the plebiscite.

While he didn't face the same obstacles of censorship and authoritarianism, Narendra Modi and the BJP in this electoral campaign did succeed in capturing the imagination of India's youth like never before. They succeeded in associating a message of hope with Modi. (Modi's campaign slogan Achche din aane wale hain even roughly translates to the song in the Chilean advertizement I linked which means Happiness is coming, Chile).  Doing so was an extraordinary feat for his marketing team. The man has been strongly associated with hate and anger since 2002. People who support Modi can claim that he has been exonerated by the SIT, but a stigma has remained. Removing that stigma and then refocusing his brand towards a positive image required some doing. And in the last 10 years or so they have been slowly chipping away at this. There are a couple of excellent truth v/s hype episodes on this subject. They systematically ignored even mention of the riots and slowly starting with the vibrant gujrat campaign they started selling Gujrat and Modi as destinations of development and progress. These campaigns were a mixed bag in attracting investors but definitely created an image of a state that is investor friendly.

After having created this image they decided to sell it to rest of the country. A great dish is never perfect without the last bit of tadka. And here is where the organizational efficiency of the BJP/RSS and the oratorical capabilities of Modi came into the picture. They kept repeating that they will bring progress at the top of their voices while using their organization to spread a message of cynicism and gloom against the current dispensation. It is not particularly difficult to do so, when the leader of the government, the prime minister, does not wish to speak and when the leader of the political party speaks, one wishes he would stop.

It is futile to fight a message of hope in a reactive campaign. If you start reacting with positive campaigns of your own you would be seen as a me too party. If you start defending yourself with your achievements you would lose anyway since you are now on the defensive. You will forever be answering questions and never relay your message. People may not even remember your answer as the questioner has already moved on to the next set of questions. If you try discrediting this message of hope with a message of gloom your loss will be complete. Now not only are you reacting and defensive but also associating your campaign with a negative message. I may not have studied marketing, but I can assure you nobody likes that. People will say let us at least give the other guy who is selling us dreams of heaven a chance. Especially when you have nothing to offer except scaring us about the dream merchant.The Congress and its marketing strategists decided that the third option was the best.

They could have started the campaigning with energy and seized the initiative with a positive message. They could have focused on their positives from the start and asked for an opportunity to improve upon this. They decided its not worth it. If a small state like Gujrat with a growth rate of 10% can sell itself so well, the whole country growing at 7.8% during the same time can definitely be sold. Both function on the same plank of free market capitalism anyway. How much ever the opposition might discredit them, there have been a record number of people who were propelled out of poverty in the last 10 years. Almost the entire country has been connected by roads. They could have talked about the fact that the entire nation has been electrified under their watch. They could have spoken about the fact that there are a billion mobile phone connections in the country. Yes, the BJP could have countered each of those by saying that the last three years the growth rate has been shrinking and the government is rudderless. They could have said the roads are in poor condition, and that while there might be a billion phone connections a billion gazillion rupees were stolen by corrupt officials in the process. But facts are irrelevant in a marketing campaign. In this scenario you are the message of hope and the BJP the message of cynicism and negativity. Especially given that the tadka of maligning the extreme right wing of the BJP and using that to gain a portion of the votes has already been applied.

The Congress did start on a disadvantageous footing, and this was completely of their own doing. After years of prostrating to a family instead of ideology, they reached an endgame where they were being led by the worst that family could offer. Given everything, Indira, Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi were fairly efficient administrators with some amount of charisma. Their governance schemes mostly matched the Congress' original ideology as well. Rahul on the other has the charisma of a polar bear in the Chennai heat. He probably has the same amount of brain power too. Given the scale of this defeat hopefully they quickly shunt him out and start rebuilding ground up with a new set of leaders. Either that or a new force will quickly need to be developed to occupy the left of center space quickly. Given that a more leftist worldview would not be palatable with most of my fellow countrymen, the days of a polity with a more centrist worldview would be the days I would be personally hoping for. Here is hoping that the days till then are also achche din!