Two Pandit families return to the Valley to find their homes taken over by security forces and their land grabbed by locals. The government has offered little help.
Bhatt still remembers the night when he left the Valley with his wife, son and daughter-inlaw, leaving behind two houses and 35 kanals of apple orchards and paddy fields. “We were scared and we took the decision in haste. Everything was intact then, but today I am an alien in my own land,” he says. Bhatt also owned a house in the nearby Arin village. In his absence, the building was demolished by a man who later got the land transferred to himself. Bhatt says officials of the revenue department assisted in transferring his land illegally. Read More.
About nostalgia, metaphor, reality, dreams and despair for a city of memories
Friday, December 21, 2007
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Blue Notebook (Update 2)
Pages from my diary about my first visit to Kashmir after more than a decade in December 2000.
22/12/2000. Srinagar.
Hotel Room.
For long time last night, bangings and knockings next door kept me awake frightfully. I had double-locked the door from inside and even made sure that it was safe to escape from the second floor window only to realise in the morning that the window is too high.
BS has told me it will be easy to get in touch with the people i want to meet for my film. He said going to my ancestral village in Pulwama may be a problem. He has asked A, the messanger boy in his office (a close relative of his who he put on the office job) to accompany me around. I feel shitty having to be accompanied in my wn city, butr there is apprehension still. I see it in the eyes of people when I tell them about my mission.
In the morning, I took a local bus to Hazratbal, where I went for 5 years everyday to go to my college. Today is the last Friday of the Ramazan. Overheard a woman at the shrine "Today, first time in years a large crowd has come.'It appeared to me a crowd that had converged from all the nearby villages and localities. All the open spaces around the hrine was crammed with people, who all bar none just let me be with my still camera as i stared at them through the camera lens. At the check point, I told the police I was from the 'press' and they just let me in. They didnt even ask me about my ID. 'press' it seems in this place has a passport like quality. I could'nt imagine they would have just let me walk through into the inner sanctum of the shrine just like that maybe in the early years of militancy. I remembered the seige and the hostage crisis of a few years ago...
This was my first view of the Dal Lake after so long. It seemed like a huge ditch shorn off its colour and sheen that I had always seen it naturally imbued with, it seemed lost and forlorn in the wintersun haze, it had lost its brilliance the invitation that never failed, or was i seeing it through my own sense of desolation that i have found here since yesterday. I was hocked to see that the Old and young men alike bared their asses to the shrine to 'cleanse' their private parts in th dirty waters of the lake, but inspite of which the fresh produce of vegetables (nedur, palak, gogz) and fish (gaade) from the lake being sold from nearby stalls did not invite any censor from any buyer in the crowd.
Over the loudspeaker, the head priest of the shrine sounding serene, moderate and peaceful was exhorting the faithful to pray for peace in the future. I did not see any tension in the crowd, the kind of tension I would have imagined that all crowds in violence torn Kashmir would be exhibit. I did not see tension nor did I see any sign of boisterousness or excitement anywhere. People looked weary to me, minding their own business. They do not run after empty buses anymore, a sight I was more familiar with during my student days. There is no pushing and shoving and shouting and aggressiveness. I felt a certain serenity in the atmosphere. Nobody seemed to bother anybody else over anything serious or trivial.I milled among the crowd to feel a closeness with them. A closeness that I had not ever sought before, yet I remained an felt an alien in the midst of a very familiar people, I was no more than a curious glance to them. I thought to myself, ‘all I have to do is keep my mouth shut and I will cease to be of any harm to anybody – just like a terrorist seeking anonymity. I let A do all the talking for me as if I was a foreigner who did not know his way way around. I only passed the money and took pictures.
To be updated
22/12/2000. Srinagar.
Hotel Room.
For long time last night, bangings and knockings next door kept me awake frightfully. I had double-locked the door from inside and even made sure that it was safe to escape from the second floor window only to realise in the morning that the window is too high.
BS has told me it will be easy to get in touch with the people i want to meet for my film. He said going to my ancestral village in Pulwama may be a problem. He has asked A, the messanger boy in his office (a close relative of his who he put on the office job) to accompany me around. I feel shitty having to be accompanied in my wn city, butr there is apprehension still. I see it in the eyes of people when I tell them about my mission.
In the morning, I took a local bus to Hazratbal, where I went for 5 years everyday to go to my college. Today is the last Friday of the Ramazan. Overheard a woman at the shrine "Today, first time in years a large crowd has come.'It appeared to me a crowd that had converged from all the nearby villages and localities. All the open spaces around the hrine was crammed with people, who all bar none just let me be with my still camera as i stared at them through the camera lens. At the check point, I told the police I was from the 'press' and they just let me in. They didnt even ask me about my ID. 'press' it seems in this place has a passport like quality. I could'nt imagine they would have just let me walk through into the inner sanctum of the shrine just like that maybe in the early years of militancy. I remembered the seige and the hostage crisis of a few years ago...
This was my first view of the Dal Lake after so long. It seemed like a huge ditch shorn off its colour and sheen that I had always seen it naturally imbued with, it seemed lost and forlorn in the wintersun haze, it had lost its brilliance the invitation that never failed, or was i seeing it through my own sense of desolation that i have found here since yesterday. I was hocked to see that the Old and young men alike bared their asses to the shrine to 'cleanse' their private parts in th dirty waters of the lake, but inspite of which the fresh produce of vegetables (nedur, palak, gogz) and fish (gaade) from the lake being sold from nearby stalls did not invite any censor from any buyer in the crowd.
Over the loudspeaker, the head priest of the shrine sounding serene, moderate and peaceful was exhorting the faithful to pray for peace in the future. I did not see any tension in the crowd, the kind of tension I would have imagined that all crowds in violence torn Kashmir would be exhibit. I did not see tension nor did I see any sign of boisterousness or excitement anywhere. People looked weary to me, minding their own business. They do not run after empty buses anymore, a sight I was more familiar with during my student days. There is no pushing and shoving and shouting and aggressiveness. I felt a certain serenity in the atmosphere. Nobody seemed to bother anybody else over anything serious or trivial.I milled among the crowd to feel a closeness with them. A closeness that I had not ever sought before, yet I remained an felt an alien in the midst of a very familiar people, I was no more than a curious glance to them. I thought to myself, ‘all I have to do is keep my mouth shut and I will cease to be of any harm to anybody – just like a terrorist seeking anonymity. I let A do all the talking for me as if I was a foreigner who did not know his way way around. I only passed the money and took pictures.
To be updated
Blue Notebook (Update 1)
Pages from my diary about my first visit to Kashmir after more than a decade in December 2000.
21/12/2000 Srinagar.
Hotel room.
Numb hands, fluttering heart, warmth on the face while rest of the body is cold. I am sitting in the dining room of this hotel........Yes I am home and feeling lonely, sad, vulnerable about who I am and how I feel. There's lot I have to put down on paper, it could take me all night. I am full of words but not sure if my words will be able to say it all.
It's only 7.30 in the evening and the city is deserted and dark. There is no electricity. The train from Delhi arrived Jammu at 7.45 am, by 8.15 am I was already on my way to Srinagar. One of my co-passengers, a Kashmiri bsinessman returning home for the Idd festival wanted to start a conversation with me in kashmiri, but I was not sure just yet about how open I could be with strangers on my first trip after so many years, so I pretended not to understand him. The taxi driver Gurmet, who only gave me his number and name after we had reached Srinagar, was however sure that I was a kashmiri returning home after many years. He could tell and I really was glad that atleast he knew my small secret for the day. He was a Sikh from Jawahar Nagar in Srinagar. With Gurmeet i felt we shared something in common, i could sense it very early (i was sitting in the front seat) but it was only much later after we had already stopped once for breakfast at a hindu hotel, that our Muslim co-passenger insisted that we stop at a Muslim restaurant further on because'he was dying to have 'nun chai'.
It was while waiting for our Muslim co-passengers to have their 'nun chay' that Gurmeet finally opened up with me, a bit hesitantly.
"you are a hindu?"
"Yes"
"you left in the militancy?"
"No, much before, in 1985 when I finished college."
At the earlier stop, just out of jammu he had told me that he recognised me from my association with radio kashmir." I was happy he had recognised me, but also not very sure what would happen should anybody else in the bus know.Throughout the journey, he took great care in expressing to me, in subtle and not so subtle ways his absolute antipathy towards his Muslim passengers, but he was not the only one. Throughout the journey, he treated the Muslim businessman with utter disdain whenever he had some peculiar request or demand. Emboldened I guess more by my sympathetic ear and by the actions of another passenger who had asked the businessman to shut up while he went yakking about how much money he had spent on the construction of his new house in Sopore. This other co-passenger was from Karnataka and on his way to re-join his work at the cement factory near Khrew.
At Jawahar Tunnel, the local police made all of us get down and walk through a check post, where they just stared at us not even attempting to body search us our see through our baggage. Passing through Jawahar Tunnel, i wondered whether at all it would be possible to take a travelling shot of the tunnel from inside as I would emerge into the valley when I would have to return a month later with my camera crew for the film. I was thinking of ways to hide the camera from the eyes of the security men standing on either side of the entry and exit of the tunnel. As we emerged from the tunnel, a Kashmiri cop wanted a lift up to Qazigund. Thankfully, the driver did not stop for him. I thought that was some courage.
I do not know how I felt emerging into the valley after such a long time away - From darkness of the tunnel to light...there was Kashmir before me as if I had never been away. I wondered a bit that at this time of the year there was no snow to be seen anywhere close though the trees were more leaf less and life less than I remembered having seen anywhere or was it just my imagination - seeing desolation where I expected it to be. My eyes searched vainly for a view of Verinag spring below...I knew it was somewhere down there from my early schoolboy memories of a few b&w stills of the highway taken from verinag point of view. Finally my view of the valley of kashmir stretched out below me and extending far to the horizon dissolved in the strong 3 o'clock glare of winter day. I could make out that Gurmeet (our driver) glanced at me furtively as I sat grim, lips pursed thinking of coming home. I was perhaps tense but not out of fear as I had expected to be but just from the thought of coming back home. I was dissapointed a bit too. What did I expect to see? The valley could'nt have changed. I was here to see how the people may have changed and been affected. I was dissapointed because I tealised that maybe this film I wanted to do can not be done. NOTHING has changed in the interval between now and when I was here last. Nothing.
Crossing Qazigund / Khanbal / Anantnah / Bijbehara / Awantipore I saw - People are the same, The pace of life is unchanged, they walk and talk the same way and still wear 'firn'the same way as they always used to.......but I have not seen 'kangri' yet...
As I write this Mr Mogambo from Mr. India speaks on the cable in this dining hall
"Naa samajh aur jaahil hindustaniyon ne apni history se aaj tak kuch nahin seekha..."
Waiter to an Indian Looking guy.
"So how was Gulmarg?"
"Heaven, jannat.' he replies.
Waiter, "yet being so near...we people cant go there."
SILENCE. END OF CONVERSATION.
...Yes, I had my first view of a small group (about 4 or 5) of renegade militants walk along with a posse of securitymen on the Khannabal crossing. I had only read about them or seen their pictures on TV before. I saw securitymen in two's standing by the road at regular intervals all along the highway from Jawahar Tunnel upto Pantha Chowk, where the highway had been closed to all traffic. But the stone carver in his corner space who I had been seeing eversince I remember seeing was still there where he ought to be but maybe it was not the same person - His son or grandson or neighbour perhaps, but all the same something familiar I met here. The Border Security cantonment atop the small hill overlooking the Pantha Chowk crossing has now grown up into a mini township. I wonder if at all any local Kashmiri would be allowed in here now.
At Pantha Chowk, because of the closed Highway our taxi took the Bye Pass into Srinagar. I realised that now we may pass by my home in sanatnagar, which can be seen from the bye pass. I had planned to go to my home only on the last day of my shoot and now what, if this is divine intervention - it's just not plain luck or mere co-incidence - I will be able to see my home on the first day of my visit to Kashmir. Here I am taravelling from Mumbai to kashmir and I am literally forced to catch sight of my home, my colony, as this is the only route open into Srinagar today. In the taxi I was near bursting, wanting to tell anyone that that is my home you see behind those trees, this is the road leading to my home, this is the Rawalpora crossing where I used to catch my bus to college everyday ...but because I had not talked to any of my co-passengers about about who I was, so I was perforce obliged to just keep quiet while my insides were all bursting to announce to an entire world that I had come home after so many years.
Ultimately i was not able to keep my feelings inside me anymore. i had to say it. i had to tell it to someone, so I turned to Gurmeet and whispered to him in Punjabi so low that I was not sure he heard.
"We are going to pass my home by the highway."
"Where?" He asked.
Just than the kashmiri businessman sitting behind me asked.
"Where are you getting down?"
"Exchange Road." I answered him.
At the point where Rawalpora main road intersects the Bye Pass road, Gurmeet kindly slowed down behind my home to let me have a proper look at the present condition of our house. I had much earlier seen picturs of it. Nothing had been left behind except the bare structrure. I could not locate our home for quiet some time as it was hidden behind a house that had recently come up afresh behind ours. Part of probably built on our backyard. And than I saw it...And I was happy. I dont remember what exactly I felt but I remember thinking about my parents. And as I write this, I remember my nephew and neice who were just a year old when we all had to leave. I believe, they and my parents will come back to it.
After Gurmeet dropped me at Jehangir Chowk, a short distance from my actual stop.( The policemen would'nt let us cross Badshah bridge for some security reasons) I went up to a Auto Rickshaw and spoke to its driver in Kashmiri. When i got down at my destination, I asked the rickshawala aboiut his fare. He said, 'pay what you wish.' I was surprised at the way he seemed nice to me. I took out a 10 rupee note and I expected him to haggle a bit though I knew that I was paying him fair. He accepted it graciously and I was really very surprised. This had never ever happened to me in Srinagar. I had always been pestered for more. Did he perhaps know that I had come home. Do I look like a stranger to other's here? Do I look like a 'bata?'
BS (My Dad's ex-colleague), who was a steno at the time my dad had to leave but is now the boss, was very warm and cordial and welcoming. I told him my actual reason for coming home after so many years. He offered all help. We talked about the 'situation'. 'Not too good' I felt, though he did not use too many words to say it. I came to know that the ramazan Ceasefire has been extended by another month. A grenade attack had taken place in Lal Chowk, just a few hours earlier though the grenade had not burst. Sitting in his office this late evening BS was eager to get home before it got dark, but he had to wait (He had to file the news report) as the response of the Hurriet leaders to the Vajpayee's ceasefire extension call had not yet come in. It was dark already by the time Hurriet's reactions to the ceasefire extension call came in, but BS could not have waited.
The entire city was in darkness. This is Srinagar every evening eversince I remember. No electricity in winter months. W came in for his late night shift. He offered to take me to the nearby hotel. Walking to the hotel in pitch darkness on my first night in Srinagar has been a nrve shaking experience. Did I expect a bomb to burst at the next street corner? Did I suspect that dark figure huddled infront of a closed shop front to be a gun weilding militant? Yes>>>> was I afraid? I was alone and I felt very vulnerable here on my first night. The crowds have all vanished from the streets within 30 minutes since darkness descended.Walking to the hotel, A shadow huddled infront the Pan Shop below the Greenway hotel whistles softly. W walks upto him, leaving me all alone a few metres ahead. I am perspiring in December coldness. W has a hurried whispered conversation with him and than comes back to me with the information that the guy is offering a room for 100 rupees. No way I say and plodd on ahead to finally heave a sigh of relief at a hotel charging 450 for the night.
I speak to the receptionist at the hotel in Kashmiri. He does not care much for it and puts up the hotel register before me to formalise my check-in. In the column 'Nationality' above mine the guest in room 201 has written 'Kashmiri'. I write 'Indian'. I walk up to a table where one place is vacant.
'If you don't mind, can I have a cigrette?
"yes" 'where are you from?'
'Mumbai'
'where are you working? Businessman?'
'No, I make films.'
'What's your name?'
'Ajay ....Raina'
(A CHANCE MEETING WITH Mr. S, MY DAD's JOURNALIST FRIEND - I have explained this meeting in detail in GOING HOME)
The staff of this hotel though aware that I am talking to them in Kashmiri always talk back to me in typically pidgin Kashmiri Hindi / Urdu. Is it just that they are expected to (or are used to) speak to every outsider in Hindi or is it just me who thinks that they do not wish to acknowledge to themselves or to me that 'I am back'.
While walking from office to the Hotel here, W had talked to me very briefly about the circumstances in which my Father left. He said, " A few of them barged into the office one day and demanded to meet RAINA SAAB. But Raina saab was not in office. Only S, the office boy (From Kerala) was in office at that time. So they left a message with S for Raina Saab. 'Move out gracefully' (My father left after many such warnings from JKLF in form of telephone calls at office and at home and letters threatening dire consequences for the family. He finally left after a friend urged him to leave by this evening)
To be updated...
21/12/2000 Srinagar.
Hotel room.
