The current situation of India reminds one of the following lines by Pablo Neruda: “Meeting in a populated forest/ the damp beats of darkness and drums/ I suddenly hear you call/ I touch the dense heavy branches from a distance/ And taste my blood in your kiss.”
Is Kashmir really ours? The pain BJP leaders went through in their quest to hoist the national flag at Lal Chowk in Srinagar tells a different story. It is about Omar’s Kashmir, of Pakistan’s intentions for Kashmir, and Arun Jaitley is close to R P Singh and can show his back to us, that has the marks and wounds of boots, kicks and beaten by sticks. But what can Delhi’s BJP President Shibba Rai do, who has constraints because she is a woman. She can’t reveal the wounds Jammu and Kashmir police has given her. R P has hoisted the tricolour at Lal Chowk in 2008, too, and so was given the responsibility of forming a team of central leaders. Small teams of three-four party members started from all parts of the country towards Lal Chowk to hoist the national flag. There was police at every corner and the sunset was at about half-past four and the flag had to be hoisted before that. But at 7.30 in the mornings itself, one of the party members was arrested from Broadway Hotel so the police was alert and so was the team. Seeing things gone awry, the BJP leaders decided that even if they can’t reach Lal Chowk, they will hoist the flag in front of Yasin Malik’s house. But they couldn’t find his house! One of their teams had gotten very close to Lal Chowk when one of the TV reporters told the police about it. And then started the arrests, followed by torture. In five hours, Omar’s police crossed all limits of cruelty. When Jaitley, who was under house arrest, found out about it, he called up Omar and spoke to him in stern words, and only then did the BJP people manage to get away from the police. Like R P Singh put it, he felt like he was in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat Jail. The Kashmiris should first talk about independence of the soul.