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Are we looking at new realities in Kashmir?

An already battered Kashmir Valley is about to set the stage for a political battleground in the days to come.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

How many more will be shot dead in the Kashmir Valley before the powers that be decide to take some firm action? Within two days of the Macchil verdict, where five Army men were sentenced for killing civilians in a fake encounter, comes the news of yet more killings – a teenager in Kulgam and a carpenter in Handwara.

Last fortnight’s killing of two young men by the Army in Chattergam is still haunting the locals. How brute and barbaric one must have to be to open fire on a car full of defenceless youths. I often wonder: would these same Army men kill commuters and car drivers in Mumbai or New Delhi if they didn’t halt or brake when signalled to? How is the administration still allowing these murders done in the name of ‘security’ and upkeep of law and order?

Is this some new form of governance, where you demand subservience by force? After all, it is easy to implement. Plus, you can show your ‘concern’ later by announcing monetary compensations for the victims’ families.

I wonder what lies ahead for Kashmir. In the coming days, the political rulers of the day will descend on the Valley in droves. Naturally, any normalcy in the region will be shattered by endless traffic regulations, more curfews and lockouts, and lengthy speeches that promise a lot but say nothing at all.

The Kashmir Valley was never in the grip of a communally-tainted Government, and there hasn’t been a Hindu-Muslim divide as much as anyone would want us to believe. But with Fascist forces spreading all over the country, it is just a matter of time before such a divide is actively created and deepened.

And all this, while the region still limps back from the brink of hell after being ravaged by floods.

What will happen to Kashmir in the coming days, I wonder…

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Picture courtesykashmirvoice.org. Image used for representational purpose only)

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Why Delhi hasn’t had communal clashes for years

The recent communal tensions came as a shock to one and all, given the illusion about the ‘peaceful’ years in between.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

There have been no incidents of major communal violence in and around Delhi for years now, especially after the Babri Masjid demoltion. After the demolition, several Muslim-dominated areas like Seelampuri and adjoining places were affected, with large numbers of Muslim youth being rounded up by the police.

Thereafter, there haven’t been any riots in Delhi, and there are some significant reasons for this. For one, a large percentage of the Muslim populations resides in its own mohallas and bastis – these include Old Delhi, Okhla, Jamia Nagar, Zakir Bagh, and West Nizamuddin. Also, they do not have the grit to speak out if any wrongdoing does take place, given the fact that they are systematically, increasingly sidelined on the political, business and education fronts. They must think it is just safer, for survival, to adopt a second-class positioning. After all, who really got punished after the communal riots in Muzaffarnagar? The victims actually lost their homes and everything else dear to them, but the culprits were later ‘honoured’ by the establishment.

Another disturbing truth to emerge in recent months is that several Muslim families have been made to ‘exit’ their ancestral villages, in several villages in and around the national capital, and in particular where there have been only a dozen or so Muslim families – which have then been persuaded to ‘leave peacefully’.

Despite knowing about these undercurrents, last week’s communal clashes in Delhi’s Trilokpuri came as a big shock. Thinking about it later, I wondered why I was so stunned – going by how the BJP and the RSS normally stress their dominance by manufacturing riots and then pretending to control them, it was an incident that would have come sooner or later, especially with the Right Wing becoming stronger by the day. Who will the affected people complain to?

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Picture courtesy firstpost.com)

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If Begum Akhtar had turned 100…

October 7 would have been legendary singer Begum Akhtar’s 100th birthday. A fascinating woman, her marriage had caused much furore in Lucknow circles.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

Legendary singer Begum Akhtar would have turned 100 on October 7. The interesting thing about the woman, to me, is that a lot of information is available about her professional life and her remarkable voice, but not much about her personal life.

Years before I heard her live in concert, I had heard about her from an unlikely source. In my parents’ home in Lucknow, an aged man would come selling lemons, cucumbers, ginger and garlic. Before placing his basket on the floor, he would loudly announced, “Akhtaria ke bagh ke hain!”

It was a popular story during that time that this old man had originally belonged to a wealthy family, but had lost his mental balance after Begum Akhtar ditched him. Unable to bear with the strain, he had been reduced to selling lemons and the like.

In fact, several rich men of Avadh had fallen in love with her, with her voice, with her andaaz. One of them was the man she eventually married. He was a Lucknow-based barrister, Ishtiaq Ahmad Abbasi. His first wife had died and after a couple of years, he had married Begum Akhtar. It is said that he’d fallen in love with her after hearing her perform at one of the local mehfils. Apparently, his family had revolted against the match – after all, she was a courtesan and he belonged to Lucknow’s aristocracy.

