“ Mr Prime Minister, here in the afterlife I have met more than 100000 kashmiris , most of my brothers and sisters were young like me , had a dream like me and had a mother who had dreams for their loved ones. By the way I also met many people here who according to your books are in the list of 10000 people who are absconding.”
My Dear Prime Minister,
I don’t know how tolerant or intolerant has India grown since my demise but hoping that I will not be berated, at least now and taking pride in my social val- ues, I greet you with my 14OO year old traditional greeting Assalamu-alaikum (May Peace Be Upon You). My name is Gowhar Ahmad Dar. I am the same guy who will not be able to reap any benefit from the 80000 crore package that you announced for the state of Jammu and Kashmir for de- velopment and prosperity.
I was almost about to fulfill my dream to become an engineer because where I come from, the job of an engineer and a doctor is considered to be extremely respectful and important. On a lighter note,many times my mother told me that she would get me married once I graduate, she has been teasing me for a long time. But I know she wasn’t just teasing. I knew she wanted me to get married and had secretly and slowly started mai ing small savings for the dresses that she wanted to wear on my wedding day but as I come from a middle class family, I did realize that I will have to prove my worth in the society before I could fulfill my mothers nuptial dreams regarding me. Since unemployment has risen in my state in an unprecedented man- ner, I was about to move to the heartland of India to find a job and taking care of the share of responsibility towards the family and society. But I really did not fathom that one of your mercenaries will release me of all my responsibilities so easily.
Mr Prime Minister, here in the after life I have met more than 100000 kashmiris , most of my brothers and sisters were young like me , had a dream like me and had a mother who had dreams for their loved ones. By the way I also met many people here who according to your books are in the list of 10000 people who are absconding. Also, I have also solved the mystery of unmarked graves of more than 2500 people. I wish I could tell you the names, the condition and situations that got them here. I met each and every person and trust me a vast majority of them were peace loving and sober during their lifetime.Let me give you an example of how ordinary my fellow afterlife mates are,many of them loved cricket and so did I during my lifetime and it will be a surprise to all the folks that they like teams other than India and Pakistan.
Today on behalf of all the ordinary people,who like me were sent here without a reason, I want to ask you some questions and I am seeking some specific answers. Please don’t lie or answer me in a duplicitous fashion, as you owe this much to your erstwhile fellow countrymen. So Mr prime minister how exactly will the justice be done to me and likes of me who have suffered the same brutality from last 25 years when you have immunity called AFSPA in place? No amount of money be it 8 crore or 80 crore or 80000 crore will bring me back to life which was full of possibilities and return me my dreams. Human right defenders chronicled the extremes but thearmy has been perpetually in denial and So has the po- litical class that exacted the gains but did nothing to repeal the Act. You gave a very eloquent lecture on the 7th of November underscoring the lessons of Mr Vajpayee as to how Kashmir can be resolved under the ambit of insaniyat, jamooriyat and kashmiriyat. If you analyze this three-pillar reference point for Kashmiris nothing but the funda- mental rights that have been bestowed by the constitution of India to all its citizens irrespective of their colour, creed, ethnicity, religion and political beliefs.Article 19 that entails freedom of speech and expression , freedom to assemble peaceably without arms , freedom to move freely throughout the territory of India , Kashmir is eviscerated of these freedoms. Not just this but your AFSPA also crushes my right to constitutional remedies givenin article 32 of the constitution. Viewing all this how will you save insaniyat? September2015 2015 Kashmir Leader December Electoral participation is vital for the functioning and development of the economic and political institutions.
Electoral politics intuitively also underscores the very fact that dissent could be manifest in many forms and if one disagrees with any form of elec- toral politics it’s the responsibility of the preachers of democracy to con- vince them to conjoin the mainstream. It’s your responsibility to understand the very root of dissent. It’s your responsibility to cater to the causes of dissent.Dissident Kashmiris participate in elections for tworeasons. First, is they are genuinely tired of being at the wrong side of history and desper- ately want a change. The very essence of democracy is freewill and it is ironical you eviscerate the dissident Kashmiri of that freewill by way of making him capitulate to your philosophy by coercion and this makes the second reason to vote. Whatever the reason a vote is for vote of participation in ac- tive democracy but then comes cases like me who lose their life and then the parents and loved ones of victims like me, in order to seek justice, lose to the institutions of the state. Yes sir it makes the society question the institutional structure. How are you exactly planning to segregate these egregious, systematic and detrimental policies so as to attain some good?
Is this democracy or what you impeccably said, jamooriyat , of any sort? Kashmiriyat comes from Kashmiris,the people who live there ,and if your institutions will keep sending them here to afterlife there will be no kashmiriat left . So my sug- gestion would be first you try to focus more on life of an ordinary Kashmiri that gives birth to kashmiriat and then focus on insaniyat and then we can attain jamooriyat in true sense. It’s a phase wise process that has to be built on the foundation of trust, which is ut- terly lacking from your side and from our side. I was not the part of people pelting stones; neither do I have anything to do with dissent.
Your agencies must have and let them again verify my records, sir, I was a peace loving person who was just about to be an engineer. But even if my ideas were at dissension, did I deserve a bullet? Did I deserve to die? But now it’s better because I met guys here in afterlife who were young- er than me, their grief is more acute than of mine and they long for oneness with their loved ones more than me. My only request is to you is that please don’t send any more youngsters here. This isn’t a pleasant place to be, more than anything seclusion hurts a lot. And just the packages, worth any money, wont cut it for kashmiris. You announce packages for Kashmiris but what good will the packages be if there will be no Kashmirirs left. I hope you will you practice the gospel of Insani-yat, Jamooriyat and Kasmiriyat in true sense and keep the essence intact that Mr Vajpayee associated with it.
(Written by Zuhaib Yousf Mir, MSc Economics , University of Edinburgh.)
