By Syed Ali Mujtaba

Even though, Ajit Doval our National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister of India has said that majority of Kashmiris support removal of Article 370 and rubbished any apprehension that the people of India may watch the ‘Holocaust’ of the century on the euphemic Republic TV.

Advertisement

Right now the whole country is cheering at the plight of the Kashmiris locked inside homes for more than a month, hungry and helpless bruised and battered. Children are not getting milk, people are not going to work and elderly are not getting medicines.

And this suffocating situation in Kashmir is being admired by a large majority who feel the writ of nationalism is superior to human race. They are cheering in favor of another Jalianwalabag to shoot the Kashmiri at sight once they defy the curfew order and come out in droves for want of food.  The lynch mob of the country is keenly waiting for watching such spectacle to happen on the TV.

The atmosphere in India right now is exactly the same what Hitler created in his Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Hitler went on to kill more than 10 million people in name of German nationalism and it looks the same is going to happen in India by the BJP led government.

Well small massacres are happening on daily basis in the country all in the name of nationalism. Sometimes it is tribals who are killed in the name of Maoism, people of the northeast in the name ethnicity, Dalits and backwards for being inferior caste and of Muslims being a Malicha.  All such killings are being justified in the name of nationalism that is synonym with Hindu nationalism.

However, the massacre of the century or the ‘ethnic cleansing’ as it may be called is yet to happen. And an atmosphere to that is being created in Kashmir.  At the moment the Kashmiri people are subjected to unprecedented hardship. They are cut out from the rest of the world. No communication network is allowed to function there. Journalist cannot go there to take stock of the situation. No one is allowed to talk to the press there about their plight in captivity.

Kashmir is a garrison state a.k.a Union territory directly controlled by Delhi. A comparison can be made with the rebellion of 1857 when London rejoiced integrating India into the mighty British Empire when the failed rebellion scripted the first story of the struggle for freedom.

Thereafter the London Durbar made Indians prostrate before the mighty British Empire, it is the same mindset of the colonizers of Kashmir that want the Kashmiri people to prostrate before the Delhi Durbar.

The story book of Indian nationalism from 1857 to 1947 is by heart to every Indian and in this the story of Jalianwala bag of 1919 is one of the most dramatic chapter. The same chapter is now being scripted by different characters with Ajit Doval being General Dyer and poor Kashmiris being common Indian.  The situation is being created as such that Kashmiri will be  forced come out defying curfew for want of food and Indian guns will blaze at them and making them as cannon fodder.

Our euphemic Republic TV has made all the preparation to provide the satellite feeds to the lynch mob sitting as couch potatoes to watch the beautiful massacre on their extra-large TV. And by doing so they would be taking pride in winning the battle of the clash of Civilizations.

This is the hard reality of the contemporary India. The writing on the wall is crystal clear and the great massacre is just round the corner. Its sorry sight as people in India are not on the side of humanism but to them Hindu nationalism is far superior identity than even to their biological identity.

This was exactly the case of Germany in 1930s. There the people willingly brought Hitler to power to carry out the Holocaust against the Jews.  In India, it’s the Hindu majority that has brought the BJP to power to create lynch mob brigade to kill the Indian Muslim and to orchestrate state terror to obliterate Kashmir’s identity. However, in case of Germany it was not the people who could threw out Hitler from power but it was Allied Forces that defeated him in World War II. It is unfortunate that in the case of India there is no external force to unseat those who are currently in power.

Many  people in the country are hoping the 2024 election can provide a remedy to this situation but the poll outcome of 2019 clearly tells that no way it is going to happen.  The poll outcome mandated that no matter whom you vote the result will be always favor of the ruling party.

In such situation what will happen to our country? The three IAS officers of the country Mr Kannan Gopinathan, Mr S Sasikanth Senthil, Mr Kashish Mittal who have resigned from the service over ‘denial of freedom of expression’ and ‘democracy’ have set the example by their deeds of valor.  They have expressed their solidarity with the democratic forces and human values in the country and not licking the boots of the current rulers of the nation. By resigning their dream job, they have given a wake-up call to all the Indians to listen to their voices of consciousness and not to get swayed by the propaganda of nationalism.

The choice now before the people of this great country is to side with the democratic forces and human values and humanity at large or with religious nationalist who are rank colonizers. It is now the turn of the ordinary people of the country to come out on the streets in large numbers and clamor for safeguard our democracy that we have won from the colonizers.

The bottom line in the story of Kashmir is, it is not the Kashmiris who have let down India rather it is India that has down the Kashmiris. It is not all the Indians who have been party to it but it is those who have hijacked our democracy in the name of Parliamentary majority. The punch line is healing the wounds and winning the hearts of the people of Kashmir will not be as easy as the abrogation of Article 370.

—

Syed Ali Mujtaba is a journalist based in Chennai. He can be contacted at syedalimujtaba2007@gmail.com