United against the terrorism

Five years ago, fugitive Indian Mujahideen commander Riyaz Ismail Shahbandri slipped through the India-Nepal border near Madhubani. From there, he undoubtedly continued to safer havens and made sure the Indian Mujahideen would be better trained and more dangerous than ever before.

The recent arrest of high-profile fugitive Siddibapa of the Indian Mujahideen—popularly known as Yasin Bhatkal—from near the Raxaul border in the northern part of Bihar has confirmed that the traditional structure of the India-Nepal border needs drastic changes.

Once, the border areas were known as peaceful regions. But now, more and more terror cells are using the area to cross international borders and plan their attacks. There have been many such cases and the current border security system has been incapable of stopping them from crossing from Nepal into India and vice-versa.

Both in principle and practice, India and Nepal are cooperating to fight terrorism and protect their lands from being misused by rogue elements. Notwithstanding the good intentions of both countries, it is clear that the open border between Nepal and India is being covertly used for passage by terrorists.

Bihar shares a 625 km border with Nepal, of which a long stretch between Jaynagar in Madhubani and Raxaul in East Champaran has been under the scanner of the Indian police since 2006. The complicity of Pappu Khan, Mohamed Khalil, Omar Madani, Ghayur Ahmed Jamali and Ajmal alias Shoaib, in recent terror attacks on Indian cities and the establishment of their activities in northern Bihar districts have justified the police’s attention and call for more of a focus in this region.

The Bihar government has shown resilience in recent years in curbing terrorist activities. The State Government woke up after a joint operation of the Intelligence Bureau and the Delhi Police in October 2005 where these agencies scanned the call details from Madhubani to East Champaran and found an unusually high number of ISD calls to hostile destinations and known terrorist linkages.

India surely appreciates Nepal’s readiness to cope with these challenges and thanks to a joint operation, India was
able to nab a deadly terrorist like Yasin Bhatkal. However, the overall security situation is very complex and the two countries have to deal with it cautiously and on time. Measures need to be taken now, as tomorrow might already
be too late.

We immediately need to end the notion that the open border between India and Nepal poses no security risk. Also, border security has to be up to the mark, which it is currently not. Second, both countries should allow each other to track wanted criminals in their respective territories, thereby making the region unattractive for wrongdoers. Times are getting tougher for India and Nepal due to the rise of international terrorism.

The leaders of both sides must recognise this and they must focus their efforts on fighting terrorism—whilst not neglecting other crucial issues. Nepal is aware of India’s problems with imported as well as homegrown terrorism. Broadly, Nepal cannot afford an unstable India and obviously, a peaceful Nepal is one of India’s main concerns. On the political side, there should be no obstacle for a new security cooperation.

An effective way to deal with cross-border terrorism could be through dialogue on high official levels. Sadly, neither side has taken this issue very seriously in the past. As a consequence, terrorists have been able to move across borders and carry out crimes.

There is, therefore, a crucial need to restructure border security arrangements and build better infrastructure on both sides of the borders. Furthermore, as Indian police are state agencies, Nepal should find a way to involve state governments, who share common concerns along the border, instead of only dealing with New Delhi. Third, the Nepal Police needs a modern upgrade when it comes to interface technology and an increase in the headcount to be deployed near the border.

The Government of Nepal has partnered well with India and if it continues to do so by making its territory safe and
its borders impassable for terrorists, India will be the beneficiary. This strategic response to the activities of non-state terror networks would end their so far successful acquisition of easily accessible resources and pieces of infrastructure.

Until a few years ago, it was unthinkable that terrorists could misuse places like Janakpur or Pokhara to conduct illegal activities against India. The two Indian districts of Madhubani and Darbhanga also suffer from these latest
developments, despite their past intellectual traditions of refined cultural practices and communal harmony.

These two districts are known in official police criminal records as the ‘Madhubani Module’ and ‘Darbhanga Module’ What, then, is fueling the hate-game? Consensus can be attained by looking at some of the most recent terror cases and their link to the districts of north Bihar. There is evidence of local support and—shockingly—most of the culprits ended up as terrorists because they misinterpreted the teachings of Islam.

