I see the deep anguish in your eyes and the quiver in your voice as you hail the martyred Mohd Akhlaq. As you, with a heart heavy as stone, cry over your rights to eat a particular variety of meat, trampled over by a bunch of zealots; who, according to you, in the name of one particular religion are the symbols of growing intolerance in the country and thereby the symbols of everything wrong with it. They splashed ink across your brother’s face. Heinous indeed; how are we expected to live like this? With such a gruesome communal murder and the vile denigration of your brethren? Surely, you had to raise your voices, and why shouldn’t you, after all, why should the Government tell us what to eat? And so, what better way to reciprocate this disparaging act than to direct it towards the award you were honored with for your superlative achievements in your field? It is the right thing to do, after all a man was murdered in the name of one particular religion. Kashmiri Pandit
But here it is, this is precisely what is excruciating for me to see. Where were your awards when not one, but thousands of innocent men, women and children were stripped naked, beaten to pulp, shot at and beheaded in Kashmir in the name of ONE PARTICULAR RELIGION? Perhaps you have forgotten, and why wouldn’t you? This doesn’t appeal enough to your secular sensibilities, after all. Where were your grieving voices, your adulation for the martyrs, the love for your countrymen when a prominent lawyer was shot in the middle of the city in broad daylight? Where was your intense grief when a poor shopkeeper was beheaded and his head thrown in a sack of potatoes as a warning? Where was your secularism when people of ONE PARTICULAR COMMUNITY shouted slogans like “raelive, gaelive, ya tselive” (convert, perish or flee) as they marched, emboldened, through the streets? As they dragged women out and raped them in front of their children? AS THOUSANDS OF KASHMIRI PANDIT S died slow horrible deaths in the makeshift tents when they were forced to migrate with not even a roof to their name? Didn’t your humanity die then? Where you are now, when I find my grandmother break down at the steps of the shrine she came back to after 20 long years and found in complete ruins? Where were your deep insights and your judgements against ONE PARTICULAR COMMUNITY as it brought devastation upon my people? Why wasn’t it a topic of prime time debate then, when a family of four including children was dragged by a vehicle through the city? Where are your researches and your questions about the exact number of people that were slaughtered in the name of ONE PARTICULAR RELIGION? Where is your veneration now for the countless Kashmiri Pandit s who saw hell, lived in extreme poverty post migration and are still one of the most forward and educated communities in the country? Kashmiri Pandit
Your silence is deafening, your hypocrisy beyond endurance. One man’s death is not less than that of thousand others but for you, only this particular incident will be able to satisfy your pseudo-secularism, your bigotry. You were supposed to be thinking, rational men and women. Instead you turned an unfortunate and condemnable incident into a celebration of your “secular credentials”. We were supposed to be proud of you, but you are no better than the mob that lynched Mohd Akhlaq ; both of you have blood on your hands. They because they wrongfully killed a man, and you because you watched silently as thousands of my people were butchered. Kashmiri Pandit
Here it is, another elder died today imagining she was back in her home at Anantnag with her husband. As she closed her eyes and breathed her last, this is all her dementia will allow her to remember; not that her house was plundered and burnt to the ground by her own neighbors and her husband was lynched on a busy street in the middle of the city. She won’t remember, but i will. I will not forget how you returned your academy awards because a man was killed by a couple of goons; and stood silently as an entire community was uprooted and massacred in your own country. Kashmiri Pandit
I will not forget.
– Tapsi Akhoon
A Kashmiri Pandit
This article was sent to The Frustrated Indian as a guest post via mail, if you wish to contribute, drop a mail to admin@tfipost.com
Cover Image Credits: http://www.shehjar.com