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The Charge Of The Fright Brigade

By Rafiq Kathwari

22 November, 2009
Countercurrents.org

She disembarks from a bus and stands on the roadside on the bleak November morning opposite the JB Pant Children’s Hospital in Badami Bagh Cantonment on National Highway 1 in Srinagar, clutching her infant baby wrapped in a blanket, hoping to have her bundle of joy examined in the hospital across the road.

Perhaps she has travelled on the bus for an hour or two, leaving her home in Pampore or points south as far away as Pahalgam. Now, having arrived at her destination, before she can actually reach the hospital gate, she is faced with the most challenging hurdle that a mother and an infant, the universal symbol of love, should never have to face in any civil society. She must cross the road without being struck down by a car, or a motorbike or even a cyclist.

There is no zebra crossing here, no boys in navy blue with circumcised lathi in one hand and a walkie-talkie in the other, no STOP or HOSPITAL signs. Instead, when the mother takes a step forward there is a cacophony of horns. She jerks back, embracing her infant ever so tightly. It is not hard to read her face. She is pleading with fear in her eyes for a minimum level of courtesy, two good drivers to stop their vehicles on the two way road, enabling her to cross over to the hospital on the other side.

It’s like a new video game, The Charge of the Fright Brigade. Mother clutching baby in her arms steps forward to cross the road -- an angry Sumo to the right of her, an armored vehicle to the left of her, an impatient Piaggio in front of her and an arrogant white gypsy, J&K GOVT painted in lipstick red below the windscreen, behind her, all spewing fumes and blaring in yet unheard melodies -- Mother clutching an angel in her arms miraculously makes it across the road. She has been lucky today, but she should never be subjected to this horrifying experience in a democratic society, particularly Kashmiri society that prides itself on its rich cultural heritage and its traditional civility – both absent in front of the children’s hospital where they should be most apparent.

Yet she is terrorized in the post-insurgency Kashmir Valley where the laws protecting the rights of children under 18 as enshrined in the Juvenile Justice Act 1997 are not readily applicable as they are in other states of India because, under Article 370 of India’s constitution, any law passed by New Delhi must be passed by the J&K state legislature before it is made applicable here, and when the final amendment to the Act (passed by New Delhi in 2000) is applied here, it is unlikely the Act would be enforced.

Enforcement is the key, but it will not happen because the current state administration dispenses Rupees 400 crores on maintaining a Big Bureaucracy and only Rupees 40 crores on enforcing the laws stamped by that bureaucracy. It is blatantly obvious that this administration lacks vision, and not just this administration but the previous ones as well --all the way back to the first one. The floodgates of incivility in the Kashmir Valley have been opened from the top down.

But, wait a moment. Should we blame everything on weak administration, a big corrupt bureaucracy corrupt, or on India’s massive armed presence? Shouldn’t we plumb our own depths, ask the questions that need asking: Who are we? What have we done to ourselves? Where are we going? Why aren’t we already there?

On the one hand we praise our Sufi mystics to the horizon of love and, on the other, we trample on their fundamental teachings to respect our mothers and daughters and the environment in which we live. Be assured, the Sufi saints are not resting in peace under alabaster; they are in turmoil at how we have raped our forests, polluted our rivers and lakes: spewing the sewage of Srinagar, a city of 2.5 million, untreated into the Jhelum and the Dal Lake, and then we have the audacity to plant big signs commanding us to save the environment. Do we really deserve this so-called Heaven-on-Earth? Are we a good people?

In the meantime, all it will take is two boys in navy blue with their circumcised dhandas to regulate traffic in front of not just the children’s hospital but all hospitals in Srinagar, ensuring safe passage for all, from one end of the road to the other, for a civil society is ultimately judged by how well its citizens regard each other, particularly its women and children.

Rafiq Kathwari, a Kashmiri-American, is a poet and photojournalist who lives in New York, Ireland and Kashmir and can be reached at [email protected]

 


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