Numb hands, fluttering heart, warmth on the face while rest of the body is cold. I am sitting in the dining room of this hotel........Yes I am home and feeling lonely, sad, vulnerable about who I am and how I feel. There's lot I have to put down on paper, it could take me all night. I am full of words but not sure if my words will be able to say it all.
It's only 7.30 in the evening and the city is deserted and dark. There is no electricity. The train from Delhi arrived Jammu at 7.45 am, by 8.15 am I was already on my way to Srinagar. One of my co-passengers, a Kashmiri bsinessman returning home for the Idd festival wanted to start a conversation with me in kashmiri, but I was not sure just yet about how open I could be with strangers on my first trip after so many years, so I pretended not to understand him. The taxi driver Gurmet, who only gave me his number and name after we had reached Srinagar, was however sure that I was a kashmiri returning home after many years. He could tell and I really was glad that atleast he knew my small secret for the day. He was a Sikh from Jawahar Nagar in Srinagar. With Gurmeet i felt we shared something in common, i could sense it very early (i was sitting in the front seat) but it was only much later after we had already stopped once for breakfast at a hindu hotel, that our Muslim co-passenger insisted that we stop at a Muslim restaurant further on because'he was dying to have 'nun chai'.
It was while waiting for our Muslim co-passengers to have their 'nun chay' that Gurmeet finally opened up with me, a bit hesitantly.
"you are a hindu?"
"Yes"
"you left in the militancy?"
"No, much before, in 1985 when I finished college."
At the earlier stop, just out of jammu he had told me that he recognised me from my association with radio kashmir." I was happy he had recognised me, but also not very sure what would happen should anybody else in the bus know.Throughout the journey, he took great care in expressing to me, in subtle and not so subtle ways his absolute antipathy towards his Muslim passengers, but he was not the only one. Throughout the journey, he treated the Muslim businessman with utter disdain whenever he had some peculiar request or demand. Emboldened I guess more by my sympathetic ear and by the actions of another passenger who had asked the businessman to shut up while he went yakking about how much money he had spent on the construction of his new house in Sopore. This other co-passenger was from Karnataka and on his way to re-join his work at the cement factory near Khrew.
At Jawahar Tunnel, the local police made all of us get down and walk through a check post, where they just stared at us not even attempting to body search us our see through our baggage. Passing through Jawahar Tunnel, i wondered whether at all it would be possible to take a travelling shot of the tunnel from inside as I would emerge into the valley when I would have to return a month later with my camera crew for the film. I was thinking of ways to hide the camera from the eyes of the security men standing on either side of the entry and exit of the tunnel. As we emerged from the tunnel, a Kashmiri cop wanted a lift up to Qazigund. Thankfully, the driver did not stop for him. I thought that was some courage.
I do not know how I felt emerging into the valley after such a long time away - From darkness of the tunnel to light...there was Kashmir before me as if I had never been away. I wondered a bit that at this time of the year there was no snow to be seen anywhere close though the trees were more leaf less and life less than I remembered having seen anywhere or was it just my imagination - seeing desolation where I expected it to be. My eyes searched vainly for a view of Verinag spring below...I knew it was somewhere down there from my early schoolboy memories of a few b&w stills of the highway taken from verinag point of view. Finally my view of the valley of kashmir stretched out below me and extending far to the horizon dissolved in the strong 3 o'clock glare of winter day. I could make out that Gurmeet (our driver) glanced at me furtively as I sat grim, lips pursed thinking of coming home. I was perhaps tense but not out of fear as I had expected to be but just from the thought of coming back home. I was dissapointed a bit too. What did I expect to see? The valley could'nt have changed. I was here to see how the people may have changed and been affected. I was dissapointed because I tealised that maybe this film I wanted to do can not be done. NOTHING has changed in the interval between now and when I was here last. Nothing.
Crossing Qazigund / Khanbal / Anantnah / Bijbehara / Awantipore I saw - People are the same, The pace of life is unchanged, they walk and talk the same way and still wear 'firn'the same way as they always used to.......but I have not seen 'kangri' yet...
As I write this Mr Mogambo from Mr. India speaks on the cable in this dining hall
"Naa samajh aur jaahil hindustaniyon ne apni history se aaj tak kuch nahin seekha..."
Waiter to an Indian Looking guy.
"So how was Gulmarg?"
"Heaven, jannat.' he replies.
Waiter, "yet being so near...we people cant go there."
SILENCE. END OF CONVERSATION.
...Yes, I had my first view of a small group (about 4 or 5) of renegade militants walk along with a posse of securitymen on the Khannabal crossing. I had only read about them or seen their pictures on TV before. I saw securitymen in two's standing by the road at regular intervals all along the highway from Jawahar Tunnel upto Pantha Chowk, where the highway had been closed to all traffic. But the stone carver in his corner space who I had been seeing eversince I remember seeing was still there where he ought to be but maybe it was not the same person - His son or grandson or neighbour perhaps, but all the same something familiar I met here. The Border Security cantonment atop the small hill overlooking the Pantha Chowk crossing has now grown up into a mini township. I wonder if at all any local Kashmiri would be allowed in here now.
At Pantha Chowk, because of the closed Highway our taxi took the Bye Pass into Srinagar. I realised that now we may pass by my home in sanatnagar, which can be seen from the bye pass. I had planned to go to my home only on the last day of my shoot and now what, if this is divine intervention - it's just not plain luck or mere co-incidence - I will be able to see my home on the first day of my visit to Kashmir. Here I am taravelling from Mumbai to kashmir and I am literally forced to catch sight of my home, my colony, as this is the only route open into Srinagar today. In the taxi I was near bursting, wanting to tell anyone that that is my home you see behind those trees, this is the road leading to my home, this is the Rawalpora crossing where I used to catch my bus to college everyday ...but because I had not talked to any of my co-passengers about about who I was, so I was perforce obliged to just keep quiet while my insides were all bursting to announce to an entire world that I had come home after so many years.
Ultimately i was not able to keep my feelings inside me anymore. i had to say it. i had to tell it to someone, so I turned to Gurmeet and whispered to him in Punjabi so low that I was not sure he heard.
"We are going to pass my home by the highway."
"Where?" He asked.
Just than the kashmiri businessman sitting behind me asked.
"Where are you getting down?"
"Exchange Road." I answered him.
At the point where Rawalpora main road intersects the Bye Pass road, Gurmeet kindly slowed down behind my home to let me have a proper look at the present condition of our house. I had much earlier seen picturs of it. Nothing had been left behind except the bare structrure. I could not locate our home for quiet some time as it was hidden behind a house that had recently come up afresh behind ours. Part of probably built on our backyard. And than I saw it...And I was happy. I dont remember what exactly I felt but I remember thinking about my parents. And as I write this, I remember my nephew and neice who were just a year old when we all had to leave. I believe, they and my parents will come back to it.
After Gurmeet dropped me at Jehangir Chowk, a short distance from my actual stop.( The policemen would'nt let us cross Badshah bridge for some security reasons) I went up to a Auto Rickshaw and spoke to its driver in Kashmiri. When i got down at my destination, I asked the rickshawala aboiut his fare. He said, 'pay what you wish.' I was surprised at the way he seemed nice to me. I took out a 10 rupee note and I expected him to haggle a bit though I knew that I was paying him fair. He accepted it graciously and I was really very surprised. This had never ever happened to me in Srinagar. I had always been pestered for more. Did he perhaps know that I had come home. Do I look like a stranger to other's here? Do I look like a 'bata?'
BS (My Dad's ex-colleague), who was a steno at the time my dad had to leave but is now the boss, was very warm and cordial and welcoming. I told him my actual reason for coming home after so many years. He offered all help. We talked about the 'situation'. 'Not too good' I felt, though he did not use too many words to say it. I came to know that the ramazan Ceasefire has been extended by another month. A grenade attack had taken place in Lal Chowk, just a few hours earlier though the grenade had not burst. Sitting in his office this late evening BS was eager to get home before it got dark, but he had to wait (He had to file the news report) as the response of the Hurriet leaders to the Vajpayee's ceasefire extension call had not yet come in. It was dark already by the time Hurriet's reactions to the ceasefire extension call came in, but BS could not have waited.
The entire city was in darkness. This is Srinagar every evening eversince I remember. No electricity in winter months. W came in for his late night shift. He offered to take me to the nearby hotel. Walking to the hotel in pitch darkness on my first night in Srinagar has been a nrve shaking experience. Did I expect a bomb to burst at the next street corner? Did I suspect that dark figure huddled infront of a closed shop front to be a gun weilding militant? Yes>>>> was I afraid? I was alone and I felt very vulnerable here on my first night. The crowds have all vanished from the streets within 30 minutes since darkness descended.Walking to the hotel, A shadow huddled infront the Pan Shop below the Greenway hotel whistles softly. W walks upto him, leaving me all alone a few metres ahead. I am perspiring in December coldness. W has a hurried whispered conversation with him and than comes back to me with the information that the guy is offering a room for 100 rupees. No way I say and plodd on ahead to finally heave a sigh of relief at a hotel charging 450 for the night.
I speak to the receptionist at the hotel in Kashmiri. He does not care much for it and puts up the hotel register before me to formalise my check-in. In the column 'Nationality' above mine the guest in room 201 has written 'Kashmiri'. I write 'Indian'. I walk up to a table where one place is vacant.
'If you don't mind, can I have a cigrette?
"yes" 'where are you from?'
'Mumbai'
'where are you working? Businessman?'
'No, I make films.'
'What's your name?'
'Ajay ....Raina'
(A CHANCE MEETING WITH Mr. S, MY DAD's JOURNALIST FRIEND - I have explained this meeting in detail in GOING HOME)
The staff of this hotel though aware that I am talking to them in Kashmiri always talk back to me in typically pidgin Kashmiri Hindi / Urdu. Is it just that they are expected to (or are used to) speak to every outsider in Hindi or is it just me who thinks that they do not wish to acknowledge to themselves or to me that 'I am back'.
While walking from office to the Hotel here, W had talked to me very briefly about the circumstances in which my Father left. He said, " A few of them barged into the office one day and demanded to meet RAINA SAAB. But Raina saab was not in office. Only S, the office boy (From Kerala) was in office at that time. So they left a message with S for Raina Saab. 'Move out gracefully' (My father left after many such warnings from JKLF in form of telephone calls at office and at home and letters threatening dire consequences for the family. He finally left after a friend urged him to leave by this evening)
To be updated...
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Blue Notebook
I found this blue notebook lying around. It is a diary i kept about my first visit to Kashmir after more than a decade in December 2000. Last time I was in Srinagar was in November first week (I guess) in 1989 when I had gone to visit my family from Pune where I was a student then. In November 1989, I had no inkling that this would be my last visit to a safe and peaceful Kashmir. One could hear a few stray bomb blasts in the night even than, I remember my brother casually referinng to one such bomb blast at dinner time as 'just a routine matter these days'. Next day I was to learn that some old building on The Bund near Amira Kadal bridge had been blasted. But that was then, now consigned to backlanes of memory.
Here, I will be posting the pages from my diary 'The Blue Notebook', which I will keep updating from time to time.
(UNDATED)
there's a war out there
and people are fighting
and dying for things they
believe
there are victims
and there are perpetrators
(DATED - 29/01/2001)
It could have been you dead or fighting
EMPATHY is the word - listen
you may hear stories that well may
be about you.
17/12/2000
Discussion at S's place tonight about Bangala immigrants, Periyer's anti-Brahmin movement in Tamil Nadu. Thoughts about my first Tamil friend Ganesh Iyer. M's comment (A Tamil Brahmin long settled in Delhi) "We deserved it."
18/12/2000 Delhi
On 16th when i left mumbai there was no mention of Kashmir in any of the major Newspapers. same thing yesterday. No news about kashmir. today - major headlines on front pages of all dailies scream. 'Hurriet leaders are positive about ceasefire', 'Hurriet leaders want ceasefire to lead to talks. (This was the Ramazan ceasefire announced by Atal Bihari Vajpayee)
The camera Equipment guy i went to for hiring his camera said he won't let me take it 'beacuse Kashmir is not safe. Our guy was beaten up somewhere in Anantnag a few months back.' So from now on, I am very hesitant about telling equipment guys here in Delhi that I am going to Kashmir, atleast will not volunteer that bit of information.
20/12/2000 Delhi.
Shalimar Express AS1-64, There will be things I'll notice anew when I am there. Thing's I did'nt know to look for..the particular colour and throw of the light, the quality of coldness and whether it has any impress on the character of the people...the colours of winter, the material and tangible evidence of fear of death or of hope in the gestures and eyes of the people.
When people in Delhi (strangers in hotels and restaurants) ask mw where I am going, I tell them ' mumbai'. I am still not very at ease with relling people that I am going to Kashmir after 1989, how many years? 11...
BS has offered that I could stay in his office (My Dad's office till he had to leave) for the duration of my stay in Kashmir. I'll go and find out. If it's too cold there I may have to decide to stay in some hotel.
'going home to stay in a hotel', the very idea seems mocking.
I have stayed in this office once in 1982 (June, around the time when India won the Cricket World cup trophy, as i remember this event too well) I think I was preparing for my 4th or 6th semester exam at the REC. This time when i'll go to REC or to my school or SP College, I'll find it empty. This is winter vacations there now.
To be updated...
Here, I will be posting the pages from my diary 'The Blue Notebook', which I will keep updating from time to time.
(UNDATED)
there's a war out there
and people are fighting
and dying for things they
believe
there are victims
and there are perpetrators
(DATED - 29/01/2001)
It could have been you dead or fighting
EMPATHY is the word - listen
you may hear stories that well may
be about you.
17/12/2000
Discussion at S's place tonight about Bangala immigrants, Periyer's anti-Brahmin movement in Tamil Nadu. Thoughts about my first Tamil friend Ganesh Iyer. M's comment (A Tamil Brahmin long settled in Delhi) "We deserved it."
18/12/2000 Delhi
On 16th when i left mumbai there was no mention of Kashmir in any of the major Newspapers. same thing yesterday. No news about kashmir. today - major headlines on front pages of all dailies scream. 'Hurriet leaders are positive about ceasefire', 'Hurriet leaders want ceasefire to lead to talks. (This was the Ramazan ceasefire announced by Atal Bihari Vajpayee)
The camera Equipment guy i went to for hiring his camera said he won't let me take it 'beacuse Kashmir is not safe. Our guy was beaten up somewhere in Anantnag a few months back.' So from now on, I am very hesitant about telling equipment guys here in Delhi that I am going to Kashmir, atleast will not volunteer that bit of information.
20/12/2000 Delhi.
Shalimar Express AS1-64, There will be things I'll notice anew when I am there. Thing's I did'nt know to look for..the particular colour and throw of the light, the quality of coldness and whether it has any impress on the character of the people...the colours of winter, the material and tangible evidence of fear of death or of hope in the gestures and eyes of the people.
When people in Delhi (strangers in hotels and restaurants) ask mw where I am going, I tell them ' mumbai'. I am still not very at ease with relling people that I am going to Kashmir after 1989, how many years? 11...
BS has offered that I could stay in his office (My Dad's office till he had to leave) for the duration of my stay in Kashmir. I'll go and find out. If it's too cold there I may have to decide to stay in some hotel.
'going home to stay in a hotel', the very idea seems mocking.
I have stayed in this office once in 1982 (June, around the time when India won the Cricket World cup trophy, as i remember this event too well) I think I was preparing for my 4th or 6th semester exam at the REC. This time when i'll go to REC or to my school or SP College, I'll find it empty. This is winter vacations there now.
To be updated...
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Trapped into silence?
The article about trials of Ayaan Hirsi Ali by Sam Harris and Salman Rushdie first printed in Chicago Tribune only reminds me of the way in which the Left Government in Bengal and the Central Government are treating Taslima Nasreen.
Sample this, "...she is a unique and indispensable witness to both the strength and weakness of the West: to the splendor of open society and to the boundless energy of its antagonists. She knows the challenges we face in our struggle to contain the misogyny and religious fanaticism of the Muslim world, and she lives with the consequences of our failure each day. There is no one in a better position to remind us that tolerance of intolerance is cowardice."
If we were to substitute 'The Left Government in West Bengal' for the word West in the paragraph above, how apt would it be in case of the beleagured Taslima ?
Here's the complete article.
Today Pranab Mukerjee, India's Forein Minister made a comment about Taslima in the Parliament. He said, "... government expects Taslima Nasreen to refrain from any act that may hurt sentiments of Indian people."
Will Taslima have to stop saying or writing about what she wants to if she chooses to stay in my country?
Sample this, "...she is a unique and indispensable witness to both the strength and weakness of the West: to the splendor of open society and to the boundless energy of its antagonists. She knows the challenges we face in our struggle to contain the misogyny and religious fanaticism of the Muslim world, and she lives with the consequences of our failure each day. There is no one in a better position to remind us that tolerance of intolerance is cowardice."
If we were to substitute 'The Left Government in West Bengal' for the word West in the paragraph above, how apt would it be in case of the beleagured Taslima ?
