Tag: Kashmir

maiñ Burhan hūñ

maiñ Burhan hūñ
yā maiñ us kī māñ hūñ
aur woh beTā merā hai
yā maiñ us kī mās hūñ
sadiyoñ se udās hūñ
sadiyoñ se udās hūñ 
keh zulm-o-sitam ruktā nahīñ
Ghulāmī ka yeh bojh hai 
keh kuchh bhī ho ghaTtā nahīñ 
dard kī kāsini pāzeb hai 
keh bajtī rahe
Khūn kā sailāb hai 
keh āj bhī pur-zor hai, thamtā nahīñ 

thamtā nahīñ hai Gham 
woh Gham jo Ghulām qaumoñ kī mīrās hai
jo wadī-e-lolāb meñ bunī ik chādar hai
woh Gham jo Burhan ke jawān janāzeh se kayī zyādah girāñ hai
girāñ hai woh Khūñ jo uskī ragoñ meñ behtā thā
girāñ hai woh ‘ishq jo us ke dil meñ dhaRaktā thā
woh laKht-e-jigar hamārā hai 
un sab māyoñ kī āñkh kā tārā hai 
jo rāt bhar soyī nahīñ 
soyī nahīñ haiñ rāt bhar 
yeh mātamī rāt jo sadiyoñ sehr kī mutalāshī hai
magar yeh sehr hai keh dāGh dāGh ujālā hai
yeh sehr hai keh shabgazīdah, pā-bajaulāñ hai 

is sehr ko shaffāf kar, yā Rab
is sehr ko pur-nūr kar, yā Rab
is sehr ko āzād kar, yā Rab
aur hāñ, merā Khūñ mujhe wāpis kar de
mere bache mujhe loTā de yā Rab

~hd, July 31, 2016

I am Burhan
Or I am his mother.
And he, my son
Or I am his Aunt,
Disquiet since centuries.
Disquiet since centuries
That tyranny and oppression don’t stem.
The weight of slavery
Just doesn’t decrease.
Purple anklets of pain
Ring, and keep ringing.
A deluge of blood
That still today storms, without end.

Doesn’t end, that pain.
The pain, an inheritance of colonized nations,
The pain, a shawl woven in the Lolab Valley,
That pain, heavier still than Burhan’s youthful bier.
Priceless is the blood that coursed through his body.
Priceless is the ‘Ishq that pulsed through his heart.
He is our flesh and our blood,
The darling of all of us mothers,
Who haven’t slept all night.
Hasn’t slept all night
This mournful night, that seeks a dawn, since centuries.
But this dawn, with mottled, stained light.
This dawn, night-bitten, fettered-feet.

O Lord! Clear this dawn
O Lord! Make this dawn luminous
O Lord! Free this dawn
And, yes, return my blood to me
Return my children to me, O Lord!

~hd, July 31, 2016

Kashmir Under Indian Settler-Colonialism in The Times of Covid: Myriad Ways to Annihilate A People

By Huma Dar

July 3, 2021

“[Indian] Government should spread Corona in Kashmir. The traitors will be taught a lesson, just like China did in Wuhan. One has to be evil to save this country. 😡🙏” @HinduRastra14 in response to Indian PM Narendra Modi, @narendramodi. April 27, 2021.

Official figures rank India as second only to the United States at 30.50 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 401,050 deaths, with a mere 3.9% rate of full vaccination as of July 3, 2021. The New York Times reports a much graver situation, including an intensive study of three different antibody tests, called serosurveys, which convincingly demonstrate the utter gravity of Covid-19 pandemic in India. The in-depth scientific analysis of the serosurveys by NYT  indicates that at the most conservative the estimated number of deaths in India is at least 600,000, with a more likely estimate of 1.6 million deaths, and a worst case scenario of 4.2 million deaths. Post-August 5, 2019, when India unilaterally derogated Articles 370 and 35A, after dismissing even the façade of the elected assembly in 2018, the Indian State has even more vigorously discriminated against the people of Jammu & Kashmir, particularly its Muslim population, especially in the form of explicitly prejudicial new land laws aimed at full-blown settler-colonialism. In a frightening feedback loop, the Indian state violence draws upon and abets Islamophobic violence against Muslims of Jammu & Kashmir at large, and includes a rising number of lynchings, the latest on June 21, 2021. The pandemic situation in Kashmir is thus exacerbated by a settler-colonialism aimed at “drowning Kashmiris once and for all.”

Continue reading “Kashmir Under Indian Settler-Colonialism in The Times of Covid: Myriad Ways to Annihilate A People”

A Critique of Subaltern Studies and Appropriative Solidarity: A Response to ‘Dear Prof. Chatterjee, When Will You Engage with the “Discomfort” of Indian Occupied Kashmir?’

by Pothik Ghosh

More Info on the Indian Occupation of Jammu & Kashmir at http://www.jkccs.net
More Info on the Indian Occupation of Jammu & Kashmir at http://www.jkccs.net

A sharply combative polemic that hits the nail on the head and which must, for that reason, be hailed. However, I doubt that Chatterjee’s response, if at all he deigns to come up with one, will throw any new light on the matter, much less open new horizons. His intellectual orientation and theoretical presuppositions — which stem from his political complicity only to reinforce it – are simply incapable of that. Subalternity is a constitutive crisis of the horizon or structure of valourisation, measure, distribution and/or representation. (The operative word here is constitutive.) In such circumstances, to envisage politics in terms of affirmation of subalternity – which is precisely the theoretical and historiographical project of the Subaltern Studies collective – is to reproduce that structure and its constitutive lack or crisis. For, subalternity is the crisis of the structure of representation that is nevertheless sutured on to it. In other words, to envisage politics in terms of affirming subalternity is to reproduce the constitutive duality of the élite and the subaltern, and thus enable its continued extension through intensification. This is pretty much a continuation through intensification of the politics of passive revolution. Something the Subaltern Studies, and Chatterjee in particular, claimed to have critiqued — albeit only as one of its concrete historical moments or appearances — by precisely perpetuating its general political mode.

