Aesop, the Hellenistic slave, narrated a
profound tale in the winter of 6th century BC. The story is simple but
the message remains relevant 2700 winters later. A Bee, queen of the
hive, buzzed her way to Mt Olympus to present Jupiter some fresh honey.
Jupiter, delighted with the offering, promised to give her whatever she
wanted in return. The Bee thought for a while and then said, “Please
give me a stinger, so that I can hurt whoever might come to take my
honey.”
Jupiter didn’t quite like the Bee’s
desire to hurt people, but he had made a promise and had to keep it. So
he answered: “I hereby give you the stinger you want, but use it at your
own risk. For you may only use it once, and it shall break off in the
wound you make. Thus you will die from the loss of it.” Right-wing
Kashmiri Pandit groups have taken recourse to the stinger, over and over
again. Cloaked in nothing but nuisance value, the loss is, in plain
words, their very own.
I don’t frankly admire the Mirwaiz too
much. I think he reeks of an elitist with all those expensive caps and
well-pressed Kameez-yazars [Pathani dresses] but he is an important
voice, however rapidly he talks on TV. The fact that some goon in
ill-fitting pants will awkwardly lunge at the spiritual head of a
huge section of Kashmiris is such a travesty. What compounds the pain
further is the sight of neo-Nazi style fellow Kashmiris, cheering the
mobsters on. Hell what have we become?
Heckling and assault on dissenting voices
has become the new bench-mark of the largest democracy in the world. If
instant 2-minute TV fame is your idea to spend a dull Thursday
afternoon, then all you got to do is this: Rush to the nearest Kashmir
seminar in town and behave like an undomesticated mare, kicking away at
everyone. Bare your teeth menacingly and go ahead and smack the speaker.
In no time the robot-like cameramen will have your attention. And
Eureka: You are a nationalist. An ultra-nationalist, if you please.
Friends can see you on telly. Simple.
One wonders if this is the educated,
liberal, brainy, respected Pandits who once inspired awe. Not to mention
an overwhelming majority of Kashmiri Pandits do retain their secular
ethics and cultural upbringing. Somewhere in the melee (post the exodus,
which is such a shameful chapter) several second generation KPs mingled
with the rougher crowd. Soon they would become the flag-waving, uncouth
sloganeering jokers in the pack. What is transpiring at the moment is
part of the same transmutation.
Lately it has become quite fashionable to
dub anyone ‘enemy of the state’ as soon as something displeasing is
said. Ofcourse there are heart-aches, ofcourse there is displacement,
ofcourse there are serious agreements but a passado at everyone who
holds a position contrary to your own makes you a crack-pot. To shoot a
man because one disagrees with his interpretation of Darwin or Hegel is a
sinister tribute to the supremacy of ideas in human affairs — but a
tribute nevertheless, the literary critic Steiner said sometime back.
One only agrees.
