Aheli Moitra
By the time we grew up, Liberalism had arrived. It meant that those of us who had won the race—because of our privilege not because the “world is flat”—could continue to be winners.
The free market had flooded the political sphere and we were doomed to piles of success, which basically meant good jobs that paid us enough to buy more useless stuff every day, our lives defined by the struggle to keep up with fashion, not meaningful political change. Defined by comfort, Francis Fukuyama told us, we had arrived at the station our ancestors had apparently set out for—the end of history.
The Brahminical Democratic Welfare State provided us with the perfect stage to drown ourselves at this station. Shopping malls sprung up everywhere, aspiration of engineering schools defined our purpose in life and eating at an American food chain defined our self worth. Rebellion of the elite youth (who made it to the above sites) was channeled by shoving them into video parlous. Spewing venomous bullets into the enemy skull, or slashing fruits to bits, satiated the bored individualist mind. When that was not enough, we rebelled against the nothingness of life. Some had controversial love affairs, some turned to drugs.
Cynicism took root. Instead of looking outward (public), at the failing politics that surrounded us, we were forced to seek the ‘indefinite’ inward (private). The private had to be divorced from the public to find ‘peace’. Since we had never felt any oppression, we adjusted well.
Blindly looking for a “purpose” in life, one day we arrived at blind nationalism. Kashmir is ours, we were told. What was to doubt? The great nation state that had created all these opportunities of self worth for us repeated it like a broken record. It was only when a trusted man ripped our bodies apart, because he “owned” the woman in us, that our eyes opened ever so slightly. Can anybody own somebody?
Can the Kashmiri people be so inconsequential to the land that we, the Indians, could “own” them at will? Could we beat them down, smash their heads and electrocute their insides, to make them understand this simple point? In the world of the Indian Brahminical elite, they were, and we could. With nothing left to fight for, we had to take control of what we “owned.” Kashmir. The Nagas. The Meitei. The Kuki. The Karbi, The Gond. Gaidinliu Pamei. Manorama Devi.
Alas, to our collective displeasure, the Kashmiris owned Azadi (Freedom). More than the joys of our oblivious skiing down the mountains of Kashmir, the Kashmiris owned Azadi. More than the rolling joys of Dzükou valley, the Nagas owned the Promised Land. We could hear the songs of freedom no matter where we tried to hide—through the guns our army fired and through the lives we smashed.
Somewhere a choir sang its hope filled Kuknalim! O Kuknalim! (Victory to the Land!) Elsewhere, ‘Hum Kya Chahte? Azadi!’ (What do we want? Freedom!) rang out. For every child the State killed, another song of hope sprung up—we may have faced the raw end of the bullet, they said, but there is hope to reach the Promised Land, free of oppression and hostility, a life of dignity and ownership- over our present, over our future. History, much like life, continued.
The ancestors of the struggling people have not set out on a journey to end history. They have set out towards a journey of building history and re-imagining the future. It conjoins personal hopes to the public—it creates aspirations beyond the self. It is not easily killed by force because it is not the result of “misleading;” it is the result of the desire to be free. More than the liberal agenda ever entailed, it is in the political journeys of these spaces that create a remarkable, hope filled, non cynical future for the world. Power holders in the Indian Union, as well as the world’s elites, need to shed their privilege by moving from being spectators to becoming participants in the lives of the oppressed, not as rulers but as followers.
Comments may be sent to moitramail@yahoo.com
