Fronteirs of Agenda

Ethnography, Solidarity and Outrage in Kashmir: Reflections on Saiba Varma’s 'Occupied Clinic' https://thewire.in/books/ethnography-solidarity-and-outrage-in-kashmir-reflections-on-saiba-varmas-occupied-clinic
Even while the letters attacking Varma have triggered a significant amount of noise, I found much of the debate disappointing for its brevity, shrillness and unanimity.

Ethnography, Solidarity and Outrage in Kashmir:
https://thewire.in/books/ethnography-solidarity-and-outrage-in-kashmir-reflections-on-saiba-varmas-occupied-clinic

Saiba Varma’s book, Occupied Clinic: Militarism and Care in Kashmir (2020), documents implications of the ongoing militarisation and counterinsurgency in Kashmir through an intensive ethnography of mental health facilities in the region.

However, a few months ago, the context of its production came under attack when an anonymous Twitter account “Settler Scholarship”, claiming to represent Kashmiri scholars, charged the author with having failed to disclose her father’s professional involvement in counterinsurgency in Kashmir and thus having kept her informants and colleagues in the dark.

Given the prevailing conditions in Kashmir, the person or persons behind the anonymous handle said they felt too vulnerable to come out in the open and take a public stand.

The book’s Indian publisher, Yoda Press, scrapped plans to bring out a local edition.

Even while the letters attacking Varma have triggered a significant amount of noise, I found much of the debate disappointing for its brevity, shrillness and unanimity, particularly because it concerns a book-length academic work on which the author has invested more than a decade. Such brevity and what appeared to be a rush to trash the scholar and her work – noticeably without any focus on the work itself.
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Varma deploys the concepts .. against the vocabularies of psychiatric treatment, torture and formal facilities of care..The institutions involved measure their success and failure in their own terms and run their procedures with total disregard to what people are trying to say, claim and at times give up their lives for. Thus, animation of local words like Kamzori (35-42), Karant (115-116), or the locally appropriated English ones like Duty (196-199) help Varma texture the worldview of ordinary Kashmiri subjects..
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Why does Varma not reflect on herself and her background in her work that concerns mental health and trauma induced by counterinsurgency when her own self is indirectly but intimately – via her father – implicated in the project?
.. many scholars working on different subjects may also not be able to come up with specific reasons for why they chose to study X or Y – perhaps her father’s role as a counterinsurgent unconsciously animated her choice.

If we assume that to be the case, why would the scholar in Varma not make it a subject of her analysis? Several lines of research suggest themselves:

What does it mean to be the offspring of a counterinsurgent, an intelligence official or a police officer implicated in a dirty war against a civilian population and its political aspirations?
Posed differently, how do we understand the sons and (mostly) daughters of Indian officers involved in the most repressive, masculinised professions aligned with the Indian establishment, frequently venturing into empathetic intellectual and activist enterprises in Kashmir or similar places elsewhere? .. Gowhar Fazili

क्या नेहरू कश्मीर समस्या के लिए जिम्मेदार थे?|| Ashok Kumar Pandey  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQz5yG6T5Jo Jul 1, 2021
व्हाट्सप्प दुष्प्रचारों को जवाब #Credible History में

Farooq Abdullah Shouts, Tears Up in Interview on J&K, Muslims in Modi's India, Opposition Disunity
205,846 viewsDec 22, 2021 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD78A47fsLE 
In a 40-minute interview to Karan Thapar for The Wire, Farooq Abdullah, a three-time former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir and the President of the National Conference, said the people of Kashmir feel “rejected”. He said they feel “as if they are being pushed away”. He said the situation was like “a volcano which could explode”. Asked what would be the outcome if the volcano exploded he said: “It will take the nation with it” adding “nothing will survive”.

Speaking about what it’s like to be a Muslim in Narendra Modi’s India, Farooq Abdullah had a short, sharp, blunt answer: “It’s terrible”.

In one of the most powerful moments in the interview, Farooq Abdullah dissolved in prolonged tears when he spoke about the lack of opposition unity and how “ego” was dividing parties like the Trinamool Congress and Congress. He said he believes Mamata Banerjee feels deeply hurt by the fact Congress did not help her but instead fought against her when she was being challenged by the BJP in the recent state elections in West Bengal.

Prime Time With Ravish Kumar: क्या कोई जानता है Kashmir में क्या हो रहा है?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQek6TIWq0s
Oct 19, 2021

(ggogle translate) If you want to know what is happening in Jammu and Kashmir, then you will ask someone or the other. The statement of the army and the police gives information about any incident, but politically, the voice of what is happening inside Kashmir will come from those who are accountable. So much is happening yet there is no detailed press conference on Kashmir. Apart from this, other traditional avenues have either been closed or weakened such as political parties, civil organisations, NGOs and the media. After the abolition of Article 370 on August 5, 2019, if you consider the condition of all these, then you will know that you have only the dock media to know on Kashmir, which itself does not know what is happening there. More than two years have passed since the abrogation of Article 370, neither the restoration of the state nor the concrete steps regarding the political process.