Not so long ago there was a feeling that China’s oppression on Tibet is not a fair one. Now, I find us here. Rejoicing China’s coming of age and taking the retribution to the developed countries with developing brigade like ours are happy about her painstaking walk over. Suddenly, everything seems to be rosy, eye lit, comprehensive; Tibetians, for that matter, forgotten at once.
Three months back, the scenario in India was different. And world over. Pictures of protest marking Tibet’s resurgence to take on the big brother head on came in the open. I remember the call of a Buddhist lama at the McLeodganj’s nerve centre. He was polite, calm yet with a certain degree of anguish that was demanding a vent. He (and me, and thousands more) had just completed a joint prayer for peace at the very political base of the exiled Tibet Government in India. He started pointing towards a series of photographs (kept on display at one of the small rooms within the Monastery) of the crimes committed on the innocent peace loving civilians in Lhasa and further in Tibet by the Chinese headship. These photographs are sent here and elsewhere, whosoever has taken to give a dimension of what Tibet nationals wants world to know i.e. that is what they are suffering from but peacefully, he said.
The lama, in his unique calm, explained the conscience one should stick to in adversity. What is this conscience? He said: nothing but the one that offers peace to self and showers happiness on others. The conversation stretched over to many other aspects where he talked about the true essence of Buddhism whereby one should not return the hatred on the same platter. Return nothing but sweetness.
While coming out of the monastery, a bunch of friends as a group walked through a narrow lane of McLeodganj. What we witnessed was something we never expected to. A tall Indian guy on a bike showering adjectives from his illicit vocabulary on a passing by lama who for sure didn’t do anything but had a slight hesitation on selecting his track that confused the biker. Playing oblivion to the filth, the monk passed by and carried on with his journey. His silence taught me a lot what words would never have been able to.
While the other day Musharraf quoted: "Kashmir is in our (Pakistan) blood". Why this bloodbath then? You have been responsible for many. We know it and so do you. The ongoing crisis in J&K is something none is happy about. News reports attribute it to ISI and then, there is anger within the Kashmir brigade. A popular face in the J&K politics, while reasoning military action necessary to stop civilian conflict justified, displays his anger through expressions because he is on air, visually. What his anguish tells many who are suffering and directly affected by the political clampdown? How people are going to read that anger on his face as? He could have been calm to explain his reasoning is the only request one could ask for.
The residents (that’s the word I use) are placed vis-à-vis rest of the country and the divide in between yawns further and further. Where to settle this unrest? Answers are hard to come by as political voices carrying on creating the theorems of winning Jammu & Kashmir. Our very conscience to find an answer is lost. Hopefully, we will regain it as has been, time and again, since centuries. Still, there is hope as I read the lines of Rabindranath Tagore:
Where the mind is without fear
and the head is held high…
I hope, we will all have a reason tomorrow to celebrate our 61st year of being an independent nation that always finds itself in a dichotomy to overcome.
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