Here's the complete article.
Today Pranab Mukerjee, India's Forein Minister made a comment about Taslima in the Parliament. He said, "... government expects Taslima Nasreen to refrain from any act that may hurt sentiments of Indian people."
Will Taslima have to stop saying or writing about what she wants to if she chooses to stay in my country?
Monday, November 26, 2007
What if?
Sheikh Abdullah's grandson evaluates two recent volumes on Kashmir and finds them well-researched and well-written even if he differs with their objectivity .
"Coming back to the what-if questions that keep echoing in my head and without going back too far—what if the Centre had not engineered the fall of the National Conference government in 1984? What if the Rajiv-Farooq accord had not taken place? What if there were no reported electoral malpractices in the 1987 elections? What if militants had not been released in exchange for Rubaiya Sayeed? The list goes on and on. As I said, hindsight is such a wonderful thing.... Knowing what I do now, I can easily say that the accord shouldn’t have been signed. Or that the terrorists shouldn’t have been released. Or that more care should have been taken to address people’s concerns about governance.But no matter how many times I ask myself ‘what if?’ it doesn’t change the fact that what is done is done. We can’t turn back the clock."
Here's the link to the article
Thursday, November 22, 2007
"I am an Israeli. I live in Jerusalem."
"I am an Israeli. I live in Jerusalem. I have a story, not yet finished, to tell." This is the opening line of David Shulman's powerful and memorable book, Dark Hope, a diary of four years of political activity in Israel and the Palestinian territories. It is a record of the author's intense involvement with a volunteer organization composed of Israeli Palestinians and Israeli Jews, called Ta'ayush, an Arabic term for "living together" or "life in common." The group was founded in October 2000, soon after the start of the second Palestinian intifada.
"This book aims," Shulman writes,
at showing something of the Israeli peace movement in action, on the basis of one individual's very limited experience.... I want to give you some sense of what it feels like to be part of this struggle and of why we do it. Read more:
"This book aims," Shulman writes,
at showing something of the Israeli peace movement in action, on the basis of one individual's very limited experience.... I want to give you some sense of what it feels like to be part of this struggle and of why we do it. Read more:
Make Music Not War
From Aditi Bhaduri in Srinagar
Srinagar's first pop group, Immersions, born out of a yearning for peace and normalcy, is making waves in the valley and the rest of India.
Badal denge duniya ki tasveer
We, the youngsters of Kashmir
Milegi manzil yeh hai yaqeen
Manzil hamse door nahin
Badal denge duniya ki tasveer
We, the youngsters of Kashmir
Maana hai dushwaariyan
Bebasi laachariya
Maanah hai mushkilen kayee
Phir bhi badhte hum sabhi
Phir bhi badhte hum sabhi
We, the youngsters of Kashmir
Badal denge duniya ki tasveer
We, the youngsters of Kashmir
These gentle words do not flow from any poet's or politician's pen. They are the thoughts of 27-year-old Amit Wanchoo, a medical doctor in Srinagar. With cropped hair and green eyes, he is the quintessential Kashmiri. Yet, Wanchoo's is a precarious existence. Growing up in conflict-ridden Kashmir, he has seen enough violence to last him a lifetime. A member of the minority Kashmiri Pandit (Hindu) community, his is one of the few families still left in Srinagar - they did not flee to the safer havens of Jammu when militancy was at its peak. There was a price to pay however: Wanchoo's grandfather was assassinated by the Hizbul Mujahideen in 1992, when Hindus in Kashmir were being targeted.
The tragedy only increased the yearning for calm and peace. Wanchoo's is thus a special investment in peace. "Life for an average youngster in Kashmir is terrible," he says. The transient nature of life was flung at his face every waking moment. Life in Kashmir is like walking over a minefield of bombs and IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices), hoping that you will not be the victim and forgetting all about it once you have crossed the danger zone. Extremely talented, Wanchoo felt tormented every time he moved out of the valley and saw life in other parts of India. He realised how cruel life had become for the youth of Kashmir. "Like their counterparts in other parts of the world, they also have dreams. They want to do something great in life; [but they also] want to attend music concerts, have fun, go dancing, enjoy late nights out with their families and friends and do lots of other things." But the atmosphere in Kashmir was too restricting. Islamist militants had imposed bans on cinema, music, concerts - in fact, on almost all forms of entertainment.
It was out of this yearning for peace and normalcy that Immersions was born. It was a scene that belied belief - the first performance of Immersions at Tagore Hall in Srinagar. A youth group was singing and dancing on stage, performing songs in Hindi, Punjabi and English - and what's more, there was even a young and beautiful woman in their midst! This was unprecedented in the valley.
Call it karma, or call it sheer luck, but it just so happened that all these like-minded, talented people came together. Wanchoo's longtime friend, King Paul Singh, who is Immersions' lead singer, was already a known name in Srinagar. A Sikh by birth, Paul was born and brought up in Kashmir, and at a young age he decided to make music his career and the centre of his universe, even though "people in Kashmir neither value nor respect music," he laments. It was not exactly smooth sailing for him. There was family pressure for him to engage in music simply as a pastime and not as a profession. Moreover, there was no state support, nor infrastructure.
"There is no encouragement for the youth here," says the bearded and turbanned Paul. "And neither is there any concept of music shows." But he persisted, even as he pursued a Masters in Computer Applications (MCA) course from the Indira Gandhi Open University. He won his first prize in music when he was in class 11, at an inter-school competition in Srinagar. That's where he also met Mehmeet Syed, who was to join Immersions as the band's female voice.
Later, many solo shows followed, and Paul became a known voice in Kashmir, performing on different TV channels, on radio and even doing commercial shows in Srinagar.
It was around this time that he teamed up with Wanchoo who was then in his third year at the Shere-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences. "We had no extra curricular activity in our college, and the whole atmosphere was depressing," he recalls. On the other hand, 1,500 Kashmiris reported annually to the psychiatry hospital, and, at least, half of them were teenagers. So Wanchoo, determined to do something and inspired by the extra-curricular activities in the academic institutions in the rest of the country, organised the first musical programme in college. "There was a lot of opposition from some staff members and students, but we managed to do it on a large scale, defeating the opposition," he says.
Wanchoo went on to establish the Amit Wanchoo Infotainment Division and worked wholeheartedly to establish a group "that would put Kashmir back on the national culture map." He wrote the lyrics and Paul composed the music and sang, and together they hired other musicians as well.
Among them was Mehmeet Syed. The long-haired, doe-eyed Syed had already made her mark as a singer in Kashmiri society by this time.
"It was not considerations of peace or healing that inspired me to sing; it was simply the sound of music," she tells me candidly. "I sing for the joy of singing, first and foremost for myself, and if in the process I am able to convey some sort of a message to anyone, or provide balm to any wound, then I am only too happy." Luckily for Mehmeet Syed, her family has been extremely supportive, and she has been singing since she was in school. Like Paul, she too has won prizes at inter-school competitions and began doing shows much before she joined Immersions. In fact, she set a trend in the valley when she did video clips of her songs with models from Jammu swaying in the background. Now this style is copied by many in Kashmir. Lata Mangeshkar, Shamima Azad (the wife of the current chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir who is also a singer) and her mother, who has a diploma in music, are the sources of her inspiration.
Besides Syed, Paul also brought Irfan Nabi Bhat, 25, a talented musician who is now the lead guitarist of the group, on board. Irfan learned the guitar in the sunny island of Goa and, in 2000, was awarded the 'Best Guitarist of the Year' award by none other than the musical genius A.R. Rahman. He is also an accomplished rock singer and, together with Paul, has done several heart-stopping shows. Some of the numbers that have become a regular feature of their repertoire are songs sung by Pakistan's Abrarul Haq and Jawad Ahmed, especially Haq's "Preeto mere naal vyaah kar le, sada aitbaar kar le." Occasionally, Irfan also plays the drums, and one of his claims to fame is his ability to play the Tumbakhnari, a Kashmiri percussion instrument.
Incidentally, Irfan also pulled 25-year-old Bilal Mattaa into the group, much to his bandmates' delight because he was like the "the missing element" in their shows.
Bilal has studied classical music and is a fantastic ghazal singer, with several solo performances to his credit. He has also been selected by the song and dance division of the cultural ministry to perform at classical music festivals. An excellent keyboard player like Irfan, he too, is an audio-recordist.
In fact, both Bilal and Irfan work as audio-recordists at the Soundcraft Studio in Srinagar, which means Immersions can now do their recordings in the valley, instead of going out of Kashmir as they did earlier.
Bilal and Irfan also form a wonderful combination while rendering Sufi songs. The number that is a hit with music lovers in the valley is the Kashmiri Sufi song, "Dilbaro mein dilas kaas Ghangalah, bih balay emi chaani garmi seet."
So what is so different about Immersions?
Their songs carry comforting messages of hope. And this hope is not just reflected in the lyrics they sing but in the composition of the group as well. Immersions is an inter-religious group: Wanchoo is Hindu; Mehmeet, Irfan and Bilal are Muslims and Paul is a Sikh. And they enthral the audience with their renderings in English, Hindi, Kashmiri and Punjabi.
It is this that is perhaps endearing them not just to Kashmiri youth, but gradually to others beyond the state. Many NGOs in Kashmir and in Jammu have invited them to perform. The group has played at numerous charity shows too. There have been write-ups in the print media, and local TV and radio channels, as well as major national TV channels like CNN-IBN have broadcast their shows. The team has been invited to perform in major Indian cities like Chandigarh, Kolkata and Mumbai and also has invitations from the Islamabad-based Young Doctors Association and a university in Lahore.
In 2004, the group released their first music album, titled Sukoon. Though it was not released under the Immersions banner, it was a collaborative effort. Wanchoo produced it, Paul was the solo vocalist and Irfan and Bilal played the music. Omar Abdullah, president of the National Conference, released the album, which soon became a hit in the Punjab and Jammu. The group's first album under the Immersion's banner is expected next year.
When a Pakistani FM channel interviewed Wanchoo for a programme featuring Sukoon in 2006, he was flooded with friendship mail from across the divide. "It would be wonderful to perform in Pakistan and extend our hand in friendship - that is the only way to survive." The 27-year-old, whose role models are Kishore Kumar and Jagjit Singh, is also extremely fond of listening to Nusrat Fateh Ali and has made up his mind that "if I ever go to Pakistan, I will visit his mausoleum."
Immersions has had its share of problems. There was virtually no support for the band, neither from their families nor from the community or the state.
Moreover, the group has received numerous threats, many of which, to their dismay, came either from close friends who were jealous of their success, or rivals in the field. Two instances are still stark in their memory. One of them took place in 1999, just before a charity programme for leprosy patients. It was a time when diktats to observe purdah and a dress code had been announced by militant groups in the valley. Tickets for the show had already been sold when Wanchoo's family got a call informing them that if their son went ahead with the programme, he would meet a fate similar to his grandfather's. A tense Wanchoo was about to call off the show when a line from a song of the Bollywood film Lagaan wafted into his ears: "Baar baar haan, bolo yaar haan, apni jeet hau, unki haar haan." He decided to go ahead with the programme, only to discover later that the caller was an acquaintance in event management. He got a similar call in June this year threatening to blow up his home if he did not cancel a scheduled programme. And this time there was actually a blast near his house, but the culprit again turned out to be an acquaintance.
These incidents only serve to make the group more determined than ever to carry on their mission. Immersions' last major performance this year was in August at the Centaur Hotel, to mark the theme of global warming. Paul composed the lyrics, which he rates among his best - and not without reason. The description of a world wracked by global warming can easily double up to describe the conflict-scarred landscape of Kashmir:
"Mujhe yaad hai jab bachpan me taaza hawa aati thi
Mujhe ghar ke har kone se khushboo se mehek aati thi
Ab kya hua saara jahan itna kyon hai veeran
Banjar hai kyon yeh zameen, banjar hai kyon yeh aasman.
Srinagar's first pop group, Immersions, born out of a yearning for peace and normalcy, is making waves in the valley and the rest of India.
Badal denge duniya ki tasveer
We, the youngsters of Kashmir
Milegi manzil yeh hai yaqeen
Manzil hamse door nahin
Badal denge duniya ki tasveer
We, the youngsters of Kashmir
Maana hai dushwaariyan
Bebasi laachariya
Maanah hai mushkilen kayee
Phir bhi badhte hum sabhi
Phir bhi badhte hum sabhi
We, the youngsters of Kashmir
Badal denge duniya ki tasveer
We, the youngsters of Kashmir
These gentle words do not flow from any poet's or politician's pen. They are the thoughts of 27-year-old Amit Wanchoo, a medical doctor in Srinagar. With cropped hair and green eyes, he is the quintessential Kashmiri. Yet, Wanchoo's is a precarious existence. Growing up in conflict-ridden Kashmir, he has seen enough violence to last him a lifetime. A member of the minority Kashmiri Pandit (Hindu) community, his is one of the few families still left in Srinagar - they did not flee to the safer havens of Jammu when militancy was at its peak. There was a price to pay however: Wanchoo's grandfather was assassinated by the Hizbul Mujahideen in 1992, when Hindus in Kashmir were being targeted.
The tragedy only increased the yearning for calm and peace. Wanchoo's is thus a special investment in peace. "Life for an average youngster in Kashmir is terrible," he says. The transient nature of life was flung at his face every waking moment. Life in Kashmir is like walking over a minefield of bombs and IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices), hoping that you will not be the victim and forgetting all about it once you have crossed the danger zone. Extremely talented, Wanchoo felt tormented every time he moved out of the valley and saw life in other parts of India. He realised how cruel life had become for the youth of Kashmir. "Like their counterparts in other parts of the world, they also have dreams. They want to do something great in life; [but they also] want to attend music concerts, have fun, go dancing, enjoy late nights out with their families and friends and do lots of other things." But the atmosphere in Kashmir was too restricting. Islamist militants had imposed bans on cinema, music, concerts - in fact, on almost all forms of entertainment.
It was out of this yearning for peace and normalcy that Immersions was born. It was a scene that belied belief - the first performance of Immersions at Tagore Hall in Srinagar. A youth group was singing and dancing on stage, performing songs in Hindi, Punjabi and English - and what's more, there was even a young and beautiful woman in their midst! This was unprecedented in the valley.
Call it karma, or call it sheer luck, but it just so happened that all these like-minded, talented people came together. Wanchoo's longtime friend, King Paul Singh, who is Immersions' lead singer, was already a known name in Srinagar. A Sikh by birth, Paul was born and brought up in Kashmir, and at a young age he decided to make music his career and the centre of his universe, even though "people in Kashmir neither value nor respect music," he laments. It was not exactly smooth sailing for him. There was family pressure for him to engage in music simply as a pastime and not as a profession. Moreover, there was no state support, nor infrastructure.
"There is no encouragement for the youth here," says the bearded and turbanned Paul. "And neither is there any concept of music shows." But he persisted, even as he pursued a Masters in Computer Applications (MCA) course from the Indira Gandhi Open University. He won his first prize in music when he was in class 11, at an inter-school competition in Srinagar. That's where he also met Mehmeet Syed, who was to join Immersions as the band's female voice.
Later, many solo shows followed, and Paul became a known voice in Kashmir, performing on different TV channels, on radio and even doing commercial shows in Srinagar.
It was around this time that he teamed up with Wanchoo who was then in his third year at the Shere-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences. "We had no extra curricular activity in our college, and the whole atmosphere was depressing," he recalls. On the other hand, 1,500 Kashmiris reported annually to the psychiatry hospital, and, at least, half of them were teenagers. So Wanchoo, determined to do something and inspired by the extra-curricular activities in the academic institutions in the rest of the country, organised the first musical programme in college. "There was a lot of opposition from some staff members and students, but we managed to do it on a large scale, defeating the opposition," he says.
Wanchoo went on to establish the Amit Wanchoo Infotainment Division and worked wholeheartedly to establish a group "that would put Kashmir back on the national culture map." He wrote the lyrics and Paul composed the music and sang, and together they hired other musicians as well.
Among them was Mehmeet Syed. The long-haired, doe-eyed Syed had already made her mark as a singer in Kashmiri society by this time.
"It was not considerations of peace or healing that inspired me to sing; it was simply the sound of music," she tells me candidly. "I sing for the joy of singing, first and foremost for myself, and if in the process I am able to convey some sort of a message to anyone, or provide balm to any wound, then I am only too happy." Luckily for Mehmeet Syed, her family has been extremely supportive, and she has been singing since she was in school. Like Paul, she too has won prizes at inter-school competitions and began doing shows much before she joined Immersions. In fact, she set a trend in the valley when she did video clips of her songs with models from Jammu swaying in the background. Now this style is copied by many in Kashmir. Lata Mangeshkar, Shamima Azad (the wife of the current chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir who is also a singer) and her mother, who has a diploma in music, are the sources of her inspiration.
