Article 370 - A Chance to be Lord Krishna

The support for the abrogation of Article 370 among much of the Indian educated middle-class has been overwhelming. And sometimes sadly savage.

Sensitive parents whose children are ensconced in lush sanctuary schools where teachers don’t raise their voices, or even break the harmonious silence with the harsh peal of bells, are raucously revelling in the ‘’lesson being taught to those stone-pelters’’; no matter that the childhood of thousands of those young people has been spent in the most relentlessly militarised zone in the world; for whom living under strict restrictions and extended curfews is norm, as, say, driving out for an ice-cream at a whim at midnight in Delhi is.

So many self-proclaimed democrats, who feel proud of living in the largest democracy in the world that holds extraordinarily peaceful elections, are thinking nothing extraordinary in the overnight, unilateral action taken by the central government on a state’s status, without the Prime Minister or any senior minister from the ruling party facing a single public press conference.

Their awareness seems to extend exclusively to reading about the valorous tales of the Indian military benignly and heroically hovering over the sullen, recalcitrant Kashmiris; the UN Human Rights and Amnesty reports, as well as those by respected economists, lawyers, sociologists, documenting any atrocities against civilians in the Valley, are all, according to them, scurrilous, perverse pillories to destabilise the achievement of the Great India being crafted.

Sometimes it seems that what we are witnessing today, is finally, the fig leaf of Kashmiriyat, Jamhooriyat, Insaniyat, that was thinly veiling the beautiful Valley, being violently ripped off, and we have the Haivaniyat - cowardly, demented lust - gleefully glittering through.

It’s like Kashmir is standing today in the court of a blind Judiciary and blinded Constitution, waiting to be ravished by a baying mob of hundreds, with a handful looking away - enervated, effete, impotent - repenting their belief in the inevitability of the crown being theirs; remorseful over their arrogance and complacency at not seeing where the dangerous gamble was leading.

Will the wise, the knowledgeable, the kind, the patient, be able to shine protective Krishna-like over this shameful spectacle.

We all have a chance to be Krishna!