SIGNS OF THE TIMES

Humra Quraishi

So, the year is ending… ah yes, ending with violence and chaos and treachery spreading out. For years I haven’t really had the grit to ‘celebrate’ the ushering in of any of the new years and this year the pain has only compounded.  In Palestine in the last ten weeks (from October 7, 2023 till date) 20,000 human beings have been massacred and many more have been left homeless and without food and water and the very basics to survival. Genocide on. Ethnic cleansing is ongoing. Brutalities are peaking. Yet the politicians of the world don’t seem to cry halt to the barbaric killings of the helpless Palestinians. The very basic terms – ceasefire, truce talks, discussions and agreements and negotiations – stand redundant as Israeli forces continue targeted air strikes and onslaughts.

Here, in our country, democracy is getting dented and destroyed, slowly and steadily. The latest is the suspension of the MPs. A total of 97 Lok Sabha MPs and 46 Rajya Sabha MPs have been suspended since December 14, 2023, for the remainder of the session. And in this scenario – with 143 MPs suspended from the Parliament, the Lok Sabha passed three amended criminal bills – The Bharatiya Nyaya (Second) Sanhita, 2023, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha (Second) Sanhita, 2023 and the Bharatiya Sakshya (Second) Bill, 2023. These three new criminal code bills were passed by the Lok Sabha on Wednesday. Union home minister Amit Shah will move these three for consideration and passage in Rajya Sabha on Thursday.

Quite obviously the Opposition is aghast and furious at these latest developments. The Members of Parliament were suspended because they queried about the security breach and the relevant details to the investigation. Bizarre it may seem but the particular BJP MP on whose name the intruders could come right inside the Parliament hasn’t till date been suspended. After all, the visitor pass was issued in the name of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP from Mysuru, Pratap Simha. What if he wasn’t from the BJP, would he have been spared from rounds of interrogations and slurs and much more? What if he was from any of the disadvantaged communities? What if he was from any of the Opposition political parties?

“Bizarre it may seem but the BJP MP on whose name the intruders could come right inside the Parliament has not till date been suspended. After all, the visitor pass was issued in the name of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP from Mysuru, Pratap Simha.”

In fact, governing tactics seemingly getting worse by the day – blatantly communal and all out in the open. After those official and unofficial orders in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, on the sale and consumption of non-vegetarian food items from road side vendors, there was communal twist to halaal meat, and now news is coming in from Uttar Pradesh’s capital city Lucknow, focusing on Kashmiri dry fruit sellers assaulted with their wares thrown about and destroyed in targeted attacks on them. All out in the open! Their fault? Travelling miles, from the Kashmir Valley to Lucknow, to sell dry fruits.

It’s a known fact that Kashmiris travelling from the Kashmir Valley to the various cities and towns of the country, find the going tough. It gets tougher for them in these surcharged ruthless times. In my recently published book – ‘The Diary of Gull Mohammad: A Kashmiri Muslim boy’s Journey from Kashmir to Kerala’ (OUP), there’s focus on the tough times this Kashmiri teenager, 14-year old Gull Mohammad, goes through, as harsh ground realities stand out.

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Nah, for me nothing positive emerged all these twelve months of this year, save for one news report – the lives of the trapped miners in Uttarakhand’s Silkyara tunnel, saved and intact. These trapped miners were finally rescued. Nah, not by any of those high-tech strategies manned by the so-called experts but by a team of earnest and sincere rescuers – rat-hole miners!

These rescuers, including Waqeel Hasan, Munna Qureshi, Naseem Malik, Monu Kumar, Saurabh, Jatin Kumar, Ankur, Nasir Khan, Devendra, Firoz Qureshi, Rashid Ansari, and Irshad Ansari, worked tirelessly in four shifts of six hours each. They dug approximately 12 meters in just 26-27 hours, a task that would typically take 10-15 days under normal circumstances.

These rescuers should be declared national heroes. Yes, they should be honoured and soon.

Also, the very term ‘rat- hole miners’ ought to be changed to our hero-miners!

Researchers and writers ought to focus on the lives of the miners, whose work seems so very tough and risky. Unsung they live!

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ENDING this column, with this verse, of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.

Titled – Passport, translated from the Arabic to English, by A Z Foreman:

They did not recognize me in the shadows
That suck my color out of the passport.
To them, the wound in me was an exhibit
For tourists collecting photographs for sport.
They did not recognize me. No . . . don’t leave
My hand’s palm with no sun, for trees in bloom
Do recognize me. Every song
Of the rain recognizes me.
Don’t leave me pale like the moon!

All the birds that followed my palm
To the doors of the distant airport
All the wheat fields
All the prisons
All the white tombs
All the borders
All the waved handkerchiefs
All the eyes
Were with me,
But taken from my passport.

Stripped of my name and what I am?
On soil I worked with my own hands?
Today Job’s cry
Filled all the sky:
Don’t make another example of me!
Good prophets, my good sirs
Ask not the name of any tree.
Ask not the valley about its mother
From my brow bursts the sword of light
And from my hand springs the river’s water…
The people’s hearts are my identity.
Go, take my passport away from me.”

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