Besides Syed, Paul also brought Irfan Nabi Bhat, 25, a talented musician who is now the lead guitarist of the group, on board. Irfan learned the guitar in the sunny island of Goa and, in 2000, was awarded the 'Best Guitarist of the Year' award by none other than the musical genius A.R. Rahman. He is also an accomplished rock singer and, together with Paul, has done several heart-stopping shows. Some of the numbers that have become a regular feature of their repertoire are songs sung by Pakistan's Abrarul Haq and Jawad Ahmed, especially Haq's "Preeto mere naal vyaah kar le, sada aitbaar kar le." Occasionally, Irfan also plays the drums, and one of his claims to fame is his ability to play the Tumbakhnari, a Kashmiri percussion instrument.
Incidentally, Irfan also pulled 25-year-old Bilal Mattaa into the group, much to his bandmates' delight because he was like the "the missing element" in their shows.
Bilal has studied classical music and is a fantastic ghazal singer, with several solo performances to his credit. He has also been selected by the song and dance division of the cultural ministry to perform at classical music festivals. An excellent keyboard player like Irfan, he too, is an audio-recordist.
In fact, both Bilal and Irfan work as audio-recordists at the Soundcraft Studio in Srinagar, which means Immersions can now do their recordings in the valley, instead of going out of Kashmir as they did earlier.
Bilal and Irfan also form a wonderful combination while rendering Sufi songs. The number that is a hit with music lovers in the valley is the Kashmiri Sufi song, "Dilbaro mein dilas kaas Ghangalah, bih balay emi chaani garmi seet."
So what is so different about Immersions?
Their songs carry comforting messages of hope. And this hope is not just reflected in the lyrics they sing but in the composition of the group as well. Immersions is an inter-religious group: Wanchoo is Hindu; Mehmeet, Irfan and Bilal are Muslims and Paul is a Sikh. And they enthral the audience with their renderings in English, Hindi, Kashmiri and Punjabi.
It is this that is perhaps endearing them not just to Kashmiri youth, but gradually to others beyond the state. Many NGOs in Kashmir and in Jammu have invited them to perform. The group has played at numerous charity shows too. There have been write-ups in the print media, and local TV and radio channels, as well as major national TV channels like CNN-IBN have broadcast their shows. The team has been invited to perform in major Indian cities like Chandigarh, Kolkata and Mumbai and also has invitations from the Islamabad-based Young Doctors Association and a university in Lahore.
In 2004, the group released their first music album, titled Sukoon. Though it was not released under the Immersions banner, it was a collaborative effort. Wanchoo produced it, Paul was the solo vocalist and Irfan and Bilal played the music. Omar Abdullah, president of the National Conference, released the album, which soon became a hit in the Punjab and Jammu. The group's first album under the Immersion's banner is expected next year.
When a Pakistani FM channel interviewed Wanchoo for a programme featuring Sukoon in 2006, he was flooded with friendship mail from across the divide. "It would be wonderful to perform in Pakistan and extend our hand in friendship - that is the only way to survive." The 27-year-old, whose role models are Kishore Kumar and Jagjit Singh, is also extremely fond of listening to Nusrat Fateh Ali and has made up his mind that "if I ever go to Pakistan, I will visit his mausoleum."
Immersions has had its share of problems. There was virtually no support for the band, neither from their families nor from the community or the state.
Moreover, the group has received numerous threats, many of which, to their dismay, came either from close friends who were jealous of their success, or rivals in the field. Two instances are still stark in their memory. One of them took place in 1999, just before a charity programme for leprosy patients. It was a time when diktats to observe purdah and a dress code had been announced by militant groups in the valley. Tickets for the show had already been sold when Wanchoo's family got a call informing them that if their son went ahead with the programme, he would meet a fate similar to his grandfather's. A tense Wanchoo was about to call off the show when a line from a song of the Bollywood film Lagaan wafted into his ears: "Baar baar haan, bolo yaar haan, apni jeet hau, unki haar haan." He decided to go ahead with the programme, only to discover later that the caller was an acquaintance in event management. He got a similar call in June this year threatening to blow up his home if he did not cancel a scheduled programme. And this time there was actually a blast near his house, but the culprit again turned out to be an acquaintance.
These incidents only serve to make the group more determined than ever to carry on their mission. Immersions' last major performance this year was in August at the Centaur Hotel, to mark the theme of global warming. Paul composed the lyrics, which he rates among his best - and not without reason. The description of a world wracked by global warming can easily double up to describe the conflict-scarred landscape of Kashmir:
"Mujhe yaad hai jab bachpan me taaza hawa aati thi
Mujhe ghar ke har kone se khushboo se mehek aati thi
Ab kya hua saara jahan itna kyon hai veeran
Banjar hai kyon yeh zameen, banjar hai kyon yeh aasman.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
The valley of love
BADRI RAINA
Incalculable suffering of the past decade or more has helped the people of Jammu and Kashmir rediscover the old values of Kashmiriyat, something that expresses itself first and foremost as an overwhelming desire for peace and non-abrasive coexistence.
In Dal lake, Srinagar, a shikara (houseboat) waits for tourists.
A WEEK, it is said, is a long time in politics. With respect to Kashmir, a week can indeed be a very long time. As life gets busier and busier, and time and space become more and more precious in terms of profit-making, `up-market' approaches to problems require that we solve them even before we have understood them. Or that we understand them in instant, post-modernist ways. Thus, for example, globally, `terrorism' has been identified as a simple enough expression of `Islamist' ill-nature, and the answer has been located in quashing `terrorists' with extreme force. Such emphasis on the products of history envisages that the processes that inform them are relegated. Our historical sense is thus labelled not sense but nuisance. It is another matter that, be it Afghanistan or Iraq or Palestine or Kashmir, such market-driven impatience leads the world every day into more intractable problems, belying the elementary postulates of rational existence. Current `advances' in science and technology thus go hand in hand with monumental and potentially catastrophic historical illiteracy. Often, of course, as with respect to Kashmir, it is not so much a question of illiteracy as of a coercive refusal to acknowledge that the problem bears dimensions that refute the construction we have chosen to place upon it. We recall what Karl Marx had underlined penetratingly that the trick that informs bourgeois revolutions is that the method of science will be used to the hilt to master nature, but strenuously prevented from any application to cognise social relations.
As I report on my two-week visit to the Valley (June 8-21), however, some watershed markers of Kashmir's modern history are best recapitulated as informing points of reference. If the changing times there are to be harnessed towards desirable conclusions, those markers must not be lost sight of. For a century between 1846 and 1947, the most comprehensively oppressed section of Kashmiris was Muslims, who had next to no presence in rural property, or the services and hardly any education. Indeed, when Sheikh Abdullalh came with an MSc degree from Aligarh in 1930, he was the first Kashmiri Muslim to have gone that far. As a peculiar form of serfdom obtained among the Muslims (called `begar'), it is small wonder that the first political organisation floated by the Sheikh should have been called the Muslim Conference; the appellation may have seemed to connote a merely communal concern but, in fact, took in a much wider reference to class oppression - much as Dalit politics expresses class inequities in addition to social realities. This, after all, was the reason that the Sheikh was able to draw support from distinguished Pandit intellectuals of the time as well.
The Pandits, meanwhile, lived by their wits, maintaining their indispensability both to the Dogra rulers and to Kashmiri Muslims, but sharing with the latter deep ethnic intimacy. The one time that the Pandits found cause to express resentment with the establishment was in the early 1920s when the Maharaja began importing Punjabi bureaucracy into the State service. Thus, in 1924, the Pandits were to raise the slogan `Kashmir for Kashmiris'.
Impelled by the syncretic Sufi Islam of the Valley, which intersected everywhere, and accreted Pandit folklore, practices and modes of worship (the second day of Sivaratri celebrations in Kashmir is called Salaam), and by what seemed the socially radical and secular dynamics of the `National Movement' shaped in the main by the preferences of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, Abdullah rechristened his political organisation as the National Conference. Thus, when Muhammed Ali Jinnah visited the Valley to plead his communal thesis with Kashmiri co-religionists, he received significant rebuff. As the Partition set the subcontinent aflame, Gandhi said the only light he saw was in Kashmir. The invasion in October of 1947 found a dithering Maharaja and an undefended Valley. Abdulllah's party of the plough, however, organised Kashmiri masses across communities in heroic resistance to the invader; rows upon rows of disciplined Kashmiris marched - with wooden sticks and wooden rifles in hand - to the ringing slogans Hamla Avar Khabardar/Hum Kashmiri Hein Tayar, and Shere Kashmir Ka Kya Irshad/Hindu, Muslim, Sikh Itihad. Had Kashmiri Muslims then desired to join Pakistan, there was nothing to stop them (something that the Togadias of our time need to ponder).
The installation of the popular government led by Abdullah yielded the Naya Kashmir programme with two revolutionary axes of transformation, namely, land to the tiller, and free education up to the post-graduate stage. In the Kashmir Constituent Assembly, the Sheikh pronounced both the desire of the Kashmiris for maximum freedom and the conviction that a Sufi Kashmir could not tie up its future with a theocratic Pakistan. The Delhi Agreement of 1952 followed, to be incorporated as Article 370 into the Constitution.
Even as that historic covenant between the Centre and Kashmir began to be subtly but systematically undermined, a new class of college-educated Kashmiri Muslims emerged by the mid-1970s, only to find that their future remained effectively confined to the less-than-meagre opportunities that obtained in the State. This new articulate and politically aware class also began to see that political democracy was to be denied to them as well. As Yusuf Shah of the Muslim United Front was cheated, among others, of electoral victory in the Amirakadal constituency in 1987, he was to transform into Salahuddin of the Hizbul Mujahideen; the bullets were to follow. Since then, the incredible cupidities of the major political formations were to ensure that the darkness remained unrelieved. In fact, the most deleterious occurrence with respect to the `Kashmir Problem' has been the convergence between fascistic `nationalism' at home and the designs of a new, unchallenged imperialism emanating from one single nation abroad.
LET me say with responsibility that during my two-week stay in the Valley, I travelled freely and without `incident' to all parts - north, south, west, east - and to every nook and corner of the city of Srinagar, including the `forbidden' down-town. Having left Kashmir some 42 years ago, my first endearing recognition is that no magic works as well in Kashmir as the ability to speak the language. Clearly, as an interventionist, this was a huge, initial advantage. Let me also say that the persons and groups I interacted with included Kashmiris of every conceivable definition - shikarawalas, itinerant furriers, retailers, hoteliers, office-goers, students and teachers at the university (where I was privileged to lecture on two separate occasions), artists, ex-militants, legislators, and a thousand-strong-mass of people at a public meeting. This is not to speak of `tourists' who, in large numbers, seemed to be having a `good time' indeed. That new lessons have been imbibed across the board was in evidence everywhere; confidences-in-vernacular available to me leave me in no doubt of that reality. The coordinates of the change that has come over the Valley seem as follows:
With the exception perhaps of the hard-core Geelani faction, disenchantment with the jehadi tehrik seems total. The erstwhile supporters of jehad whose allegiance followed a patently communal logic - among them the non-Kashmiri-speaking Muslims who have felt a closer ethnic bond with similar co-religionists across the Line of Control (LoC) - acknowledge, however sadly, that the General Pervez Musharraf-run `client' state of Pakistan (client to the United States) is no longer either a worthwhile or a realisable option. Young people from such families, whom this writer had known a decade ago to spew rabid `Islamist' fervour, today poke fun at Musharraf's strutting entrapment between an obsolete theocratic project and the diktats of an `anti-Islamic' imperialism. An important element here is also their greater willingness to see opportunities of personal advancement in newer technologies and correlated institutions in a market-driven world of seemingly undifferentiated scope. A proliferating access to the visual media has made accessible to such young people the burgeoning desire for peace, democracy, and modern development among wide sections of the urban elite within Pakistan, and the articulate critique of such elites of the Pakistani state works as a decisive influence. Those others whose allegiance to the idea of Pakistan has been less literate, more subliminal, curse that country for having betrayed Kashmiris in the way in which the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) today pours scorn on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. That disgust is captured in the eloquent Kashmiri phrase Pakistanus gao Dakistan, that is, `May Pakistan suffer annihilation'.
Lighting oil lamps at the Kheer Bhawani temple near Srinagar.
Perhaps the most telling source of repugnance with the jehadis is centred around the experience that most of them have used the gun either to amass wealth, or to get any sort of job done (from property-grabbing to college admissions, marriage deals and appointments), or generally to acquire social power and recognition - all of that inimical to the `mission' and, in popular parlance, more in the nature of `commission'. One of the results is that either the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) no longer feels the confidence to give calls for hartal, or, when it does, it is sniggered at and largely observed in the breach.
The old sentiment for azadi remains real, but with new caveats. One, that total independence is simply a bit of a pipe dream. Many made the point to me that Pakistan has never endorsed that option anyway. Some are even willing to embrace the thought that separation from both India and Pakistan, were that to happen, could very well turn Kashmir into an imperialist enclave and playground, with catastrophic consequences for Kashmiriyat.
As to religious freedom, Javed, the itinerant furrier, makes the point that whereas Kashmiri Muslims have always enjoyed complete religious freedom, it is not unusual to find mosques in Pakistani cities fired upon, or Shia Muslims attacked by Sunnis. This concatenation of perceptions, imbued universally with the incalculable suffering of the past decade or more, has, as I found in all my interactions, led to a surge and sentient rediscovery of the old values of Kashmiriyat, something that expresses itself first and foremost as an overwhelming desire for peace and non-abrasive coexistence.
A rapid, and alas, all-too-brief enumeration of the treatment I received best illustrates that change. The hotel that charges some Rs.1,200 for a room charged me but Rs.600 accompanied every day by a bouquet of felt intimacies; the famous bakery establishment that makes giant bakerkhanies only upon order gave me all I wanted accepting nothing in return; the sisters, Neelofer and Ayesha, upon hearing me ask a boatman-vendor at Nehru Park in the Dal for a cup of Nuna Chai, dragged me and my wife home to a dilapidated houseboat, whereupon the mother not only gave us the choice cup but a dear old familiar shower of the sweetest Kashmiri blessings; at Kheer Bhawani, the two elderly Muslims who see to the infrastructural requirement of worshippers could restrain neither a tight hug nor their precious tears; at a party hosted by a well-known Kashmir Pandit doctor, who spent close to three months in captivity with militants, a highly respected Muslim bureaucrat turned the evening into a saga of Kashmiri songs and made moving lament as to how it is the Pandits who had taught `us' all `we' know, and why would they not come back; my breakfast at Soz sahib's turned out to be a feast of not only converse, but also the rarest of Pampore Sheermal, of which I received a carry-home gift; and if you wanted to share one of those spontaneous experiences of Kashmiriyat try this: upon my return from Kheer Bhawani it is the gracious Mrs. Soz who asks me what the colour of the water in the holy pond was. Legend has it that the water changes colour, beckoning good or bad times.
Kashmiri Pandits are spoken of with regret and deep poignancy - regret that they should have exited in the face of a shared fate, and poignancy at the thought of the suffering they have had to experience away from `home' and at the thought also that soon they might return to `complete' Kashmir. At the airport shop, the gentle Muslim owner poses the question whether many more Muslims have not been killed, and expresses the hurt that Pandit `brethren' rarely remember to mention the sufferings of their Muslim `brethren'. Also commented upon is the sad irony that while the Muslims seek to free themselves of jehadi pressures, influential sections of the Pandits should veer towards right-wing Hindu chauvinism.
At the university, my audience of young men and women listen with an intensity born of the deepest life-experiences. Their analysed openness and warmth renders shallow my experiences as a teacher at Delhi University. Yet, the trapped agony in their bright eyes, the questions they pose with gentleness, tear me apart - How do they make a future in a country where Gujarat happens, where the Togadias openly seek to recast the state as a majoritarian, fascist one, and where the government of the day seems not just helpless but closely allied in consenting silence and non-action?
The public meeting organised by the State unit of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), led by its secretary Mohd. Yousuf Tarigami, to greet Member of Parliament Somnath Chatterjee, visiting the State as the Chairman of a Parliament Standing Committee on Communications, provides clear proof of the credibility that democratic politics is beginning to enjoy. The Mufti Mohammed Sayeed-led government is seen to mean well and to be working with honest purpose.
All those who address the meeting (Chatterjee, Tarigami, Soz, the Mufti, and this writer briefly) draw felt responses, even applause, at the programmes and ideololgical directions that are shared. Departing from its unsavoury record, the Congress(I) behaves with a new-found patience and wisdom; the group led by Tarigami provides both secular credibility and democratic energy; and the Mufti educates without euphoria or despondency. One senses, however, that soon this government will have to determine how the `healing touch' policy may be extended/transformed into a desirable political conclusion. Although the first formal demand for `secession' from the Union in post-Independence India came from the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), correctly understood as a demand, at bottom, for devolution of democracy and power, it has been a tragedy that similar demands from Kashmir have tended to be read as `Islamist'. In changing times, perhaps, it will be appropriate to revisit the autonomy question in ways that such devolution is made available to all provinces of the State.
