“The old man I spoke with briefly, yesterday, told me (quoting him verbatim).
” We’re paying for not standing with our brothers in Kashmir. We realized very late that it was in fact a war waged against our faith. Babri did not wake us up, Gujarat did not either. We have been savoring Korma, Briyani throughout our lives totally indifferent to what lay ahead of us. We did not believe Kashmiris when they said these people will come after you. We should have seen it coming. There’s immense regret at not having believed them. How do we look them in the eye ever again? They stand vindicated. Yes. I went to the university (jamia) meaning to ask students to join the protest and one of the boys remarked how when they (Kashmiris) were fighting/protesting against these vile designs of Indian state, Indian muslims chose to look either way. It stung, it was bitter truth. To your shoe, here i offer my head. I pleaded with that boy. He said, you stood against evil now…we have been fighting the evil since long. The truth is: yes, we chose to remain in ignorance and it has only brought us more suffering. I was in Babri when they demolished the mosque. Those who escaped unhurt, like I did, have been on the run since.. the state of our lives. We are stateless, in our mind. We don’t belong anywhere. The ghettos we like to call our home and us who live here, have always remained at the mercy of these barbarians. These ghettos feel like temporary shelters and us, despite the fact that we were born here, have felt like refugees all along. ”
bro Omair Bhat
–Kashmiri Mubashir Naik