The Pedagogy of Oppression

Arshid Malik

The people; men, women, young and old, have braved all kinds of atrocities and most of the times for just expressing their opinions or pressing for their rights. They have braved bullets, mortar shells, pepper bombs, rubber bullets, lathis and all at the hands of a cult that is motivated to a specific kind of subversion to ensure that the people of Kashmir do not carry the strength to stand up on their own two feet. But howsoever regressive the policies of the oppressor have been, Kashmiri people have stood the tides of time and are still pressing for their rights one way or the other. There is no denying the fact that once you stand up against your oppressor, you are bound to face wrath but sometimes, which are in fact the most unfortunate of all times, when your own people are found to be involved in a nexus of kinds that aims to dilute the very core of a population, Kashmiri in this case, is something that is hard to grapple. When your very own brother plots against you while you have been most kind and generous to him, have fed him when he was hungry, have consoled him when he was grieving, have shared his laughter and tears, it turns out to be more atrocious than the worst of crimes committed against you by your oppressor. Such moments of despair are very hard to withstand and are worse hitting than gun butts and canes.

The people of Kashmir have undergone vast subjugation in the past couple of decades at the hand of the oppressor. I am not naming the oppressor because I do not believe in the singularity of the “oppressor”, for it is always a conglomerate of parties with an almost common goal and that turns the multiple parties into a group, the “oppressor” with a unique aim. Anyways, while the people were and are suffering at the hands of the oppressor, there were factors at work within the sheaths of the Kashmiri society, sheaths comprising of Kashmiri people, who were out planning the utilization of the simplistic value systems and a very down-to-earth level of comprehension of the Kashmiri people. This sect of people (though I am not sure whether these people can be categorized into a sect) was out there to extort the people of Kashmir over and under the pretext of the conflict that was raging on. These people are slowly and gradually being unmasked.

Of recent some people concerned with the pharmaceutical and the health industry have been unmasked. These people were into a nexus supplying spurious and fake drugs into major health institutions in Kashmir. For the lust of easy money, these criminals were imbibing such drugs into the sick and ailing who happen to have great faith and trust in the medical practitioners, and were putting them to deep sleep – sleep from which they would never wake up. Imagine the height of their lust for money; these people did not even spare the hospitals which provide neo-natal care and general and specialized health care for our children. We, only recently, were witness to unbelievable mortality rates in some of the specialized health care institutions for children and no wonder a lot many number of children died – our money minters had planned their extermination. This kind of an attitude, an outlook with respect to your very own people is more dangerous than the planned and structured wipe-out of the subjugated by the oppressor.

It is not just about drugs. The whole healthcare system is riddled with flaws which point in only one direction – the shadowy extermination of the people of Kashmir. I am not sure whether this may count as one of the points of the agenda of the oppressor for even it is so, when my own people are facilitating this agenda, it supposedly runs in the blood, our own blood.

At the far receiving end of the whole game is the common Kashmiri who falls sick and seeks the help and assistance of a medic. What happens to this man or woman who is ailing and in immediate need of medical attention? Well, he or she first has to raise enough money out of almost nowhere since he or she is walking into a fleecing industry. First the doctor will charge a couple of hundred bucks and then, without even practically listening to the patient, he or she will prescribe a plethora of diagnostics which cost a huge deal of money and alongside will prescribe drugs which again cost a lot of money. The poor patient will be fleeced of a couple of thousand rupees in the very first go. And if he or she gets lucky, they may eventually be fortunate enough to gulp down a handful of medicines which are not spurious and get well – the odds being 1 to 99, 1 counting for genuine medicine and 99 counting for spurious ones (do pardon my fuzzy logic).

Leaving aside the healthcare part, let’s talk about a person who has retired from service and needs his provident fund money for say, the daughter of his marriage. This person goes to the concerned office and spends, on an average, six months running in and around government offices, paying off thick bribes and all for the money that he honestly and diligently earned while in service. Or else, let’s talk of a budding young man or woman who does not classify himself or herself as the average go-get-a-job kinds and wants to set up a small enterprise. With some money from their father, such people go to the government agencies which are supposed to help and aid budding industrialists and get fleeced off all the money they had acquired one way or the other and end up frustrated and wanting to commit suicide – and some of them really do.

We are against us. We are our own enemies. We do not want our own people to grow. We want to grow rich overnight by robbing well-meaning people of their hard earned money. We only know how to take advantage. Well, I should well say that we are our own worst oppressor and the objective oppressor is laughing out loud.