[Harsh measures against dissent
have trickled down to practitioners of the region’s poetic traditions, with
many saying they have been told to stop.]
By Sameer Yasir
Each word spoken here meets censors
and checks
Yesterday the ones sermonizing on
dignity
Have today rude daggers kissing
their necks.
All his life, Ghulam Mohammad Bhat
has read the poetry of resistance to anybody who would listen. During the
mid-1990s peak of the insurgency in his home of Kashmir, the starkly beautiful
land long claimed by both India and Pakistan, he sang eulogies for militants at
their funerals.
For that, the local government
dragged him to detention centers, where he wrote poetry and read it to fellow
detainees after they were hung by their wrists and forced to stare at
high-voltage lamps. All he needed, he said, was a pen and a piece of paper.
Now, more than two decades later,
Mr. Bhat — who writes under the pen name Madhosh Balhami — reads and composes
poetry in secret.
“In the last 30 years I have never
seen this kind of suppression,” he said. “There is silence everywhere, as if
the silence is the best cure for our present crisis.”
Indian forces now keep the largely
Muslim region under a tight grip. New Delhi poured additional soldiers into
Kashmir two years ago as it stripped the region of about eight million
people of
its semiautonomy.
And in cracking down on free
expression, the authorities have muzzled the region’s poets, practitioners of a
centuries-long tradition. Three Kashmiri poets told The New York Times that
they were questioned recently for hours by police officers for speaking to journalists.
In interviews, more than a dozen
others said increased surveillance has left them with no choice but to stop
writing resistance poetry or forced them to read it in places far from the
gazing eyes of the agents of the state.
“We are not allowed to breathe
until and unless we breathe as per the rules and the wishes of the government,”
said Zabirah, a Kashmiri poet who uses only one name. “The silencing of voices,
the freedom to speak and vent grievances, all is gone, and it is suffocating.”
Ms. Zabirah now takes inspiration
from Kashmir’s military checkpoints, bristling with soldiers and endless
roadblocks:
The pathways leading to and from
my worn-out heart are sealed
with concertina wire
Stay put till the heart rebels
we will both escape one day
and leave behind a vibrant nation
The Indian government, which has
grown weary of the region’s persistent violence, has argued that it can better
guarantee individual rights by taking firm control and said it has a plan to
reinvigorate the regional economy. Officials in Kashmir did not respond to
requests for comment.
Nirmal Singh, a top leader of
India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and former deputy chief minister of Jammu
and Kashmir, the formal name for the India-controlled territory, said officials
want to curb the separatist activities that have long flourished in the Kashmir
valley.
“Be it poets or anyone else,
questioning India’s territorial integrity will not be allowed. If you speak
about azadi or Pakistan, that will not be allowed,” said Mr. Singh, referring
to the Kashmir term for independence. “You can speak anything within the limits
of the Indian constitutional framework. Nobody will be stopped.”
Local officials have taken a tough
stance on where those limits lie. Journalists are told what to write, and some have been barred from flying out of
the country. The police have threatened to slap antiterrorism charges on
reporters who tweet about conditions there.
Since 2019, more than 2,300 people
have been jailed under stringent sedition and antiterrorism laws, which
criminalized such activities as raising slogans or posting political messages
on social media, according to one Indian media outlet.
Even peaceful protests are quickly
stopped by police. On Aug. 5, the second anniversary of India’s crackdown, many
Kashmiri shopkeepers locked their doors in protest. Then in Srinagar, Kashmir’s
summer capital, plainclothes men armed with long iron rods and blades began
cutting the locks on the doors and gates of shuttered shops, forcing owners to
return.
The police appeared with the men
cutting the locks and did nothing to stop them. When asked by a reporter why
the police were there, one officer said they were protecting shopkeepers.
Another shooed journalists away.
Kashmir has long stood as a
crossroads between the Hindu and Muslim worlds. Its poetry reflects that rich
history and celebrates the land’s ivory-tipped mountaintops, crystalline lakes
and dazzling wildflower fields.
But for centuries, Kashmir’s poets
and politics have been intertwined. Lal Ded, an influential poet who wrote in
the 1300s, has been claimed by Hindus and Muslims alike. A 14th-century
mystic, Sheikh Noor-ud-Din, used his writing to spread Islam as well as his
idea regarding social reform and individual mores in Kashmiri society.
Agha
Shahid Ali, a Kashmiri-American poet who died in 2001, brought contemporary
recognition to the region’s poetic traditions — and used the violence
of the 1990s uprising as inspiration:
I am writing to you from your
far-off country.
Far even from us who live here
Where you no longer are.
Everyone carries his address in his
pocket
At least his body will reach home.
The militants sought full
independence from India, sparking years of violence. Though the fighting
eventually ebbed, separatists have lingered in the region for years and enjoyed
support among large parts of the population.
Then a suicide
bombing killed more than 40 Indian soldiers and a subsequent military
clash between Indian and Pakistan erupted near their disputed Kashmir border,
leading to New
Delhi’s crackdown in the summer of 2019.
On a recent afternoon, Zeeshan
Jaipuri, 26, a Kashmiri poet, sat with his friends inside the ruins of a fort
overlooking Srinagar, reading verses inspired by years of violence:
Riding on the domain’s fierce
winds, the clamoring heart
Went around dejected seasons.
Saw the blood of yearning here and
there.
Found restless hearts here and
there.
Found every speck drowned in
mourning.
Mr. Jaipuri, grandson of a famous
Kashmiri poet, grew embittered in 2010, when a tear-gas canister killed
his 17-year-old
neighbor. He grew to hate his school textbooks, which portrayed Kashmir as
a happy tourist place.
Still, he said, in past years
artists and poets did not need to struggle so hard to find places to express
themselves.
“Now we read our poetry to
ourselves, or to a few close friends,” Mr. Jaipuri said. “Our throats are
pressed because the government doesn’t want us to breathe in fresh air,” he
said.
Conflict, too, had touched Mr.
Bhat, the poet who writes as Madhosh Balhami. In early 2018, militants pushed
their way into his home. Indian soldiers arrived to battle them. He lost his
house and more than a thousand pages of poetry. Watching the flames, he said later, felt
like watching his own body burn.
Later, he wrote:
The tyranny that Kashmir has had to
endure
Deserves never ever be forgotten,
be unknown
Inside our hearts enshrouded we
have kept
Wounds, as such, too ugly to be
shown
Today he keeps his poems largely to
himself. Over the past two years, the police had summoned him several times and
told him he was trying to sow discord.
In these times, he said, silence is
golden.
“Fingers are not trembling, but the
brain says no,” Mr. Bhat said as he sat on the bank of the river, wary of the
sight of others. “India has largely prevailed to choke our voices, but the cry
of freedom inside our hearts will remain. It will not die.”