Any idea why people of Kashmir have generally lost it with politics, more so with the word ‘democracy’ – the kind of democracy they have witnessed all along? The answer lies partly in the latest snap-shot of the ‘democracy’ they are seeing at work everywhere in mainland India where people are being hounded and harassed just because they are Kashmiris.
The way Kashmiri people, students and others, are being singularly targeted with hateful violence is both appalling and fearsome. It is horrifying because it points to the increasing fascist tendencies in the right-wing parties, which unfortunately are being protected and patronized without any remorse or regret by the state and its institutions. May be someone should inform the Prime Minister Narendra Modi that throughout history silence has been regarded as assent!
What is happening in the aftermath of Pulwama suicide attack, let it be made clear goes beyond what it is made out to be. Actually this entire pornography of violence and hate directed at the Kashmiri people is carefully choreographed into a big polarizing controversy with an eye on the forthcoming general elections. And that is what makes it all the more sinister.
Conflict is a necessary part of any politics, and of course the essential core of a free and open society. It is said that if one were to project the democratic way of life in the form of a musical score, its major theme would be the harmony of dissonance. But this does in no way mean that the conflict that has been raging in Kashmir, and the one in the minds of the people here and elsewhere has to escalate to the level of physical violence. By resorting to such undemocratic behavior wherein the Kashmiri people are targeted with venomous hate, BJP and its other rightwing siblings are certainly not doing any good – neither to itself nor the country, which never ceases to boast of its democratic credentials.
A party which came to power by promising “Sabh Ka Saath, Sabh Ka Vikaas” has lost its track and today the very party which claimed being the custodian of responsibility, morality, law, and justice (even though all these terms are strangers to each-other) is acting like a big bully everywhere. Had it not been son then of course the government at the Centre would have done whatever was needed to put an end to this “hate campaign” that has been let loose at the people of Kashmir in the mainland.
After what has been and is still being done to the people of this God-forsaken land, the right-wing groups and pro-right media could console itself with the “psychological carry-overs” of “having taught Kashmiris a lesson” and scores of similar other prayerful hopes like having “pleased their supporters”, but as for its being a responsible people and country, that is over and done. It has already attracted much damage, indeed far more than the political soothsayers could have anticipated and predicted, and could possibly salvage.
