Reflections on Kashmir's national schizophrenia
Being judgmental is in our DNA. We love to sling mud. In the moral law of our land, everybody is guilty until proven innocent. We love to hate our enemies. But we don’t mind acting predators to our comrades in arms, as well. Now we don’t mind dehumanisation, either.
We have mastered the art of inventing conspiracy theories. Making martyrs out of vulnerable men is our national pass-time. To thrive on chaos is part of our culture now. Mistakes, even the small ones, are unpardonable. We prefer a mass suicide to an individual one. We love to label people. Slander them. Spin the turbans in the air. Yet we get tears in our eyes too easily.
By: Arjimand Hussain Talib
How do we reflect on all that happened in the State Assembly past week? Inspire disgust? Pride? Introspection? Or a mixture of all these?
Yet again we made international headlines.Kashmir was talked about all over - for a ‘scandal’, evoking global curiosity and laughter. South Africa’s most popular FM radio ran a full fledged program on the matter. The radio’s jockeys giggled and shared jokes.
Let us don’t take sides here. Or pass judgements on morality, sins and innocence. Let us just talk.
Ruling National Conference and PDP’s political rivalry has reached a crescendo. Both are fighting battles for survival. Both need to constantly reinvent their political raison d’être. But what does Muzaffar Hussain Beig’s diatribe symbolize? How to see his volte face during a discussion with Dr Abdullah on a TV channel the same evening?
Lately, a new thinking has evolved in our intellectual circles in Srinagar. Call it a renaissance of Kashmiri thought. This thinking sees all our traits from the prism of ‘survival instincts’ – survival in an environment where our enemy is not the sole predator. This thinking tends to see the intense aggression within us as a by-product of oppression. Even the kind that sometimes borders illogic.
This theory of ‘survival instinct’, interestingly, seeks to justify all that we do in our daily lives. It makes the boundaries between morality and immorality evaporate. It diminishes the line between principle and compromise. It makes brazen impossibilities possible. And contradictions accepted as ethical.
There is another theory which is also popular – the theory of ‘slave mentality.’ All these theories are not totally unfounded. Some are valid. Some are simply bizarre.
In the Assembly when Beigh made the accusation against Omar, he looked a different person. The very next day he sounded different. And when everything is justified as a ‘survival instinct’, then it doesn’t really matter if he was right or wrong.
And look at the other contrast of our national character. We continue to be one of the most humane, hospitable species on the planet. Our social cohesion and love for others makes our visitors envy. When a fellow citizen gets a slap or a kick from a soldier; slogans reverberate and flags flutter in no time. When faced with an onslaught, revolutions are not far away. Mention prostitution or a comment by a soldier on our women, and swords cross. The minds of the researchers of our anthropology spin.
We are yet to switch over to professional funeral companies. When facing a calamity or an illness, the flood of friends, relatives and foes acting as helpers remains a part of our social reality. We don’t have the heart to see our poor go hungry. Or be badly dressed. Our small place is a paradise for even non-local beggars. Yet our national schizophrenia remains.
An alcoholic remains an untouchable in our society. Violence against women is somewhat alien to us. Thank God, HIV/AIDS is a distant issue. For our women to be home well before dusk remains a must. Life beyond the permissible hours of social life is still frowned upon.
We continue to value and live our traditions which hold a deep meaning, the essence of life. Even as most of the East is lost in the whirlwind of globalisation, we nurture the values of the Orient - values which celebrate humanity.
And look at the way Nyla Ali Khan, Sheikh Abdullah’s grand daughter, responded to the affair. ‘I thought an Ivy League institution like Harvard produced the likes of John F. Kennedy and Barrack Obama. Didn’t Muzaffar Beigh imbibe any of the political, academic, and social values that permeate the privileged spaces of Harvard? , she questioned. And she sounded a true Kashmiri, and even cute, when she administered a dose of moral advice to Mehbooba Mufti, ‘Mahbooba would do herself an enormous favor if she emulates the likes of Begum Akbar Jehan, Zainab Begum, and Zooni alias Goori’.
And then came Khalida Shah, Omar’s long-estranged aunt. She issued her own bit of clean chit to Omar, making it amply visible where her heart was.
So, don’t we make an interesting species? God bless Kashmir.
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