The marriage finally took place and the couple started living in Lucknow but Abbasi sahib had imposed a condition – that she would no longer sing or hold concerts. She had agreed to this initially, but the no-singing clause took a toll on her health a few months later and she fell ill. Abbasi, besotted with his talented wife, relented and took away the condition, with the rider that she could sing anywhere but in Lucknow.

If you were to ask her relatives details of her everyday life, her marriage and the adjustments she had to make, they will tell you several things not many people know about the late singer. In an earlier interview, Rafia Hussain, Abbasi’s niece had told me, “Begum Akhtar was a person with strong likes and dislikes. She lived much beyond her means, wearing heavy jewellery and expensive saris. She loved food, especially bhuna kheema and roghini tikkiya. Her marriage was smooth, but the credit for that must go to her husband.

“He sacrificed a lot for her. He could not even become a Judge because of his marriage to a courtesan. Also, when she travelled to Lucknow, she would not allow him to accompany her, so he would stay back. He was extremely lonely and yearned children – he did not have children from his first marriage, nor from his second.”

Rafia further went on to say that he was so much in love with his wife that his entire clan had to accept her. “But once they accepted her, the bonding was good,” Rafia said. “She gave the family a lot of respect. But she brought along so many of her relatives to stay with her, they stayed on even after her death, even after the death of my uncle!”

Lucknow would often buzz with talks of her being depressed and in pain, and there were rumours that she would inject herself with morphine. “It was a well-adjusted marriage,” Rafia repeated. “Even I had heard of the injections, but I can’t comment on that because I never saw her injecting herself. I remember she was addicted to tea and smoking. She would smoke one cigarette after another, may be that caused her death. When she died, her husband was shattered and even more lonely. He died ten years later, a broken man.”

Humra Quraishi is a senior journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Picture courtesy hindubusinessline.com)

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At last, a proper analysis of 100 ‘achche din’

An independent people’s report on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 100 days in Government by a US-based raises some uncomfortable questions.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

I have been wondering how America will react to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s arrival on US shores. Amidst the hype surrounding his visit, came the news that the Ghadar Alliance, a US-based educational watchdog coalition created by concerned citizens in the wake of the recent BJP victory, is releasing a report on September 26.

The report is touted as a comprehensive 100-day report evaluating the performance of the Modi Government’s first 100 days in office. Titled Fast Track To Troubled Times, the report is reportedly the first independent people’s report to be published since Modi came into office, and it identifies the economy, religious extremism and human rights as grave areas of concern.

“We have been very careful and meticulous in collecting data only from public sources to build an evidence-based and fully data-driven report,” said Raja Swamy, economic anthropologist and one of the authors of the report. “When it comes to the economy, our report shows that the new administration wants to eliminate all democratic protections in favor of corporate giveaways and ripoffs.

One example of this are the amendments that the Modi regime has proposed to the Land Acquisition Act of 2013, that do away with meaningful safeguards for those losing land, especially for India’s poor, marginal peasantry and indigenous peoples. The proposed amendments accept in toto all corporate demands and eliminate existing safeguards. From the evidence available, can we not conclude that the minimal protections for ordinary people are being wiped out to favor corporations?” he asked.

The report is replete with such detail as it compares the Modi Budget with the previous United Progressive Alliance budget, and points to such facts as the BJP government’s plan to raise four times more money through the ‘sale of State assets’ than the previous government did. The report highlights the ‘empowerment of violent gangs of the supremacist Hindu Right under the Modi dispensation’. In the three months since Modi took charge, there have been over 600 cases of anti-minority violence in one single state, Uttar Pradesh, and several cases of forced ‘reconversion’ of Dalits (India’s so-called untouchable castes) to Hinduism.

“If there is one thing that is clear already, it is that under Modi, Hindu supremacist gangs will virtually rule the streets. There is a palpable sense of insecurity today among minorities, Dalits and women as non-State actors have turned hyper-aggressive, and Modi, through his consistent silence and refusal to hold offenders accountable, has given tacit approval,” said Anu Mandavilli of the San Jose Peace and Justice Center and a co-founder of the Ghadar Alliance.

“The privileging of economic growth as the primary goal functions to dictate an amnesia about Modi’s Gujarat record with US investors eager to capitalise on the Indian market,” added Professor Snehal Shingavi, also a co-founder of the Alliance. “And for many of us born and raised in a racialised US context, the targeting of minorities in India by Hindu reactionaries uncomfortably corresponds to our own experiences with anti-immigrant racism here.”

