30 June 1969 near Sopore, Baramulla district, Jammu and Kashmir
By: Aabid Rehman Pala 7 February 2019
9th of February 2013 was unlike any other day, not because on this day Dr. Muhammad Afzal Guroo was hanged which no doubt was the major reason but many things were unveiled before the people. They perceived many unusual things and happenings around, which gave them an insight about who’s what. They found themselves in a strict curfew when they woke up that fateful morning and their C.M shedding tears after signing the hanging in the wee hours of night. They were also acquainted about the collective conscience of the people of India on whose shoulders the burden of the hanging was thrown.
Democracy got ashamed and died hundred times the day when Dr. Guroo was hanged. He was denied the democratic right of a fair trial and still when there were not enough reasons to hang him, he was murdered to satisfy the so called collective conscience of the Indian society. It was an untimely hanging because neither he nor his family was informed before. Post hanging, the world’s largest democracy didn’t hand over the mortal remains of Dr. Guroo to his family and hence perpetrated a heinous crime by denying his last rites.
Nobody in India could justified the hanging other than the parliamentary elections of 2014. UPA government had to show their bravery to the people of India and NC government had to prove their faithfulness unto the centre. In between, Dr. Guroo was made the bait and hanged. Neither did it change anything nor did it satisfy anybody but only swelled the number of graves in Kashmir.
The central government always keep pushing people of the valley away and then talk about hugging them. How can a person be hugged, who is nowhere in the scene, rather pushed away consistently? Their deeds never prove their words. They talk one thing and do the other. They always used Kashmir for their electoral gains.
When it comes to talks, the centre always talk about an irrelevant stuff that has nothing to do with the problems and the situation that the people of the valley are forced to go through. They never reached to the base of the problem rather do politics on it. That is the reason why people are losing interest in the political solution of their problem, although knowing that their problem is a political one.
Actually the faith in politics is lost and the reason is the inscrutable and ailing politics at centre which has closed all the political hopes. That is why other doors are being opened. The people only want to get rid of this suffocation and they should be helped to come out. Rather if the doors are closed for them, they definitely had to find any other way themselves to come out. Then to blame their way out is utter non sense, nothing else.
The recent visit of the Prime Minister of India to Kashmir is witness to the fact that how far has the union government pushed the netizens of the valley. Firstly, his visit has paralysed the whole valley which never happens anywhere on his visits. He was welcomed with a complete shutdown, where from he should measure his penchant.
Secondly, he talked about breaking the backbone of the militancy, as if that is going to solve the problem. If the problem would have been so, then some mere 200 or 300 untrained militants would never be a headache for such a military might. But the problem lies somewhere else, which always goes unaddressed. They keep talking the irrelevant things with a changed attitude to leave the problem dwindling.
It is not the law and order problem which would be curbed by the use of force but the denial of rights. And by portraying it the other way, they are doing no good to their country, rather harming it. Need of the hour is to first accept and then to address the ground reality and subsequently look for a viable solution by taking the people of valley into the loop. Rather if they go on complicating the things and think about peace and progress in their country, they are definitely living in the fool’s paradise.