TALES OF TRAVESTY
DR. JITENDRA SINGH
Overwhelming rush of tourists from across the country and abroad ! Unrelenting traffic jam due to tourist cabs and cars lining up all along the National Highway to Srinagar ! And, an Air ticket for a bare 30 minute journey from Jammu to Srinagar selling at over Rs Fifteen to Twenty thousand.
If this is not what the common man in Kashmir had yearned for all these years, then what else ? If this does not define for him the “Azaadi” to earn dignified prosperity, then what else does the “Azaadi” define for him ?
Much water has flown down the river Jhelum and Kashmir has come a long way ahead from those heady years of 1990s when terror and fear ruled the roost, when the fragrance of roses was marred by the smoke of gunfire and when the rippling serenity of Dal Lake turned into a “frozen turbulence”. Today, the cosmopolitan face of tourists thronging the Boleauvard, with a Tamilian family here looking for a Madras Thali or a Gujrati family there looking for a pure vegetarian food point, present a picture of mini-India thriving in Kashmir with all its heterogenecity standing out in the backdrop of full spring bloom.
The iron curtain is gradually coming down. People are daring to ask questions. Why this far-fetched “Azaadi” rhetoric at the cost of losing out the benefits of India’s giant leap forward on the road to grand global economy ? Why rake up avoidable controversies like Amarnath Yatra when a larger number of Yatris could actually add to the tourist revenue ? Why this unconvincing “Jehad” call for an ordinary innocent youth when the spearheaders of “Jehad” have lodged their own young sons and daughters far away in the safe havens of Delhi, Mumbai and London? ‘‘Why this farcical ‘‘united front’’ under a single common “Hurriyat” umbrella even as its leaders continue to be mutually at loggerheads ? And, last but not the least, why deny being referred as an Indian even while not refusing to partake of an Indian passport, an Indian senior citizen’s concessional air ticket or a former Indian legislator’s pension ?
Truly perhaps, every movement has a self-limiting life-span and the targets have to be achieved before the time is out. That is a lesson learnt from an aborted Soviet revolution or an unrequitted French revolution even as a frail Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the scantly clad “Fakir” as Churchil described him, managed to drive out the mighty British empire without resorting to blood-shed or violent “Jehad”. To that extent, have the torchbearers of Kashmir’s “Azaadi” movement failed the very movement that they proclaimed to lead ? Or, is this a classic example of having lost the battle by calling for sacrifice from others without making a sacrifice oneself, imploring others to lay down lives without risking one’s own life out of a heavily guarded security cardon ?
As tourists rush in and “Azaadi” is held on wait, the common man is seen having the best of times after a nightmarish suffering of two decades. Umapathy prays for the freedom of Kashmir’s flowery gardens which he cherishes far more than the self -righteous freedom advocarted by a handful of self-righteous protagonists, a La, ‘‘Ab Koi Gulshan Na Ujre, Ab Watan “Azaad” Hai !’’
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