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And Such Is Kashmir!

By Ghulam Mohammad Khan

12 November, 2015
Countercurrents.org

If you want to kill a human being without any fear of the law, or want to see everyday-street-battles between a flamboyant youth and a panoptic army, or any cases of horrible human rights violation, or anything about political cunning, deceit and deception, the valley of Kashmir would be indubitably the best option. Here is a strange system of justice; you will not be charged for a murder, I assure, but there are chances you may get the reward for that; reward for your heroism. Our valley is one of the few places – I hope you know these few places; they are like our own valley – where you have the license to kill. One thing more, the powerful manufacturers of the common consent in the valley can never be a threat to your adventure; they may provide you with the necessary equipment, and in case you are caught – that is beyond the bounds of possibility – they may surreptitiously (I hope you know much of the Politics is done surreptitiously and what we usually see politicians doing is actually a secondary politics) arrange your escape. History vindicates it - I don’t mean the Big Brother’s version of history - our valley has seen all the frightful faces of barbarism and treachery. Let’s know about one such frightful event of barbarism in the very recent political history of Kashmir.

On November 7th 2015 Prime Minister visited the valley of Kashmir and the same day was one of the worst days of emergency and military rule in Kashmir. Curfew and strict restrictions were imposed; the roads were secured for the pounding by heavy military combat boots, markets and other centers of business were closed to worsen the already fragile economic health of the state, the internet services were suspended to stave off the circulation of public resentment (only the Big Brother’s media industry was allowed for the coverage of events of the woeful day), and hundreds of Pro-Kashmir activists and their supporters with anonymous crimes were arrested by the police. Why should all this happen when it was only the visit of the Prime Minister who claims, “India is incomplete without Kashmiriyat”?

Why should there be such tough security arrangements to let the Prime Minister announce just an economic package for the state, the streets of which suffocated under the clonking boots of the lug iron beast? It was the same day when democracy was murdered ten thousandth time in the already blood-stained streets of Srinagar; when the world knew all the thick and thin about the Kashmir imbroglio, the wily capitalist monarch flaunted the same superannuated and hyperbolic rhetoric.

Fortunately, the spectators (calling them listeners would be comparatively an irrelevant and ambiguous term) were not totally Kashmiris; an absolutely astonishing part of the crowd hailed from Bihar and other states of the country. Even the Kashmiri spectators were not the real Kashmiri people – I mean the People who make possible a real, successful and flawless parliamentary democracy - , they were the asinine, ill-advised party workers who are sold like petty wares in the dirty market of political exchange every day.

It was the same day when Kashmir was horribly, unprecendently fortified, but still the voice of resistance broke in the alleys of Zainakot where the young lad Gowher wrote with his own blood on every single scrap of the soil the same story of loss, struggle, injustice, death and distress. Yes! Gowher was killed on the same day when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the Valley of Kashmir. He was not any Wanted militant or any across-the border-trained Pakistani insurgent, he was Gowher Ahmad Dar, an innocent, young student, who chose not to listen to the Prime Minister. He was hit in head by a shell (his family later confirmed it was a bullet; this is how the Big brother’s and the politically subaltern citizen’s versions of the narrative vary) fired by the camouflaged men to ensure their King that the truth was buried and the way was cleared for his perfect Hindi rhetoric. It was the same day when even a single school was not open, even in the remotest villages of the valley, leave alone the city.

Tell me how much you like this one day in the lives of the people of Kashmir? After listening to all your answers to this question, I will say to all of you only this reality: all other days are same in the Wail of Kashmir.

Ghulam Mohammad Khan, PhD Scholar at Central University of Kashmir
Email: [email protected]

 



 

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