The Senseless Symphony

Protesting Zubin Mehta’s concert in Kashmir is not protesting against music and art. It is about highlighting the bizarreness of a concert that purports to promote peace in a strife torn state while not allowing locals to participate.

The show is over. The German ambassador to India, who came to Kashmir with the promise of ‘hope and encouragement’ for the people of Kashmir, has gone back with his entourage of flying machines and BMWs filled with the world class players of Bavarian State orchestra; the list of who’s who from India and from the embassies of countries around the world, has packed up and gone back where they came from. What is left behind is the litter of curfews, stone-pelting protests, arrests, crackdowns and occasional bullets and blasts – it’s nobody’s baby to clean and sort out.

At the Zubin Mehta concert in Shalimar gardens, Jammu and Kashmir’s chief minister Omar Abdullah talked about ‘uplifting souls’ with his symphonies. A few hours before the grand maestro played Beethoven and Hayden classics, the CRPF men celebrated their hour of uplifted souls by gunning down 4 innocent youth in Shopian. The audience in all their shimmering best sat, either spellbound by the music in the backdrop of Chinars, the Mughal garden and the world famous Dal Lake, or trying to be spellbound, because they felt that the rules of elitism demanded that they ought to be mesmerised by the melody and the status tag that comes with a show like that. Whatever the case, the souls were uplifted indeed, unmindful of the three mothers who wailed at a distance of about 50 kilometres in the apple rich town of Shopian.

One of the three dead still remains unidentified – a convenient ‘terrorist’ to the men who pumped bullets into his body, and a migrant labourer from outside the state to the local eye-witnesses.

Before he played his music, Zubin Mehta lamented that there weren’t enough ordinary Kashmiris among the audience and hoped to play again at some point of time at a stadium for a bigger gathering. The concert was organised in the name of Kashmiris but the barricaded, fortified venue remained out of bounds for them on a day that the summer capital of the state was turned into a vast, inside-out prison. However, amidst the grand crowd, a few odd privileged Kashmiris jostled for good seats – the VVIPs, the bureaucrats, the politicians and their families, media persons, artists, and a few others. Many of these lesser attendees, including some local artists who played their 7-minute composition as part of the performance, did not make it on to the list of the privileged invitees to a dinner hosted by the chief minister.

But Kashmiris were expected to be active participants with soulful music played live on television. So, was rest of the world. Then why did Zubin Mehta and his grand orchestra have to be flown in especially to play in Kashmir for an audience, much of which also flew in too to watch the grand maestro at his usual best? Days before the concert, the German ambassador Michael Steiner announced that it was ‘apolitical’ and meant for the people of Kashmir and to acquaint them with the ‘peace of music’ with the idea of bringing ‘hope’ to them.

Was the German embassy inspired by the sheer idea of benevolence? Noted analyst and activist Ravi Nair, writing in Kashmir Times, points out Steiner’s multi-layered past and his sudden rise to prominence in 1989 with Germany’s diplomatic engagement with Czechoslavakia,  his role in 2000’s in Bosnia, Libya and later Afghanistan, and now his very recent role in ending the European Union bar on Narendra Modi.

The stark reality, the Haqeeqat of Kashmir, was laid bare when four youth in Shopian were gunned down hours before the concert and not even a whimper of remorse or sympathy came from those who sought to offer peace and hope. The grand orchestra and its audience packed their bags and left, not even looking behind as the Valley slipped back to its endless cycle of killings, lies, denial of justice, protests, strikes and curfews.

Whatever Steiner’s real interests in Kashmir, the interests of the state government, which provided more than logistical and security support, and the interests of the Centre, whose unflinching support for the show is manifested beyond a shadow of doubt and the engagement of some local Congress leaders in the making of the concert, were explicitly clear. The very word ‘apolitical’ in a place like Kashmir is a red rag and often is taken as a euphemism for something downright political and politicised. Kashmir has had a history of events and trends that are organised or introduced to showcase the Valley as a ‘place of calm and normalcy’ with the design of hiding beneath the layers of this whitewash the ground reality of curfews, concertina wires, crackdowns, bullets and blasts. That is why there was a howl of protests right from the time the German ambassador announced the concert titled ‘Ehsaas-e-Kashmir’ (feel of Kashmir). In a letter to him, intellectuals and civil society members demanded cancellation of the concert and expressed their reservations, maintaining, “the concert will strengthen the occupation in the State” and be “exclusionary” as it was by invitation only.

