COVER STORY
On How Corpses Resist in Kashmir Every struggle for freedom is beset by both poison and cure BY FARHAN MUJAHID CHAK
W
hat is it to die? Is it not contingent on how one lives? To either melt in His eternal warmth — that infinitely loving, tender embrace, or to wallow in the icy depths of unsightly darkness and frightening isolation. As for those who kill others unjustly, do they not forfeit their life? And what shall we make of the corpses of those murdered? Seize their breath if you will, but in death their everlasting words soothe us. Suffocate their voices in life, yet in death they shall indeed sing. You may have taken out their eyes, but it is you who are blind. So even as the ground adoringly welcomes their twisted, contorted bodies back, they are now dancing. And how does this reflect on you? The martyr’s death is a symbol of your end and the beginning of their reign. That is why corpses terrify you. You cannot even bear to look upon their bodies. Or is it that their faces seem wicked, since it is you who are unwanted?
Your covetousness, misery and unrequited obsession — all causes for cringeworthy lashing out. You desecrate their corpses and secretly bury them in unmarked graves without allowing the presence of their families or the performance of their final rites. As for the depraved weakling who throws acid in response to spurned desire, “If not me, then no one,” this cruel, unusual form of punishment is a reflection of you. Thus as the Indian government, led by the fascist Bharatiya Janata Party, revels in the monstrosity of snatching the bodies of innocent Kashmiris and burying them in forlorn graves, it is you and your ilk who are alone. Worse, know this: The unseen mourning leads to the riot you fear in the hearts of millions. This is how corpses resist. The dead have awoken the living. You may have spread poison in Kashmir, but you have also caused the cure. Truly, revolutions are fought in the heart; the battlefield is for the untrained warrior.
22 ISLAMIC HORIZONS MARCH/APRIL 2021
The disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir remains the longest unresolved conflict on the UN agenda. It is also the planet’s most militarized space. Even worse, this international conflict — certainly not bilateral, since it involves Kashmir, Pakistan, India and China — has the atrocious appellation of being a nuclear flashpoint. In illegally Indian-occupied Kashmir, Reuters reports that over the last 30 years alone the Indian occupation forces killed nearly 100,000 people. According to kashmircivitas.com, they have also raped/ molested 11,000+ women, dug over 6,500 unmarked graves and created over 90,000 orphans. And as if this were not enough, the Washington Post reported that thousands of political prisoners, including children, were being held without charge when, on Aug. 5, 2019, India unlawfully abrogated Article 370 and 35A of its own Constitution, with credible reports of their sexual abuse. Over 600 habeas corpus petitions are pending in
