There is a strange yet intriguing dichotomy inherent in the nature of Kashmiris. To an observer’s eye the paradoxical nature seems baffling many a times. Observe it nowadays.. Four Kashmiri boys have done us proud with their ace performance in civil services exams and they surely have become the talk of the town. Every morning we are being greeted by their smiling faces in the newspapers in the context of one or the other article. Doctors, engineers and students everywhere are searching for contact numbers of these ace performers to get a few words of guidance from them. Parents (I’m sure) in every household would be goading their kids to action and telling them to follow the example of Dr. Shah Faesal et al (without even realizing if their kids are really capable of doing it or interested in doing it!). Let us take a look at the other side of this. Whoa!! Where are those people who some months back were shouting slogans” Hum kya chaahtey aazadi” ,“Narai Takbeer Allah-u-Akbar” and busy slandering the very Indian nation as a whole. I hear those same people advising their kids, “tuhiye te karzihew IAS”! Antithetical isn’t it! Take a look at our respected teachers. A look at a busy month in the calendar and they start praying for hartals and curfews. They know a new month has begun if our hartal uncle’ Geelani sahab’ has given a new hartal call for a fresh cause! And at the end of the month they start demanding their salaries, for whatsoever modicum of work they have done! Coming to our academicians of the varsity, they will speak volumes about following the American system of education but when it comes to classroom lectures they can’t even tolerate a new idea or methodology of solving a problem. How will potential researchers come up if the pedagogues nip them at the bud itself! (By nasty comments like, “Apney aeydea (read idea) apne paas rakho)
The degree colleges of our state are no less. Each year they will promise to work for academic excellence, but what it turns out in the end is bureaucratic excellence. One college starts and the others follow the lead and join the bandwagon! Ministers, media, the show biz and on the other hand the academic machinery running haywire, with no one to attend to the pupils in the classroom. Nowadays, our Education system has become more of a show biz and a ‘Degree provider” rather than imparting education in its real sense and improvising on work ethics.
There’s more to the dichotomy than only this! Every Kashmiri is proud of their ‘Jannat-e-Firdous” and are concerned about its beautification and cleanliness. What I don’t understand is that despite of all the concerns, why do we have garbage littered around the city and why do we figure as the 4th dirtiest city in the country. Each year we demand airplane runway like wider and better roads. But what’s the fun? Even if the government to some extent is fulfilling its promises of providing a better road network, what are we doing in return? No sooner a road is made, it is encroached with a line of shops or other constructions. As if this wasn’t enough, then huge bottomed transformers are put at an unsuited location defacing and squeezing the roads all the more.
We are the People, who sermonize about the hazards of environmental pollution and the urgent need to ban polythene bags but readily accept these ‘non biodegradable culprits’ when we go out for shopping. Even if a good soul among us questions the shopkeeper about these polythene bags, they very smugly reply, ‘Yahaan sab chalta hai”. Surely nothing is illegal for them as long as they don’t caught! The Mughal emperor would have been appalled at the shocking condition of what he called ‘the heaven on earth’ and if he travelled to the present, he would surely rethink before saying’ Agar Firdaus Bar-roye zameen ast, Humhein Asto humein ast’. Sigh! This reminds me of what our erstwhile Union Minister of State for External Affairs, Dr. Shashi Tharoor once remarked about India, which somehow applies to Kashmir too “India (read Kashmir) is not, as people keep calling it, an underdeveloped country (state), but rather, in the context of its history and cultural heritage, a highly developed one in an advanced state of decay”
I don’t want to go on revealing the sharply contrasting psyche of Kashmiris neither I wanted to open a Pandora box of complaints. But I do have a point to make Kashmiri people must do soul-searching and identify what they really want and stand by it in all circumstances. For change and improvement, we need something more than effective governance; it is the participation of people and their belief to cause the change and make it permanent. We don’t need changes that are as ephemeral as the governments, what we require is a long standing transformation! We not only face a political imbroglio but more than that we have an internal muddle to deal with. Two groups with clashing motives are acceptable, but a same person having conflicting thoughts imbibed in his/her mind is not at all tolerable! It is this discord within minds of the people itself which prevents us from an emancipation and empowerment. Unless we make a resolve to clear our minds of the ambiguity and stand by what we say we’ll never move ahead and always get trampled down. Hollow words are not what are desired, it’s after all actions which speak louder than words. Make or mar your motherland-The choice is yours!
