After more than 50 days of communication clamp down and continued curfew in the Kashmir valley, some students at St. Stephen’s College have started writing to the Prime Minister about their concerns on the condition of people in the Kashmir valley. The material they are using is post card: those yellow, 50 paisa cards that are largely, if not entirely, out of use with Generation Z. This project of writing to the PM, apparently on for a couple of weeks in small student cricles has had the participation of 73 students so far, and the students staged their first event when the student letter-writers stood around the college cafe tree, a major student hang out zone, and then walked around the college campus wearing black clothes, tying a red ribbon around their arms, with these post card appeals for the PM pinned on their body day before.
The use of post cards is relevant in two ways: post cards make no secret of the content. Though post cards are private as per the postal etiquette of blessed memory, they are open to reading by a number of people, curiously communicating with unknown ones, on its way to the addressee. Secondly, with mobile phones and cell phones getting blocked, writing -passing chits or even letters passed around through people- is back in the Valley, as per a BBC report. That way these letters do bring out a condition.
The students cite emotional as well as ethical reasons why they took to writing: they are writing both as concerned citizens of the country and as friends/classmates/collegemates. Many of them have Kashmiri friends and they say it is disheartening for them to see their friends not being able to connect with parents for days on end or seeing them worried without proper communication mechanism.
One of the cards exhibited read:
“Dear Mr. P.M. ,
I have classmates who belong to Kashmir. Seeing their faces just makes me feel bad about the present condition. Sir, Kashmiris are also people and the citizens of the country, I cannot imagine how enraged I would feel if someone did that to me. Think of it, sir. What if you didn’t know whether your parents are alive or dead…And sir, it has been more than a month since the abrogation of 370. We are sure you can find other ways to safeguard the security of our country. Please uplift the communication ban, sir, we implore you!”
Another student narrates an incident in pointing out the trauma of the situation:
“A week ago, I was out with my friends at night and I couldn’t call my parents because my phone battery died and I was apprehensive to ask a stranger in the metro to lend their phone. My parents got really worried as they couldn’t reach me for an entire one hour metro ride. I came back home and I could really see how worried they were and they were relieved and happy to see me alive. I have Kashmiri friends in college who haven’t spoken to their family and relatives back in Kashmir for about two months now. They are worried about each other, they need to know how they are doing and how their family is. If my parents got worried without being able to connect with me for an hour, think about people who haven’t talked to each other in 53 days. I seriously urge you to lift the communications ban imposed in Kashmir. I hope you reconsider this. Thank you.”
Another student connects two communication failures:
“Hon. Prime Minister of India, Chandrayan II didn’t reach the moon. Nor did my friend’s Eid wishes to her mom back home. A humble request to let the free flow of communication resume in the valley”.
There is a card that is just one line:
“Respected Prime Minister,
Let them speak. The silence is too loud to not be heard. “
Some of the students consider the communication blockade and shut down as unethical, as per their understanding of the foundational principals of Political Science and from their school text book narrations:
“Respected Prime Minister,
The concept of a state emerges from the people and for the people. Thus, they have to be the prime facie of concern and not undermined for any other secondary reason. Kindly uplift the communication ban.”
“As a part of our syllabus in 10th grade, we studied the book Chandragupta Vikramaditya. I remember this excerpt from the novel wherein Chandragupta, the king talks about Kashmir as the head of the nation and how the spirit of the great nation reverberates from the head, from the land of Kashmir. Putting that in this context brings extreme sorrow to my heart. The monumental decision about the valley was taken by keeping the people of Kashmir in the dark and their political representatives under arrest. The shadows of this darkness loom over the entire country today and I am writing this to you, as a concerned citizen, in the form of a fierce request to lift the communication band and free the voices of our fellow Indians.”
While some of the students are ambivalent about the abrogation of 370, some support the move as needed but all of them think curbing the fundamental human rights of the fellow citizens is ethically wrong and must be ended. Some of the cards on display showed how sorry they were for the plight of things where millions have terrible constraints on conducting their everyday life. Some of the post cards written by Kashmiri students talk of the anxiety and sadness they have to go through on a daily basis. All of them were not just about empathy and compassion but also about how the Government has to make things better for and remain accountable to the citizens of the Republic.
As in the proper punk legacy, they used the campus space as their stage and their body as the property in their “exhibition of post cards” and walk to put out this performance of reminding about and announcing solidarity with fellow citizens, friends and fellow human beings!
When I see any such step from the students of St. Stephen’s College, I am reminded of the the ethical urge of C F Andrews in aligning with the people who are suffering, whoever and wherever they are and in voicing what he found to be the ethical position. It is good to see that spirit glowing in such steps!
(In this note and the photos, I have removed both faces and names of students for the ethical reason that I haven’t asked them for permission before writing this Written upon an encounter with an improvised student collective of empathy, compassion and understanding- may be my generation is bound to learn from college and school students about a lot of things, not just climate issues!)
