We will meet again!
Kashmir
20th May,2007
Dear Basuji
We will meet again by the Villa’s of Peace when you will not be identified as the
‘Indian soldier’ and me a ‘Kashmiri girl’ . When innocent Kashmiri boys will not disappear from the Kashmir’s ground and no Kashmiri Pandit will flee the valley out of fear. When separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani will not feel his voice is choked and military will not complain that their image is tarnished unnecessarily. When Asiya Andrabi and Durakhshan Andrabi will sit together on one platform and enter into a dialogue, when media in Kashmir will grow and mature and present the balanced view of the reality, when incidents of Kunan Poshpora will not be repeated agai, when we all will come out of our egos and self-centered natures, when we will start looking beyond our noses and will try to understand each other’s reality, When journalists will not feel their pens are under the pressure of guns and military does not feel that their guns are operating under the pressure of pens, when young men like Khurram Parvez will not have their legs amputated prior to their declaration of Masters’ results, when youngsters like Guljan , Asiya and Major Purshottam will not loose their lives in Kashmir, When students of Mass Communication & Journalism Department in Kashmir will not complain to the students of Gyan Prabodhini from Maharashtra that why they have to prove their own identity after every 10 minutes by showing their identity card to the Indian soldier on their own land, when His Holiness Shri Shri Ravi Shankar will not be flaunted by the audience in Sher-i-Kashmir International Convention Center (SKICC) with questions like how his meditation courses are going to help them gain Independence from the Indian State, When the sons of 350 disappeared people will return to their families, When Parveena Ahanger will no more have to fight for the return of her disappeared son, when no war widow in India has to remove her Sindoor because her husband was posted I Kashmir When the soldiers will feel free to come out of their barracks and interact freely with locals, when they will have to stop doing the thankless job of Policing against militants and thereby inviting the wrath of whole civilian population of Kashmir and if by chance they commit any mistake equally inviting the wrath of their officers, When human rights activists will have to stop writing their bullying reports, when the states of India ad Pakistan will not spend billions on their wars of propaganda and misinformation campaign, trillions on their defense budgets, quadrillions on their nuclear budgets, when back channel diplomacies will not fail time and again When Americans will not have their calculated interests in South Asia especially the sub continent, when Washington will be interested in creating long-lasting Peace in South Asia, When people like Rumsfield______the man of war will be out of power, when Zoinists and Jehadi’s will not gain ground on the globe, when BJP will stop demolition of Babri mosque and playing the card of Hindutva thus misleading the Indian Public, when Kashmir will be accepted as Political problem by leadership from both the sides and masses will not be mislead into believing the it is a communal problem, When democracy will be allowed to function in a proper manner on both sides of Line of Control, when higher ups will think of integrating Pakistan Administered Kashmir, Indian Administerd Kashmir, Gilgit Baltistan, Ladakh and Jammuregions, when Aksai chin will not be gifted to china by the state of Pakistan, When guns will stop pumping in the bullets and grenades will stop falling on the roads in Kashmir, when children of all the six regions of Kashmir will be familiar with their own history rather thanthe history of the world, when they will speak their own language and learn to respect it as it is their identity in the world, When there will be no branding ( Militant aide, Army informer, Research and Analysis Wing Agent (RAW), Inter Services Intelligence Agent (ISI), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Agent, Indian American Agent , Pakistani Terrorist, Foreign Mercenary, Embedded and paid Journalists) and thus killing of innocent people, When people like Sumantra Bose and Seema Kazi will not have to come all the way from the London School of Economics to Kashmir to research on Kashmir problem, when MSF will close down its office and there will be no Conflict Zone related stresses, when there will be fair representation of women in the corridors of power and they will not have to fight continuously for their rights, When the speeches of governor Retd Lt. GenS.K.Sinha will not be measured with suspicion and Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir State will not be accused of regional bias, when we all will come out of the myopic lens of communalism, which actually is the denigration of spiritualism into symbolism , when bureaucracy will come out of Red Tapism and serve the function for which it has been created, When people like Ashique Hamdani in Khazakistan and Naqshab Afra Khan Afridi will not find the scenario in Kashmir so bleak that they prefer to go to oblivion rather than coming to the forefront, When the efforts of Usman Rahim Ahmad in Mercy Core will be acknowledged,when we will realize the pain of the widows whether the widow of a militant or a military man, , when all our identities will merge into one human face,when we will explore the human potential that we can meet again by the Villa’s of Peace on the Kashmir’s ground.
Assabah