They have forgotten the shared past and the unbreakable trust which still remains among the different communities of the Mithila region. Neither historical records nor the present situation justifies such misinterpretations. Nevertheless, terror has expanded. It has to be ended and terrorists have to be reformed (those who are willing to be) or wiped out.

There is no reason for us to treat them with kid gloves. India has been suffering greatly from terrorism, although it was only after 9/11 that the world acknowledged India’s pain. India has the capacity to fight terrorism and its determination to do so is unshakable. Nothing could be as helpful at this stage as effective security cooperation between India and Nepal.
-Atul K Thakur
Email: summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in The Kathmandu Post on October06,2013)

Aboard the Madras Express

Book Review: Non-fiction/ Degree Coffee by the YARD by Nirmala Lakshman, Aleph, 158p; Rs295 (Hardback)Nirmala Lakshman thinks Chennai of olden days can be better understood through its culture, language and heritage rather than politics and history...
The memory of a political class could have its own distinctive merits as well as flaws, but they do immeasurable harm when they start tampering with historical facts. For example, the city of Madras was founded by the Brits, almost four centuries back in 1644 when the Fort St George was built by the British East India company—but in a sudden stroke, its name was indigenised, to Chennai. Nevertheless, the city retained its basic characteristics flowing with the time.

Nirmala Lakshman can say much about her city, which fortunately in her descriptions is still Madras, but in Degree Coffee By The Yard, she has chosen to present a short biography instead. Her sense of history is immaculate and undisputable, as it is hindered by no barrier of ideologies and shows no alignment with specific camps within historical debates.

She gives the readers an outline, and in patches descriptions too, about how the city, established by the British, rose to become a site of powerful nationalistic movements. Lakshman also charts the later phases, describing the glory of this city in independent India, despite its formidable distance from the seat of power, Delhi.

This was not a mean feat, because identity politics of any kind, too, had to thrive on the Centre’s ‘assistance’ — and on different occasions it became evident, especially in post-reform eras, when the politics had been in the grip of sinister business interests than issues on ground. Although it was and still persists as a universal phenomenon, Madras, as a hub of shadowy politics, is neither unique, nor too typical.

The city has a quaint vigour, charming characteristics and the people live with them, as Lakshman reminds us about the little intricacies that make Madras different from other Indian metros. Lakshman, a senior journalist herself, has, over the years, strengthened The Hindu Group of Publications—so, directly or indirectly, she has made the city’s biggest and strongest brand more popular and inclusive.

Lakshman’s accounts of her family and their standard publication interests — spanning RK Narayan, literature, authors and books, over dosa and coffee — give a sublime quality to her narration of the city. While looking back on bygone Madras days, she appears more a preserver of heartwarming, conventional practices rather a conservative harping on tradition at all costs.

Of course, she admits the essentiality of change and sees the partial Western cultural invasion into modern day Chennai, with ease. With the world fast turning, old things are making peace with the fact that now their existence would probably be confined to being items in a curio shop or the museums of memory, stacked neatly, although, often falling out of people’s minds.

Still, some incorrigible inheritors will not cease to intertwine old symbols with life style. As a brief history (but of course not as semi-history) of the city, the book chooses to not dwell at length with the state’s parochial politics, where the culture of succession is an accepted reality now. Cinema, too, has not given extensive coverage, probably to not enter the usual discussion on its unhygienic nexus with Tamil politics.

The book, consciously, has a leaning for music and public life. That places it closer to ‘people’s history’ rather than resembling with an official charter on Madras. The readers would be delight in reading Lakshman’s personal views on her city, who helps them recall a Madras minus the clear and present fears of political vandalism or the atrocious dictates of Shiv Sena’s Tamil counterparts.

Probably, this reflects the differing temperament of the two mega Indian cities. Whereas, recalling Bomaby is taboo, Madras can be still used synonymously with its present name, Chennai. Lakshman believes, Madras can be known better through its culture, language and heritage rather than with politics and history.