In an article written in a special number of Seminar, this writer had suggested that Kashmir be seen as a `window to India', not just as a showpiece of secularism but fraught with consequences for the entire nation-state. This requires, foremost, that Kahmiris - and not just the territory - be embraced as the very best of Indians. And if I say that they are not just among the brightest of us but also the most loving, do not read that as an expression of hopeless ethnic subjectivity.
May I also keep my word to the many citizens of Srinagar to say that the city deserves drinking water quality, far better roads, and avoidance altogether of the driving habits of New Delhi.
Dr. Badri Raina, Professor of English at the Delhi University, writes on cultural and political issues. This article is based on his recent visit to Jammu and Kashmir.
Incalculable suffering of the past decade or more has helped the people of Jammu and Kashmir rediscover the old values of Kashmiriyat, something that expresses itself first and foremost as an overwhelming desire for peace and non-abrasive coexistence.
In Dal lake, Srinagar, a shikara (houseboat) waits for tourists.
A WEEK, it is said, is a long time in politics. With respect to Kashmir, a week can indeed be a very long time. As life gets busier and busier, and time and space become more and more precious in terms of profit-making, `up-market' approaches to problems require that we solve them even before we have understood them. Or that we understand them in instant, post-modernist ways. Thus, for example, globally, `terrorism' has been identified as a simple enough expression of `Islamist' ill-nature, and the answer has been located in quashing `terrorists' with extreme force. Such emphasis on the products of history envisages that the processes that inform them are relegated. Our historical sense is thus labelled not sense but nuisance. It is another matter that, be it Afghanistan or Iraq or Palestine or Kashmir, such market-driven impatience leads the world every day into more intractable problems, belying the elementary postulates of rational existence. Current `advances' in science and technology thus go hand in hand with monumental and potentially catastrophic historical illiteracy. Often, of course, as with respect to Kashmir, it is not so much a question of illiteracy as of a coercive refusal to acknowledge that the problem bears dimensions that refute the construction we have chosen to place upon it. We recall what Karl Marx had underlined penetratingly that the trick that informs bourgeois revolutions is that the method of science will be used to the hilt to master nature, but strenuously prevented from any application to cognise social relations.
As I report on my two-week visit to the Valley (June 8-21), however, some watershed markers of Kashmir's modern history are best recapitulated as informing points of reference. If the changing times there are to be harnessed towards desirable conclusions, those markers must not be lost sight of. For a century between 1846 and 1947, the most comprehensively oppressed section of Kashmiris was Muslims, who had next to no presence in rural property, or the services and hardly any education. Indeed, when Sheikh Abdullalh came with an MSc degree from Aligarh in 1930, he was the first Kashmiri Muslim to have gone that far. As a peculiar form of serfdom obtained among the Muslims (called `begar'), it is small wonder that the first political organisation floated by the Sheikh should have been called the Muslim Conference; the appellation may have seemed to connote a merely communal concern but, in fact, took in a much wider reference to class oppression - much as Dalit politics expresses class inequities in addition to social realities. This, after all, was the reason that the Sheikh was able to draw support from distinguished Pandit intellectuals of the time as well.
The Pandits, meanwhile, lived by their wits, maintaining their indispensability both to the Dogra rulers and to Kashmiri Muslims, but sharing with the latter deep ethnic intimacy. The one time that the Pandits found cause to express resentment with the establishment was in the early 1920s when the Maharaja began importing Punjabi bureaucracy into the State service. Thus, in 1924, the Pandits were to raise the slogan `Kashmir for Kashmiris'.
Impelled by the syncretic Sufi Islam of the Valley, which intersected everywhere, and accreted Pandit folklore, practices and modes of worship (the second day of Sivaratri celebrations in Kashmir is called Salaam), and by what seemed the socially radical and secular dynamics of the `National Movement' shaped in the main by the preferences of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, Abdullah rechristened his political organisation as the National Conference. Thus, when Muhammed Ali Jinnah visited the Valley to plead his communal thesis with Kashmiri co-religionists, he received significant rebuff. As the Partition set the subcontinent aflame, Gandhi said the only light he saw was in Kashmir. The invasion in October of 1947 found a dithering Maharaja and an undefended Valley. Abdulllah's party of the plough, however, organised Kashmiri masses across communities in heroic resistance to the invader; rows upon rows of disciplined Kashmiris marched - with wooden sticks and wooden rifles in hand - to the ringing slogans Hamla Avar Khabardar/Hum Kashmiri Hein Tayar, and Shere Kashmir Ka Kya Irshad/Hindu, Muslim, Sikh Itihad. Had Kashmiri Muslims then desired to join Pakistan, there was nothing to stop them (something that the Togadias of our time need to ponder).
The installation of the popular government led by Abdullah yielded the Naya Kashmir programme with two revolutionary axes of transformation, namely, land to the tiller, and free education up to the post-graduate stage. In the Kashmir Constituent Assembly, the Sheikh pronounced both the desire of the Kashmiris for maximum freedom and the conviction that a Sufi Kashmir could not tie up its future with a theocratic Pakistan. The Delhi Agreement of 1952 followed, to be incorporated as Article 370 into the Constitution.
Even as that historic covenant between the Centre and Kashmir began to be subtly but systematically undermined, a new class of college-educated Kashmiri Muslims emerged by the mid-1970s, only to find that their future remained effectively confined to the less-than-meagre opportunities that obtained in the State. This new articulate and politically aware class also began to see that political democracy was to be denied to them as well. As Yusuf Shah of the Muslim United Front was cheated, among others, of electoral victory in the Amirakadal constituency in 1987, he was to transform into Salahuddin of the Hizbul Mujahideen; the bullets were to follow. Since then, the incredible cupidities of the major political formations were to ensure that the darkness remained unrelieved. In fact, the most deleterious occurrence with respect to the `Kashmir Problem' has been the convergence between fascistic `nationalism' at home and the designs of a new, unchallenged imperialism emanating from one single nation abroad.
LET me say with responsibility that during my two-week stay in the Valley, I travelled freely and without `incident' to all parts - north, south, west, east - and to every nook and corner of the city of Srinagar, including the `forbidden' down-town. Having left Kashmir some 42 years ago, my first endearing recognition is that no magic works as well in Kashmir as the ability to speak the language. Clearly, as an interventionist, this was a huge, initial advantage. Let me also say that the persons and groups I interacted with included Kashmiris of every conceivable definition - shikarawalas, itinerant furriers, retailers, hoteliers, office-goers, students and teachers at the university (where I was privileged to lecture on two separate occasions), artists, ex-militants, legislators, and a thousand-strong-mass of people at a public meeting. This is not to speak of `tourists' who, in large numbers, seemed to be having a `good time' indeed. That new lessons have been imbibed across the board was in evidence everywhere; confidences-in-vernacular available to me leave me in no doubt of that reality. The coordinates of the change that has come over the Valley seem as follows:
With the exception perhaps of the hard-core Geelani faction, disenchantment with the jehadi tehrik seems total. The erstwhile supporters of jehad whose allegiance followed a patently communal logic - among them the non-Kashmiri-speaking Muslims who have felt a closer ethnic bond with similar co-religionists across the Line of Control (LoC) - acknowledge, however sadly, that the General Pervez Musharraf-run `client' state of Pakistan (client to the United States) is no longer either a worthwhile or a realisable option. Young people from such families, whom this writer had known a decade ago to spew rabid `Islamist' fervour, today poke fun at Musharraf's strutting entrapment between an obsolete theocratic project and the diktats of an `anti-Islamic' imperialism. An important element here is also their greater willingness to see opportunities of personal advancement in newer technologies and correlated institutions in a market-driven world of seemingly undifferentiated scope. A proliferating access to the visual media has made accessible to such young people the burgeoning desire for peace, democracy, and modern development among wide sections of the urban elite within Pakistan, and the articulate critique of such elites of the Pakistani state works as a decisive influence. Those others whose allegiance to the idea of Pakistan has been less literate, more subliminal, curse that country for having betrayed Kashmiris in the way in which the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) today pours scorn on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. That disgust is captured in the eloquent Kashmiri phrase Pakistanus gao Dakistan, that is, `May Pakistan suffer annihilation'.
Lighting oil lamps at the Kheer Bhawani temple near Srinagar.
Perhaps the most telling source of repugnance with the jehadis is centred around the experience that most of them have used the gun either to amass wealth, or to get any sort of job done (from property-grabbing to college admissions, marriage deals and appointments), or generally to acquire social power and recognition - all of that inimical to the `mission' and, in popular parlance, more in the nature of `commission'. One of the results is that either the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) no longer feels the confidence to give calls for hartal, or, when it does, it is sniggered at and largely observed in the breach.
The old sentiment for azadi remains real, but with new caveats. One, that total independence is simply a bit of a pipe dream. Many made the point to me that Pakistan has never endorsed that option anyway. Some are even willing to embrace the thought that separation from both India and Pakistan, were that to happen, could very well turn Kashmir into an imperialist enclave and playground, with catastrophic consequences for Kashmiriyat.
As to religious freedom, Javed, the itinerant furrier, makes the point that whereas Kashmiri Muslims have always enjoyed complete religious freedom, it is not unusual to find mosques in Pakistani cities fired upon, or Shia Muslims attacked by Sunnis. This concatenation of perceptions, imbued universally with the incalculable suffering of the past decade or more, has, as I found in all my interactions, led to a surge and sentient rediscovery of the old values of Kashmiriyat, something that expresses itself first and foremost as an overwhelming desire for peace and non-abrasive coexistence.
A rapid, and alas, all-too-brief enumeration of the treatment I received best illustrates that change. The hotel that charges some Rs.1,200 for a room charged me but Rs.600 accompanied every day by a bouquet of felt intimacies; the famous bakery establishment that makes giant bakerkhanies only upon order gave me all I wanted accepting nothing in return; the sisters, Neelofer and Ayesha, upon hearing me ask a boatman-vendor at Nehru Park in the Dal for a cup of Nuna Chai, dragged me and my wife home to a dilapidated houseboat, whereupon the mother not only gave us the choice cup but a dear old familiar shower of the sweetest Kashmiri blessings; at Kheer Bhawani, the two elderly Muslims who see to the infrastructural requirement of worshippers could restrain neither a tight hug nor their precious tears; at a party hosted by a well-known Kashmir Pandit doctor, who spent close to three months in captivity with militants, a highly respected Muslim bureaucrat turned the evening into a saga of Kashmiri songs and made moving lament as to how it is the Pandits who had taught `us' all `we' know, and why would they not come back; my breakfast at Soz sahib's turned out to be a feast of not only converse, but also the rarest of Pampore Sheermal, of which I received a carry-home gift; and if you wanted to share one of those spontaneous experiences of Kashmiriyat try this: upon my return from Kheer Bhawani it is the gracious Mrs. Soz who asks me what the colour of the water in the holy pond was. Legend has it that the water changes colour, beckoning good or bad times.
Kashmiri Pandits are spoken of with regret and deep poignancy - regret that they should have exited in the face of a shared fate, and poignancy at the thought of the suffering they have had to experience away from `home' and at the thought also that soon they might return to `complete' Kashmir. At the airport shop, the gentle Muslim owner poses the question whether many more Muslims have not been killed, and expresses the hurt that Pandit `brethren' rarely remember to mention the sufferings of their Muslim `brethren'. Also commented upon is the sad irony that while the Muslims seek to free themselves of jehadi pressures, influential sections of the Pandits should veer towards right-wing Hindu chauvinism.
At the university, my audience of young men and women listen with an intensity born of the deepest life-experiences. Their analysed openness and warmth renders shallow my experiences as a teacher at Delhi University. Yet, the trapped agony in their bright eyes, the questions they pose with gentleness, tear me apart - How do they make a future in a country where Gujarat happens, where the Togadias openly seek to recast the state as a majoritarian, fascist one, and where the government of the day seems not just helpless but closely allied in consenting silence and non-action?
The public meeting organised by the State unit of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), led by its secretary Mohd. Yousuf Tarigami, to greet Member of Parliament Somnath Chatterjee, visiting the State as the Chairman of a Parliament Standing Committee on Communications, provides clear proof of the credibility that democratic politics is beginning to enjoy. The Mufti Mohammed Sayeed-led government is seen to mean well and to be working with honest purpose.
All those who address the meeting (Chatterjee, Tarigami, Soz, the Mufti, and this writer briefly) draw felt responses, even applause, at the programmes and ideololgical directions that are shared. Departing from its unsavoury record, the Congress(I) behaves with a new-found patience and wisdom; the group led by Tarigami provides both secular credibility and democratic energy; and the Mufti educates without euphoria or despondency. One senses, however, that soon this government will have to determine how the `healing touch' policy may be extended/transformed into a desirable political conclusion. Although the first formal demand for `secession' from the Union in post-Independence India came from the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), correctly understood as a demand, at bottom, for devolution of democracy and power, it has been a tragedy that similar demands from Kashmir have tended to be read as `Islamist'. In changing times, perhaps, it will be appropriate to revisit the autonomy question in ways that such devolution is made available to all provinces of the State.
In an article written in a special number of Seminar, this writer had suggested that Kashmir be seen as a `window to India', not just as a showpiece of secularism but fraught with consequences for the entire nation-state. This requires, foremost, that Kahmiris - and not just the territory - be embraced as the very best of Indians. And if I say that they are not just among the brightest of us but also the most loving, do not read that as an expression of hopeless ethnic subjectivity.
May I also keep my word to the many citizens of Srinagar to say that the city deserves drinking water quality, far better roads, and avoidance altogether of the driving habits of New Delhi.
Dr. Badri Raina, Professor of English at the Delhi University, writes on cultural and political issues. This article is based on his recent visit to Jammu and Kashmir.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Monday, November 19, 2007
Kashmir’s Rage Boy is not all that angry
Focus | Yusuf Jameel
Srinagar: It is a story of a "larger-than-life" character. The fuming face of Muslim anger over the real and perceived tirade against Islam and the believers, the man who has been nicknamed "Rage Boy" and is a blog favourite in the West and beyond, is actually a mundane man among Kashmir's belligerent youth.
But encouraged by the kind of hype the media and "Islamphobia" campaigners have given to him over the past many months - his irate face appears on clocks, beer mugs, thongs, T-shirts - a 29-year-old Srinagar youth is now thinking global. He with likeminded activists is preparing to launch a new political party to "defend Muslims,'" interests across the globe. Reacting to his being America's most hated poster-boy of alleged Islamic radicalism, Shakeel Ahmed Butt said, "I know they hate me but I'm not bothered at all. The invective, though tenuous and part of anti-Muslim bias, has rather encouraged me to do more for my brethren."
Mr Shakeel, a failed militant whose "biggest achievement" is carrying out an unsuccessful sneak rifle-fire attack on the cavalcade of senior Congress leader and then junior minister at the Centre Mr Rajesh Pilot, along the Boulevard here during the heyday of insurgency feels elevated enough to say, "I'll soon decide on my political future. I would dedicate rest of my life for the cause of Islam and the Muslims." His reverie is; "All the 56 Muslim countries must join hands and fight back the enemies of Islam. They must severe ties with the governments and the nations that affront Islam, the Qur'an or the holy Prophet." He also wants Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Islamic nations to "withdraw their money from the American banks in order to bring it to its knees."
The so-called "Rage Boy" who turns up at almost every major or small demonstration to express anger about any move or incident that is seen as anti-Islam or anti-Muslim, be it Danish cartoons, the Pope's swing at Islam, knighthood to Salman Rushdie, Israeli's military actions against the Palestinians and Lebanon, the American invasion on Iraq and strikes in Afghanistan or the Srinagar sexploitation scandal, said that he does not believe in any ideology but Islam. "I don't subscribe to socialism, secularism or Gandhi-ism but Islam and Islam alone and would reconcile to nothing except liberty for the sake of Islam," Mr. Shakeel told this newspaper at a classic Kashmiri urban house built of exposed brick and timber with windows made of delicate wooden fretwork in the city's Malik Angan neighbourhood where he lives with his mother and her five other sons and their families.
As our photographer Habibullah Naqash and I walked into the patio of the house to meet the 'Rage Boy' at a mutually decided time, a man in his early forties rushed out to inquire about us and the purpose of our visit. On being told who we are, he said, "No, he is not here." But he had asked us to come to (his) house for the meeting, the man who turned to be Mr Shakeel's elder brother was informed. "Ok, ok, let me find out," he said and after steering us to a small room on the first floor of their house, went away. A few minutes later, Mr. Shakeel came in and after the customary exchange of pleasantries suggested that we should shift to a more "luminous" room on the third floor. We agreed. There, he, for about one hour, spoke about his family and his own life and future plans.
