The fundamentals of decency were violated. To restore them is a pipe-dream now. We are off human color. Along these rephrased words a well-known columnist of a prestigious newspaper Greater Kashmir Ajaz-ul-Haque in his Sunday column (Write Hand – The common ground of decency September 22) laments the indecency of the religious occasion (including Muharram processions) which, according to him, had created a law and order situation. He decries over it and calls it undignified. Rather than mourning on the real murderers of decency, he was anguished over the attitude of people who were out to just commemorate Karbala Martyrs. Instead of condemning an ‘unjustified ban on Religious gatherings’, the esteemed columnist senses the looming threat to the moral code of decency from our expression of the fundamental right to religion. That depicts his sheer ignorance about this particular community and its entitlements. Pertinently, in the columnist’s self-constructed ‘we’, he implicitly target a particular sect. That is very unfortunate.
Decency has gone to the winds. Inarguably, Political indecency is the reason. However, the columnist seems concerned about the principle (decency). When he writes with whimsical courtesy ‘our public breaks law to observe a ritual’—wantonly disregarding the actual situation on the ground— it is to come by an undemocratic code ( ban on Muharram processions) at the writer’s behest. There wasn’t any stone-pelting incident reported during these Muharram processions in Srinagar, or any other untoward situation created by mourners censured as indecent. Don’t know within which parameters the columnist assess the decency. Does the moral code (of decency) reflect by being a dictator’s henchman? Or does it appear in our confession of State ruthlessness as submissive victims?
In a philosophical plane, decency has no contours. And particularly for a Shia, the martyrdom of Imam Hussain (AS) is an uprising that can’t be performed in claustrophobic confines but openly at roadways. You call it ‘indecency’ but we name it spreading the revolutionary message of Karbala. History bears witness that message of revolution was never performed at close doors but openly like a Camus’s Rebel.
When all is said and done, the columnist’s made-up story highlights the sectarian element in an expression of the belief. Several reasonable grounds of Unity are accessible from Central, North to South Kashmir where both sects of Muslim community set the best example of unity in commemoration of Muharram. Despite an extensive coverage of this progressive element of brotherhood on the religious occasion and beyond, your forged account whiffs of that sectarian divisiveness! For god’s sake, stop it.
(The writer is from Paller , Budgam)
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