Re: Re: Re: Why socialism is necessary

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 24 May 2002 21:41:53 -0700 (PDT), Anthony D'Costa wrote:
>I don't think it is economic deprivation that is
>the cause of the Kashmir problem per se.

Well, poverty is never the direct cause of violence. Violence usually
is produced through a combination of poverty and some kind of
obscurantist ideology run amok, either nationalist or clerical--in
Kashmir a combination of the two. In any case, most commentators
agree that economic desperation in the Himalayan region, including
Nepal, is driving people to pick up the gun.

The New York Times, July 11, 2001, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

War-Weary Kashmiris Contemplate the Price of Peace

By JOHN F. BURNS

SRINAGAR, Kashmir-- Before dawn each day, Nazir Ahmed, bone-thin and
stubble-bearded, rises, dons heavily patched trousers and a
sweat-stained shirt, and faces Mecca for his prayers. Then, under the
fading glimmer of the stars, he sets out with a rickety handcart, his
route framed by a silvery lake, distant Himalayan peaks and
centuries-old high-domed mosques.

Once he reaches the city's main bazaar, Mr. Ahmed loads his cart with
bunches of bruised bananas, and on a good day, hawking down the
sinuous alleyways of this crumbling city, he can earn 80 rupees,
about $1.70. At 25, his life is like that of thousands of young
Kashmiri Muslims, whose poverty has helped provide an inexhaustible
recruiting pool for Muslim separatists. Since 1989, they have fought
to wrench the state out of Hindu-majority India and set it on a
course toward independence or integration with Muslim-majority
Pakistan in a conflict that has cost more than 30,000 lives.

But as he sold the last of his bananas the other day, Mr. Ahmed said
plainly what many other Kashmiris might not yet be daring to admit:
that the peace that almost everybody here craved might require that
they accept that this half of Kashmir will remain, for the indefinite
future, a part of India.

"It's obvious to everybody now that India will never leave Kashmir,"
he said. "So if we want an end to the killing, we will have to accept
that we will have to continue as part of India. If we go on fighting
for independence, or for Pakistan, we will starve."

--
Louis Proyect, lnp3@xxxxxxxxx on 05/25/2002

Marxism list: http://www.marxmail.org