Thus, she dwells on the caste and language movements in the state with the prism of the city’s softer attributes, rather than any rigid polemic. Understanding any part of India requires flexibility and informed inquiry to decipher some of its qualities or lacunas. Lakshman, a visionary and veteran journalist at The Hindu, has distilled that gist with perfection for this book. It reads well, both as a precise work of history and a short memoir of a city, about which most of us need to know more.
Atul K Thakur
Email:summertickets2gmail.com
(Published in Millennium Post on September15,2013)

All gore for the crown

Book Review: Non-fiction/ The Bloodstained Throne by Baburam Acharya, Penguin, 266p; Rs299 (Paperback)
Baburam Acharya sheds light on the inglorious power struggles within Nepal’s bloody royal history.
Nepal has an eventful past, but sadly its culture of historiography isn’t that strong. Few historians from the land, which has on occasions, seen both war and peace between the royalty and half-baked democracy, have documented the changing times. Baburam Acharya was an exception among the Nepalese scholars, who had shown great leaning for historical writing, without ever fearing the wrath of ruling kings of his time.

The Bloodstained Throne is the English translation of Baburam Acharya’s seminal work in Nepali—Aba Yasto Kahilyai Nahos. The translation has been done by his grandson, Madhav Acharya, a well-known journalist. Moreover, Baburam’s son Shreekrishna Acharya has done justice with the book, as its editor, preserving the facts, while moulding the book for new era readers.

The book covers a very disturbed timeframe of 1775-1914, when the ruling Shah dynasty confronted both the internal and external oppositions against its rule. A fragile kingship and corrupt feudal structure allowed the despotic Rana regime to come to fore, plunging the throne to a new low.

All 11 chapters of the book dwell with the gloomy time of Nepal’s royal rule, recalling major conspiracies, murders and court politics. The violent eras were preceded by Prithvi Narayan Shah’s effort to unite Nepal into a single entity, even though there was hardly any connect with that principled vision. The time to come was rather driven by the court conspiracies, massacre and assassinations — violence in tune with the disenchantment with royalty.

From Pratap Singh Shah to Dev Shamsher, there was not a trace of hope. Nepal has been living under the ‘factional challenges’— the royal massacre of 2001, the beginning of civil war to ongoing democratic blunders in the country, which have largely stemmed from the same complexes. Prithvi Narayan Shah died early, causing a young nation to fall from the track of consolidation and development.

As an articulate historian, Acharya had rightly chosen not to write a fictional history of the nation. The book gives rich details of Chinese incursion into Nepal’s territory during the rule of Bahadur Shah—and the decisive role played by the Malla kings and Gorkhali Empire. Bhimsen Thapa’s real character is revealed, contrary to his popular nationalistic image.

The death of Pratap Singh Shah and emergence of Rajendra Laxmi as the new power centre had allowed Thapa to pursue his wrongful ambitions. The shadowy nexus left a deep scar on nation’s prospects. From there, started the Rana’s adventurism with the throne—Rana Bahadur was made the Prime Minister and he met his end in court, while pronouncing the punishments targeted at courtiers.

Rule of Jung Bahadur was bloodier. The brutal Kot Massacre was the height of his cruelty. If the Shah had drawn the middle name ‘Vikram’ from India’s Parmar dynasty, the surname ‘Rana’ came as sign of newfound clout for the ‘Kunwars’. The nomenclature had wider symbolic values.

The Rana rule continued in Nepal for almost 100 years and they made the Shah dynasty a puppet during those painful decades. Nepal remained a hub of ignorant and greedy feudals. Between the senseless war between the Shahs and Ranas for power, Nepal remained sandwiched with all bad turnouts.

The book opens up many hidden facets from Nepal’s royal history, but there are no detailed narratives on the people or their suffering. Acharya had sensed the aristocratic pulse of those eras and streamlined his research towards the same. It was a better idea to focus on decisive factors, whose sources were available. The diversification would have made the project superfluous, especially because of the severe limitation of reliable information.

The Bloodstained Throne is a pathbreaking addition to Nepal’s politics and history. It would redefine the perception on the established institutions and symbols, bring in sharp clarity.
-Atul K Thakur
Email: summertickets2gmail.com
(Published in Millennium Post on October06,2013)

Delhi by Heart

Book Review: Non-fiction/ Delhi by heart by Raza Rumi, Harper Collins, 322p; Rs399 (Paperback)

As Raza is Rumi, so ploy of narrower gratifications should normally evade his identity. Surprisingly (for conformity between author and editor), the cover of Delhi by heart presents this most impartial and genuine self-narration on the city Delhi as—‘Impressions of a Pakistani Traveler’. In actual, the author was never alien to this city—as like many of us, he too could see beyond the boundary without falling in guise of extreme limiting factors—such as nationality and uncomfortable equations among the two nieghbouring nations.

