Every year we celebrate Kashmir solidarity day on February 5th. We claim to stand solid with Kashmiris in their miseries and inflicted misfortunes. It has been more than four decades now that we claim to stand beside them but unable to ease their pain. It could be considered a futile effort if we don’t understand the cognitive basis of human solidarity.

WE ARE A PROSOCIAL NATION AND FIRMLY BELIEVE IN FRAMING EMPATHY THROUGH SELECTIVE PROJECTION

Solidarity also called prosocial behavior is an important form of empathetic behavior, is essential for maintaining positive social relationships and promoting social adjustment. Prosocial behavior was defined as behavior through which people benefit others, including helping, cooperating, comforting, sharing, and donating.

The competence of being able to use a moral compass is the ability to make moral judgments and to act according to these judgments. I can proudly claim that as a nation our moral compass is fully intact so the point of being effective and affective is irrelevant here.

KASHMIRIS ARE NOT THE ONLY VICTIMS OF INDIAN INHUMANE RUTHLESSNESS. LET’S NOT FORGET INDIAN PUNJAB, NAGALAND, GUJRAT, BIHAR, AND TAMIL NADU.

We are a prosocial nation and firmly believe in framing empathy through selective projection. Human attention is selective so any effort to direct it toward something more important can put the elements in the foreground. We are foregrounding all the misdoings done by oppressors in any way or form.

I will admit that in Kashmir’s case we find ourselves in a dark maze of lies and deceits. Remember India has not created this maze of manipulation just for Kashmiris. Kashmiris are not the only victims of Indian inhumane ruthlessness. Let’s not forget Indian Punjab, Nagaland, Gujrat, Bihar, and Tamil Nadu.

KASHMIRIS ARE BEING RAPED, KILLED, AND TORTURED BECAUSE THEY HAVE EMPATHY BECAUSE THEY CAN FEEL THE PAIN BEING INFLICTED ON THEM, THEY RETALIATE BECAUSE THEY CAN NO LONGER BEAR IT HOWEVER OPPRESSOR HAS NO SUCH HUMAN TRAITS

History has taught us that India has only one way of dealing with any voice of freedom for the right to live and to die and that is being anti-social. Being anti-social means that you don’t have empathy and you are insensitive to pain, emotions, and thus humanity. This is a cognitive disorder where someone becomes irresponsive to all human emotions, in that case inflicting pain and torturing others become as possible as for an animal.

Kashmiris are being raped, killed, and tortured because they have empathy because they can feel the pain being inflicted on them, they retaliate because they can no longer bear it however oppressor has no such human traits. Atrocities India is committing in Kashmir can counter any massacre available in history books. The extermination level is so high that one can forget Genghis Khan.

THE SO-CALLED LARGEST DEMOCRACY HAS EARNED THE NAME OF ADANI AMBANI’S INDIA WHERE ANYTHING LESS THAN THAT IS SIMPLY UNACCEPTABLE

All those who are normal and still have empathy in India are traitors and being treated as a criminal. My deepest concern is the level of incompetence of our neighbor India. Not only India is exercising inhuman activities with full confidence but with remarkable incompetence. A competent enemy is far better than an incompetent, incapacitated one.

A series of recent events have exposed that Indian intelligence services plan a mission and it becomes a slap on their face right away. The matter of Pulwama attack, Gujrat riots, and now Kisan Morcha. Whenever and wherever the Indian government tries to manipulate the truth it gets exposed bluntly by their people.

The so-called largest democracy has earned the name of Adani Ambani’s India where anything less than that is simply unacceptable. Being ambitious is not a bad thing but the level of ambition in which either an Indian citizen has to be Adani and Ambani or otherwise he will be treated as Shoodars (untouchable). So future of India seems to be a piece of land with a cruel division between humanities, two sides of society one who is corporate giants and the other living in a primitive way, without even basic human rights. Poverty, disease, hunger, crime will be destitute of that other half. What will be the point of being economic power if your countrymen are incarcerated in death and hunger? Incapsulating the Indian society by the corporate giant to fulfill their never-ending desire of having control of everything, everything means virtually everything, air, water, land, and sky.

Let’s add Indians to Kashmir solidarity Day because they are also suffering from fascism and over-ambitious capitals, let’s include minorities of Gujrat as they are tired of mourning their dead ones, let’s show our solidarity to Nagaland, whose jungles are long looking for peace and prosperity.

Let’s tell Kashmiris that they are not alone that they are not the only victim, India is torturing Indians, India is suffocating their elderly farmers, India is burning its Gujrat youth, India is target killing their Sikhs, India is arresting its intellectuals, India is humiliating its police and India is making fun of its intelligence agency.

We stand in solidarity with all who are suffering, with all who need help to get their voice heard. We stand in solidarity against one common enemy India and its inhumanity.

We stand in solidarity and demand from the empathetic world to intervene and save humanity.

By Prof Shazia Cheema

The writer Shazia Cheema is an analyst writing for national and international media outlets including Pakistan Observer, Eurasia Diary, InSight, and Mina News Agency. She heads the Thought Center of Dispatch News Desk (DND). She did her MA in Cognitive Semiotics from Aarhus University Denmark and is currently registered as a Ph.D. Scholar of Semiotics and Philosophy of Communication at Charles University Prague.