Born in 1978 to a Kashmiri artisan family which has now spread its handicrafts business beyond the Valley, Mr Shakeel was not a gifted child to his parents. He gave up his studies when he was still in Class 12 at a government-run school in Srinagar's Bana Mohalla locality. His father Ghulam Qadir Butt was cherished by his neighbours and friends as being a devout Muslim. Though not associated with any political party of his time, he was known to have a propensity towards the thought of Kashmir joining Pakistan, which did not happen and the events unfolding in post-1947 Jammu and Kashmir left him disillusioned. "But he never took part in active politics and instead dedicated his time and energy towards the upbringing of his children - six sons and two daughters," Mr Shakeel said. But a bloody incident that occurred way back in 1986 changed the family profile. As the Muslim United Front alliance was pitted against the National Conference-Congress combine in the state Assembly elections, the police raided the cluster of houses in their locality in search of the ruling alliance's opponents. The policemen on barging into Butts' house allegedly threw Mr Shakeel's 18-year-old sister Ms Shareefa out of an upstairs door. She broke her spine and died from her injuries six years later. While she was still fighting for her life, Mr Shakeel decided to "stand up and fight for a bigger cause." As the insurgency was reaching its peak, he joined Al-Umar Mujahideen which was emerging as one of the most feared militant outfits, particularly in Srinagar. On Februaty 5, 1991, he with the outfit's deputy chief Naeem al-Haq crossed the Line of Control using the Lolab valley track and returned home after two-and-a-half months as a trained militant who knew how to use a Kalashinkov and explode a grenade.But without making a mark as a "mujahid," he was seized by the BSF during a cordon-and-search operation in a Srinagar neighbourhood on September 24, 1994. "Prior to my release on February 2, 1997, I was kept at different detention centres and torture chambers run by the Army, the BSF, the STF (local police's counterinsurgency Special Task Force) and was tortured even by the Ikhwanis (the renegades working for the security forces)," he charged. Days after his release, another tragedy struck the family. The STF men raided their house to look for Mr Shakeel but he was not there. They, he alleged, beat his 75-year-old father instead, leaving him with a broken leg. The senior Butt spent the rest of his life bedridden.
Since his release in a larger group of 135 militants and other separatists, Mr Shakeel claims he has been briefly detained by the police about 300 times, mainly during street protests. He feels proud that he has been lodged in all the police stations in Srinagar and the main ones in the towns of Baramulla, Sopore, Kupwara, Pulwama and Anantnag. It was during his stay at Srinagar's Kralkhud police station last month when two senior police officers had visited him to offer they would find him a suitable girl to marry. He added, "They were ready also to do all that would be required to rehabilitate me and said that they would drop all the cases against me if I quit going to demonstrations."But Mr Shakeel wants to marry a girl of his choice - a non-Muslim from any part of the world whom he would only convert to Islam. He vividly remembers his father often taking him to mosques and edifying him about two important principles of life: do not be greedy and help Islam to spread its teachings the way our Sufis and seers did. He also recalls how he as a child would love to wear a blue services' cap and then stand up in front of his father to yell "Aadhi rooti khanyan ge, par sar nahi jukayen ge."
He pledges to continue to do what he has been doing for the past few years - ranting in demonstrations against "injustice" wherever it takes place. Asked if he also felt for the non-Muslims if wronged, Mr Shakeel retorted, "Yes, of course. I do feel equally for them. I was injured when the police came in the way of the procession taken out against the massacre of 35 innocent Sikhs at Chattisinghpora. They broke my head with a lathi."
He said that he has turned down an offer made to him by a group of Kashmiri attorneys that they would on his behalf file a case against those who project him as a bad boy of Islam.
"I told you I'm not bothered. Why should I? It gives me some relief that I've been able to, at least, startle the enemies of Islam." He also said that a Western journalist had recently asked him if he knew where Osama bin Laden was. "I told him that he lives in the heart of every Muslim." What Mr Shakeel also knows is; "an infidel feels terrified of a true Muslim.
"That is why they are exaggerating what I've been doing. This they do only to tarnish the image of Islam." But the so-called "Rage Boy" insists that he should not be blamed for that.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Similarities, not differences, key to a new understanding
By Neha Trivedi
A new film by Ajay Raina uses cricket as a peg and rekindles hope of peace between India and Pakistan
WAPSI: The Return . A film that travels through Pakistan, with cricket fans, during the Indo-Pak Cricket series returns not only to Pakistan and to the now 58-year-old partition stories but to much more. Returning to the core of the India and Pakistan divide, returning to the core of many of the problems that keep resurfacing on either sides of the border under different names and at different times.
Wapsi: The Return is directed by Ajay Raina, whose first film, Tell them the tree they had planted has grown now, had won the Golden Conch and Best National Documentary Award. Raina, a Kashmiri Pandit who was forced to leave his home, straddles a troubled history and a difficult present, and the film reflects his feelings on the Kashmir issue and his views of the Indo-Pak struggle, on the conflict in his homeland.
The opening shots of the film present the strange situation of people awaiting visas to go to Pakistan: special visas are offered to cricket fans even as those who long to go across the border to visit relatives have to wait for their papers. Through the next 60 minutes, the camera travels the streets of Lahore and Delhi, the towns of Pakistan, and revisits stories of the people, bringing forward a “real” depiction of the Indo-Pak relationship.
It shows you both what you would have liked to see and what might come across as unpleasant reality. But what it ultimately leaves you with is the hope of the real possibility of peace within the two countries rather than romantic ideas of the neighbor we are separated from.
The movie raises several issues through brilliantly chosen scenes of everyday life. Scenes of news headlines where cricket headlines compete with news headlines about Kashmir; or the conversation on the streets of Lahore between the visiting Indians and the locals which narrow down to the ‘Kashmir’ issue and the status of Muslims all over India or the candid admission of a taxi-driver that the demolition of the Babari Masjid in India resulted in the demolition of a temple in Pakistan. Each scene is permeated with the intensity of the issues, yet flavoured by the realization that the people are so similar.
The film moves to Harappa, the site of the Indus Valley civilization, exploring the ‘common heritage’ and the depiction of the origin of civilization when no Hindu or Muslim existed. The reconstruction of history on the other side of the border clearly emerges in the commentary at the Harappan museum as it dwells on the advent of Muslim rulers and their influence on India.
It’s the voiceover that provides the shock of the present, as a series of shots from streets in Lahore, abandoned during Partition, to similar ones in Kashmir and Gujarat are accompanied by the commentary: ‘And a year ago, I was in Kashmir looking at streets similarly left behind by the Kashmiri Pandits and a year before that in Gujarat.’ No stronger indication is needed of the common thread that runs through the story of displaced people, of the violence that their lives were subjected to, of the sense of ‘difference’ that led to bloodshed merely because we failed to look at the similarities.
The film draws on the message of sufi followers who dance to music and celebrate their love for God, neither Hindu nor Muslim. Their final message is a powerful plea: ‘that instead of looking at all our divisions cant we look at similarities…the spiritual impulse which is part of the land be it Islam or Hinduism’…
Talking to this writer after the screening of the film, Raina felt that the ‘Kashmir issue’ is not so much about the so-called clash of Hindu-Muslim Civilizations. What irks is the feeling that the ‘so-called secular forces have not been able to take their debate forward’, he said,
There is a sense of confusion and hopelessness amongst Kashmiris today and there is a greater need to voice alternative opinions, he felt. Recalling the narrative of the houseboat owner in his first film, he pointed out that Independence was a higher ideal and striving for a higher ideal should lead to regeneration of society. “But this has not happened in Kashmir. Society has instead collapsed. There is a disjoint between what you want and what you are striving for”, he felt.
Raina also perceives a strong sense of defeat amongst Kashmiris today especially since so many had ‘believed in the movement at one point in time and had invested everything in the movement’. Now, he continued, you see a sense of personal defeat as well.
“While a similar thing happened in Punjab, the people of Punjab had moved on but in Kashmir, people have invested so much they would still want to hold on to it. That’s the state Kashmir is in now. They won’t criticize India but they will want to maintain that sense of alienation”, Raina felt.
For Raina, the solution lay in ‘first acknowledging and recognizing the problem, stressing on similarities and moving beyond our single religious identities. The Hindu-Muslim identity had become part of our psyche more after partition when it has become a tool. This is true of Kashmir also. It is when this has happened that vested interested have played their roles. We need to move beyond this single identity. We have many other common identities, Identities of us probably fighting the same system, identities of class, occupation. We need to stress on these.’
‘There is hope in education, economic growth. To become involved in leading our daily regular lives, to move beyond our only religious identities. Today in Kashmir, as my friend says in the film, people are more religious that before,” said Raina, wondering whether the heightened religiosity amongst youth indicated a major shift in society.
Raina’s films drawing to the need to stress on similarities, but along with an identification and recognition of the problem. As he put it, ‘WAPSI is not only about returning but to start over again, and it’s also about a new beginning.’
How far from being human
A brief note on Raina’s first film - Returning Home: Tell them 'the tree tree they had planted has now grown'.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The film began as a personal journey for the director, to return to his home.
In Kashmir after 11 years. As the Director says, the film was “an attempt to overcome the fear of going back. And in the process talk to whoever we could” In a very subtle but strong way, the film communicates to us so much more than what is apparent. By bringing forward all the opinions that are not apparent in the regular news and political debates of Kashmir.
The opening line of the Film are evocative but soon bring into sharp forcus a deep sense of betrayal: “When my parents built our new house in Srinagar, they also planted trees on the boundaries of our compound thinking that some day our children, grandchildren would reap their fruits. The fruits we reaped instead is years of continued exile from our home cause we believed India is our country!”. And that is enough to get across to you the sense of betrayal that the.
Was trust the main casualty of the Kashmir conflict? Raina tries to leave the sense of betrayal Kashmiri Pundits have felt since the mass exodus in 1989 and find out whether the walls of mistrust can be broken.
Through the film, one hears several opinions and what clearly emerges is the realization that none of the groups seem to have obtained what they set out to grasp. Everyone seems to be worse off, from the JKLF representative who said, “when the movement began, it was different, and we all take sometime to realize our mistake’ or the board at one of the many graveyards in Kashmir reads ‘Lest you forget, we’ve given our today for tomorrow of yours’.
Everywhere, one cannot escape feeling a sense of deep remorse, for those who fought for a cause they believed in (right, wrong, no one can make the judgment) the movement which today as the movie reflects knows what Ii does not want but does not know what it wants.
For the ordinary person on the street, the last 15 years have led to a permanent mark on their psyche. The casual reaction to sounds of gunfire or the violence on the streets or the woman who was asked whether she felt afraid…. For the director, ‘the Kashmiris have become a humble, silent people, dumb by fear. They appear to be people who are caught in a web of events, they cannot control, who are on a back of a tiger not knowing how to dismount, who want to rid themselves of the people with the gun but do not know what to do with them!’
And what of the Kashmiri Pundit? Raina continuously asks himself is ‘If I were a Kashmiris Muslim, how would have I seen things?’ and the answer is, that it would be different. The tension between the sense of being a Hindu and a Minority did exist earlier and the Pundits in the camp voice the feelings that ‘when we left in 1989, we did not think we were leaving for good. We thought we will come back’.
And in this entire chaos, as the Director tries to make his personal journey back to the House in Srinagar only to find it completely deserted, with all the cupboards empty or to have even visited the temple at Rainawari but found it in ruin or the sense of regret amongst Kashmiri Muslims for the exodus and the feeling that though the ‘average Kashmir is still secular but the collective identity is that of a Muslim’, one is forced to re-examine the reasons for the apparent independence movement in Kashmir.
For the director, it is imperative that we ‘confront the ghost of partition and its effect on our collective psyche’. Only then, he believes, can we seek a solution that satisfies us all and build a road of rapprochement between to estranged brother nations!”
And what of the trees planted in his house: Alas, they were uprooted, leaving behind only the memories of better, more human, days and the realization that we have indeed strayed far away from the path of humanity…
The Mumbai-based writer is currently working as a research associate with a voluntary organisation. She is also (in her own words): ‘trying to figure my way out in this confusing world by talking to as many people, to learn of the different interpretations to life and the world! New knowledge and new viewpoints are what excites me the most!’. She can be contacted at nehatrivedi@gmail.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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© Copyright 2004 Foundation for Humanisation
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Ph +91 22 26616197
A new film by Ajay Raina uses cricket as a peg and rekindles hope of peace between India and Pakistan
WAPSI: The Return . A film that travels through Pakistan, with cricket fans, during the Indo-Pak Cricket series returns not only to Pakistan and to the now 58-year-old partition stories but to much more. Returning to the core of the India and Pakistan divide, returning to the core of many of the problems that keep resurfacing on either sides of the border under different names and at different times.
Wapsi: The Return is directed by Ajay Raina, whose first film, Tell them the tree they had planted has grown now, had won the Golden Conch and Best National Documentary Award. Raina, a Kashmiri Pandit who was forced to leave his home, straddles a troubled history and a difficult present, and the film reflects his feelings on the Kashmir issue and his views of the Indo-Pak struggle, on the conflict in his homeland.
The opening shots of the film present the strange situation of people awaiting visas to go to Pakistan: special visas are offered to cricket fans even as those who long to go across the border to visit relatives have to wait for their papers. Through the next 60 minutes, the camera travels the streets of Lahore and Delhi, the towns of Pakistan, and revisits stories of the people, bringing forward a “real” depiction of the Indo-Pak relationship.
It shows you both what you would have liked to see and what might come across as unpleasant reality. But what it ultimately leaves you with is the hope of the real possibility of peace within the two countries rather than romantic ideas of the neighbor we are separated from.
The movie raises several issues through brilliantly chosen scenes of everyday life. Scenes of news headlines where cricket headlines compete with news headlines about Kashmir; or the conversation on the streets of Lahore between the visiting Indians and the locals which narrow down to the ‘Kashmir’ issue and the status of Muslims all over India or the candid admission of a taxi-driver that the demolition of the Babari Masjid in India resulted in the demolition of a temple in Pakistan. Each scene is permeated with the intensity of the issues, yet flavoured by the realization that the people are so similar.
The film moves to Harappa, the site of the Indus Valley civilization, exploring the ‘common heritage’ and the depiction of the origin of civilization when no Hindu or Muslim existed. The reconstruction of history on the other side of the border clearly emerges in the commentary at the Harappan museum as it dwells on the advent of Muslim rulers and their influence on India.
It’s the voiceover that provides the shock of the present, as a series of shots from streets in Lahore, abandoned during Partition, to similar ones in Kashmir and Gujarat are accompanied by the commentary: ‘And a year ago, I was in Kashmir looking at streets similarly left behind by the Kashmiri Pandits and a year before that in Gujarat.’ No stronger indication is needed of the common thread that runs through the story of displaced people, of the violence that their lives were subjected to, of the sense of ‘difference’ that led to bloodshed merely because we failed to look at the similarities.
The film draws on the message of sufi followers who dance to music and celebrate their love for God, neither Hindu nor Muslim. Their final message is a powerful plea: ‘that instead of looking at all our divisions cant we look at similarities…the spiritual impulse which is part of the land be it Islam or Hinduism’…
Talking to this writer after the screening of the film, Raina felt that the ‘Kashmir issue’ is not so much about the so-called clash of Hindu-Muslim Civilizations. What irks is the feeling that the ‘so-called secular forces have not been able to take their debate forward’, he said,
There is a sense of confusion and hopelessness amongst Kashmiris today and there is a greater need to voice alternative opinions, he felt. Recalling the narrative of the houseboat owner in his first film, he pointed out that Independence was a higher ideal and striving for a higher ideal should lead to regeneration of society. “But this has not happened in Kashmir. Society has instead collapsed. There is a disjoint between what you want and what you are striving for”, he felt.
Raina also perceives a strong sense of defeat amongst Kashmiris today especially since so many had ‘believed in the movement at one point in time and had invested everything in the movement’. Now, he continued, you see a sense of personal defeat as well.
“While a similar thing happened in Punjab, the people of Punjab had moved on but in Kashmir, people have invested so much they would still want to hold on to it. That’s the state Kashmir is in now. They won’t criticize India but they will want to maintain that sense of alienation”, Raina felt.
For Raina, the solution lay in ‘first acknowledging and recognizing the problem, stressing on similarities and moving beyond our single religious identities. The Hindu-Muslim identity had become part of our psyche more after partition when it has become a tool. This is true of Kashmir also. It is when this has happened that vested interested have played their roles. We need to move beyond this single identity. We have many other common identities, Identities of us probably fighting the same system, identities of class, occupation. We need to stress on these.’
‘There is hope in education, economic growth. To become involved in leading our daily regular lives, to move beyond our only religious identities. Today in Kashmir, as my friend says in the film, people are more religious that before,” said Raina, wondering whether the heightened religiosity amongst youth indicated a major shift in society.
Raina’s films drawing to the need to stress on similarities, but along with an identification and recognition of the problem. As he put it, ‘WAPSI is not only about returning but to start over again, and it’s also about a new beginning.’
How far from being human
A brief note on Raina’s first film - Returning Home: Tell them 'the tree tree they had planted has now grown'.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The film began as a personal journey for the director, to return to his home.
