Now it is getting ugly, really ugly. The way some people here are using Kathua rape and murder case as a pretext for their unruly behavior has become a cause of huge fear and hearty-ache. Needless to say this behavior is also turning away people, and with it their sympathies for the “collective cause” – which in this case is justice to the minor victim of rape and murder and punishment to the guilty. So those in the leadership roles, who always boast of their politics as being “inherently nonviolent” and accuse governments of “violent oppression” must try and do something about it. Bloody street-fights with young students instead of being in their schools and colleges coming out on the streets to train stones and fists at anything and everything to put brakes on the normality, is completely uncalled for. And as such cannot and should not be condoned, particularly given the fact that the Kathua rape and murder case is already in the court now for judicial determination, and the state’s agencies have already done their bit. Moreover the massive sympathies and support this case has attracted from far and wide should not be spoiled and squandered by the reckless actions of a bunch of people who derive sadistic pleasure in showcasing their psychopathic tendencies. Having allowed the situation to go adrift and come this far, we can no longer accord this mayhem anymore sanctity of the status quo.
The separatist leaders even though they have already urged the young protagonists to maintain discipline during their protests, claim, and perhaps rightly, that the people and gangs mounting violent campaigns on the fellow people, are operating beyond their (separatists’) control and at “someone else’s behest”. In that case, they will have to somehow guarantee that the violent acts occur separately in time and space from the “non-violent” protest programmes announced by them week after week, and that the two are easily and clearly distinguishable to the general public here. If this is impossible, then the only recourse would be to distance aggressively and denounce publicly the non-violent behaviours, and make sure that the general population understands why that has been done.
Related posts
If one is to draw from the general rules as articulated and argued by the countless scholars and votaries of the non-violent political struggle, it is essential for the participating public to understand that when called to chip in their contribution to the “movement” by way of participation in its activities, “they are not being invited to join a new religion or change their basic world-view”. To participate in the struggle, they must keep their behavior within a certain modus operandi for the duration of the campaign. Peter Ackerman and Christopher Krugler, two leading scholars and authors of the ‘Strategic Non-violent Conflict” argue that both participating public and the leading activists “need to know what behavior is expected, in specific terms, and why it is essential to strategic success”. Obviously any deviant behavior comes with a huge unnecessary baggage of diminishing legitimacy, general embarrassment, and turning off and turning away potential supporters!
Ackerman and Krugler maintain the groups engaged in nonviolent action must “issue easily understandable codes of conduct and discipline their own members who stray.” In Kashmir context, the instructions for remaining nonviolent could include such things as injunctions against pelting stones — irrespective of the identity and circumstances of the target— for in any case, this actually compromises the safety of the common people, directly when stones are targeted at them or their vehicles, and indirectly when trained at the police and paramilitaries whose retaliation is then again directed at the people, not necessarily and certainly not always at those only who throw stones. It could also mean asking people to withdraw from a protest march or a rally or a congregation if and when they feel their resolve to remain nonviolent is giving away. Borrowing again from the authors, “keeping nonviolent discipline is neither an arbitrary nor primarily a moralistic choice; it advances the conduct of strategy.”
The least that is expected from the leadership at this juncture is to ensure that awareness of all these facts permeates all levels of their campaign. They need to understand that nonviolent campaigners too are, in so many ways like the soldiers. While the latter is trained in the efficient use of weapons, former are expected to refrain from violence even while “actively resisting in order to change the alignment of forces on the strategic and policy levels.”
