A Book From The perspective Of Young Minds, Post Box Kashmir by Divya Arya, An Excerpt

Post Box Kashmir by Divya Arya is a non-fiction story on the backdrop of political history and turbulent present of Kashmir and India from the perspective of the young minds.

Duaa and Saumya were down to writing their final letters. They had walked a long, if fine line, from discussing hobbies to stone pelting and more. How liberating that a friendship of just over a month, now had the courage, trust and equanimity to consider the call for freedom: ‘Azadi’. This Urdu word, that is simple to pronounce, with no complex sounds, but has many compounded meanings.

They had both heard it, on the streets of Srinagar and Delhi. At various protest marches in recent years, young men and women had made it their own. It was written on posters, sung in songs, cried out loud in passionate slogans…

The deeply felt cry for ‘Azadi’ had always been seized by minorities of different hues, at different times—Dalit, Kashmiri, Adivasi, the poor, the working class, the peasants, the intelligentsia, the LGBT community and women. In December 2012, a year etched in our collective conscience, for the inhumane sexual violence inflicted on a young woman on a moving bus in Delhi, it made its way to the capital’s streets. Young women and men were drawn out of their homes—in anger, disgust and hope. They marched to the capital’s heart, India Gate, and asked for ‘Azadi’…

Some new slogans were born: ‘Bekhauf Azadi’ (freedom without fear), ‘Baap se Azadi’ (freedom from patriarchy), ‘Khap se Azadi’ (freedom from feudal panchayat’s diktats), and ‘Shaadi karne ki Azadi, na karne ki Azadi’ (freedom to decide who to marry or stay unmarried). Women did not want security by compromising on their freedoms. They demanded both and more. From equal rights to freedom from fear.

Feminists had always wanted freedom. The vocabulary of their songs and slogans had started using the term ‘Azadi’ a few decades earlier. Journalist Nirupama Dutt has written about dancing and chanting to ‘the catchy beat of the Azadi number’ at the Women’s Studies Conference in West Bengal’s Jadavpur University in 1991…

Feminist Kamla Bhasin said there was no copyright to the rhythmic chant of ‘Azadi’, but that everyone had the right to copy it. She pointed to her sisters across the border, in Pakistan, for inspiring her from their use of the slogan in the 1980s where it was chanted in the hidden corners of bazaars and melas for fear of reprisals.

Pakistan was under a dictatorship then. General Zia-ul- Haq had taken over power in a military coup in 1979 and imposed martial law. One of the measures in his efforts to Islamize the judicial system were the Hudood Ordinances that remained in force long after his decade-long rule. They dealt with many crimes including those against women, like rape and adultery. But any prosecution needed the presence of male witnesses to the crime, leaving women extremely vulnerable and helpless. As a result, thousands of women were jailed for committing ‘honour’ crimes instead of being able to access justice for being victims of sexual violence. Protests against the ordinance invited beatings by police and jail.

This repression led to the formation of many women’s groups and the birth of Pakistan’s women’s movement.

It is difficult to pinpoint how widely the chant of ‘Azadi’ was being used elsewhere in Pakistan at that time. But it did, along with armed rebels, get transported to Kashmir in the late 1980s, where it became a resistance anthem. Used by militants in training camps and by protestors on the streets, an inextricable part of the Valley’s political history. A call to struggle and resist collectively the daily violence in their lives. The forced disappearances, sexual assaults, human rights violations. ‘Hum kya chahte? Azadi’ (What do we want? Freedom), maybe used in different contexts and movements in the country but has become clearly associated with Kashmir’s aspirations. Some memoirs even credit Kashmiri students with bringing it to university campuses and conversations in the rest of the country.

But this has meant that in place of the myriad shades of ‘Azadi’, in popular consciousness, the chant has come to mean a demand for separation from India. Making it unpopular with a wide populace that balks at the mere suggestion of Kashmir acceding from India. For some in the Valley, it may mean self-rule, for others, autonomy within India and for a few, rule by Pakistan. But it is difficult to argue that the chant has any other meaning in Kashmir. Prompting Saumya to ask,

Sometimes I get to know from newspapers that Kashmiris want freedom. I want to know whom do they want freedom from?

Duaa’s answer was not straightforward, instead almost poetic, philosophical.

We want freedom from cruelty of the world, freedom from discrimination, freedom from the people who think that we are inferior to them.

She didn’t write about politics and power, government and the armed forces or separatists and militants. Her words were what she felt. What the world felt to her, and made her feel about herself.

Excerpted with permission from Post Box Kashmir by Divya Arya.

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