In Kashmir after 11 years. As the Director says, the film was “an attempt to overcome the fear of going back. And in the process talk to whoever we could” In a very subtle but strong way, the film communicates to us so much more than what is apparent. By bringing forward all the opinions that are not apparent in the regular news and political debates of Kashmir.
The opening line of the Film are evocative but soon bring into sharp forcus a deep sense of betrayal: “When my parents built our new house in Srinagar, they also planted trees on the boundaries of our compound thinking that some day our children, grandchildren would reap their fruits. The fruits we reaped instead is years of continued exile from our home cause we believed India is our country!”. And that is enough to get across to you the sense of betrayal that the.
Was trust the main casualty of the Kashmir conflict? Raina tries to leave the sense of betrayal Kashmiri Pundits have felt since the mass exodus in 1989 and find out whether the walls of mistrust can be broken.
Through the film, one hears several opinions and what clearly emerges is the realization that none of the groups seem to have obtained what they set out to grasp. Everyone seems to be worse off, from the JKLF representative who said, “when the movement began, it was different, and we all take sometime to realize our mistake’ or the board at one of the many graveyards in Kashmir reads ‘Lest you forget, we’ve given our today for tomorrow of yours’.
Everywhere, one cannot escape feeling a sense of deep remorse, for those who fought for a cause they believed in (right, wrong, no one can make the judgment) the movement which today as the movie reflects knows what Ii does not want but does not know what it wants.
For the ordinary person on the street, the last 15 years have led to a permanent mark on their psyche. The casual reaction to sounds of gunfire or the violence on the streets or the woman who was asked whether she felt afraid…. For the director, ‘the Kashmiris have become a humble, silent people, dumb by fear. They appear to be people who are caught in a web of events, they cannot control, who are on a back of a tiger not knowing how to dismount, who want to rid themselves of the people with the gun but do not know what to do with them!’
And what of the Kashmiri Pundit? Raina continuously asks himself is ‘If I were a Kashmiris Muslim, how would have I seen things?’ and the answer is, that it would be different. The tension between the sense of being a Hindu and a Minority did exist earlier and the Pundits in the camp voice the feelings that ‘when we left in 1989, we did not think we were leaving for good. We thought we will come back’.
And in this entire chaos, as the Director tries to make his personal journey back to the House in Srinagar only to find it completely deserted, with all the cupboards empty or to have even visited the temple at Rainawari but found it in ruin or the sense of regret amongst Kashmiri Muslims for the exodus and the feeling that though the ‘average Kashmir is still secular but the collective identity is that of a Muslim’, one is forced to re-examine the reasons for the apparent independence movement in Kashmir.
For the director, it is imperative that we ‘confront the ghost of partition and its effect on our collective psyche’. Only then, he believes, can we seek a solution that satisfies us all and build a road of rapprochement between to estranged brother nations!”
And what of the trees planted in his house: Alas, they were uprooted, leaving behind only the memories of better, more human, days and the realization that we have indeed strayed far away from the path of humanity…
The Mumbai-based writer is currently working as a research associate with a voluntary organisation. She is also (in her own words): ‘trying to figure my way out in this confusing world by talking to as many people, to learn of the different interpretations to life and the world! New knowledge and new viewpoints are what excites me the most!’. She can be contacted at nehatrivedi@gmail.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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© Copyright 2004 Foundation for Humanisation
11 Yogniti, 18 SV Road, Santacruz (W), Mumbai - 400054, India.
Ph +91 22 26616197
Ahmedabad. September 23, 2002
Leya Mathew
9pm
My stomach is knotted up in fear. 26 people have been killed in a terrorist attack in Akshardham Temple complex in Gandhi Nagar. The road in front of our flat is one of the many borders near Shah Alam ‘Dargah’. Much violence had happened in this areajust a few months back. My dad calls me up every half an hour from Surat to tell me the latest TV news. We have no radio, no TV. If the mobile phone connections are cut off, we will be cut off from the entire world. Mobile connections were jammed all afternoon. The night sky shows a helicopter light circling the city. The knot in the bottom of my stomach grows tighter. My fourth floor flat in Dani-Limda is too high to jump down from in case someone comes to attack us for being neither a Hindu nor a Muslim, but just a human being.
We watch and wait...Tonight, Riyaz (one of our local friends) had sent us Tiffin from his home…we eat the delicious basmati rice and chicken curry…in apprehension, fear and in anxious thoughts about what will follow.
We call up Riyaz. He comes over, gives us the phone numbers of the local Police Station. “Whatever you do, don’t go out on the road if anything happens.” Is his parting advice. He shows us how to get to the nearby Police Station through the back alleys.
11pm
We have packed up our essentials into a small bag. A change of underclothes, all our money, camera, blank tapes... In case we have to leave in a hurry. We leave the ‘exposed’ tapes of our two months shooting and our dairy behind. What if someone from either side with a sword in hand would want to see what we have shot/written so far! – A painful decision. We leave behind all our accounts of the help we have rendered to the chali, all our financial records…. and the photographs of the carnage we had been given. The street in front of our flat is empty; Deserted... I have never seen it empty, even at 2 am in the morning.
Riyaz calls up again to tell us that people have started shifting to Shah Alam Roza (a relief camp) from Naroda Patia and from Behrampura also. We decide to go to Kasai ki Chali, the Chali we have adopted in Behrampura. The rest of Ahmedabad is a stranger to us anyway. There are no auto rickshaws available tonight. We walk fast. Ajay keeps looking over his shoulder. I look into the shadows. Everything looks suspicious. There are some young men collecting stones. We hurry on. Men sit outside, huddled in silence. They watch us warily. There is anxiety and there is fear. We finally manage to get an auto.
“Behrampura chaloge?”
“Haan.”
We reach Kasai ki Chali by 11:30. The men of the Chali are all huddled together outside, on the stone benches. The children are mostly asleep. A few loiter around, too scared to sleep. The women sit outside their houses on the charpoys. Every one is happy to see us.
We go to Chand Bibi’s house. Rihana and Amna keep Chand Bibi company. Amna usually has a big smile for me, but she is cold now, her eyes look frightened. She is muttering something under her breath. Rihana laughs uncontrollably. Chand Bibi sits silently rocking herself. She is a childless widow. She lives alone. Last time, she had no one to help her shift her luggage. She had lost everything. Her one room home had been burnt down. In the last few months, she has somehow managed to rebuild her house. Most of it on charity from relatives, from us…
Her old wrinkled face is wrought with worry. Ajay takes out his camera and asks her to pray. “Ya Allah, Reham kar…Shaitanon ko akal baksh…Unhen sachchi rah dikhah…” (She prays for peace and for some sense to the devil’s children…)
There is a TV in the house next to the school we started here two months back. Aaj Tak TV says, “Terrorist attack on Akshardham temple on the day of Kashmir Elections. 24 people have died. The NSG is fighting it out with the terrorists holed up inside the temple." People walk in and out, for a glimpse of the latest news.
We wait outside the chali. Asiappa sits with her son Amir Ali. The young men form a group near one of the stone benches. A State Transport bus stops near the chali. All of us watch the bus suspiciously. It has a tyre puncture. The driver calls out to us to help him out. The young men help him out willingly. At least there is something to do instead of sitting and waiting for God knows what… Police vans go by every once in a while. That it is Gujarat Police vans and not the State Reserve Police (SRP) or Central Reserve Police (CRP) vans only increases the scare. A firecracker goes off nearby. At this time of the night? Is that a bomb? Our nerves are frayed. The wait is maddening…
By one in the morning Ajay and I go out for a walk, to kill the sleep that is slowly creeping in. We walk down to Jamalpur Char Rasta for a cup of tea. The place is usually packed in the night with the lorry traffic that comes to the APMC Sabzi Market. Tonight, there are only a few odd ghosts like us. At least it is not deserted. We sit at Khalid Ibrahim’s ‘ande ka larri’. Khalid is from Kasai ki Chali. We know he won’t kill us. He gets us kala pani - A strange concoction pretending to be black tea - and he won’t take any money.
The Police Vans pass more frequently here. Jamalpur Char Rasta was the one of the most sensitive areas during the prolonged communal violence here. Stabbings were everyday incidents. Crude bombs went off as women calmly shopped for the day’s provisions.
Every one looks at us suspiciously. We are not part of the lorry traffic. We are dressed differently. We are with a camera. “What are these people doing here?” They wonder. We walk back to the Kasai ki Chali. On the way we pass the Behrampura Police Station. It is buzzing with activity. I wonder who among them had fired at Sharif, of Kasai Ki Chali. I wonder who among them had taken money from Bolu as protection money to turn a blind eye when the mob burned up Kasai ki chali and Gasiram ki Chali…
1.30pm
We go to sleep in Chand Bibi’s one room house. She has already decided to shift out tomorrow itself. She has a niece living nearby in Bombay Hotel Area. The lights are switched off, but she keeps mumbling about wanting to shift all her meager possessions to a safe place. Ajay assures her that by tomorrow he will have her possessions shifted to her nephew’s house in Jamalpur.
The door is only latched. The night is full of strange sounds. I keep my eyes open for as long as I can manage. Somebody is talking urgently outside. I get up to check that everything is okay. Ajay is also awake. I lose count of the number of times I get up to check.
There is some loud noise outside. Both Ajay and I wake up simultaneously. Ajay goes out to check… The night doesn’t seem to get over. We sleep in the early morning hours and get up by 7 am.
24 September, 9am
The night has passed by eventless. In TV news, though the terrorists are still holed up inside the temple, equations have already been drawn between the terrorist attack and the ongoing elections in Kashmir, as though nothing ever had happened in Gujarat. The State Congress has already called for a bandh today. VHP has called for a bandh tomorrow. Only some shops are closed. The city seems normal. But there is tension and apprehension that things would go bad. “It looks the same as that day when Godhra happened.” Someone says. Memories are not normal. The pattern is similar. Godhra. 2days of bandh… What after that?
2pm
The chali people have started shifting their goods to safer places. They are getting used to this. But how long will you keep shifting back and forth? More shops have been shutting up for the day. The traffic is thinning out…
3pm
Today morning, according to earlier plans, we shifted from our flat in Dani Limda to an empty flat in the ‘infamous’ Delight flats in Paldi. Aslambhai, the guy who had the key has shifted to the Muslim dominated Juhapura. The memory of the daylong siege here on February 28,of the mobs with swords, of the flats guarded by a handful of people and one firearm… The memories are too recent. Aslambhai will not be coming to this area for atleast two days.
We have moved our luggage from our earlier flat but are unable to shift in to a new one. So for tonight we have no place of our own to stay. Ajay has decided that we must go back to Mumbai tonight itself. We were supposed to leave the day after…
8 pm
The luxury bus passes Kasai ki chali on it’s way to Mumbai. The men are still waiting outside the chali on the stone benches. I wonder what we will come back to…How long will it take us for all of us to understand - that just a couple of mad people on two sides of the extremist fence can put an entire country’s peace at stake…
(Ajay Raina and I make films. We have been working with the riot affected people of ‘Kasai ki Chali’ and have recently started a non-formal school/sewing centre/handmade paper workshop for the children and women of the chali.)
9pm
My stomach is knotted up in fear. 26 people have been killed in a terrorist attack in Akshardham Temple complex in Gandhi Nagar. The road in front of our flat is one of the many borders near Shah Alam ‘Dargah’. Much violence had happened in this areajust a few months back. My dad calls me up every half an hour from Surat to tell me the latest TV news. We have no radio, no TV. If the mobile phone connections are cut off, we will be cut off from the entire world. Mobile connections were jammed all afternoon. The night sky shows a helicopter light circling the city. The knot in the bottom of my stomach grows tighter. My fourth floor flat in Dani-Limda is too high to jump down from in case someone comes to attack us for being neither a Hindu nor a Muslim, but just a human being.
We watch and wait...Tonight, Riyaz (one of our local friends) had sent us Tiffin from his home…we eat the delicious basmati rice and chicken curry…in apprehension, fear and in anxious thoughts about what will follow.
We call up Riyaz. He comes over, gives us the phone numbers of the local Police Station. “Whatever you do, don’t go out on the road if anything happens.” Is his parting advice. He shows us how to get to the nearby Police Station through the back alleys.
11pm
We have packed up our essentials into a small bag. A change of underclothes, all our money, camera, blank tapes... In case we have to leave in a hurry. We leave the ‘exposed’ tapes of our two months shooting and our dairy behind. What if someone from either side with a sword in hand would want to see what we have shot/written so far! – A painful decision. We leave behind all our accounts of the help we have rendered to the chali, all our financial records…. and the photographs of the carnage we had been given. The street in front of our flat is empty; Deserted... I have never seen it empty, even at 2 am in the morning.
Riyaz calls up again to tell us that people have started shifting to Shah Alam Roza (a relief camp) from Naroda Patia and from Behrampura also. We decide to go to Kasai ki Chali, the Chali we have adopted in Behrampura. The rest of Ahmedabad is a stranger to us anyway. There are no auto rickshaws available tonight. We walk fast. Ajay keeps looking over his shoulder. I look into the shadows. Everything looks suspicious. There are some young men collecting stones. We hurry on. Men sit outside, huddled in silence. They watch us warily. There is anxiety and there is fear. We finally manage to get an auto.
“Behrampura chaloge?”
“Haan.”
We reach Kasai ki Chali by 11:30. The men of the Chali are all huddled together outside, on the stone benches. The children are mostly asleep. A few loiter around, too scared to sleep. The women sit outside their houses on the charpoys. Every one is happy to see us.
We go to Chand Bibi’s house. Rihana and Amna keep Chand Bibi company. Amna usually has a big smile for me, but she is cold now, her eyes look frightened. She is muttering something under her breath. Rihana laughs uncontrollably. Chand Bibi sits silently rocking herself. She is a childless widow. She lives alone. Last time, she had no one to help her shift her luggage. She had lost everything. Her one room home had been burnt down. In the last few months, she has somehow managed to rebuild her house. Most of it on charity from relatives, from us…
Her old wrinkled face is wrought with worry. Ajay takes out his camera and asks her to pray. “Ya Allah, Reham kar…Shaitanon ko akal baksh…Unhen sachchi rah dikhah…” (She prays for peace and for some sense to the devil’s children…)
There is a TV in the house next to the school we started here two months back. Aaj Tak TV says, “Terrorist attack on Akshardham temple on the day of Kashmir Elections. 24 people have died. The NSG is fighting it out with the terrorists holed up inside the temple." People walk in and out, for a glimpse of the latest news.
We wait outside the chali. Asiappa sits with her son Amir Ali. The young men form a group near one of the stone benches. A State Transport bus stops near the chali. All of us watch the bus suspiciously. It has a tyre puncture. The driver calls out to us to help him out. The young men help him out willingly. At least there is something to do instead of sitting and waiting for God knows what… Police vans go by every once in a while. That it is Gujarat Police vans and not the State Reserve Police (SRP) or Central Reserve Police (CRP) vans only increases the scare. A firecracker goes off nearby. At this time of the night? Is that a bomb? Our nerves are frayed. The wait is maddening…
By one in the morning Ajay and I go out for a walk, to kill the sleep that is slowly creeping in. We walk down to Jamalpur Char Rasta for a cup of tea. The place is usually packed in the night with the lorry traffic that comes to the APMC Sabzi Market. Tonight, there are only a few odd ghosts like us. At least it is not deserted. We sit at Khalid Ibrahim’s ‘ande ka larri’. Khalid is from Kasai ki Chali. We know he won’t kill us. He gets us kala pani - A strange concoction pretending to be black tea - and he won’t take any money.
The Police Vans pass more frequently here. Jamalpur Char Rasta was the one of the most sensitive areas during the prolonged communal violence here. Stabbings were everyday incidents. Crude bombs went off as women calmly shopped for the day’s provisions.
Every one looks at us suspiciously. We are not part of the lorry traffic. We are dressed differently. We are with a camera. “What are these people doing here?” They wonder. We walk back to the Kasai ki Chali. On the way we pass the Behrampura Police Station. It is buzzing with activity. I wonder who among them had fired at Sharif, of Kasai Ki Chali. I wonder who among them had taken money from Bolu as protection money to turn a blind eye when the mob burned up Kasai ki chali and Gasiram ki Chali…
1.30pm
We go to sleep in Chand Bibi’s one room house. She has already decided to shift out tomorrow itself. She has a niece living nearby in Bombay Hotel Area. The lights are switched off, but she keeps mumbling about wanting to shift all her meager possessions to a safe place. Ajay assures her that by tomorrow he will have her possessions shifted to her nephew’s house in Jamalpur.
The door is only latched. The night is full of strange sounds. I keep my eyes open for as long as I can manage. Somebody is talking urgently outside. I get up to check that everything is okay. Ajay is also awake. I lose count of the number of times I get up to check.
There is some loud noise outside. Both Ajay and I wake up simultaneously. Ajay goes out to check… The night doesn’t seem to get over. We sleep in the early morning hours and get up by 7 am.
