One of the things that S. Murugesan had secretly enjoyed about being in Kashmir was that fair-skinned Kashmiris would often taunt Indian soldiers by mocking their dark skins and calling them “Chamar nasl” (Chamar breed). He was amused by the rage it provoked among those of his fellow soldiers who considered themselves upper caste and thought nothing of calling him a Chamar, which was what North Indians usually called all Dalits, regardless of which of the many Untouchable castes they belonged to. Kashmir was one of the few places in the world where a fair-skinned people had been ruled by a darker-skinned one. That inversion imbued appalling slurs with a kind of righteousness.
To commemorate S. Murugesan’s valor, the army contributed towards building a cement statue of Sepoy S. Murugesan, in his soldier’s uniform, with his rifle on his shoulder, at the entrance to the village. Every now and then his young widow would point it out to their baby, who was six months old when her father died. “Appa,” she’d say, waving at the statue. And the baby would smile, mimicking precisely her mother’s wave, a fold of babyfat spilling over her babywrist like a bracelet. “Appappappappappappappa,” she’d say, smiling.
Not everyone in the village was happy with the idea of having an Untouchable man’s statue put up at the entrance. Particularly not an Untouchable who carried a weapon. They felt it would give out the wrong message, give people ideas. Three weeks after the statue went up, the rifle on its shoulder went missing. Sepoy S. Murugesan’s family tried to file a complaint, but the police refused to register a case, saying that the rifle must have fallen off or simply disintegrated due to the use of substandard cement—a fairly common malpractice—and that nobody could be blamed. A month later the statue’s hands were cut off. Once again the police refused to register a case, although this time they sniggered knowingly and did not even bother to offer a reason. Two weeks after the amputation of its hands, the statue of Sepoy S. Murugesan was beheaded. There were a few days of tension. People from nearby villages who belonged to the same caste as S. Murugesan organized a protest. They began a relay hunger strike at the base of the statue. A local court said it would constitute a magisterial committee to look into the matter. In the meanwhile it ordered a status quo. The hunger strike was discontinued. The magisterial committee was never constituted.
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:
Azadi ka matlab kya?
La ilaha illallah
What does freedom mean?
There is no God but Allah
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.