The report also compares the first 100 days of the new government with Modi’s 12 years of rule in Gujarat. “Examining Modi’s first 100 days in the context of his record in Gujarat reveals a number of disturbing parallels, and these parallels legitimise the report’s predictive capacity,” said Mandavilli.

The report is the first in a series of actions that the Ghadar Alliance is initiating to keep a consistent and critical focus on the BJP/RSS from outside India. The Founding Committee of the Alliance is intergenerational, of multiple faiths, of diverse professions and geography. “We represent the true diversity of India rather than the narrow homogeneity of Modi supporters lining up to welcome him here in the US,” said Dr Swamy.

Humra Quraishi is a senior journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant. ‘Enough Said’ looks at current social, political and literary trends in the country.

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The Kashmir problem

What can we do to help the people in flood-hit Kashmir, before the temperature drops and reaching the area becomes next to impossible?
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

This is one of the worst tragedies to have hit the Kashmir Valley and its adjoining districts. I’m sure all of us are pained to see the television shots of the hapless trapped populace struggling to survive against all odds.

I have been wondering about the fragility of modern techniques and technology. Of what use are our modern methods of connectivity and retrieval, when landlines and mobile phones are not working, when thousands of people are stranded, and when all the so-called sophisticated modern structures in the area could not withstand nature’s fury for even seconds.

At least people are trying to help. As humans, we need to reach out immediately, without waiting for our political leaders to take corrective action. I think doctors could travel in small groups and attend to survivors, civil society could rush volunteers and teams carrying tents, blankets, food packets, bottled water, medicines, clothes and whatever else they can spare.

Whatever happens, help must reach fast. It is now autumn in Kashmir, and within the next couple of weeks, temperatures are expected to fall and the situation will worsen.

Of course, it will take a long time for Kashmir to really bounce back, even come back to the way things were. For once the situation reaches a semblance of normalcy, the restoration process will take a really long time. Rescue teams and the authorities will face a daunting task – infrastructure will have to be restored, houses will have to be rebuilt, the homeless rehabilitated, the dead and missing accounted for, the sinking roads repaired, and above all, the mess and the rot that inevitably accompany floods will have to be tackled urgently.

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

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Where we reward those who must be punished

Honest voices trying to shed light on atrocities are muted in our country, while blatant criminals are given Z Security.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

This sure is a strange phenomenon. What is the logic that prompts successive Governments to reward criminals with immunity and protection?

Take the case of Sangeet Som (in picture above), one of the main accused in the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots. The newspapers say he is due to get Z Security by the establishment. It seems to me that today, all one requires to be protected is to belong to a Right Wing organisation.

Does this mean that our laws are to be used only for commoners such as you and I? If you’re a politician in India, you could commit abominable acts of criminality and not just be left untouched, but also subsequently garlanded!

And then there is the story of Shubradeep Chakravorty.

Shubradeep (in pic on right) was a New Delhi-based journalist who later became a documentary filmmaker. He passed away here on Monday this week.Shubradeep Chakravorty I had met him and his wife Meera soon after he had made the controversial documentary After The Storm. The documentary focussed on seven young Muslim men who had been jailed on terror charges, only to be proven innocent and later acquitted from various courts. However, by then, they had been ruined on every possible front.

The documentary also highlighted how the men did not receive any compensation from the Government. I remember a comment that Shubradeep made on the sidelines of the film, “These seven (in the film) are a small number. At one 1,000 innocent young Muslim men could be jailed in India, implicated with terror charges on their heads…”

Last autumn, soon after the Muzaffarnagar riots, he and Meera had travelled extensively in the area, making another startling documentary, In Dino Muzaffarnagar, on the ‘political truths’ behind the incident. As was to be expected, the documentary ran into trouble from the start – it was banned after an initial screening at Mumbai’s Prithvi Theatre, then refused clearance for screening by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC). He applied to the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (FCAT) against the CBFC decision, but that was also turned down.

Shubradeep was not one to give up, and he was determined to fight the “gagging order on the film by the Modi establishment.” However, the stresses of the case caused him to suffer a brain haemorrhage and he slipped into a coma, finally dying at a young 42 years of age this week.

I hope his widow, Meera, carries on his legacy and tries her best to show his documentaries to a larger audience.

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Pictures courtesy www.thehindu.com, www.flickr.com)

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