Free will versus freedom.
In her book The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness, Arundhati Roy writes, “In Kashmir the only thing to do with nightmares was to embrace them like old friends and manage them like old enemies.”
On Instagram, photographers, amateur and professional alike share pictures of Kashmir, otherwise a visual treat in an intentionally blurred fashion, shaky or tilted to give a sense of chaos and uncertainty of the moment. The plight of a people has the become the aesthetic of wokeness of the other.
The government of India has revoked Article 370, which guaranteed significant autonomy to the Muslim-majority state, thereby betraying Kashmir’s decision to align with India in 1947.
It was declared by stakeholders in Delhi that the law prevented the people of the state from benefiting from the central government’s affirmative action policies. It was countered by stakeholders in Kashmir by saying that it was a sinister attempt to alter the demographics of the only Muslim-majority state in the country. In all the noise of the stakeholders, social justice warriors and keyboard knights mixes with the muffled confusion in the valley. In the uncertainty of these times, among the tangle of disconnected landlines and defunct internet, an Anne Frank’s diary has yet to emerge, but what would it say if it did?
Would it describe the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions? Would our Anne Frank from Kashmir be able to point out the difference between men in salwars and the ones in uniform? Would she still believe that humanity wouldn’t tolerate the killing of her peers or would she know, just inherently know that the same fate may await her?
Does she know if she would grow up among children just like her from Bengal and Bihar and Odisha and Assam on account of a man’s decision from the inside of a television or would she continue to hide like she was in the basement of her house stocking up on ration for months? Does she know if she would visit her family in her holidays from a college in Tamil Nadu or will she spend the rest of her life mourning the death of her husband killed in another insurgency?
No one knows for sure. Not her, not us. Not the man in the TV, but the thing is, did she sign up for this? For a constant battle between life and death, for a bloody war between three countries? Did any of us? For those who say deciding to live in Kashmir is deciding to live in war should know that your feet might leave your home, but your heart wouldn’t. Among hysteria, panic and confusion, Kashmir walks a tight rope between war and peace since the day of its inception.
I don’t know about the intricacies of Article 370. Is it annexation? Is it colonisation? Is it indeed a state sponsored attempt to change the demographics of the area? Will the integration mean peace for the Kashmiris at long last? I don’t know.
All I know is I learnt in history that we’ll never let another little girl suffer the fate of Anne Frank. I learnt that no man, no matter the justification, would lead his life in the rifle sight of a soldier. I learnt that no amount of crime in the name of pride in the nation, or self, or an identity was excusable for the sacrifice of its people. I learnt what humanity had learnt from history, that we wouldn’t let it repeat. That war is never good, we all know.
How could the world’s biggest democracy forget the most basic chapter in history? How could you forget the moral science chorus? How are you celebrating the passage of a law in a war like siege? How is integration guaranteed through a lock down? How are you calling for a ‘clean up’ of Kashmir?
Very soon, normalcy will be declared. Because that’s how you establish normalcy, by declaring it. Although gridlocked in occupation, Kashmir has feisty children. The tortured Kashmiri child’s defiance can’t be integrated into the coursework of CBSE. The adults demanding their destiny of human rights will not listen to Doordarshan in peace. Those buried under years of silence will not come to the polling booth. Integration doesn’t come as an order from Delhi, integration comes from the heart.
Mun tu shudum, tu munshudi.
(I am you and you are me)
– Amir Khusro
It is just the geographical area that we care about, we should really stop the facade. The people in the world’s most militarized zone would remember that when it came down to the question, we chose a piece of land over the people. India’s crown would remain an empty desolate stretch of land but the people would remember the injustice, the trauma, the betrayal. For in deconstructing them, it is ourselves we are destroying.