Prologue:
Months before Mohammad Afzal Guru was clandestinely hanged, I remember discussing him with a law student in my university hostel during midnight.
I was trying to educate her about the inadequacy of law and how it is used to suppress and silence Kashmir people. In her as-a-matter-of-fact-tone, she trashed everything, saying: “Woh tou Kashmir hai.”
Precisely!
When I told her, that India’s apex court had handed death to ‘satisfy the collective conscience’ of its people, I found myself debating not the hollowness of the remark, but the existence of the statement itself.
Till 4 am I kept leafing through history which the stewards of public memory have carefully chosen to erase. I talked about Gujarat, Manipur, Nagaland, Assam and Tamil Nadu. She not only seemed ignorant, but stubborn as well.
Amidst the discussion, I was only calculating the danger that state sponsored history can have on a young mind. I requested her to leaf through, not alternate history, but some facts on the issue. She remained stubborn.
My last statement, “India is a sham democracy.” Period.
She left and next day her friend told me: “She searched you on Google and read all your articles.”
A week later, she calls me an anti-Indian.
~
Mad heart be brave—Aga Shahid Ali
On 9 February, at the crack of dawn, when faint light filtered through the curtains, I finally fell asleep.
Few hours later, when I woke up, I had missed many phone calls. My mother, few friends from Kashmir had called. It was unusual.
I have not seen a calendar in months. The calendar is mapped in my mind to a different scale (I still inadvertently refer to 2010— the year of uprising in which over 100 protesters and bystanders were killed— as last year). This calendar is perhaps informed by the history and memory of the place I come from.
I was unaware that this date—09.02.2013—will enter the calendar of my memory. I was gathering myself when a friend announced it over phone: “Afzal has been hanged”.
Next, Ami called: “We are under curfew. Be careful there. Don’t post anything on Facebook.”
I wasn’t shocked. Not even angry. A strange meaninglessness dawned upon me. I received a text from a friend informing me about a protest at Jantar Mantar against the hanging. My mind asked no questions. I began to ready myself.
As I opened the door of my hostel room, I wondered, very foolishly, how and why everything around me could carry itself with the usual rhythm and pace. Afzal’s death was a deep personal loss, I realised. I felt its weight. The journey to Jantar Mantar took longer than usual— both in my mind and otherwise. The auto-rickshaw developed a snag, but I managed to reach somehow. The road leading to the venue was blocked. The driver remarked, “Yahan tou kuch na kuch hota hi rehta hai.” He stopped few meters away.
As I walked closer, I recognised no faces. I saw many groups of protestors—seeking Gorkhaland, capital punishment to the rapists, a pack shouting for road widening.
I walked further and saw a small pool of familiar faces. I identified the burden etched in these taut faces. As we looked at each other, my sense of personal loss became collective. I was petrified, but testifying. From other end I could hear “Bharat Maata ki Jai” slogans. I looked around and saw people celebrating Afzal’s hanging. So it was these people whose conscience was satisfied, I thought.
Other than on TV, I had never seen Bajrang Dal activists—with their saffron scarves and vermillion smeared foreheads—in my life. In Kashmir, where I grew up, there were only men in uniform whose bloodshot eyes terrified me.
Suddenly, I found myself and our small group trapped within a large circle of poking cameras, police and rightwing goons who were trying to fill easy gaps. I hadn’t anticipated this!
We were outnumbered. Now that we were in the middle of this perfect representation of the State, I got a chance to know it better.
The goons from the Hindu nationalist parties provoked us. They hurled abuses and booed. They tore our placards and threw mud. Then they assaulted us.
The goons tore a placard which my Indian friend, who had come to express solidarity, was holding. But, slogans of azadi reverberated!
Our group was being continuously pushed by police and behind them the Bajrangis. The onlookers also joined in the abuses and jeers. The ultra-nationalistic fervor of other group of protestors rose and they backed the Bajrangis in their attack against hardly 30 of us—who were reminding Indian state of its gross error. They forced us to split but we re-grouped. This happened many times till the police arrested most of us while few ran for safety. I saw one of my colleagues being dragged by goons. They kicked, hit him with stones and beat him to pulp. The goons thus sabotaged the peaceful protests and ironically, the police cracked down on us.
