In India, a topic which has often grabbed the headlines every now and then is the topic of ‘Indianness.’ This ‘Indianness’ has often been crystallized by making its citizen rise to the National Anthem that plays as a compulsion in the cinema halls and at other times this subject of ‘Indianness’ comes as a political assertion of Sonia Gandhi being a ‘foreigner’ and now the territorial notion of Indian nationhood seeks to have resurrected once again, with Kashmir. I remember reading this statement on my phone on the evening of August 6, where it suggested that this latest chapter being created with the Indian government’s move of quashing the Article 370 of the Constitution, will be best judged by the upcoming generations of India. A pacific, futuristic statement on the surface for the reader, but, loaded with extreme ignorance on the inside for a thinker. It’s startling enough to register the Article 370 being revoked for the good or bad, I cannot say, but what’s poignant is that the judgement of the good or bad, is being discussed without the people most affected by the decision, the residents of Kashmir.
It’s troublesome to grasp how many Kashmiris’ are at a disadvantage to participate in this complex political decision. I fail to understand why our democratic sentiments have always failed to light up in the case of the people of Kashmir.
An abiding memory of mine dates back to the year 2006, when I got acquainted to the ‘shawl wale uncle from Kashmir,’ for the first time. Over a period of time, my family’s trading relationship blossomed with the shawl wale uncle and so did my comfort, from seeing the shawl wale uncle come with his wonderful wools every winter, year after year. Our greetings and meetings became frequent and so did my fondness of the shawl wale uncle’s warm demeanor and vibrant persuasion skills. It took me some years to understand the situation of Kashmir, which got worse and worse with time. When I did manage to gather all the necessary information about Kashmir, I could not resist having a conversation with my effervescent uncle, about his land. I would like to interlude my story here to mention the reason I do not name the shawl wale uncle is to keep his identity hidden. Continuing my story, when I asked the shawl wale uncle about his feelings about being an Indian and the connection with India- he adroitly bypassed my question and answered with a moving voice how this was the first time someone from outside Kashmir had wanted to talk about his feelings. I had gotten my answer. Before he left, which ironically happened to be the winter of 2019, the month of march to be precise, he thanked me for being considerate that one time, I desired to say I hoped he would one day no longer need to thank me for my consideration, but the words did not come.
Kashmir to most Indians has appeared to be troubled and distinctive, it is a generalization made on account of the blatant occurrences that hardly need any pointing out. In 2015, during a debate on NDTV of which I was a part of as the audience, a fellow student and member of the audience who was from Kashmir, broke down after the heated discussion on identity, regarding how left out her community and region is made to feel, when it comes to embracing larger discussions as to what ‘an Indian’ thinks and feels. Thereafter, the room was filled with silence and none of us, the conscious audience members, could offer her our sympathies and yet sympathies were not entirely non-existent as we all left from the debate studio with our heads drowned with guilt.
What we students did that day was a failure to engage with a discussion with the right discusser. And what I did with my shawl wale uncle was the same, an inadequacy to trample in his thinking patterns. That failure and inadequacy is all a result of the fear which has been strengthened with our conditioning as an Indian grown up in India with a troubled Kashmir. A truth underlying the fear that maybe we are reclaiming something that might be wanting to reject us. This fear, making us believe that we are somewhat gracious when we react with silence, however, in our hearts we know that the silence is our weakness. Our silence is a reminder that our notions are wrong about the world we live in. We as Indians accept diverseness and accept disagreement, but we expect to respond to the disagreement and engage in a discussion on the criticisms, but we have failed to do so in the case of Kashmir.
A more credible and democratic method of defense for the ruling government should have been to have consulted the people of Jammu and Kashmir, not locking the local representatives away and issuing a total blackout in the Kashmir valley, where the people could not even tune into their television or radio sets to learn what is happening around them. The phrases of the ruling government appear glib when they are unable to stimulate a debate for the right reasons with the right kind of audience.
It is expected that the government’s decision would provoke the people of Kashmir, but to silence them in a democracy is not expected and should not be accepted. My concern is not with my friends on Instagram belonging to different parts of India, celebrating Article 370’s abolishment, but, as a thinking citizen of this country and supremely as a well-wisher, it worries me for not being able to reach my shawl wale uncle. This time around, I genuinely want to be considerate and above all, I want to be humane to the grief that smites him and the people of his land, which I have for so long, ignored, both as a friend and as an Indian.
About the writer : Vireet Randhawa holds a MSc in Organizational and Social Psychology from the London School of Economics. She began writing while she was still an undergraduate student at Lady Shri Ram College for Women. She shares an inordinate fondness for both erudition and writing.
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