Doctoral student Binish Ahmed has created the first Kashmiri Indigenious rights advocacy platform at Ryerson University to draw attention to issues faced in the disputed South Asian region.
Ahmed was born and raised in Kashmir and currently lives in Toronto. Since she migrated to Canada, she has gone back and forth.
In January, Ahmed founded Kashmir Gulposh, a group “focused on peace and security as well as prosperity and Kashmir” — a mountainous region located between Pakistan and India. In a local Kashmiri language, “gulposh” refers to Kashmir as a “garden adorned with flowers.”
“We focus on centring Kashmiri voices and experiences, so what that means is we think about creative ways of articulating what it is Kashmiri people want,” Ahmed said. “It’s an outlet that allows people to deal with some pretty severe challenges.”
Tensions in Kashmir are on the rise
Kashmir has been the subject of a fierce territorial dispute between Pakistan and India since the end of Britain’s colonial reign in the region in 1947 when India and Pakistan became independent countries.
One of the major consequences of this dispute has been the number of deaths in the region. According to the Hindustan Times, in one span of 27 years 41,000 lives were lost of which 14,000 were civilian deaths.
Article 370 of the Indian Constitution gave Kashmir special status to govern under its own separate constitution. In August the Indian government, through a presidential order, revoked the article and sent thousands of troops to Kashmir and implemented a communications blockade. On Aug. 15, 2019, a genocide alert was issued for Kashmir by international human rights group Genocide Watch.
Ahmed said there is “a very deliberate targeting” of young boys and men. “Thirteen thousand have been picked up since Aug. 5, 2019, without a paper trail, taken to army camps by the Indian armed forces, and later disappeared. Ten thousand more disappeared since 1990 in the same pattern,” she said.
“Communication blockages and the ethnic cleansing of Muslims is the new normal I guess,” says third-year English student Fatima Shad Khan. “And according to some people, calling it exactly that is to spread propaganda and to indoctrinate people.”
The role of Kashmir Gulposh
Kashmir Gulposh classifies itself as an arts and intellectual organization with the goal of giving a voice to Kashmiri concerns and bringing awareness about the region to Canada. One of its recent projects has been an exhibit featuring Kashmiri artists, which took place outside the Eaton Centre last month.
“The art exhibit was a combination of a number of things. One of them being the extent of the grief that was being felt by Kashmiri community members intergenerationally here,” said Ahmed.
“Kashmiris have died and lived this gruelling reality over generations and generations. The blood that irrigates the valley of Kashmir has been spilling for over seven decades. That blood still holds power in the face of a systemic genocide and oppression. That blood is the inspiration behind my work,” said Rimshah Ahmed, one of the artists who participated.
Another artist, Shagufta Lone, said, “I chose to take part in the exhibition because it was to raise awareness for Kashmir. I am a Kashmiri and what is happening there is very disturbing and painful to me.”
Lone lived in Kashmir for around 30 years before moving to Canada. She has not been able to contact most of her extended family there since the communications blockade was implemented. She said she was only able to communicate through someone she knows outside of Kashmir, who told Lone that they are “OK.”
“And OK means that they are alive,” she said.
“I think art opens up a way to connect with people that is non-verbal. So it expands beyond the boundaries of language. Sometimes there’s language barriers that people have, we live in a very multilingual context here in Toronto,” Ahmed added.
The group will continue to work on upcoming projects at Ryerson in an effort to create more dialogue around the issue of Kashmir.
The role that Ryerson plays
“I think the Indian diaspora should be speaking out about this more vocally. A lot of people hide behind excuses of not knowing the history but you do not need a full rundown about the dispute to know that tear gassing protesters and raping women is wrong,” Khan said.
She said that if the Ryerson Indian Students Association and the Ryerson Pakistani Student Association didn’t speak up, then no one on campus will.
Neither Ryerson president Mohamed Lachemi nor any other university official has commented on the matter.