The design and politics behind the concert was evident right from the start. But in a place like Kashmir where everything under the sun stands to be politicised – right from the use of Indian passports to the cup of coffee being sipped at the corner café from the rising graph of tourists to a Kashmiri making it to the Indian cricket squad – where does one draw the line of opposition, which at the end of the day is used to project the Kashmiri society as ‘fanatic’, ‘rigid’ and ‘opposed to cultural promotion’? As it is, Kashmiris are always caught on the back foot. An instance of this was seen not long ago when a state sponsored religious leader Mufti Bashir, whose writ either lies in the seat of power or within the compound of the four walls of his house, issued a fatwa against the all-girl rock band ‘Pragaash’. Kashmiris were asked why they never opposed the ban vociferously when they said they didn’t support it. Yet, when Shiv Sena hooligans oppose cultural events, impose dress codes, or ban Valentine’s Day, people elsewhere in the country aren’t quite put on the notice in a similar vein.

Of course, like elsewhere in the country, there is a fringe fanatic section in Kashmir, those who would glamourise every retrogressive move like banning music, cloaking women, or stopping any kind of cultural activity. But the larger opposition to Ehsaas-e-Kashmir, much like the Harud literary festival that never happened two years ago, was not about aversion to cultural activity, but was completely political in nature. The choice of venue and the scale of event and the restricted access to select invitees raised some doubts in the minds of Kashmiris. The arrogance and stubbornness of the organisers thereafter to go ahead with the programme despite a stiff opposition from the public helped confirm those doubts. The German ambassador’s claim before select media persons that he was ‘backed by the silent majority’ and Zubin Mehta’s assertion that ‘I did not choose Kashmir but Kashmir chose me’ made the designs absolutely clear, inspiring the civil society to fight back.

The lines were drawn. The significance of the opposition does not simply lie in choosing what to oppose but also the strategies used to oppose. The culture of hartals and boycotts easily makes the Kashmiris look a tad too rigid and fanatic before the eyes of the world, much to the convenience of the governments in Srinagar and New Delhi. Perhaps Kashmir’s civil society struggling to find new creative strategies to launch their protests may eventually have something to thank Zubin Mehta and gang for – the birth of Haqeeqat-e-Kashmir, a parallel cultural event aimed to protest against the official, elitist Ehsaas-e-Kashmir, and also an apt answer to the several dilemmas of protesting without being caught on the back foot.

When Zubin Mehta played Beethoven symphonies by the banks of the famed Dal Lake and made international news, a little distance away from the fortified venue of this grand show, Kashmiris made a history of sorts with the phenomenal success of the parallel cultural extravaganza, organised by the civil society, titled Haqeeqat-e-Kashmir (Reality of Kashmir).The success of Haqeeqat-e-Kashmir is measured by the huge attendance despite the curbs, cordons and restrictions on the movement of the people; by the international limelight the programme received; and the creative manner in which the stories of oppression of the masses were so evocatively communicated through songs, music, drama and art. A precursor to this cultural bonanza was earlier seen on the International Day of the Disappeared Persons on August 30, with similar creative articulation of oppression, though on a much smaller scale. The significance of this new trend lies in showcasing the real Kashmir of oppression, also of the courage and commitment of the people. Also, it communicated that the opposition of a vast section of Kashmiris to the Zubin Mehta show did not stem from an aversion to music, but from the State-centric agenda of denying the suffering of the people and silencing their voices.

Yet, critics of Kashmir’s resistance find ample reason to still blame them for the “hypocrisy” of opposing select cultural events, of things like remaining silent to the invasion of Bollywood in the Valley. Actor Rahul Bose, who has spent some time in the Valley in the last couple of years trying to train young Rugby players on television, talked about maintaining political neutrality towards events like Zubin Mehta’s. However, there is a marked difference between Shahrukh Khan coming to shoot a Bollywood film or Rahul Bose coming in without his politics in pursuit of Rugby talent. Neither of them claimed to have come with a promise of peace and hope for Kashmiris; neither brought planeloads of outsiders to talk about inclusion of Kashmiris while actually excluding the Kashmiris. This is precisely what made Zubin Mehta concert flawed enough to be opposed.

The stark reality, the Haqeeqat of Kashmir, was laid bare when four youth in Shopian were gunned down hours before the concert and not even a whimper of remorse or sympathy came from those who sought to offer peace and hope. The grand orchestra and its audience packed their bags and left, not even looking behind as the Valley slipped back to its endless cycle of killings, lies, denial of justice, protests, strikes and curfews.

Apparently, nothing has changed since the days when the notorious Roman emperor Nero played his fiddle while Rome was burning. Nero was known to throw lavish parties where he invited select guests in his fortified palace to watch the macabre show of lesser mortals being roasted alive to the sound of music. Modernism has only taught the present day rulers to add the art of subtlety to such grotesqueness. Here they were cocooned in a venue, a symbol of both beauty and of Kashmir’s history of occupation, where pure musical symphony was the hallmark of civility. The ugliness of death and destruction was outside this fortified zone as the power of music drowned all the shrieks and wails.