Kashmir 3-pack
3 CDs
Includes:
Modi, Hindutva & Kashmir
"India's democracy is being systematically disassembled,” says renowned writer and activist Arundhati Roy. She adds, “Any kind of dissent is just smashed with an iron fist." Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party openly espouse Hindutva, a racist ideology rooted in a mythical past and fueled by magical thinking. It’s a supremacist doctrine that privileges and elevates one group, Hindus, over all others. Its animus toward Muslims is particularly acute but Christians and other minorities also incur its wrath. Hindutva nationalists want to dominate Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state. The Himalayan region has endured decades of occupation by hundreds of thousands of Indian troops. There is resistance. Tens of thousands of Kashmiris are dead and missing. Human rights violations are routine. Yet the Kashmiri quest for azadi, freedom, continues.
Azadi! Freedom!
"Azadi!"—Urdu for "Freedom!"—is the slogan of the freedom struggle in Kashmir against Indian occupation. Abroad, New Delhi promotes itself as the world’s largest democracy. At home, the picture is quite different. India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, the BJP, led by Narendra Modi espouses Hindutva, Hindu nationalism. It promotes Islamophobia and stifles dissent. What it wants from largely Muslim Kashmir is submission. To ensure that it has deployed hundreds of thousands of troops making the Himalayan region the most densely militarized zone on earth. Kashmir is an unresolved issue dating back to the partition of India in 1947. For decades Kashmiris have been in revolt against Indian rule. Many tens of thousands have been killed. Many more have been displaced. What do Kashmiris want? Azadi. Interviewed by David Barsamian.
Kashmir: Telling the Story
I interviewed Khurram Parvez in Srinagar, Kashmir in February 2011. When I returned to India that September to follow up on reporting on the mass graves in Kashmir, I was denied entry by the Indian government. I’ve been banned from India ever since. Sadly, this interview is still relevant. Since August 2019 the Hindu nationalist regime ruling India has imposed even harsher conditions on Kashmiris and eliminated what little autonomy they had. This story needs to be told. But the G20 won’t hear it. Its tourism officials are visiting Kashmir in late May in what will be an orchestrated photo-op extolling the valley’s natural beauties and comparing Kashmir to paradise. Kashmir is off the media radar screen. India has carefully controlled the narrative. Interview by David Barsamian.
Speakers
Mohamad Junaid
Mohamad Junaid grew up in Kashmir in the 1990s and witnessed the rise of resistance against Indian rule. He has written on Kashmir in various newspapers and magazines and is a contributor to Until My Freedom Has Come, Of Occupation and Resistance and Kashmiri Futures. He teaches at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.
Sanjay Kak
Sanjay Kak is a New Delhi-based, award-winning independent documentary filmmaker and journalist. His films include How We Celebrate Freedom, Words on Water and Red Ant Dream. He is editor of the books Until My Freedom Has Come: The New Intifada in Kashmir and Witness.
Khurram Parvez
Khurram Parvez, a Kashmiri human rights activist, is the program coordinator of the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society. He has been jailed by the Indian government since November 2021 joining many other Kashmiris behind bars. Time named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world calling him a “modern-day David.” Arundhati Roy calls him “one of the most remarkable people that I know. He and the organization he works for have for years meticulously documented the saga of torture, enforced disappearances, and death visited upon the people of Kashmir.”
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