Like insiders of this city, his comfort level is more competent with the old parts of Delhi than its shining hotels and sprawling urban extensions, which tirelessly ostracize wisdom and release endless hallucination of modernism. Clearly, this can’t be confronted by wimps—praying to be separated from the load of past and oddness of present.

Still there is no dearth of alibis from the people and machinery that make the old urban structures, marginalised and dying slow death. Sadly, the pattern of certain kind of living too diminishes with the demise of symbols. Delhi is catching up that pattern blindly—so it’s naturally justified, if majority of its residents know Chirag Delhi by a nearby over-bridge than for its historic significance.

The days are not far when Nizamuddin Dargah would be better known as a landmark to reach Hotel Oberoi—and Kutub Minaar as picnic spot for absentee landlord type scholars from western part of the earth, living in the farmhouses of M.G.Road. This road ends Delhi, hence civilisation and brings Gurgaon—an anti-thesis of former. This book has no taste to travail any uncivilized roads.

Raza’s leaning with the northern India, as he confesses in writing—grown-up by listening the pre-partition stories from elders at home. That part of the land was once his home—he got that sense and also pain for not being able to see it freely. This happened with so many people, we have various accounts on that but those were from earlier generation. Author leads the debate here, as he represents those who didn’t see the trauma of partition though felt its darkness even after decades.

As he shares, his first visit took place to see his forefathers’ land—and in the course of the time, his bond of sharing developed with fellow Indian students in LSE during University days and later working in Multilateral Agencies, being part of Pakistan’s elite Civil Services.

Years back, he moved from the service to become primarily a writer, with free pen and conscience. That made him writing this meticulously researched and well involved book on Delhi—a city that was in want of authentic looking back on its fading edifices and cultural tradition.

As a columnist too, Raza has been writing about Delhi, its people, who are his friends. And on different side—he is the person, whose writing infuse hope from Pakistan. He can speak of his mind, for making the ills obvious, and thus less harmful. However, the establishment running Pakistan like a half-baked democracy has no intention to stop its slumbering for listening rational commentaries.

Raza likes Delhi—and this city reciprocates with him in same warm way. This book marks it better than any other additional attribute. He has remembered his Delhiwaala and they are reading this book and loving it. Even in conservative estimation, I see this book reaching in ‘essential reading list’ on Delhi. This solely based on the authenticity, the book upholds.

Delhi’s eternal characteristics defies partitioning views—so compilation of its good and bad can be sensibly done only by those not pursuing many goals at a time. That stands opposite with most of the historians, claiming to have expertise on this restless city. Raza Rumi’s Delhi by heart is an important addition to the literatures on Delhi and for delinking the concentration of history writing from royalty to people. In either or both ways—the book will command a wide readership, from across the sections.

If travelling can enrich entitlement with the places—its articulation could make history, simple to be remembered. We can believe it, if not overlooking a remarkable book like this one.
-Atul K Thakur
Email:summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in The Kashmir Walla on October23,2013)

Incorrigible Patna

Book Review: Non-fiction/ A Matter of Rats by Amitava Kumar, Aleph, 144p; Rs295 (Hardback)
The city part of Patna is eternally incorrigible—because most of those, who make this city complete, have no permanent rapacious leaning. This is unusual trend, seeing the kind of progress India has made over the years, with its semi-reformed economy and very active ‘cronyism’. These two together make ‘billionaires’ at filthy high pace—we all know them, as they don’t do petty acts like fodder scam.

Their modus operandi are accomplished, so they do speak on ‘innovative practices’ in packed halls of India’s glittering metros unlike Bihar’s clueless political frauds, bound to make more ‘defame than fame’ through their visible mean acts. The whole country has rats, though people of Bihar believe in co-existence, so they let allow rats to do wishful. But, can believing on animals, with sharp teeth, is a fair idea?

