Writer: Waseem Khan
Breakfast in Kashmir is quite unique, you’ll find people buying bread early in the morning, this bread is taken with Noon Chai and its a staple breakfast for Kashmiris. 20 years old Majid wakes up early everyday and buys bread for his family from the bakers and everyday as he reaches home he finds his Mom waiting for him at the doorsteps. “She worries too much” Majid thinks but can you blame her? The region has seen a lot of turmoil in the past and there are a lot of rumours and stories about almost everything. It’s been a while since Majid went to college, thanks to Corona he’s had the longest vacation of his life and so despite the online classes Majid has a lot of time in his hands and at times he thinks and ponders over all the stories he’s heard trying to tell the lies from truth but just like everything else here it’s all very complicated.
He’d heard stories from some of his friends that the police and army beats people on road and so he recalls his first encounter in an army check post. Its anticlimactic as the army personnel just checked his father’s ID gave a quick glance at the vehicle and asked them to leave and since then he’s encountered quite a few check points but never been harassed. He’d heard that Kashmiris are being persecuted but what he saw again debunked what he had heard, terrorists shooting policemen from behind and running away and firing and throwing grenades in a crowded market. Majid has since then developed very analytical thinking, he’s stopped believing what the rumour mongers say but his parents, well they still worry. One day thinking about random things Majid stumbled upon the most complicated question of his life. What is independence?
He’s seen videos of crowd protesting for Azadi, if a separate nation is the demand then why is it so that a lot of Pakistani terrorists roam around the valley, and how can anyone seek help from a nation that attacked and plundered Kashmir. He once argued with his friend that it was India who went to the UN to look for a solution and it was India who saved Kashmir from the raiders but his friend won’t listen to him and since then he stopped discussing this topic but he still thought and got more confused, an independent Kashmir at the hands of the corrupt politicians would have been a nightmare, had there been no Pakistan then Kashmir would’ve seen less violence and more prosperity.
Since August 2019 people have divided opinions some support the abrogation while some say there’ll be an influx of outsiders which again sparks a debate in his head, three of cousins work in Delhi and they live a happy life there mingling with people while in the news he saw how some people who came to work in Kashmir were shot dead by terrorists, who’s the real villain here? When he asks his parents they tell him to focus on his studies and make a life for himself and so he never gets an answer.
In the evening he goes to Dal lake with his father the lights and decorations there are splendid, Independence Day is near and the entire area has been decorated and a military band plays tunes of patriotic songs. He looks around and sees happy faces, faces with no fear, people taking a stroll along the lake, shopping and just enjoying the beauty of the place and so he thinks again as to how can it be an occupational regime, no occupational regime would allow people to just go about their lives the way they want all they ask you to do is not to pick up weapons, no occupational regime would work for development and to make things better, this happiness this lack of fear isn’t this independence? How can shooting a policeman from behind who’s going to offer namaz be a fight for independence and when these fanatics are neutralised, Pakistan based organisations say that he’ll get azadi in jannat but is there freedom in paradise? If yes where does it lie? Is it veiled amidst verdant vegetation or sheltered softly beneath the snow? Does it scream from hilltops or serenade from the skies? Or does it gush out from rivulets to rest upon the rocks of eternity? Maybe freedom nestles not in such bespoke spots, but in the souls who inhabit them and in their will to repair the meaning of independence.
So it sticks with Majid and he goes home content, happy because he had his answer and he resolves to repair the meaning of independence for Kashmir because it has always been an inalienable part of India. The independence does not lie with Pakistan nor does it lie on a separate nation, the fairy tale that’s told in Kashmir is just an illusion as the Dogras were placed in charge by the British. Real independence lies only with the nation that saved Kashmir from Pakistani aggression in 1947, it lies with the nation with whom Kashmiris sided with in the 1965 war, Kashmir is independent and it lies with her nation India.