24 September, 9am
The night has passed by eventless. In TV news, though the terrorists are still holed up inside the temple, equations have already been drawn between the terrorist attack and the ongoing elections in Kashmir, as though nothing ever had happened in Gujarat. The State Congress has already called for a bandh today. VHP has called for a bandh tomorrow. Only some shops are closed. The city seems normal. But there is tension and apprehension that things would go bad. “It looks the same as that day when Godhra happened.” Someone says. Memories are not normal. The pattern is similar. Godhra. 2days of bandh… What after that?
2pm
The chali people have started shifting their goods to safer places. They are getting used to this. But how long will you keep shifting back and forth? More shops have been shutting up for the day. The traffic is thinning out…
3pm
Today morning, according to earlier plans, we shifted from our flat in Dani Limda to an empty flat in the ‘infamous’ Delight flats in Paldi. Aslambhai, the guy who had the key has shifted to the Muslim dominated Juhapura. The memory of the daylong siege here on February 28,of the mobs with swords, of the flats guarded by a handful of people and one firearm… The memories are too recent. Aslambhai will not be coming to this area for atleast two days.
We have moved our luggage from our earlier flat but are unable to shift in to a new one. So for tonight we have no place of our own to stay. Ajay has decided that we must go back to Mumbai tonight itself. We were supposed to leave the day after…
8 pm
The luxury bus passes Kasai ki chali on it’s way to Mumbai. The men are still waiting outside the chali on the stone benches. I wonder what we will come back to…How long will it take us for all of us to understand - that just a couple of mad people on two sides of the extremist fence can put an entire country’s peace at stake…
(Ajay Raina and I make films. We have been working with the riot affected people of ‘Kasai ki Chali’ and have recently started a non-formal school/sewing centre/handmade paper workshop for the children and women of the chali.)
Wapsi review
REVIEW by Veeresh Malik
(www.chowk.com)
For all I know, taking a video camera into Pakistan is not banned, nor does shooting tourist home movies get you into any sort of trouble or fame there. But then, the end product from those amateur efforts can hardly qualify towards holding any form of serious interest.
WAPSI, on the other hand, grips you throughout its very precisely edited one-hour duration. The actual handheld shots in Pakistan, about 70% of the movie, delivers live footage of aspects of Pakistani life not seen too often. More than that, some of the critical parts have been shot without the subjects being aware. The absence of women on the streets, the fear in the shifting eyes of the minorities caught on candid camera in Pakistan and the existence of a vibrant sufi movement, these, and more, are as evocative as the obvious pride in their flag, the brilliant countryside and the honky-town night streets of Lahore.
But the revealing points have to be the rather evolved history lessons prefered by the guides and authorities at the Museums and tourist spots. And the clips from typical popular Pakistani movies where the stereo-typed blatant Hindu villian is blamed for everything is a revelation to me. Cut right away to the status of Hindus in Kashmir and you wonder - what sort of people are these Islamist fundamentals who emerge from Pakistan? Were these the ones that Jinnah, and now Musharaf, wished on the world?
The big message that WAPSI brought out for me as a dispassionate observer who watched this movie repeatedly with friends and relatives including many who are from the communities known as minorities where they live (Indian Muslims, Indian Parsees, Indian Christians, Pakistani Christians, Kashmiri Hindus and Pakistani Hindus) was this:- What comes out very calmly in Ajay Raina’s movie is the various ways minorities have been treated by their Governments in India and Pakistan since 1947. And the progress or lack thereof that both countries have made therein, related to this important aspect. Chilling shots of Hindus in the Kashmir Valley are very relevant, for example,to the way the Indian Government has failed with its minorities..
In other words, if you as a country, as a Government, use fundamentalism as a tool to subjugate minorities then it is your own majority people who will remain backward while the minorities get ahead or leave the country or the weakest ones get left behind. If you do not recognise and assimilate fairly the minorities then it is your majority community that settles down into tunnel vision and regressive syndromes. This rather telling synopsis of statements made during a free-and-frank, sizzling, discussion (captured in this film) made on the streets of Lahore by Pakistanis and Indians is so very apt in summing up the issue.
The simple fact that temples, gurudwaras and churches are regularly knocked down or left to rot in Pakistan without much demur because the system and the majority is Muslim while a single nationally and internationally reviled Babri Masjid incident in India required and provoked a national movement in India to precipitate matters is brought out up front by comparing the status of mosques in Indian Punjab with that of temples in Pakistani Punjab. In bright living colour.
At the same time, the simple and open love that the man on the street Pakistani has for his Indian visitors and guests is captured intact, with the warmth coming through genuinely. My favourite part of the movie has to do with one Indian in Lahore telling the camera things to the effect that if you ask any Pakistani for vegetarian food then they will take you home and cook it for you and make you stay at their place too. This is something I experienced in Pakistan, too, the basic open and unqualified love from the man on the street.
However, their own truths about riots against minorities are discussed openly and frankly without fear of being documented by Pakistani and Indian Muslims while the Pakistani Hindus and Sikhs look around shiftily and pretend there is nothing of the sort. The confidence with which Indian Muslims discuss their problems in India versus the hesitation in the voice and face of the Pakistani Hindus and Sikhs has to be seen to be understood.
Juxtapose this with the brightly lit Food Street, Gawalmandi, CooCoos, and Motorway shots. And nothing beats the surge in a Punjabi heartbeat as the golden fields of The Punjab come into focus on a brilliant shot while crossing the Ravi.
Yes, it pre-supposes an interest in the subject. No, it does not pontificate. And maybe it puts forth, tentatively, some directions for a solution. But most of all it leaves a sadness as the poetry brushes gently past the remnants of non-Muslim Lahore.
Shot on location in India and Pakistan with a variety of hand-held cameras and camerapersons, WAPSI holds your attention whether you agree with it or not. However, there is seldom denying the truths that come on the canvas of the screen, and the slick editing as well as fast transitions back and forth in time and location make this documentary into a fast-paced revelation.
(www.chowk.com)
For all I know, taking a video camera into Pakistan is not banned, nor does shooting tourist home movies get you into any sort of trouble or fame there. But then, the end product from those amateur efforts can hardly qualify towards holding any form of serious interest.
WAPSI, on the other hand, grips you throughout its very precisely edited one-hour duration. The actual handheld shots in Pakistan, about 70% of the movie, delivers live footage of aspects of Pakistani life not seen too often. More than that, some of the critical parts have been shot without the subjects being aware. The absence of women on the streets, the fear in the shifting eyes of the minorities caught on candid camera in Pakistan and the existence of a vibrant sufi movement, these, and more, are as evocative as the obvious pride in their flag, the brilliant countryside and the honky-town night streets of Lahore.
But the revealing points have to be the rather evolved history lessons prefered by the guides and authorities at the Museums and tourist spots. And the clips from typical popular Pakistani movies where the stereo-typed blatant Hindu villian is blamed for everything is a revelation to me. Cut right away to the status of Hindus in Kashmir and you wonder - what sort of people are these Islamist fundamentals who emerge from Pakistan? Were these the ones that Jinnah, and now Musharaf, wished on the world?
The big message that WAPSI brought out for me as a dispassionate observer who watched this movie repeatedly with friends and relatives including many who are from the communities known as minorities where they live (Indian Muslims, Indian Parsees, Indian Christians, Pakistani Christians, Kashmiri Hindus and Pakistani Hindus) was this:- What comes out very calmly in Ajay Raina’s movie is the various ways minorities have been treated by their Governments in India and Pakistan since 1947. And the progress or lack thereof that both countries have made therein, related to this important aspect. Chilling shots of Hindus in the Kashmir Valley are very relevant, for example,to the way the Indian Government has failed with its minorities..
In other words, if you as a country, as a Government, use fundamentalism as a tool to subjugate minorities then it is your own majority people who will remain backward while the minorities get ahead or leave the country or the weakest ones get left behind. If you do not recognise and assimilate fairly the minorities then it is your majority community that settles down into tunnel vision and regressive syndromes. This rather telling synopsis of statements made during a free-and-frank, sizzling, discussion (captured in this film) made on the streets of Lahore by Pakistanis and Indians is so very apt in summing up the issue.
The simple fact that temples, gurudwaras and churches are regularly knocked down or left to rot in Pakistan without much demur because the system and the majority is Muslim while a single nationally and internationally reviled Babri Masjid incident in India required and provoked a national movement in India to precipitate matters is brought out up front by comparing the status of mosques in Indian Punjab with that of temples in Pakistani Punjab. In bright living colour.
At the same time, the simple and open love that the man on the street Pakistani has for his Indian visitors and guests is captured intact, with the warmth coming through genuinely. My favourite part of the movie has to do with one Indian in Lahore telling the camera things to the effect that if you ask any Pakistani for vegetarian food then they will take you home and cook it for you and make you stay at their place too. This is something I experienced in Pakistan, too, the basic open and unqualified love from the man on the street.
However, their own truths about riots against minorities are discussed openly and frankly without fear of being documented by Pakistani and Indian Muslims while the Pakistani Hindus and Sikhs look around shiftily and pretend there is nothing of the sort. The confidence with which Indian Muslims discuss their problems in India versus the hesitation in the voice and face of the Pakistani Hindus and Sikhs has to be seen to be understood.
Juxtapose this with the brightly lit Food Street, Gawalmandi, CooCoos, and Motorway shots. And nothing beats the surge in a Punjabi heartbeat as the golden fields of The Punjab come into focus on a brilliant shot while crossing the Ravi.
Yes, it pre-supposes an interest in the subject. No, it does not pontificate. And maybe it puts forth, tentatively, some directions for a solution. But most of all it leaves a sadness as the poetry brushes gently past the remnants of non-Muslim Lahore.
Shot on location in India and Pakistan with a variety of hand-held cameras and camerapersons, WAPSI holds your attention whether you agree with it or not. However, there is seldom denying the truths that come on the canvas of the screen, and the slick editing as well as fast transitions back and forth in time and location make this documentary into a fast-paced revelation.
An excerpt from - Husband of a Fanatic
BY AMITAVA KUMAR
Naipaul, travelling in Srinagar in the 1960's had felt that he was in a medieval city, a world that 'had not developed a sense of history, which is a sense of loss.' But each Kashmiri is a keeper of another kind of history, one not of loss but of a distinctive acheivement. Under the fourteenth century mystic poet Lal Ded, who was born in a Brahmin family but was very much influenced by Islam, and also under saints like Hazrat Nuruddin who followed Lal Ded and was revered as Nund Rishi,there had flourished in the Valley a religious movement that had brought Hindus and Muslims together in a unique way. The sense of loss that Naipaul had found missing in the 1960s, and which now pervades every street and every home in Srinagar, is also in part about what a recent documentary film abpout the horrors in Kashmir calls 'the momories of those days when we were so proudly human'.
The documentary i have just quoted from is Ajay Raina's Tell them, 'the tree they had planted has now grown'. The film's title comes from a statement that the wife of an old family servant makes when the film-maker returns to the home in which he had lived with his parents, the home where they had planted pine trees and from where they had fled after the violence began. Raina is a Hindu and in the film he returns to Kashmir after more than a decade and talks to people about the region's recent past. The film is beautifully made, it's poetic texture mirroring in many ways, the film maker's sensitivity and anguish. There are moments, however, when Raina cannot escape the prison of his own subjectivity. He sees the struggle in Kashmir, like many other displaced Kashmiri Pandits, as a fight between democracy and fundamentalism. At one point in the film Raina makes the simple minded and innacurate claim that 'the soldier representing secular India is locked in a mortal combat with the jihadi from across the border'. But other voices in the film nudge into view alternate claims and understanding of the situation in Kashmir. In fact, rather early in the film, the Kashmiri writer Akhter Mohiuddin tells Raina about the way in which the dominant Pandit community was seen as oppressive and in complicity with the distant rulers of the Indian nation - sate. Mohiuddin, who had returned the Padma Shri awarded to him by the Indian government to protest it's actions in Kashmir, tells Raina on camera, 'India betrayed us and the Pandits supported them during every betrayal.' The Kashmiri Muslims, 96 per cent of the poulation in the Valley, had a literacy rate of only 0.8 per cent. Hindus formed about 4% of the entire population of the Valley but it was they who occupied many of the administrative and political positions of power. If 63.4 per cent of the population in the Valley is today unemployed, than these new resentments feed into and distort a very old rage.
Raina's film is more successful in showing in a series of images from Charar-e-Sharif shrine, the agony and the faith of the Kashmiri people. The Chrar is the shrine of Sheikh Nuruddin and was gutted in 1995; the security forces as well as the separatist guerrillas blamed each other for the fire. In Raina's film, we see ordinary men and women weeping at the shrine, their hands held open in ardent prayers, tears flowing down their faces. I'll give you my life, dear beloved, of all universe. at In this gesture of prayer, at a shrine which had traditionally been shared by both faiths, what is expressed in the chant is contrition and love. It is easy and tempting to find only innocence there.
There is innocence, but it takes a more surprising form. In the film, we watch as Akhtar Mohiuddin tells Raina of a 'mini short story' he has written. This is a story that I heard repeated many times when I was in Kashmir. Its popularity might be explianed by the fact that it outlines a situation where the loss of innocence is represented not through assault but by the seduction of violence. The story is titled "Terrorist". A woman named Farz Ded is walking down a narrow street. From the opposite end of the street, a police patrol approaches her. Farz Ded's young son starts crying. The commander thinks that the kid is scared and he reassures him. Farz Ded says to the man,'This rogue is not afraid of you. He sees the soldier and cries, 'I want a gun...I want a gun."
Naipaul, travelling in Srinagar in the 1960's had felt that he was in a medieval city, a world that 'had not developed a sense of history, which is a sense of loss.' But each Kashmiri is a keeper of another kind of history, one not of loss but of a distinctive acheivement. Under the fourteenth century mystic poet Lal Ded, who was born in a Brahmin family but was very much influenced by Islam, and also under saints like Hazrat Nuruddin who followed Lal Ded and was revered as Nund Rishi,there had flourished in the Valley a religious movement that had brought Hindus and Muslims together in a unique way. The sense of loss that Naipaul had found missing in the 1960s, and which now pervades every street and every home in Srinagar, is also in part about what a recent documentary film abpout the horrors in Kashmir calls 'the momories of those days when we were so proudly human'.
The documentary i have just quoted from is Ajay Raina's Tell them, 'the tree they had planted has now grown'. The film's title comes from a statement that the wife of an old family servant makes when the film-maker returns to the home in which he had lived with his parents, the home where they had planted pine trees and from where they had fled after the violence began. Raina is a Hindu and in the film he returns to Kashmir after more than a decade and talks to people about the region's recent past. The film is beautifully made, it's poetic texture mirroring in many ways, the film maker's sensitivity and anguish. There are moments, however, when Raina cannot escape the prison of his own subjectivity. He sees the struggle in Kashmir, like many other displaced Kashmiri Pandits, as a fight between democracy and fundamentalism. At one point in the film Raina makes the simple minded and innacurate claim that 'the soldier representing secular India is locked in a mortal combat with the jihadi from across the border'. But other voices in the film nudge into view alternate claims and understanding of the situation in Kashmir. In fact, rather early in the film, the Kashmiri writer Akhter Mohiuddin tells Raina about the way in which the dominant Pandit community was seen as oppressive and in complicity with the distant rulers of the Indian nation - sate. Mohiuddin, who had returned the Padma Shri awarded to him by the Indian government to protest it's actions in Kashmir, tells Raina on camera, 'India betrayed us and the Pandits supported them during every betrayal.' The Kashmiri Muslims, 96 per cent of the poulation in the Valley, had a literacy rate of only 0.8 per cent. Hindus formed about 4% of the entire population of the Valley but it was they who occupied many of the administrative and political positions of power. If 63.4 per cent of the population in the Valley is today unemployed, than these new resentments feed into and distort a very old rage.
Raina's film is more successful in showing in a series of images from Charar-e-Sharif shrine, the agony and the faith of the Kashmiri people. The Chrar is the shrine of Sheikh Nuruddin and was gutted in 1995; the security forces as well as the separatist guerrillas blamed each other for the fire. In Raina's film, we see ordinary men and women weeping at the shrine, their hands held open in ardent prayers, tears flowing down their faces. I'll give you my life, dear beloved, of all universe. at In this gesture of prayer, at a shrine which had traditionally been shared by both faiths, what is expressed in the chant is contrition and love. It is easy and tempting to find only innocence there.
There is innocence, but it takes a more surprising form. In the film, we watch as Akhtar Mohiuddin tells Raina of a 'mini short story' he has written. This is a story that I heard repeated many times when I was in Kashmir. Its popularity might be explianed by the fact that it outlines a situation where the loss of innocence is represented not through assault but by the seduction of violence. The story is titled "Terrorist". A woman named Farz Ded is walking down a narrow street. From the opposite end of the street, a police patrol approaches her. Farz Ded's young son starts crying. The commander thinks that the kid is scared and he reassures him. Farz Ded says to the man,'This rogue is not afraid of you. He sees the soldier and cries, 'I want a gun...I want a gun."
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