Amatava Kumar inquires it through his new book-A Matter of Rats, which is slim, sharp and appealing for readers, with faceless distinction. Personally, I read his previous books too—and those were belonging to the different genres. I grew up in Madhubani and lived in Patna for a year during the height of state’s political misrule (2001-02)—have also read for first time the writings of Phanishwar Nath Renu and Baba Nagarjun in school days and had stroll on the roads of this state capital.

So, I could understood the genuine nostalgia, which makes Amitava Kumar recalling places, events and people of Bihar, with remarkable or shocking characteristics. The merit of the book lies in Amitava Kumar’s frank observation about his own elite background, the smoke of feudalism and the official lacunas, which for long have gripped the whole state. Still, the claimed changes are not on the ground in Bihar—the author is right in saying, through his firsthand account on this city.

On the positive side—Bihar has been a land of knowledge-seekers. This is not less, because common Bihari people were more competent with their knowledge than other resources to survive in the big bad world. So the book has detailed attention on the achievers from Bihar, who have travelled long path and their success in different field are indeed worth of admiration.

Amitava Kumar doesn’t ignore the positive changes, which took place in the state in last few years. However, categorically he proves why still Patna is a place to be visited by its young absentee population, but not for living permanently. We all think on this, while being on walk in morning or evening or talking to our ageing parents—the sense of void is pervasive everywhere. Biharis’ are doing well outside —but back at home things wear the same non-changing look.

Lack of enterprise and hiatus in cultural exchanges are the two reasons, which make Patna less happening than it deserves actually. So, people should have urge to live in their city and to love it as much they wish. Among the earlier journalistic works on Bihar —Arvind N Das’s Republic of Bihar and Vijay Nambisan’s Bihar Is in the Eye of the Beholder had captured the ground realities. Both these books were written with great insight and meticulous efforts.

After a long break, Amitava Kumar’s A Matter of Rats is a valuable edition in those literatures on Bihar. This book breaks the monotony in different way—it sensitizes the readers towards the state, which for long had seen losses of perceptions and fortunes. Now it is rebounding—whose marked sign is this book.

A well-established writer, Amitava Kumar has looked with utmost care on his home state—and has searched the odds, which are recognizable and addressable. His account of Patna is though much more deep than ‘home-matters’. This is about an incorrigible city, and shaped by the memories and perspectives of Amitava Kumar. The book has come out naturally meaningful, and deserves wide readership.
Atul K Thakur
Email: summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in Rising Kashmir on 7September2013)

India in sepia tint

Book Review: Non-fiction/ Mofussil Junction by Ian Jack, Penguin/Viking, 323p; Rs599 (Hardback)

Ian Jack’s Mofussil Junction is a treasure trove of scintillating sketches of a bygone time, when he traversed and documented rural heartlands of Bharat.
For the veteran Guardian journalist Ian Jack, India is not just a subject close to his heart, but a second home. The compilation of his essays, written during his active days as a journalist/traveler in pre-liberalised India, emphatically announces at the outset the impossibility of collating India at the altar of coherence. This volume deserves far wider reading by those born after 1991, when the ‘enigma of reform’ finally arrived at the slumbering power corridors of Delhi.

India decided to go another way in early 1990s, not because of the Indian leaders’ newfound love for the verses of Victor Hugo, but to escape a wretched existence, wherein wealth creation had become really tough. So, it was then that ‘an-idea-whose-time-has-come’ kind of prose came into prominence and shifted the entire India narrative, turning it inside out as the country embarked on an unprecedented journey.
Ian Jack is no Max Mueller — he has real feelings for India. Unlike the German Indophile, Jack keeps himself at arm’s length from hypothetical arguments. However, he is a superlatively articulate journalist. Jack has seen much and the result is this volume, a treasure trove of scintillating sketches and travels by road and rail through the length and breadth of India, with the spotlight on rural heartlands of Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. From metropolitan India to mofussil Bharat, he appears to be a neutral observer of a changing nation.

Going against the Western trend to look at the East through either rose-tinted glasses or shambolic poverty-goggles, Jack comes across as a moderate polemicist, especially when he’s writing on Bombay or George Orwell’s Motihari, where, to his dismay, few knew the acclaimed Englishman. Similarly, Jack’s essays on the Bhagalpur incident, or the Mansi Railway accident, break the convention of traditional journalistic reportage that eschews opinionating. Knowing it to the bone, Jack’s intuitive grasp on eastern India, which he has seen and felt like no other Western traveler, spellbinds even some of the most astute readers.