Continue reading “A Critique of Subaltern Studies and Appropriative Solidarity: A Response to ‘Dear Prof. Chatterjee, When Will You Engage with the “Discomfort” of Indian Occupied Kashmir?’”

Free Kashmiri Political Prisoners, End the Occupation of Kashmir

We send you this request in hopes of garnering your crucial and valuable support for the letter attached below. This letter is a response to the dire conditions of thousands of Kashmiri political prisoners, both adults and minors, under the Indian Occupation. Your support will help bring global attention to this critical and urgent issue.

Indian Occupation Forces and their 'Fearsome' Targets: Young Kashmiri Boys
Indian Occupation Forces and their ‘Fearsome’ Targets: Young Kashmiri Boys

Greetings,

We send you this request in hopes of garnering your crucial and valuable support for the letter attached below. This letter is a response to the dire conditions of thousands of Kashmiri political prisoners, both adults and minors, under the Indian Occupation.  Your support will help bring global attention to this critical and urgent issue.

On the ground, in Kashmir and elsewhere, we have a concurrent month-long campaign, the “Fast for Freedom,” first initiated via Facebook, which involves optional fasting, sit-ins, protests, lectures, and film-screenings.  This will culminate in civil protests, fasts and sit-ins by various organizations – including the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons(APDP) – and campus events in Srinagar, Delhi, and Berkeley et al, from 9th to 11th February 2014.  It is an opportunity not just for Kashmiris but for all people of conscience to show solidarity with an oppressed people, to protest an illegal military occupation, the illegal detention and torture of thousands of Kashmiri political prisoners, and incessant human rights abuse, including mass graves, fake encounters, forced disappearances, mass and gang-rapes, and daily humiliation under the ongoing military occupation.  (Please see the linked report Alleged Perpetrators for more details.)

Your endorsement of the attached letter will help bring urgently needed political attention to this long-festering issue, as well as help to generate intellectual energy to begin necessary conversations on military occupations with regard to power and privilege, coloniality and postcolonialism, sexual assault as a weapon of war, imperial and decolonial feminisms, the colonial politics of prisons and capital punishment, post/colonial tourism, the construction of the “terrorist,” Islamophobia and other forms of racialization in the context of Kashmir.   Continue reading “Free Kashmiri Political Prisoners, End the Occupation of Kashmir”

Kashmir, of dreams and nightmares

by Burhan Qureshi

Blurred Memories. photo credit: Huma Dar, 2006
Blurred Memories. photo credit: Huma Dar, 2006

My mother comes from a sleepy village in north Kashmir.  It is, indeed, picturesque.  At times when she sits me down and tells me the stories of her childhood, she takes me into a dreamland.  Her house there is on a hillock, a gushing clear stream runs at its foothills.  There are vast fields on either side of the road.  She tells me of the orchard where the finest apples grow, of the walnut trees in her garden that she used to climb (in fact, she taught me how to eat the raw, green colored walnuts, which if you know the trick, taste even better).  And when she tells me that she used to swim in that stream, my heart skips a beat.  I fall in love with her all over again.

Continue reading “Kashmir, of dreams and nightmares”

Poem: Dry Fruit and Nuts

by Amjad Majid

When you are away
I see the night running
away with my days
In oblivion seasons change
and tell me it is time
to harvest and gather.

From orchard to orchard,
I strain my poise in gloom,
branches pat my head,
consoling me obtrusively,
as I garner what they bear,
morosely I am stealing
what some call taking
for the giving,
but not for the sale…

Continue reading “Poem: Dry Fruit and Nuts”

Thousands join Kashmir protests

Tens of thousands of people across Indian-administered Kashmir have joined protests against Indian rule in the Himalayan region. The Indian police has been battling to contain demonstrations for months, ignited by the killing of a 17-year-old student by police in June.

Al Jazeera’s Nilanjan Chowdhury reports.

Robert Fisk: The Road out of Kabul goes through Kashmir

The title is actually a quote from veteran journalist Graham Usher, but it pretty much sums up Robert Fisk’s view of the significance of Kashmir to the new Great Game being played in Afghanistan.

Continue reading “Robert Fisk: The Road out of Kabul goes through Kashmir”

Peaches

by Arif Ayaz Parrey

Can I tell how much I love peaches?
Not ordinary ones
But those plucked from
The orchards along Jhelum

The ones in the basket before me
Are nebrim for sure
But they blush like a home-grown innocence
And hold as many juicy promises

I wonder what tree bore them
I wonder if it’s wise to ignore them

The tree of life
Has many buried roots

It is said that my only son
Was killed under the canopy
Of the branches of one such tree
By the army
Also known as the security forces
An old joke
What do they secure
These so-called security forces?
Not the people, not our lives, not our liberty
Not our sentiments, nor our emotions, not our sanity
Not our sons who are shot
Nor our daughters who are raped
Not the truth, not the facts, not humanity

Continue reading “Peaches”

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