By Alig Paul Aabid ur Rehman
Mohammad Afzal Guru, which is not impecunious of any introduction is both a hero and a terrorist in the eyes of the people living in the same country. Accused of being one of the convict of the incompetent terrorist attack that strike the Indian Parliament on 13th of December 2001. Guru, after spending eleven years in prison and mostly in solitary confinement was stealthily hanged in the country’s Tihar Jail on 9th of Feberuary 2013 which was inevitable as he was on death row right from the day he was accused of attacking the Parliament of India. The stealth macabre hanging sent shivers down the spines and the whole valley came to halt. And what followed was not alien. Hundreds of detentions and maimings with many put to death for protesting against the undemocratic move. He was not given the chance to meet his family one last time. Neither was the family given his body for last rites. His corpse was clandestinely buried inside the jail premises which is one of the beastly act the world’s largest democracy has perpetrated.
Post hanging, the news was a buzz not only in India but it influenced the whole of South Asia. Media in India has sown some eccentric and obfuscate kind of seed in its citizens that whatever they say, people show a consensual approach towards it. No matter be that devoid of any reality. So living in India, one finds it very difficult to convince the people that M.A Guru was not a terrorist but was strategically booked into a fabricated and false case with abundant propagandas suffice to hang him albeit the stances of media against him were notional and vengeful.
Afzal’s case was widely criticized for its dodgy investigations and absence of fair trial by the senior supreme court advocates, human rights activists and of course many media personals. But it didn’t preclude the hanging of the Kashmiri man. The highest court in India scarcely gave a hoot to the dire stances of civil society and hang him. The temptation shows that they were appetitic of his blood. They have to hang him, so they did to satisfy the so called ‘collective conscience of the society’. Subsequent to hanging the common cove who persist to raise his righteous voice against the hanging or show any kind of solidarity and affection towards the ill-fated Afzal was onslaughted and threatened.
The way S.A.R. Geelani was tactically accused by the media in the involvement of Parliament attack, it was almost impossible for him to acquit because the anti-terrorism laws in India are so stringent that anybody merely found suspicious in the involvement of terroristic activities is incarcerated for yonks.
According to The Times of India S.A.R. Geelani was the hub of the Parliament strike who masterminded the whole attack. if we go by Hindustan Times then he was giving lectures on terrorism in spare time in the D.U campus, where he was a lecturer in Arabic. Even The Hindu framed him as the guide of Fidayeen. He was lucky to be proven innocent and was acquitted despite all the vile conspiracies. The conspiracies hatched against him by the media were malicious and outright lies, nothing else. The media by its rhetoric statements always deceit their people and provoke them for violence and also abet them for hatred and alter attitude towards Kashmiris. Anon after his release, Geelani stanced that ‘the acquittal of an innocent man is not an occasion for celebration, but a cause for reflection’.
Leaving all the miff, anger and tarnation for media and the Indian state aside, our state government too is synonymous to hypocrisy and doublemindedness. The Abdullah dynasty who was at the helm amid the time of hanging created the real drama. Omar Abdullah after clandestinely signing the hanging in the wee hours of night in Delhi came back flying to shed the crocodile tears the ensuing day, like he knows zilch. How bizarre and deceitful! Would somebody respectfully tell him that Afzal was the citizen of your state and his hanging was not possible without your nod.
The second vile episode of drama came from Dr. Farooq himself which offended the people of Kashmir. Post hanging he beatifically endorsed, “Anybody who is venom to our country would meet the same fate and there is no space for a terrorist in our country” . But soon after they lost the power in 2014 assembly elections the first stance the son and the father gave was that they lost the power because of the mass upheaval of 2010 and the hanging of Afzal Guru which was totally unjustified! This is our leadership! They all seem to have unquenchable greed for power to remain in limelight. Not only N.C but all the mainstream parties typify to it. They dance on the New Delhi’s tone to exaggerate them so as to cash in on from every ordeal that Kashmiris face.
Post Script:- Leaders holding the helm should understand that by sabre rattling or detaining every voice that is erupting against them in the valley is not the solution. If that would have been so then the voice would have curbed long ago. But despite all the odds the flame remained alive and alight amidst the illegal incarcerations, custodial disappearances and mass rapes. It is because a basic right is being shunned which makes the peace impossible. The need of the hour is to stop the violation of human rights and promptly delve for a viable solution to this imperative and long lasting conflict in the South Asia that would be doable and acceptable to the aspirations of the local populace belonging to both sides of the segregated state of Jammu and Kashmir by taking the leadership of this conflicted zone in the loop. A nonchalant reconcile of this hornet’s nest is needed for peace and stability in the sub-continent. It would verily then preclude any gory quagmire in the future and burgeon the peaceful ambience in pan- South Asia as it is the pith of the whole turbulence.
Alig Paul Aabid ur Rehman is the student of English Literature at Department of English, Aligarh Muslim University. He hails from Frisal Kulgam Kashmir and can be reached at [email protected]
