DOST KHAN
JAMMU: By any standards, the people of Kashmir are intellectually and politically sagacious enough to draw a demarcation line between decency and indecency. Nevertheless, there are elements, which tend to remain in the shell of stone-age fanatic mindset that does not allow them to see beyond arm-length distance. Unfortunately, these fringe elements are more than relevant in Kashmir context for the past over two-and-half decades with saner voices getting muter day-by-day. Or, the voices which represent the Kashmir ethos don’t dare to assert for known fears donning the Valley for one fourth of a century now. Only voices heard are those coming from separatists as salvos and mainstream parties as browbeats. Both have worked in milking money and making merry at the cost of poor people.
A day when Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided to spend Diwali amid flood-hit people of Kashmir, the separatists found themselves on toes, attributing motives to the visit. The chronic and hawkish amongst them, Syed Ali Shah Geelani stretched it too far. He said Modi’s visit to Muslim dominated state of Jammu and Kashmir on the occasion of Diwali is nothing but show of Hindutva mindset. First, Geelani is unaware about the demography of Jammu and Kashmir as two of its important regions Jammu and Ladakh are dominated by Hindu and Buddhist population respectively; and second, and most importantly, the Prime Minister was not coming to celebrate the colour of lights; he was coming to be with the sufferers. Even if the Prime Minister would have desired to celebrate Diwali in the Valley, how would anybody be entitled to raise any objection or how it amounted to be cultural aggression? Geelani is fond of terms cultural aggression and social engineering. He smells rat in any effort of Indians reaching out to compatriots in Kashmir and steering them out of morass brought by people like Geelani, Mirwaiz or Yasin Malik by accepting to be the conduits of rogue Pakistan. Geelani needs to explain the Hindu extremism attached with Indian Prime Minister to a State which is an integral part of India.
Kashmir had been known as ‘Reshawaar’, a garden of saints and suffis from times immemorial. It has been the land where people of different faiths had been living in harmony for centuries till the time radicalised strife hounded out a particular segment of people thus painting a painful and dismal picture of intolerance. The fanatic elements brought a stigma to Kashmir’s ethos and left the scars which are hard to fill. They were now sowing the seeds of hatred which can have very serious repercussions for the homogeneity of the State. If Geelani’s illogical argument of Hindus celebrating their festival in the so-called Muslim dominated Jammu and Kashmir is taken on its face value then a situation will arise when fanatics among Hindus of Jammu will question the people of other faiths rejoicing their festivals in this part of the State. The myopic and rigid elements of the Valley are getting emboldened day after day as the sane voice refuses to muster courage to counter. This has brought Kashmir at the cross-roads of history where sanity is failing before lunatic tendencies.
The people known for their progressive political outlook are shadowed by ignorant and semi-literate entities whose imagination does not go beyond their wretched perceptions. Imagine the mental level of a person proclaiming himself as Supremo of United Jehad Council, an amalgam of terror organizations engaged in Kashmir strife, went to the extent of describing Narendra Modi’s visit as condoling the demise of “army’s 372 cows that got killed during the floods”. Such flight of imagination is a question for sane majority Kashmiri population to ponder over, as the elements like Syed Sallah-ud-Din claim to be representing the ‘oppressed’ people at the international fora. Will such entities be allowed to dominate the Kashmir scene, whose stature is nothing but puppets in the hands of a failed state in the neighbourhood. The insightful and wise majority of Kashmir will have to break the shackles of fear unleashed by radicalised Pakistani agents and spell out the idea of Kashmir. By doing so, they are not going to lose anything except the baggage of handful zealots.
