Wonderful insight by Manu Joseph. I had argued along similar lines. // That the State cleared Haider for public viewing, notwithstanding the many cuts enforced by its censors, is extraordinary. What can explain this uncharacteristic generosity? Could it be that the State has demonstrated that it is finally willing to experiment with maturity? Or, is it just that India has no choice anymore but to resemble a true, major democracy// More from the article on Haider (not a review of the film): // Bhardwaj shows a Kashmir where India is an illegal occupier, which it still is; and a brutal oppressor, which it once was. Bhardwaj shows soldiers pulling out the nails of terror suspects, electrocuting them and carrying out extra-judicial killings. It is unprecedented for a mainstream Indian film to portray this. That the State cleared Haider for public viewing, notwithstanding the many cuts enforced by its censors, is extraordinary. What can explain this uncharacteristic generosity? Could it be that the State has demonstrated that it is finally willing to experiment with maturity? Or, is it just that India has no choice anymore but to resemble a true, major democracy? Is it time then for the fellowship of paraliberals, too, to come of age and shed their allegiance to their cabal? The Fellowship is a network of writers, documentary filmmakers and academics, with a uniform set of values. The Fellowship’s community mind finds it morally aesthetic and appealing to all its constituents to promote the point of view that Kashmir is and will be in a state of perennial unrest until India miraculously quits the place. It is a view that is dear to a section of Kashmir’s elite, and its diaspora--to be precise, people who have the means to get on with their lives. But, in a changed Kashmir flanked by a transformed Indian economy and deteriorating Pakistan, the poor and the villagers speak of an aspiration that is very different. Their priority is a decent life, which is usually about things that make very bad poetry--jobs, education, roads, electricity. They have contempt for India but they also wish Kashmirs economy to move on. This, a section of Kashmir’s relative rich and the Fellowship they are a part of, find repulsive. Because they have the luxury to find it repulsive. They couch all their arguments as the fight of the oppressed against the oppressor, but fall mute about the rights of Kashmir’s Hindus, who were forced to flee their homes at the height of the insurgency, to return. In the wounded spectral space of Kashmir, the encroached are encroachers too. Unlike the State, the Fellowship does not have the power to ban or censor journalistic or literary works or statements that it deems offensive. If it had the powers it would have, but as it doesn’t it resorts to sustained defamation of those whom it does not agree with. As it has done to Shah Faesal, who in 2009 became the only Kashmiri to be ranked first in the civil services exam. Faesal, whose father was once assaulted by the Indian army and forced to chant, “Ram, Ram”, and later killed by ‘unidentified gunmen’, told me in 2012 that the period of calm in the Valley in the preceding months was proof that, “Common sense is finally winning.” He faced severe abuse on the social media for the comment, chiefly from non-resident Kashmiris because from the safety and comfort of distance, they found peace in Kashmir offensive. On his Facebook page, Faesal said about the long-distance lovers of Kashmir: ‘…the crop of burger-fed, Armani-attired pseudo-revolutionaries has actually harmed Kashmir, more than anyone else.’//
Posted on: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 11:44:24 +0000
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