4/17/24, 3:36 PM
Limited Vocabulary, Unlimited Jingoism: India's Response to UN Report on Kashmir
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Limited Vocabulary, Unlimited
Jingoism: India's Response to UN
Report on Kashmir
Aman
10/Jul/2019
5 min read
India's perfunctory response citing bias, and the con
dence that people
will be convinced by this, is deeply problematic.
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A 2016 photograph showing women at a sit-in protest against the killing of civilians in
Srinagar. Photo: PTI
Last year around this time, the Office of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) came out with the first-ever
report on human rights abuses on both sides of the Line of Control in
Kashmir.
The report met with huge furore in India and the Central government
reacted strongly, calling it “fallacious, tendentious and motivated”. Its
response, however,
displayed very little detail or reason and absolutely
no respect for the law and human rights.
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4/17/24, 3:36 PM
Limited Vocabulary, Unlimited Jingoism: India's Response to UN Report on Kashmir
Latest
India at UN, Geneva
@ ndiaUNGeneva · Follow
Response by @MEAIndia :
"India rejects the report. It is fallacious, tendentious and
motivated. We question the intent in bringing out such a
report.
It is a selective compilation of largely unverified
information. It is overtly prejudiced and seeks to build a
false narrative.”
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There were also personal attacks on the “Kashmir-baiter”, “Pakistanlover” (and Muslim!) Zeid Hussein, who was high commissioner when
the report was published.
This was despite the report having been severely critical of Pakistan
and the several clarifications issued by the OHCHR about the
methodology it used and its motivations. The OHCHR even gave a
dignified response to some outlandish arguments including the
allegation (based on a photograph of Zeid with three individuals from
Pakistan-administered Kashmir) that the Inter-Services Intelligence or
ISI was associated with the report.
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In an unprecedented move, Zeid himself responded to some rebuttals
in a compelling piece and said that the report was indeed “motivated —
motivated by the desire to contribute to the search for peace and justice
in Kashmir”. He urged people to read it in that spirit.
Despite this, editorials in inf luential, popular newspapers kept calling
this a pro-Pakistan report and labelled Zeid a biased man. Some
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Limited Vocabulary, Unlimited Jingoism: India's Response to UN Report on Kashmir
quarters even expressed a “sigh of relief” as Michelle Bachelet
replaced him as high commissioner.
Limited vocabulary
On July 8, 2019, the OHCHR came out with its second report on
Kashmir with updates on the situation from May 2018 to April 2019.
India’s response to the latest report, interestingly, was
exactly the same
as its response to the first. It called the report “fallacious, tendentious
and [politically] motivated“.
This was partly amusing for two reasons. One, to know that the
Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) is running out of hollow adjectives
to use whenever India is questioned about Kashmir. More
interestingly, this report was published under the new high
commissioner who was seen by Delhi as a fair and objective observer,
unlike her predecessor.
This is also indicative of something deeply problematic — the Indian
government feels that these adjectives are
sufficient to convince people
of the report’s problems.
This confidence is also because since the publication of the report, most
Indian media outlets have only focused on the government’s anguish
over the report, and hardly on the contents of the report itself (see
here, here and here for examples).
A father comforts his son who, he said, was injured by pellets shot by security forces in
Srinagar following weeks of violence in Kashmir on August 18, 2016. Photo: Cathal
McNaughton/Reuters
Sadly, the report ignored the only addition to India’s replies to the
serious human rights violations the second time around: “the sustained
and comprehensive socio-economic development efforts by India in
Kashmir”.
Such a response is only comparable to Jared Kushner’s absurd,
ignorant and deeply dangerous “economic peace plan” claim in
Palestine.
Unlimited jingoism
The issue, however, extends to a sentiment in many that such silence by
India must be defended and promoted whenever the issue of Kashmir
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Limited Vocabulary, Unlimited Jingoism: India's Response to UN Report on Kashmir
comes up. In the context of the first report on Kashmir, former senior
diplomat Satish Chandra wrote how the Centre’s decision to limit the
powers of observers like the OHCHR is a sound state strategy.
His concerns stemmed from another piece by ex-IPS officer Vappala
Balachandran who praised the Narasimha Rao government which
allowed the first international human rights organisation, the
International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), to assess the situation in
Kashmir in the 1990s. Balachandran called that a great move, despite
the ’90s being a “more troublesome period for India’s human rights
image on Kashmir,” as India had “nothing to hide”.
Leaving aside the statist reduction of human rights to an issue of
images or headaches for state, it is ironic that this ICJ report of 1995
unearthed much that was actually hidden from the Indian narratives.
In fact, it even questioned the legality of India’s continued control of
Kashmir.
Chandra wrote that it was pointless to engage with such ‘biased’
missions which were ostensibly lacking in objectivity, perspective and
accuracy. Pakistan, too, argued that the parts pertaining to it lacked
objectivity.
However, Chandra’s biggest concern was that the ICJ report was “antiIndian” and that “such a report on such issues is something best
avoided”
Chandra says the government back then was compelled to undertake a
“damage limitation” exercise. This involved negotiations with the then
ICJ secretary general Adama Dieng, who was described (like Michelle
Bachelet) as someone “well-disposed towards India”.
Insha Mushtaq, 15, lost vision in both eyes in July 2016 after being hit by shotgun
pellets. Photo: Amnesty International
Little did Dieng know then that even he may now lose his “unbiased”
tag (also like Michelle Bachelet) as soon as it is discovered that Dieng,
now the UN secretary general’s special adviser for the prevention of
genocide, had recently asked countries like India to show “moral
leadership” in the region and “not bury its head in sand” when it comes
to the Rohingya crisis.
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Limited Vocabulary, Unlimited Jingoism: India's Response to UN Report on Kashmir
No one is unbiased enough to sit over a review of human rights issues
in Kashmir, let alone discuss causes of such human rights violations.
Espousing a “no-response/no-engagement” stance is further
problematic because it ref lects a dangerous entrenchment of
unshakable narratives of history, sovereignty and human rights.
This support for “no-response” is increasingly gaining ground.
Chandra refers to a “50 page pungent response” by India in response to
the ICJ report. Without going into the merits of the response, it must be
noted that there was at least a response.
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Similarly, even while denying access to Amnesty International to
Kashmir, the government at least engaged with Amnesty on its 1995
report on torture; and its 1993 report on impunity and
disappearances. This is unlike the last two times where India has said
nothing besides hurling the same adjectives at a well-evidenced account
of violations.
Value of response or the lack of it
Such engagements are not necessarily constructive and honest.
However, the lack of a response citing bias and the belief that people
will buy into such a self-fulfilling understanding of bias is more
problematic. This is not just with respect to the proponents of such
responses but also the ones receiving these without question.
Whenever Kashmir comes up we immediately recede into a cocoon
which is comfortable for our conscience and politics. The reports act as
triggers to at least begin questioning.
It also exposes us to the extent of rights violations that we are shielded
from in our everyday lives. As the human rights lawyer, Shrimoyee
Nandini Ghosh rightly points out, these reports give a “faint glimmer
of a dream, that it would give us Indians the courage to think the
unthinkable, to reorient our moral and cartographic compasses, and
begin to see Kashmir for once not as a question of their alienation from
us, but of our own increasing alienation and isolation from the world at
large.”
Aman is a human rights lawyer working in Delhi and Srinagar. He
tweets at @CB_Aman.
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