Volume 50, Number 3 · February 27, 2003
Kashmir: One Cheer for Democracy
By Pankaj Mishra
It did not snow much in the valley of Kashmir this December, but the cold and the fog were severe. No one seemed to suffer from them more intensely than the soldiers from South India as they huddled behind improvised bunkers of sandbags and tarpaulins at street corners in the capital city, Srinagar. Hundreds of thousands of Indian soldiers have been fighting the anti-India insurgency, which was begun by Kashmiri Muslims in 1989– 1990 and which is now supported by several radical Islamist groups based in Pakistan. Things haven't changed much for these soldiers, although in October the Hindu nationalist government in New Delhi began withdrawing the troops it had mobilized in battle-ready positions along India's border with Pakistan after blaming Pakistan for a terrorist attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001.
Feature, 3784 words
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