The essay on Tagore confirms it, where he diligently recognises the Bard’s unmatchable fame and how that has become a myth in itself, available for popular regression. It is another thing that now Bengalis, and other Tagore-scholars, have developed many, often conflicting, sets of opinions on the Nobel laureate, but none of those challenge his supreme authority in the cultural affairs of the clan. So, while Jack confronts their obsessive side, which hinders the dogmatic Bengalis to see merit in others, he also strikes a resonant note when he asks why Tagore has suffered in translation, and why his preeminence within the Bengali cultural superset is not without its reasons.

Jack’s essays on good English-speaking people like Sonny Mehta, or his landlord in Delhi, Sham Lal, have greater symbolic value, as they were written in simpler days, when speaking mannerisms and accents accrued greater degree of appreciation than the real content. On the Gandhi troika – Indira, Sanjay and Rajiv — his pieces seem to give primary information. I would like to believe this hardly showcases his limitation; rather, it allows us to believe, blissfully so, most of us are perfectly enlightened about the precious and trashy details of our political first family.

But Jack is an old horse at narrative journalism, and it’s humanly not possible to keep the inner perspicuous observer in him hidden behind the reluctant annalist of the Indian dynasty. On 1984 Delhi riots, he provides fresh perspective. Notwithstanding the fact that it’s an old issue and India has, unfortunately, had periodical bouts of turbulence, violence and bloodshed since then, the 2002 Gujarat pogrom being one, Jack’s eyes discover new details that had gone unnoticed in the deluge of politically-motivated accounts of the ugly chapter of modern Indian history. As a democracy, India has been ceremoniously plagued by the ‘culture of riots’ and the fertile ground of hostility is right inside the polity, and partially, Jack, too, hints at the unpalatable truth.

The book has a fleeting subcontinental touch as well. It becomes evident in his recollections of Benazir Bhutto and her mother, who once danced with a white politician, interestingly, which even Oxford-educated Benazir couldn’t do, that there was more to the embrace of modernity and Western ideas than the South Asian mind would like to admit. On Benazir’s reluctance or refusal to dance with a white man, Jack muses whether it was because she was a determined conservative who had learnt Urdu to use it for embellishing both her slang offerings and fiery speeches, which we most of us have heard at some point of time.

Jack’s essays are musings, repositories of collected memories — memories which are personal but have huge relevance for the larger audience, whether Indian or Western. At a juncture, when the incessant drone of breaking news clogs off the sieves of mind, and few are left with a proper appetite for narrative journalism, essentially, which is the better part of the trade, Jack’s work comes as a whiff of cool breeze and refreshing change. Mofussil Junction is here to buck the trend and is a delightful addition to your library, big or small.
Atul K Thakur
Email: summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in Millennium Post on 1September2013)

Tales of Kashmir Walla

Book Review: Anthology/Non-fiction: Of Occupation and Resistance: Writings from Kashmir by Fahad Shah (Edited), Tranquebar/Westland, 264 pp; Rs395 (Paperback)
Fahad Shah, a young journalist from Kashmir has been mainstreaming the Kashmiri people’s voice through an alternative, but very remarkable online magazine —The Kashmir Walla. Like his journalistic works, his first book too sets a new trend of narrative and has potential to diminish the limitless polemics channelised by ‘poet-philosopher to hand choppers’!

The essays of this anthology are handpicked under a clear editorial policy, which is guided with precision and ‘native touch’. The perspective is new and expression exuded by most of the writers of this volume drastically differs from the romantic notion —‘Kashmir is only paradise lost’. But here, one can see the personal and collective angst overturning those beliefs.

Fahad, who stays in Delhi too and has friends here, yet looking at home, makes him feel ‘disconnected’ from rest of India. This still stays a typical status of mass Kashmiris, who struggle for existence rather supremacy and feel vindicated with unrelenting misdeeds from all corners. Fahad’s long introduction of this book and his essay—Kashmir: A Colony of India affirms those unwavering tussle of ‘self and others’ generated out of political follies and adamant stand of opportunists.

