KL NEWS NETWORK
SRINAGAR
Srinagar-based civil society body Kashmir Centre for Social and Development Studies (KCSDS) Monday expressed deep anguish over the turn of events in the state which, it believes, have the “potential of uncontrollable eruption anytime from now on”.
“On one hand, there is blood everywhere – blood of kids, grown-ups, elders, shed by State forces and their stooges and one the other, multiple discourses have been thrown open to tear away every shed of peaceful co-existence of communities and regions in the state,” KCSDS said in a statement. “In order to sabotage and suppress people’s voice for their rights, new divisive issues are floated to deflect attention from the main issue and to engage people’s energies in futile debates.”
In this scenario, the spokesperson said, mere statements of condemnation will not do.
“Govt of the day must provide security and safety to the citizens and take head on communal forces like RSS who are hell bent on taking away religious freedom and identity from Muslims in the state in particular.” Otherwise why should an RSS person within the govt go to the court to revive a dead and defunct law of RPC and then the communal elements insisting on the implementation of the judgement failing which they have the gall to threaten economic blockade, the spokesperson said.
“This draconian and obscurantist law belongs to the era of despotic monarchy and in spirit it died with the monarchy itself,” the spokesperson said. “State govt should have long back scrapped it because of new constitution of the state as well as the international human rights treaties. But state govt being what it is, at the mercy of the Indian state rather than on people’s mandate could not do so.”
Other than religious freedom being impinged it is an open assault on individual freedom where you are dictated what you should eat or not eat, the statement said.
“The problem is when one community forces down something down the throat of another community, the way an Indian parliamentarian did force food down the throat of his Muslim employee in last Ramazan,” the spokesperson said. “Then it impinges upon the freedom and sentiments of other community. Muslims have never asked the govt of India to ban pork as it is haraam for them. Knowing that they cannot take away the freedom of others to have it, it is a travesty of all democratic values that Indian state claims to live by. PDP must either put down such decadent elements or quit the govt if it has even an iota of concern for people’s daily rights and freedoms and their lives!”
