A New Rudali In The Block

I am amazed by the number of sympathizers. I am equally amazed by the number of morons that fill our political scenes. Sympathizing odd rascals for some immediate political gain is one thing but to extend that phenomena in sympathizing with people like Afzal Guru is quite another. It not only looks bizarre at face value but also sounds like a cry of the holocaust in defense of the indefensible. As if people who perpetrate all the mayhem on innocents has only got their human rights while those who suffer because of these fanatics has none, we see hoards of human rights exponents readily launch themselves in defending the scoundrels of their rights. The latest entrant to this perpetual Rudali brigade of human rights advocates is none other than the Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah. 

For starters I would love to know the reasons why someone like Afzal Guru be shown any kind of mercy. The nature of his crime which led to the loss of 12 innocent lives and the audacity shown thereof in attacking our symbol of democracy certainly amounts to high end treachery. And the only punishment for treachery in my books is nothing less than death. You certainly can’t conspire against your own nation and then expect the state to be merciful. But for people like Omar, the nation, its pride and its integrity doesn’t feature in the paramount list as far as political ambitions are concerned. The nation and national sentiment can wait but winning political brownie points certainly can’t.

No sooner Afzal Guru was hanged; it was Omar Abdullah who turned around to throw at us his pennyworth intellectualism. According to him, Afzal Guru was very wrongly convicted of the heinous crime and never got the adequate legal help that is so fundamental to any citizen of this nation. While I was expecting the J&K chief minister to sound jubilant in seeing justice been finally done after a long and not so required wait, he rather was critical of our criminal justice system and raised questions on the wisdom of our apex court. In a nation like ours where our judiciary is painfully slow and even slower in capitulating death penalty, someone holding a responsible constitutional post standing up to criticize the system itself is not only pathetic but also deplorable. While Omar may have got all the liberty to speak his mind on the issue he certainly can’t term the long due hanging as an act of reaction to national sentiment. Omar may have his views which go south to what most of others believe but calling the hanging as an act of apathy towards the people of Kashmir is highly condemnable. Being a chief minister if he feels had it been a person from some other state the law would have taken an entirely different course; I can only feel sorry for our democratic framework which allows people like him to be a part of it while being skeptical of the veracity of the system they are in. 

The second reason of his displeasure is even more bizarre. I am not sure of the backdrop but felt like rolling on the floor laughing when he said the people of Kashmir and more so the youth would feel further alienated after the hanging. May I ask – why is that so? How come punishing a genuine rotten cabbage amounts to alienating an entire state and its populace? Why the youth of Kashmir won’t be proud seeing a notorious rogue getting hanged but would feel aggrieved instead? To be honest, Omar’s logic in drawing correlation of the hanging with state wide dejection is beyond me. Since when people of a state hold a terrorist as a role model so much so that his execution would throw the peace of the state out of gear? For me and most of others, people like Afzal Guru are blot on our nation and it is better that we get rid of such nefarious scalawags at the earliest and anyone who has the opinion of Guru being an innocent messiah must also need to be dealt with iron fist. You can’t stay in our nation, get all the benefits of the democracy and then take sides of the enemy of the state so openly. If you can’t choose between the person who topped the civil services exam from your state and rogues like Guru as your role model, I am afraid you don’t deserve to enjoy anything that this nation has to offer to its responsible citizens. Patriotism can’t be an optional attribute; it has to be a must. You can’t rejoice hearing the news of Masood Azhar getting released and grieve in the form of throwing stones at our security forces for scumbags like Guru. If you feel sorry for the just treatment meted out to gutter bugs like Guru then we are left with no option but to feel sorry for having people like you as fellow citizens.

The claim of many Kashmiris and useless human rights protagonists like Arundhati Roy are nonsensical. To say the problem of Kashmir is purely because of our own security forces and their repeated atrocities while Pakistan is as innocent as a kid, then I must say, I haven’t seen a better act of playing ostrich in my entire life. There are many states where our forces are having their presence but surprising enough it is only Kashmir which seems to have a problem or two with them. If our forces are so rabid then why one doesn’t hear similar or even a tenth of the accusation that one hears emanating from Kashmir? Someone has to be responsible for the mess that we are trying to cleanup for last three decades. Certainly Indian army is not the one. They might have contributed to the plight on odd occasions but to term it as their handiwork in entirety is juvenile and prejudiced. 

Need a paradigm shift in the psyche of a lot of people. When I say a lot of people I obviously tend to add people like Omar Abdullah in that list.  Nobody wants to alienate a state intentionally and more so when there is no gain in doing so. If at all people of Kashmir are feeling alienated it is because they are accepting scoundrels like Yasin Malik as their leaders and adoring dingbats like Afzal Guru as their role model. Sensibility and national ethos has to be inculcated if one wants to be part of the pan-India mainstream. You can’t garland crooks like Yasin Malik who hobnobs with Hafeez Saeed on daily basis and then expect the rest of the nation to overlook such acts of treachery and move on. You can’t get engaged in your fulltime act of delivering anti India rants and then expect the state to come to your rescue when your posteriors are on fire. 

Mutual respect comes with mutual cooperation and showing compassion for others as Indians; not just Kashmiris. I still remember the words of that houseboat owner of Srinagar – ‘Yahan kya banta hain sahib. Akhrot, Pista? Baki saab to Hindustan se aata hai’. Hindustan? Isn’t Kashmir a part of that? I asked. I am yet to get the answer from any Kashmiri, let alone that houseboat owner.