In victory we lose. In defeat we lose. In action we lose. In inaction we lose. In status quo we lose. In change we lose. In war we lose. In peace we lose. In participation we lose. In boycott we lose. Now we are at a loss to understand what is happening in and around us. This is a loss greater than all the others put together. Every single apolitical Kashmiri is today the personification of Rubashov the protagonist of Arthur Koestler’s novel, Darkness at Noon. Like Rubashov, every Kashmiri is now on the trail of death for destroying himself! It is a tragedy for all the people of Kashmir, like one never before. And mind you, Kashmir and Kashmiris have seen tragedies galore.
The way in which it is panning out, the current imbroglio does not pit India against J&K; or the Kashmiri Muslims against Kashmiri Pandits or Jammu against Kashmir. Instead, it pits political ideology against personal sensibilities; it pits the representatives against the represented. It pits us against us.
Most of the people who have been straddling the streets of Srinagar in lakhs, have not lost individually. Yet they are on protest. They are not there to settle individual scores with the government or its repressive machinery. The much maligned and misunderstood stone pelter is not settling personal scores; nor is he being misled. It needs to be understood that he is working in the existential dimension of politics. He intends his violent act to threaten the sovereign and not simply advance a set of personal interests. He is reacting to the collective loss of power of his civil society.
Not surprisingly then, his mere throwing of a stone today (it can even be spitting tomorrow), will generate a reaction to kill from his opponents. Why? Simply because the stone pelting is seen as an existential threat to the sovereign. The boys who are pelting stones are now on the verge of performing their own self sacrifice. As such, the reaction to a stone is a bullet not because the stone is dangerous or can kill but because his act of defying the sovereign will not be punished within the borders of the system of law. Instead, the state enters into a kind of competition of the sovereign power of killing and being killed. It wants not to punish but to kill.
Yes, the CRPF kills us at will. Brutal. The Home Ministry defends this “teenocide”. Heartless. The J&K Government rationalizes it. Powerless. Opposition cashes in on it. Ruthless. Secessionists glorify it. Perfidious.
