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The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing, Niyaz Ahmad has his say...
These words cannot sound any stronger with me today when I watch the otherwise kind and emotional Indian public in general and the sagacious Indian civil society in particular watching the ugly orchestra of death in Kashmir silently and through the blood-tinted glasses provided to them by the Indian state. The indifference and the apathy that has come to define your posture towards the collective suffering of the hapless people of Kashmir as inflicted by the Indian state and its hired butchers in Kashmir is simply soul-shattering to all of us.
The very people and forces that are behind it all are not just suddenly special to you but regarded as the only hope that holds Kashmir with the Union of India. Perhaps, you don’t have any idea of what India means to us or what feelings it invokes among the people of weeping valley today. Perhaps, you don’t have any sense of profundity of our individual as well as collective suffering at the hands of forces that are ironically referred to as the ‘security forces’. Perhaps, you don’t know that our daily concern is not whether to have meals at home or to eat out; to wear jeans or a saree; to watch a movie or switch to a popular soap opera, but rather how to live another day amidst shoot-at-sight orders. For us the daily and widespread paradox of having to live under the occupation of the so-called largest democracy is too painful to be glossed over for your nationalist sensitivities and therefore it becomes imperative to hold you to your exalted pretensions of being a great country.
From childhood we were weaned on the stock academic diet in our classrooms that India is a great country with diverse humanity of different creed, colour, custom and ethnicity and that India is the pioneer in teaching the world the lesson that plurality can be a source of strength rather than weakness. While, we believed it cheerfully as students and held it in high esteem, it failed us all when tested in the matrix of our day to day living here. The cruel equation of Indian bullets against Kashmiri stones being the state’s only idiom of contact with us today has drained even our residual but innocent fascination with the very idea of academic India. The practical India as faced and suffered by us in the shape of killing us with impunity; breaking into our homes and smashing our household to pieces; beating and molesting our womenfolk for fun; massacring people even during funerals must all be the contrast of shame between what you claim and what you frame.
The denial of freedom of expression, right to democratic and peaceful assembly, right to represent and highlight true public sentiments and cold refusal to honour the pledges made to us from time to time shocked us all to act, though belatedly but surely. The dichotomy of what you profess and what you practice is what made us rise against your government and resist it. Today, you castigate us for throwing stones, not appreciating the fact that it is the physical manifestation of the pain, the suffering, the humiliation, the daily dishonour heaped on us, the covert and overt state repression and the brutal suppression of all our democratic urges. You even disregard the truth that it’s been more of a show of resistance by the oppressed against the oppressor right through the history of human existence. It symbolizes the haplessness and helplessness of the subjugated people like us, as stones in our hands are no match to the latest weaponry and live ammo at the disposal of killer forces. It accentuates the desperation of the young generation who has been pushed to wall with no avenue to address its sense of deep alienation and no hope of justice. So isn’t it criminal hypocrisy on your part to kill us right and left, back and forth, up and down and yet expect us to suffer in silence.
Recently the farmers of Aligarh and Mathura burning public property and their women pelting stones at police as they were demanding adequate compensation/prices for their land taken for some Yamuna expressway in Uttar Pradesh. The running crawlers also said that the agitated mob has already set ablaze the official vehicle of SSP and attacked a police station too. The contrast could not be sharper for me to see a sympathetic coverage by your media of it all and dismissal of the humanitarian disaster wrought by your forces in Kashmir as a simple law and order problem, as if you are not dealing with public sentiment but some petty crime unfolding on the streets of our sobbing land. Moreover, the BJP and the ruling Congress in a rare unity of purpose are these days raising uproar over the issue, which on the face of it need not be frowned at. But the chilling message of patent discrimination it conveys vis-à-vis Kashmir is too glaring to miss, more so when the parliament of India is never exercised about the miserable situation in Kashmir despite the conscious and manifest slaughter of the people here which mainly includes teenagers.
We are deeply moved when we see whole India and its media living the trauma of an accident faced by some child named ‘Prince’ when he falls into some well, but are equally gobsmacked when there is not even a whisper, leave alone a cry, when a boy named Faizan in his teens is thrown into the water of Jhelum by forces. Indian civil society is duly aghast when some boy is killed due to ragging but retreats into sadist silence when Kashmiri doctors peacefully demonstrating against human rights violations in valley outside Jammu University are hounded and persecuted and put behind bars at the behest of chauvinist and extremist Hindu forces of Jammu.
You boast of being the citizens of the so-called largest democracy on earth, then how come you wink your eyes when other people assert and demand their democratic rights? What is it that prevents you from implementing the solemn pledges you made to us at the time of our coerced accession with India through your first and distinguished prime minister -Jawaharlal Nehru- that India will not grudge Kashmiris the exercise of their ‘Right to Self Determination’ and that however painful it might be for India, if Kashmiris chose to part ways with it, it will accept it gracefully?
