Kashmir was put under indefinite curfew on August 5, after Article 370 was scrapped. By whatever fictitious thread Kashmir had been tied to the union of India, it was cut loose. At midnight on August 5, mobile networks were snapped. The world will remember this as the first night of Kristallnacht . It has already been more than 40 days. No phone calls can be made to the residents. There is a total communication blackout.
A simulacrum of that coup occurred in Srinagar on August 5. It will have lethal repercussions. Kashmiris are counting days. They are hoping against hope. The siege has taken a toll on them. Although, miles away, they sense the dread hovering over their homes in Kashmir. The significant question: how will they fight this war? They have inherited the stone as a weapon of war from their ancestors. However, they have also inherited immense courage. Their legacy: fighting successive oppressions and foreign occupations. Because: ‘Unho ne gulshan ke tahaffuz ki qasm khaayi hai.’ They have honed their courage to the extent that, in the face of death, their people shout the loudest slogans of liberation. They will fight you with it. India Revokes Occupied Kashmir’s Special Status
The sad country has been held captive to an indefinite curfew. No news is reaching out to the outside world from the graveyards of Srinagar. The soldiers are stationed outside every house. Their houses are turned into jails. They have been sentenced to life. ‘But, even if their homes are prisons right now, it’s still their home that they will hold on to, until their death. Their home, where they will revolt, where they will die.’ 
The terror and violence that Indian Army has inflicted on the people of Kashmir, is brazen and an affront. They are not distinguishing between the sick and the dead. These are, indeed, difficult times. Kashmir has been held hostage to the wagering of history by fascists. The revolution is inevitable. Windows have been thrown open. They await it with their arms outstretched. Allah is on their side. They are waiting to bring the skies down on their oppressors. The moon and the sun, the night and the day, the rotation of planets, the twinkling of stars will witness the devastation of oppressors on Kashmir’s lands.
Enough. The heart is sinking into the shrieking of a sea. The calm has been rattled. Kashmiris are looking for a reason to grow out of the confines of the fear that has been instilled in their imagination. They miss freedom terribly. There’s a possibility. A beginning with no end. One must, after all, gamble a chance to respond to the cruelty of the coloniser. Fanon comes to my mind: ‘We revolt simply because, for many reasons, we can no longer breathe.’ It’s suffocating. The anger will erupt. The provocation warrants an answer. The people of the valley know it’s a war then. A bloody war.
In consequence: from the debris of Kashmir, a bird will emerge and flutter away. A blood thread will bind their souls to the primitive cherry tree in their courtyards at home. They will turn into a pile of ash. Kashmir will be born anew. The prisons will dissolve into the porcelain of night. They will fight the Pharaoh. They will go back and see his determined end. That’s how I see their future now.
Infamous torture centres are being built inside the Valley. They are near perfect replica of hell. There is only wilderness. Precisely how, on October 27, 1947, when India invaded Kashmir with colonial ambition using the temporary Instrument of Accession as a legitimizing alibi, on August 5, 2019 it has invaded Kashmir once again with neocolonial ambition, scrapping the same Instrument of Accession it had used 72 years ago to legitimize its presence in Kashmir. India has employed crude violence to force Kashmiris into submission then, India is again employing violence to subjugate Kashmiris now. The similarities are unmistakable.
Kashmiris are on their knees, they are bitterly hurt. They are collapsing. They are calling this tyranny as the funeral of formal humanism. This howling savagery is so blatant that it can bring down the skies on the oppressor. What more do they have to witness?
Looking at this blatant massacre of human rights, I can only recall the story of the infant martyr of Karbala, Ali Asghar. Minutes before his martyrdom, when Hussein picks up the infant in his arms, He asks: ‘Hal min nasiro yansorona?’ The only meaning I could render today: Is there anyone who will come to their aid?