Just because I wear a head scarf like many of my friends there, they gazed and shouted: “Pakistaniyon, Antakwadiyon”. For media it was another occasion to telecast their jingoistic voyeurism. I heard a cameraman shouting Bharat Mata ki Jai. Most were laughing and enjoying the spectacle. Another TV reporter asked me: Madam aap hindi mein baat karein gi ya … I just snapped back.
I remember asking my friends to make a human-chain. But police started dragging us towards their van. I tried pulling my friends out but lost grip. I ran. Suddenly, I found myself alone. I didn’t know what to do. Should I stop or run?
I saw Sanjay Kak— a Kashmir documentary filmmaker— at a distance and ran towards him. He looked dumbfounded. I asked him frantically, what we should do. The goons ‘identified’ him—yeh bhi hai— and assaulted him.
I ran again as goons chased me. I saw a friend, attending to his wound, at a distance. As I was running, I was calculating the distance. I have to reach that point, I told myself. I called out to him. I remember him saying, “Run as fast as you can.” A goon appeared right in front and held my friend by his collar. He freed himself and we ran all the way to the platform of a nearby metro station.
My feet and clothes were covered with mud. I wasn’t able to come to terms with the happenings. Perhaps, not still. I couldn’t help but think about the Gujarat pogrom. All those images came to life.
At the metro station, I started calling my friends and was told twenty one amongst us were detained. As I was standing on the platform, each passerby appeared to me, as if waiting to attack.
~
I write therefore I am. I have been writing stories of people in Kashmir. Every time, I feel the guilt of having a vantage of writing people’s stories— the weight of their secrets, their ordeal. I went to Jantar Mantar not as a spectator. But to remind and remember!
It is important for a writer to connect to the movement on the street. Nobody is privileged in struggle, in war. We all lose. We all fight. Words lose their meaning, their weight if we don’t stand for what we write. That day, I robbed myself of the vantage and that was comforting.
When pictures of the protest floated it made me uncomfortable as it was against my politics of collective. Moreover, it isn’t easy to look at the pictures where your emotions perhaps become a public memory.
Seeing these pictures in continuum with thousands of pictures from Kashmir, I have seen in the comfort zone of my sitting room— of women wailing and protesting, their clenched fists in air, of boys protesting— I was robbing myself of that privilege. In struggles we reflect each other.
Emotions are sacred, essential too. We many times can’t stop from expressing them. Emotions like protest are fluid.
They flow. They show.
But, in no way should our emotions be equated with victimhood. Our women and men don’t live in ‘victimhood’ contrary to the prevalent discourse. We remember. We resist. We fight. Every strategy breeds from emotions. In struggles—anger, fear, sorrow, laughter—translate into resistance.
In the evening, when we gathered, our conversation was filled with news from home, anger, disgust. Also, with mad laughter. We laughed at us and everything and everyone. It felt absurd for a moment.
Amidst all this, only our defiance was pronounced. The bullies could only go so far!
˷
Epilogue:
I wasn’t born when Mohammad Maqbool Bhat was hanged. I had not even seen his picture. Though, in my history textbook there was a picture of Bhagat Singh. And in my head I had likened him to Maqbool.
When we were children, among other passions like collecting used bullets, making wooden toy-guns, we would play this game—catch each other unawares and put a cloth or a plastic bag over the other’s head and hold it for sometime before the other person retorted. It was meant to be the hangman’s ‘black cloth’.
I would scream the moment I would have an inkling that somebody behind me is ready to play the hangman. For a person to be hanged, I always thought, the most difficult moments would be when breathing within that enclosed space— in the black cloth.
I remember, talking endlessly with my brothers, about what it meant to be hanged and what it was like to be a hangman—his dilemma. A popular childhood slogan was ‘sar kata sakte hain lekan sar jhuka sakte nahe’—a heroic display of our resolve. We would chant this when we would enter into a brawl and would ask the other to ‘surrender’.
As we grew, the enclosed space within this black cloth encompassed our lives and manifested itself in life around. I no longer screamed but found comfort in closed spaces.
We have lost passion for the game!
Years later when was Afzal is hanged, my childhood thoughts about the person’s last moments within the black cloth came to life again. However, as the hangman’s (referring to the State) face is clearly outlined, there is no question about the dilemma.
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