When Children Bought Hundred Guns In A Single Day
A Psychologist’s Journeys Through Troubled Kashmir
PART I
The
Kashmir valley has turned green. This is what I notice as I come out of the
Srinagar airport and drive to my hotel. This is another green, the green of Islam
that seems to have taken roots everywhere. As my car passes by Dal Lake, I see some
men sitting with a banner that says ‘Are all religions the same?’ Sitting next
are men with booklets in their hands on why Islam is the best religion. The men
stare at everyone who passes by. Just a few feet away is a police vehicle. The message
is stark and clear. Islam has been anointed as the religion of the valley.
I
am here on a visit with a group, all Kashmiri Hindus. For them it is like a
pilgrimage to a land which was once their home. Now they can come here only as tourists.
Thirty
years have passed since the last Kashmiri Hindus were driven out from the
valley after hearing the mosque loudspeakers blare ‘Kashir banavo Pakistan
battav rustoi battnein sann’ (We will make Kashmir into Pakistan without Hindu
men but with their women). Since then time has stood still for half a million Kashmiri
Hindus. Why then do they come back and visit their deserted homes? Is it to
search for their roots or to know if the people who drove them away feel any remorse?
This
journey, I believe, may provide me with some answers.
It
seems that Kashmiris have become angrier than before. Everybody seems to shout.
My driver screams on the phone as I fail to locate him. He thinks he has given me
perfect instructions and is irritated as to why I do not understand. When I
point out the anomaly, he sulks and is ready to desert me. As we drive on I
notice an army petrol outside stopping and checking the cars. My driver refuses
to stop when waved at by an army man. After it happens a second time I ask him to
stop.
As
we do an army man asks us why we didn’t stop earlier. My driver tells him that he
didn’t see. The man tells us not to do it again and lets us go. After some
distance, my driver abuses the army saying it is they who are the ‘Terrorists’
in the valley. “I don’t want to stop when they ask me to. All drivers feel the
same,” he says. “The army does encounters of young children and kills them,” he
adds and spits. “Today is India - Pakistan cricket match. Every Kashmiri is
praying for the victory of Pakistan,” he tells me before leaving.
One
thing that strikes me during this trip is the behavior of the drivers I meet. Almost
every driver talks in the same language of the atrocities by the Indian army on
Kashmiris. Have they been coached to do so and asked to spread a narrative? As
I talk to other tourists at the hotel, I discover we all had the same experience.
None
of the drivers it seems want to go with us on a trip to Hindu temples. When we
ask one to take us to the temple on Hari Parbat he denies the existence of any
such temple. He says there is only a fort now occupied by the army. When we
show him there is a temple, he feigns surprise. None of them say they know
Kheer Bhavani temple, Martand temple, Martand ruins, Zeethiyar temple or even
Roop Bhavani temple. Are they lying to us and pretending they don’t know? I
wish I could understand.
We
collect to go to a popular picnic spot. I notice a toy shop next to the food
stall. It displays fancy toy guns. The shopkeeper tells me he sells around ten
guns in a day. “Local children are my regular customers. They buy it to play
fighting the Indian army,” he answers and tells me on the day of the funeral of
Burhan Wani, he sold a hundred guns in a single day. “That was a record,” he
says. “The children in Kashmir become adults by throwing their first stone and holding
a gun.”
Why
is a race scripting its children in violence? I feel a sense of unease as I see
two boys come with their father and pick up a toy Kalashnikov. The father buys two
of them. I imagine them, a few years from now, gun in hand trying to kill. Will
that day too more guns will be sold? Who will stop this cycle of violence?
Burhan
Wani was a terrorist who lived by the gun and openly talked of killing non-Muslims.
Why and how did such a person become an icon, a cult figure? Who made him so?
I
am also beginning to get a puzzled by this bravado that I see. From interviews,
personal interactions, I had known Kashmiri Muslims to be shy, demure and
withdrawn. This kind of bravado is strange.
We
go inside and sit at a corner of the garden by the flowing stream. Families are
having lunch. A fruit seller comes and my wife answers her in Kashmiri. I see the
woman in the next group look at us. She invites us for food. “This is an old
Kashmiri custom,” my wife tells me explaining that when you see someone not
carrying food you invite them. I politely decline but the woman comes and wants
to know how my wife speaks Kashmiri. When she tells her she is a Kashmiri and I
am a Bengali, she narrows her eyes. We walk away and feel her eyes staring at
us.
We stop at Roop Bhavani temple. I notice a board
saying Farooq Abdullah from the Chief Minister’s fund restored this temple. It
is not hard to understand why. It is next to a tourist spot. What is not
fathomable is what he restored. The temple is so small that it defies
explanation of why it needed a Chief Minister’s fund.
We
decide to go to the ancestral home of a friend. The driver on discovering we
are a group of Kashmiri Hindus gets uncomfortable. He asks personal and probing
questions. He wanted to know how long ago we left and if we have plans to come
back.
“Why
visit it? What is left?” someone distracts my friend as we approach the home.
“Maybe
this is my last visit,” my friend answers and adds…
To
Be Continued…
Rajat
Mitra
Psychologist
and Author of ‘The Infidel Next Door’
The
book is also available at select book stores like Bahrisons.
Link for the book for buying overseas
Contact Book Club of India via following email bookclubofindia@gmail.com for delivery of overseas orders of the book.
Contact Book Club of India via following email bookclubofindia@gmail.com for delivery of overseas orders of the book.
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