Arundhati Roy - The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

In some countries, some soldiers die twice.

The headless statue remained at the entrance of the village. Though it no longer bore any likeness to the man it was supposed to commemorate, it turned out to be a more truthful emblem of the times than it would otherwise have been.

S. Murugesan’s baby continued to wave at him.

“Appappappappa…”

As the war progressed in the Kashmir Valley, graveyards became as common as the multi-story parking lots that were springing up in the burgeoning cities in the plains. When they ran out of space, some graves became double-deckered, like the buses in Srinagar that once ferried tourists between Lal Chowk and the Boulevard.

Fortunately, Miss Jebeen’s grave did not suffer that fate. Years later, after the government declared that the insurrection had been contained (although half a million soldiers stayed on just to make sure), after the major militant groups had turned (or been turned) on each other, after pilgrims, tourists and honeymooners from the mainland began to return to the Valley to frolic in the snow (to be heaved up and whisked down steep snow banks — shrieking — in sledges manned by former militants), after spies and informers had (for reasons of tidiness and abundant caution) been killed by their handlers, after renegades were absorbed into regular day jobs by the thousands of NGOs working in the Peace Sector, after local businessmen who had made fortunes supplying the army with coal and walnut wood began to invest their money in the fast-growing Hospitality Sector (otherwise known as giving people “Stakes in the Peace Process”), after senior bank managers had appropriated the unclaimed money that remained in dead militants’ bank accounts, after the torture centers were converted into plush homes for politicians, after the martyrs’ graveyards grew a little derelict and the number of martyrs had reduced to a trickle (and the number of suicides rose dramatically), after elections were held and democracy was declared, after the Jhelum rose and receded, after the insurrection rose again and was crushed again and rose again and was crushed again and rose again — even after all this, Miss Jebeen’s grave remained single-deckered.

She drew a lucky straw. She had a pretty grave with wildflowers growing around it and her mother close by.

Her massacre was the second in the city in two months.

Of the seventeen who died that day, seven were by-standers like Miss Jebeen and her mother (in their case, they were technically by-sitters). They had been watching from their balcony, Miss Jebeen, running a slight temperature, sitting on her mother’s lap, as thousands of mourners carried the body of Usman Abdullah, a popular university lecturer, through the streets of the city. He had been shot by what the authorities declared to be a “UG”—an unidentified gunman — even though his identity was an open secret. Although Usman Abdullah was a prominent ideologue in the struggle for Azadi, he had been threatened several times by the newly emerging hard-line faction of militants who had returned from across the Line of Control, fitted out with new weapons and harsh new ideas that he had publicly disagreed with. The assassination of Usman Abdullah was a declaration that the syncretism of Kashmir that he represented would not be tolerated. There was to be no more of that folksy, old-world stuff. No more worshipping of home-grown saints and seers at local shrines, the new militants declared, no more addle-headedness. There were to be no more sideshow saints and local God Men. There was only Allah, the one God. There was the Quran. There was Prophet Mohammed (Peace Be Upon Him). There was one way of praying, one interpretation of divine law and one definition of Azadi — which was this:

There was to be no debate about this. In future, all arguments would be settled with bullets. Shias were not Muslim. And women would have to learn to dress appropriately.

Women of course.

Of course women.

Some of this made ordinary people uncomfortable. They loved their shrines — Hazratbal in particular, which housed the Holy relic, the Moi-e-Muqaddas , a hair of Prophet Mohammed. Hundreds of thousands had wept on the streets when it went missing one winter in 1963. Hundreds of thousands rejoiced when it turned up a month later (and was certified as genuine by the concerned authority). But when the Strict Ones returned from their travels, they declared that worshipping local saints and enshrining hair were heresy.

The Strict Line plunged the Valley into a dilemma. People knew that the freedom they longed for would not come without a war, and they knew the Strict Ones were by far the better warriors. They had the best training, the better weapons and, as per divine regulation, the shorter trousers and the longer beards. They had more blessings and more money from the other side of the Line of Control. Their steely, unwavering faith disciplined them, simplified them, and equipped them to take on the might of the second-biggest army in the world. The militants who called themselves “secular” were less strict, more easy-going. More stylish, more flamboyant. They wrote poetry, flirted with the nurses and the roller-skaters, and patrolled the streets with their rifles slung carelessly on their shoulders. But they did not seem to have what it took to win a war.

People loved the Less Strict Ones, but they feared and respected the Strict Ones. In the battle of attrition that took place between the two, hundreds lost their lives. Eventually the Less Strict Ones declared a ceasefire, came overground and vowed to continue their struggle as Gandhians. The Strict Ones continued the fight and over the years were hunted down man by man. For each one that was killed, another took his place.

A few months after the murder of Usman Abdullah, his assassin (the well-known UG) was captured and killed by the army. His body was handed over to his family, pockmarked with bullet-holes and cigarette burns. The Graveyard Committee, after discussing the matter at length, decided that he was a martyr too and deserved to be buried in the Martyrs’ Graveyard. They buried him at the opposite end of the cemetery, hoping perhaps that keeping Usman Abdullah and his assassin as far apart as possible would prevent them from quarreling in the afterlife.

As the war went on, in the Valley the soft line gradually hardened and the hard line further hardened. Each line begot more lines and sub-lines. The Strict Ones begot even Stricter Ones. Ordinary people managed, quite miraculously, to indulge them all, support them all, subvert them all, and go on with their old, supposedly addle-headed ways. The reign of the Moi-e-Muqaddas continued unabated. And even as they drifted on the quickening currents of Strictness, ever-larger numbers of people continued to flock to the shrines to weep and unburden their broken hearts.

From the safety of their balcony, Miss Jebeen and her mother watched the funeral procession approach. Like the other women and children who were crowded into the wooden balconies of the old houses all the way down the street, Miss Jebeen and Arifa too had readied a bowl of fresh rose petals to shower on the body of Usman Abdullah as it passed below them. Miss Jebeen was bundled up against the cold in two sweaters and woolen mittens. On her head she wore a little white hijab made of wool. Thousands of people chanting Azadi! Azadi! funneled into the narrow lane. Miss Jebeen and her mother chanted it too. Although Miss Jebeen, always naughty, sometimes shouted Mataji! (Mother) instead of Azadi! — because the two words sounded the same, and because she knew that when she did that, her mother would look down at her and smile and kiss her.