Humra Quraishi’s Column
These Fascist Times
Humra Quraishi
Are we living in a developed scenario or is it turning
all too barbaric?
It is definitely not a ‘developed’ scenario, when a full-fledged genocide is on in one country, when starvation deaths are taking place in several countries, when citizens are getting lynched, when women and children and teenagers are getting sold, when human bodies are getting bartered, when innocents are paraded as criminals, when homes of the poor and disadvantaged are bulldozed on a daily basis, when convicted criminals and rapists and murderers can go about on long or short breaks from the prison cells, when facts and accuracy are in danger of getting twisted by those in governance, when rulers cannot be trusted to take care of the hapless citizens, when poisonous communal propaganda gets unleashed about the ‘other’ to cause rifts and divides amongst the masses, when rapes take place even in work place and even along the roadside, when the so- called teachers unleash communal tactics on young children, when elections are fought not along the open transparent format but along dubious tactics, when candidates can be manipulated in the most dubious of ways, when there’s no one out there to hear one’s cries and shrieks, when even the dead aren’t spared as graves and grave yards are on the land mafia’s target list, when political mafia is unleashed all around to cause anarchy and loot and kill and hound!
The provocation for writing this is based on seeing and experiencing and sensing the traumatic happenings taking place. Communal poisoning reached such obnoxious levels that just yesterday a news report caught attention–a medical doctor in Madhya Pradesh simply refused to take life-saving blood from a Muslim for his Hindu patient!... In fact, what also caught my attention is this video coming from Uttar Pradesh where a school headmaster/ teacher can be seen talking in that obnoxiously communal way in the context of his seven-year-old Muslim student… Every single day one hears and sees the blatantly obnoxious communal incidents and happenings. Alas, there’s no stopping.
News reports coming from the Kashmir Valley seem disturbing as they reek of the right-wing tactics … spreading out its agenda out there too. Not really surprising as this seems on in recent years. I detailed these build-ups in my book titled–‘Kashmir–TheUnending Tragedy–Reports from the Front Lines’. Published in 2019, it carries these details “…I’m reminded of the grave apprehensions that the Kashmiris have been airing since news of the Sainik colonies being set up in the Valley first came up. They’d told me they considered the establishment’s plan of setting up Sainik colonies a ploy to get RashtriyaSwayamsevakSangh (RSS) workers to reside in the Valley. ‘in the coming years we Kashmiris will be pushed here and there and those RSS cadres will be given our prime areas. Look what a massive tragedy took place in Palestine… the Palestinians have been driven out of their homes and lands, and the Israelis have taken total control’ said one of the Kashmiri I had spoken to …”
Today Palestine and the plight of its people is so very traumatic that those images moves one to tears …severe level of sadness cum helplessness overtakes one. In fact, yesterday/ 10 September, as news reports carried details of 40 Palestinians killed within hours or minutes as Israeli bombardments continued on tents and camps housing Palestinians, it not just shocked but shook one’s soul!
In these fascist times, it is not easy to take out marches or hold meetings in solidarity with the Palestinians. Hundreds of our fellow citizens are grieved and very upset and pained by the ongoing genocide taking place in Palestine but have to keep their grief tight, within their hearts and hearth! Not sure about that space too, as bulldozers are the order of the day! Homes and human psyches can be bulldozed in no time, on any of the alibis!
Don’t know how the so-called world leaders can witness the ongoing brutal killings of hundreds and thousands of innocent Palestinians…. men, women, children. Those Palestinians left alive are living in complete agony. There is not just lack of water and food but also affected is medical relief and aid and with that diseases and infections and viruses are peaking.
Would you by any remote chance call this scenario as the developed world or the so- called developed times we are destined to live in! Sheer barbaric tactics unleashed on thousands of Palestinians who are either rather too often killed on the spot in the Israeli air strikes and bombardments or are dying a slow painful death, amidst lack of food and water and the basic essentials to survive…. Look at the irony of it all–a land full of olives and fruits has been taken away rather too forcefully and violently from its rightful citizens!
Perhaps, my sorrow and emotional pain and grief best relayed in this particular verse of
Sahir Ludhianvi:
“If there is a reason for my angry songs, it is this
That when I see the hungry farmers
The poor, the oppressed, the destitute, the helpless
My heart cannot participate in assemblies of pleasure
Even if I wish, I cannot write dreamy songs of love”.
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Vol 57, No. 14, Sep 29 - Oct 5, 2024 |