Agar firdaus bar roo-e zameen ast, Hameen ast-o hameen ast-o hameen ast.
If there is Paradise on Earth it is here, it is here, is how the Sufi-Saint poet Amir Khusro had described Kashmir when he had laid his eyes upon the Kashmir valley. India and Pakistan have been in a state of war since 1947 and in the midst of these disputes is stuck a landmass of 222,236 sq km that is hollering for autonomy (Azaadi).
Even though I face some uneasiness in putting this up, they say if you maintain neutrality during instances of oppression, you side with the oppressor, well, here is what, I don’t.
A few days ago, a video surfaced on the Internet where the Kashmiri youth seemed to be pelting stones at some men from the armed forces, it got everybody’s blood boiling, then there surfaced another video in which some Jawans tied a local to an army jeep and people called it tit for tat.
A video of people pelting stones at army men makes your blood boil, yet you don’t get enraged by the fact that the By-elections held in Kashmir saw a voter turn out of 7%, which clearly shows their faith in the government, you don’t get enraged by the fact that their stones are often answered by bullets, that eight people were killed on voting day, It is not about one video, It’s about controlling an area using the military for 30 long years (The Armed forces, special power Act, 1990) but you don’t get enraged because you do not know what it is like to live in a state of emergency for thirty years, Where the army holds the autonomy to execute anybody it suspects of treason.
Can we really blame these kids? Thirty years of military control in Kashmir has turned the youth into militants. Bhagat Singh, the great freedom fighter had himself said that it takes a loud voice to make the deaf hear and it takes a louder voice to make a government hear, who has turned a deaf ear to your demands ever since the nation woke to freedom. Kashmiris deserve the referendum that was promised to them.
While I understand that the army is only doing what they’ve been told to do, in the name of the beautiful books that I read and the characters that I’ve loved, may the army be defeated. Yeh gussa Pakistan ke liye rakhiye, apne civilians par mat nikaliye. #kashmirilivesmatter #civilianslivesmatter