You all are people with heart, with sensitive souls, with healthy conscience. You all are good people and for good people Edmund Burke said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”.
The very people and forces that are behind it all are not just suddenly special to you but regarded as the only hope that holds Kashmir with the Union of India. Perhaps, you don’t have any idea of what India means to us or what feelings it invokes among the people of weeping valley today. Perhaps, you don’t have any sense of profundity of our individual as well as collective suffering at the hands of forces that are ironically referred to as the ‘security forces’. Perhaps, you don’t know that our daily concern is not whether to have meals at home or to eat out; to wear jeans or a saree; to watch a movie or switch to a popular soap opera, but rather how to live another day amidst shoot-at-sight orders. For us the daily and widespread paradox of having to live under the occupation of the so-called largest democracy is too painful to be glossed over for your nationalist sensitivities and therefore it becomes imperative to hold you to your exalted pretensions of being a great country.
From childhood we were weaned on the stock academic diet in our classrooms that India is a great country with diverse humanity of different creed, colour, custom and ethnicity and that India is the pioneer in teaching the world the lesson that plurality can be a source of strength rather than weakness. While, we believed it cheerfully as students and held it in high esteem, it failed us all when tested in the matrix of our day to day living here. The cruel equation of Indian bullets against Kashmiri stones being the state’s only idiom of contact with us today has drained even our residual but innocent fascination with the very idea of academic India. The practical India as faced and suffered by us in the shape of killing us with impunity; breaking into our homes and smashing our household to pieces; beating and molesting our womenfolk for fun; massacring people even during funerals must all be the contrast of shame between what you claim and what you frame. The denial of freedom of expression, right to democratic and peaceful assembly, right to represent and highlight true public sentiments and cold refusal to honour the pledges made to us from time to time shocked us all to act, though belatedly but surely. The dichotomy of what you profess and what you practice is what made us rise against your government and resist it. Today, you castigate us for throwing stones, not appreciating the fact that it is the physical manifestation of the pain, the suffering, the humiliation, the daily dishonour heaped on us, the covert and overt state repression and the brutal suppression of all our democratic urges. You even disregard the truth that it’s been more of a show of resistance by the oppressed against the oppressor right through the history of human existence. It symbolizes the haplessness and helplessness of the subjugated people like us, as stones in our hands are no match to the latest weaponry and live ammo at the disposal of killer forces. It accentuates the desperation of the young generation who has been pushed to wall with no avenue to address its sense of deep alienation and no hope of justice. So isn’t it criminal hypocrisy on your part to kill us right and left, back and forth, up and down and yet expect us to suffer in silence.
Recently the farmers of Aligarh and Mathura burning public property and their women pelting stones at police as they were demanding adequate compensation/prices for their land taken for some Yamuna expressway in Uttar Pradesh. The running crawlers also said that the agitated mob has already set ablaze the official vehicle of SSP and attacked a police station too. The contrast could not be sharper for me to see a sympathetic coverage by your media of it all and dismissal of the humanitarian disaster wrought by your forces in Kashmir as a simple law and order problem, as if you are not dealing with public sentiment but some petty crime unfolding on the streets of our sobbing land. Moreover, the BJP and the ruling Congress in a rare unity of purpose are these days raising uproar over the issue, which on the face of it need not be frowned at. But the chilling message of patent discrimination it conveys vis-à-vis Kashmir is too glaring to miss, more so when the parliament of India is never exercised about the miserable situation in Kashmir despite the conscious and manifest slaughter of the people here which mainly includes teenagers.
We are deeply moved when we see whole India and its media living the trauma of an accident faced by some child named ‘Prince’ when he falls into some well, but are equally gobsmacked when there is not even a whisper, leave alone a cry, when a boy named Faizan in his teens is thrown into the water of Jhelum by forces. Indian civil society is duly aghast when some boy is killed due to ragging but retreats into sadist silence when Kashmiri doctors peacefully demonstrating against human rights violations in valley outside Jammu University are hounded and persecuted and put behind bars at the behest of chauvinist and extremist Hindu forces of Jammu.You boast of being the citizens of the so-called largest democracy on earth, then how come you wink your eyes when other people assert and demand their democratic rights? What is it that prevents you from implementing the solemn pledges you made to us at the time of our coerced accession with India through your first and distinguished prime minister -Jawaharlal Nehru- that India will not grudge Kashmiris the exercise of their ‘Right to Self Determination’ and that however painful it might be for India, if Kashmiris chose to part ways with it, it will accept it gracefully?
You all are people with heart, with sensitive souls, with healthy conscience. You all are good people and for good people Edmund Burke said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”.
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