The state the nation is not healthy, for the nation’s stateshave contracted an unnamed viral fever going strong. Symptom: cold-shoulderingsing-song voices of reason/freedom, spasms of cough but no syrup against thestrong arms of the radical/fanatic, and mind-numbing lethargy to act.
This could well be the diagnosis if the nation was a humanspecimen and went to a doctor for a health check-up.
And the viral sure is spreading. While it never was off air,it just seems to fell more and more states in its net. So if West Bengal doesnothing to stop arrest of people for some good-humour lampooning the chiefminister, Maharashtra stops and stares as hoodlums swearing allegiance to azealous political leader threaten some girls for daring to question theshutdown of Mumbai following the leader’s death; if Andhra Pradesh sits likeSwami Vivekananda, arms locked against the chest, as a legislator spews venomin the name of a religion, then Tamil Nadu does even little asover-enthusiastic people, again in the name of religion, force anabout-to-be-released film to be shelved for a fortnight.
Jammu and Kashmir appears to be the latest victim to fallprey to that viral, as a band formed by three class ten girls is forced to callit quits ” threatened and scared by the fringe radicals, their musical dreamsmashed to pulp and free spirit pulverised by the foot soldiers of unreason.Amid all this, the state’s chief minister, Omar Abdullah, plays the modern-dayNero, fiddling with his phone to flirt with and flare on Twitter as home burnt.
Well, almost. As of Tuesday, the band Pragaash (meaning ” atyour service, Irony ” ‘light’) is safe and sound following Abdullah’s voice ofsupport. An FIR was filed against “unnamed people” who threatenedvocalist-guitarist Noma Nazir, drummer Farah Deeba and guitarist Aneeka Khalidon their Facebook page. Threatened with social boycott, their families wouldmuch rather have nothing to do with music or the media, lest the notes of disconnectgo off-key and fly off the handle.
The girls are safe not because Omar Abdullah, among manyother political leaders who rush to extend “unflinching support” to victims atsuch times, urged them not to quit singing because of a “bunch of morons”. Theyare purportedly safe because they have done the exact opposite: they havedisbanded the band.
They are safe because they have followed the diktats ofBashiruddin Ahmad, the state’s grand mufti, who on Sunday issued a fatwaagainst the band. “I have said that singing is not in accordance with Islamicteachings,” he told PTI.
They are also safe because they went underground soon afterreceiving threats of ‘social boycott’ from Dukhataarn-e-Millat (meaning‘daughters of the nation’; in effect, daughters of the nation against manyother daughters of the nation who deviates from their thought mafia decrees).
They are equally safe because Asiya Andrabi, the leader ofthe radical women’s outfit, on Tuesday backed the grand mufti’s fatwa, therebymaking the teens doubly safe. “There is no place for music in Islam. Womencan't be seen singing and dancing. The fatwa issued is right,” she said.
The girls are safe because the FIR (ironically lodged underthe same Section 66A of IT Act that lulled West Bengal and Maharashtra intofeverish inaction) filed by the police does not name anyone ” neither those whoordered them to stop singing nor those who threatened them to fall in line ”and would thus become a non-issue faster than Noma, Farah and Aneeka checktheir notes and change tune. Because that ” changing the tune, and eventually‘falling in line’ ” they would surely do soon. For their own safety, becausethey have no one else to fall back on.
As a relative of the girls were quoted in a report in TheHindu on Tuesday, “We have seized their cellphones and laptops. Their band hasbeen shut….. Nobody is safe here. The chief minister’s tweets and the policecan’t protect us. We don’t want to get caught in politics.”
That’s called talking about the daze of the nation in hushedtones ” in hash-tag days.
In association with Governance Now
