India Resists

In the end, I request you: don’t colorise or dress my words in any colour or dress, except a purely responsible human concern for humanity.

Sameer Bhat | The completeness of night’s silence is absolute in Kashmir. Earlier today another boy was put six feet under. Killed in cold blood in Baramulla by the Indian army. Apparently a small crowd was protesting against the hanging of Afzal Guru and driven by pure emotion, pelted a passing army patrol with stones.

Did Afzal Guru’s hanging satisfy the collective conscience of the nation?

Such cases of yielding to the religious nationalism, promoted by BJP and company will surely be a recipe for disaster for the process of normalization and democratization in Kashmir. The communal mind set should not be allowed to rule the roost.

Naseer A Ganai | The Chief Minister did take care of the situation. He imposed curfew. He didn’t allow people to walk out of their doors. He executed internet for four days. He brought Kashmir to the standstill. They hung Afzal in Tihar. The Chief Minister tightened noose around Kashmiris in the Valley. Mission accomplished.

The sudden haste with which it carried out Ajmal Kasab’s hanging in a similar manner late last year, the sudden whip up of nationalistic chauvinism along the LOC last month, or even the big bang neo-liberal reforms in the last period all point out that Congress is clearly trying to go on the offensive come what may.

We write to you in deep anguish, despair but in outrage as well. Afzal Guru was hanged on Saturday (9th February 2013) in secrecy. We have been told – after the hanging – that you rejected the mercy petition filed by Guru’s wife Tabassum, on 3rd February. We believe that you made a grave error in rejecting the mercy petition.

‘STF made [me] an [a] scapegoat in all this criminal act which was designed and directed by STF and others which I don’t know. Special Police is definitely the part of this game because every time they forced me to remain silent.’

What if the politics, the media, the intellect and the legal system are all part of the spectacle to amuse the mob pseudonym – the nation? What makes a nation and what constitutes its conscience? Perhaps the majority, Perhaps the mob!

Hacktivist group Anonymous joined thousands of others to protest the shutdown of internet services in Kashmir for the fourth consecutive day by authorities after the hanging of Afzal Guru, a key accused in the Parliament attack case.