Line that cuts

This week my neigbour suffered a bereavement. A painful moment in any human life, this death was unusual as it reflected our collective suffering. When the neigbours gathered in the house,  the strangeness of the incident was present in the atmosphere.

The brother who lost his sister could not attend the funeral, even could not see his ailing sister all the while she was diagoinised with a sinister diease. His sister lived at Muzaffarabad, and for this ‘crime’ the family must suffer. This judgement is passed on us by the lords of the nation-state, and till this lordship exists we are here to endure the punishment.

   

While we tried to console our neighbour, his phone rang up. It was her niece on the other side of the Line. A video chat between the two filled the air with an inexplicable sadness. The two were crying, tears rolling down. Those of us around stood in a state of numbness.

Who on earth has the right to raise a wall between siblings that can’t not be crossed over even in case of death. What an evil this thing called Nation-State has turned into. And what a cursed thing this idea of  impassable borders is. The tomes of academic critique on this modern structure of nation-states aside, that moment taught me how inhuman this construct is, and how crucial it is that it must go. The brother, just at a distance of 3 hours, must not suffer the pain of not meeting his ailing sister, not joinig the funeral, and not consoling his niece by his presence.

This is not the lone case in Kashmir. There are thousands of divided families who have gone through this pain. Parents away from their children, and siblings permanatly separated. We talk of Kashmir as something of a disputed sovereignity, a contested territoriality, and an international dispute.

Leave that aside for a moment. It’s a disaster, a ripping apart of human relationships. All those in the positions of power – international, regional, national, and local – who contributed, or are contributing to this disaster are criminals of the worst order. All of them, in this moment of despair our hearts cry, must burn in the depths of hell.

Only those who go through this pain, and to some extent who witness it closely, can understand what it means. Just some weeks back I happened to join another condolence meet at a distant relative’s house. His uncle had passed away.

The family on this side of the Line could only console by talking about the memories of the uncle when he, years before, visited Kashmir. All the while I was there, I could sense a kind of void. The person who was burried hundreds of miles away was being mourned here. It was a sort of suspended condolonce, representing full well the susopneded state of our fate. May God punish those who iflicted on us this state of suspension.

At a moment when the triumphalist brigades are talking ofwar, these intimate incidents highlight the futility – cruilty – of borders. Ifonly one could enlarge this picture of pain, and also of crime, and show it tothe people in India, and the the world at large. If only one could put to shameall those who propitiate the human relationships on the altar of nations,nationalisms, and a mad machismo.  

The politics of hatred, politics of suffocating an entirepopulation, politics of  never listeningto the other side, politics of vandalising all traces of civility in the realtionships among differentcommunities, and countries – this politics finally breeds despair. God aloneknows how many, how much, and for how long will suffer. What we know is thatborders must not, and cannot, be above human relationships. Those who have lived together thorughout history,those who are tied to each other by geography, by culture, by language, byemotions, must live together.

It is now a human struggle to fight against thismonster.  Like slavery, declare closureof borders as a sin against humanity. Those who invoke history, and historical empires, as marks of culturalsupremacy are spoiling the order and peace of this world. Peoples in thisregion have a long battle ahead. A new political conciousness, across borders,to fight against the evil impact of borders, is needed.   

My neigbour has a right to join the funeral of his sister. Ihave a right to go there and join him in the condolence. It is a God givenright, humans have no right to intervene.

May our sister’s soul rest in peace. May her family beblessed with patince, and lots of happiness to come. And may the time come soonwhen we all trample this line and meet our soulmates across.

Let’s pile all the passports, burn them, and spread theashes on the borders. Farewell to this evil called militarised nation-state.

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