“Before leaving that night, my friend asked me if I knew what Einstein had once said: “I do not know how the Third World War will be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in the Fourth—rocks!” Perhaps, it was not so much about the Fourth World War, but war in the Fourth World, the one that lies buried under the first three. The Third World has forgotten that it was once colonized, controlled, enslaved. It celebrates its freedom, but under its feet it tramples those for whom dates like 1947 don’t resonate freedom, but rather its opposite. This Fourth World lies strewn across the world in patches, disconnected, dismembered, and beleaguered. Or, perhaps, the Fourth World War is on after all. It started before the Third, and is being fought with stones.”
It was a June afternoon of a sleepy hartal day in 2009. Kashmir was hotter than any summer in previous memory. On a hartal day, everything would be shut down in protest, and the streets would simmer with anger. Protests against the rape and murder of two women, attacked by Indian soldiers in an adjoining town the week before, had reached the boiling point as the India-loyalist local government refused to admit that the crime had taken place. To remain in the Indian army’s good books, the local government argued that the women had drowned in water. The bodies had been found on the banks of a gently flowing stream no more than knee deep, in close proximity to three large Indian security camps. Why the bodies had struggle wounds, why at least one was found stark naked—for these questions, the government had no answer. Clampdowns and extended curfews, the government’s old strategies, followed its failure to answer or investigate impartially—a chronic problem under the military occupation. (…)
Stone wars test human endurance, and their long history in Kashmir also says something about the collective endurance of Kashmiris. No one remembers anymore when the stone wars began in Kashmir. There is a legend that it was a practice invented in the older neighborhoods of Kashmir’s capital city, Srinagar, more than a century back, and deployed first against oppressive moneylenders and then against the region’s autocratic rulers. Older Kashmiris remember throwing stones at the cavalcade of Indian Prime Minister Nehru on one of his visits to Kashmir. They hold him responsible for occupying Kashmir against the wishes of Kashmir’s inhabitants. As India became the hungriest and poorest nuclear weapons state in the world, Kashmiris persisted with throwing stones at symbols of its presence in their country. (…)
Hum kya chahte? Azadi!—What do we want? Freedom! Ae zaalim-o ae jaabir-o, Kashmir hamara chhodh do!—O tyrants, o oppressors, quit our Kashmir!
The first tear gas shells started landing on the protesters a few minutes after the slogans began. A few enterprising young boys had brought big, wet jute bags with them, and instantly placed them over the shells spurting noxious gas. One boy even managed to catch a couple straight into his bag. Everyone clapped and whistled. This was an old game. Both sides were good at it. In the distance, a couple of armored cars appeared on the scene and started driving quickly toward the crowd, which just as quickly splintered into the alleys. As the lead car reached where the protesters had been, a spatter of stones greeted it. The car stood there as if stupefied, unable to move, unsure of its purpose. No one came out of it. The intensity of stones increased. The car retreated. The stone warriors returned in triumphant joy. They had won the first round. The slogans grew shriller. Bharat ko ragda, ye ragda!—We clobbered India, here we did! See-Aar-Pee (CRP) ko ragda, ye ragda!–We clobbered the CRP, yes here we did! (…)
I reached home with eyes red and itchy. Nobody believed that I had only watched. My hands were inspected carefully. “How did you manage to run in your sandals? You should have worn proper shoes!” I should have. My mother was right. She told me about young boys who had died over the years throwing stones.
“How is this going to help?” she pleaded. “No one in the world gives a care.”
Those who threw stones knew that the world didn’t care. Perhaps, they also didn’t care for such a world. I told my mother what I had heard all along: “Then what else can Kashmiris do?”