What would have Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi done at this moment? Like he did in Calcutta, Noakhali and Bihar, Gandhi would have definitely gone to Pahalgam, embraced every family member of the victims and the survivors, wherever they were, and prayed with them. He would have insisted on reciting hymns from the Vedas and the Quran. He would have remained in Pahalgam, walked its slopes and streets, gone into every home and shop, and listened to what people had to say. He would have held their hands and helped them work through their dread and anxiety. The living need undivided healing, he would have said. Gandhi’s love was fearless and he did not care for social obligations. He considered societal designs impediments to realising humanity. It was this untruncated caring that moved many, including those who disagreed with him. It has been 77 years since his assassination and my mind still went looking for him in this moment of distress.
What Pahalgam went through was a ghastly terrorist act in which Hindu civilians, innocent tourists, were specifically targeted. We cannot forget the pony driver, a Muslim, who was killed while trying to save the victims. Ordinarily, I would not mention the religion of individuals killed in a terrorist attack. Every human being is precious, irrespective of his/her social category. Irrespective of whether the victim is a Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jew, Sikh, agnostic, or atheist, the taking away of a life should pierce our souls and lead to a feeling of helplessness, of not knowing what to do with ourselves. Even if the assailants make no bones about who they were specifically targeting, our sorrows should not be based on the socio-religious position of those who were murdered. We cannot place anguish on a weighing scale based on the identities of the victims and compare statistics after every violent incident. Even if it sounds trite, I will state it again. Terrorists have no religion. Their religion is terror. They may profess any religion, even invoke it. They have no right to do so. Whatever any State needs to do to tackle or respond to terror it must do. Civil society — we —
must do so as human beings who reject violence, ethnic venom, and bigotry.
But today, we are unable to begin this conversation without mentioning the victims’ religious identity. In doing so, we are either communicating affinity towards one group, pointing fingers at another set of people, or establishing an equilibrium. All three positions are consciously demonstrated. The other side of this compulsion is expectations. Every condemnation is evaluated. If the individual belongs to the same community as the victim, then the expression of sorrow is seen as enough. If the person practises the perpetrator’s faith, then the condemnation has to be of a certain order. Anything less leads to ostracisation of the individual. People are trapped in this tangle of how they group themselves and how others perceive them. Once this form of deliberate action seeps into our consciousness, grief becomes a veneer. It just hides our compartmentalised mind.
Grief is a powerful human experience, with the potential to transform us into truly creative beings. In the moment of grief, social addresses disappear and differences wither away. Grief brings people together in a manner that even joy seems to struggle to do. When we laugh together, there is that whiff of a possibility that the lines remain drawn and the demarcations are intact. We can also retreat from the moment of joy into our shell with great ease. But when we cry, we break down, hugging whoever is near, taking and offering comfort to each other. In this involuntary sharing, there is no judgement. Once we join in the collectivity of sorrow, it is very difficult to detach ourselves from its overwhelming emotional togetherness. No one can play-act this experience. Help is born from this union. It was with this sense of urgency that the locals in and around Pahalgam helped when terror struck. It is the same sensibility we witness when we hear people of the area speak of what this incident has done to them. There is agony in their voices and a sense of shame that this happened on their land. Unfortunately, the voices of those who witnessed or live around Pahalgam are disregarded.
Most of us who seem to have much to say on this subject, including myself, do not live in Kashmir; nor are we directly affected by the terrorist attack. Yet, the heart-wrenching stories that are emerging are traumatising. But what are we doing with that trauma? We must hold on to its universality, experience the loss of lives with everyone else, and struggle to accept the fact that people who until a few minutes before were taking in the beauty around them are gone because of the vileness of terror. Instead, we have forgotten the human beings and identified with and clung to groups and categories. We manifest anger and hate. When grief is infringed upon, we cannot drown in the sorrow of others, empathise without boundaries, and unconditionally partake in that moment of human vulnerability.
Belonging is also used in two ways. If someone is a Hindu, then the establishment of the victims as Hindu is considered necessary to share the pain. When religious identity is not mentioned, the expression of grief is considered half-hearted. The other accusation is that Hindus do not come together in caring for ‘our own’ like ‘others’. Therefore, a tragic event is used to build religious solidarity. Those who abhor the act have to also simultaneously chastise the Islamic faith and the community. If the perpetrator is not identified as Muslim, then the damnation is labelled as a fraud. Considering the fact that this is how we view ourselves and others, we have to wonder about the relationships we make with different people. There can be no truth to them when our associations are all navigated by classification. Where, then, do we find love?
I will leave you with a quote by the radical philosopher, J. Krishnamurti. In a different context, he had this to say about love: “Love is not thought, love is not remembrance… we (must) negate everything that is not love, jealousy, hate, violence, all the rest of it.”
T.M. Krishna is a leading Indian musician and a prominent public intellectual