Famed novelist and sensible depicter of actual social realities, Siddhartha Gigoo’s Looking Back at the Roots gives balancing touch to the book. His essay marks unending shocks—started with Pandits’ exodus from valley to their turning into a prosperous community, sans cultural affiliations. This is a void hard to fill by ‘artificial get-togethers’ or tempted to live in divisive ghettos, created by confused state machinery.

Gigoo maintains his own track-record of looking on Kashmir’s socio-cultural outbreak and does not make himself to be like partitions— the way many young Kashmiri writers are doing these days at the risk of making plights’ graver. The sense for inter-community life, which once used to be the strength in Kashmir, witnessed its intense wane in 1980’s and since then continuing with the worldview, which is sectarian in actual and holds no amicable solution.

Gigoo can read the pulse of his community—and also to his neighbours back at home—with whom he is separated physically but not at the cost memory. Here, Kashmir still exists in mind and frame—atleast this is a case with few who have been living in honest memory for over two decades. Those subtleties of memory walks further in Nitasha Kaul’s articulately presented Everything I Cannot Tell You About The Women of Kashmir.

With convincing intellectual puts in recalling an important chapter of history—Mridu Rai traces the advent of nationalism, as well as the ‘discontents’ through essay—Memorialising 13July1931in Kashmir. She presents her views on popular compulsions of convergence& alienation as:
“Beginning in the 19th century, ever since nationalism became the predominant ideological vehicle to counter colonial dominance in India, memory became apotheosized in its culture. Events, people, places, words, memory became symbolized. And memory became history; history, however, mapped out in specific ways.”

If these essays brings back the historical turnings into glare—the other pieces, particularly written with bylines less known (from band singer/ M C Kaish, young journalists, stone palters, corpse bearer etc) —too touches the core subject of the book. They are in resistance mode—in life or writing. Irrespective of checks& barriers at theoretical level—they think on sovereignty differently. But in cases, when state protects crime committed by its own men and doesn’t stop watching kitchens of its claimed ‘citizens’—such voices will be remain in vogue.

Since 1947, Indian democracy has grown-up—mostly in terrible shape but at bright side, it has made citizens overtly conscious about the dignity. Unfortunately, we see double standard quite often than not in conflict zones or with whom, who have no representation in power circle.

If, routine check-up in Kashmir makes mockery of basic citizenship rights—the powerless as hysterical level faces similar fate. Although, the variance could be noticed at the level of violence—Fahad not appears colour dyslexic when he terms ‘red is blood in Kashmir’. Those who flirts this lost paradise have no time to think for people—they are sponsoring puppets in state machinery and keeping the pressing questions out.

Freny Manecksha’s How I Understood Kashmir’s Resistance and Gautam Navlakha’s The Matter of Truth, Lies and Manufacturing Consent in a Conflict Zone gives impetus for deeper observations but at occasions, confine their viewpoint at pre-determined level. The essays written from distant geography are less serious than in totality this book comes out—the good thing is, the deviation are surfacing only on few pages.

This book is about the present Kashmir, which comes into this shape and away from age old socio-cultural equilibrium through the political overplays. Both the definition and narration can be diverse but at the end—the realisation has to come—the plagued state of occupation and resistance cannot ensure the democratic ideas blossoming.

It was wrong the way, the interlocutors sent from Delhi to Kashmir, saying—the issues of Kashmir are impossible to be solved under the India constitution. This was among the improper conclusions from the mavericks. It could have much better, had they timely acknowledged that the stone is being pelted there by the youth—not because, they are not in employment, but with urge to resist against the tyrannies of better placed and powerful state forces.

This could have controlled the violence—and peace might be imminent there. Things are in altered shape there—as the will-power lacks in Srinagar and New Delhi equally, and without even the difference of fraction second. Though with the changing time—state as well as the pampered lot of Kashmir’s local leadership has to be extra-conscious—as the young Kashmiris’ are less receptive to outdated whims& fancies.

They are looking for normalcy—and that should not be merely confused by some more political maneuverings. Fahad, with his first book has brought attention on Kashmiri people—this is a valuable accomplishment and will put forth positive turnouts. The hope has better chance to stay now!
Atul K Thakur
Email: summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in Rising Kashmir on August08,2013)