Throughout history, the English have refrained from giving epithets to their monarchs. However, King John 1, described by historians at 5’5″ with a barrel-chest body and as an un-chivalrous cruel tyrant, had the dubious distinction of earning one– “Bad King John.”
His reign is portrayed by Shakespeare in “King John” as: “A sceptre snatched with an unruly hand, must be boisterously maintained as gained.”
Known for his military debacles, when John was defeated at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214, his frustrated barons stood up in rebellion. To appease them, dithering but besieged, John signed the famous Magna Carta Libertatum (Great Charter of Liberties); drastically limiting royal power. Magna Carta restated English Law. Its key clauses, 38 and 39, remain central to liberty and justice in British law to this day. The revulsion that John’s legacy evokes is summed up in chronicler Matthew Paris’s epitaph: “Foul, as it is, hell itself, is made fouler by the presence of John.” Ironically, Magna Carta’s liberty and justice emanated from Bad King John’s tyranny as did the enduring legend of Robin Hood, his arch antagonist. Farooq Abdullah recently said, “Indian government’s unilateral decisions are a total betrayal of trust that Kashmiris had reposed in India.”
One is betrayed by someone near or a trusted being; India, for Kashmiris, was never either of the two. Only, the ditched and discarded, Sheikh Abdullah and Mufti Sayeed’s clans and their ilk should feel betrayed. They sold their souls to Delhi by donning a power mantle drenched in the blood of millions of Kashmiris. Dr Agha Shahid Ali, a famed Kashmiri poet and professor, is called the chronicler of Kashmiri pain. His poem “Karbala: A History of the House of Sorrow,” said, “Death had turned…every day in Kashmir into some family’s Karbala.”
In “Farewell” he wrote, “I am being rowed through Paradise (Kashmir) on a river of Hell.”
India is a polyglot of Union Territories. Delhi’s arbitrary act to do away with whatever veneer of ‘independence’ Occupied Kashmir had is a ‘constitutional first’ towards a Hindutva ruled Akhand Baharat. The Delhi mantra of all is well in Kashmir lies bare with the continuation of the oppressive Kashmir curfew. Modi, delusional with the opiate that unbridled power is, committed a wanton act, a cardinal sin, in trying to Hindutvanise Kashmir; by doing so he has ensured the Kashmirisation of India.
India’s malicious intent was evident since decades as it whittled down Article 370. Article 248, giving Delhi power to interfere in Occupied Kashmir matters under the pretext of defending India’s sovereignty, Article 356 allowing the imposition of president’s rule and Article 357 empowering Indian parliament to grant power of Kashmir legislature to the Indian president were extended to Occupied Kashmir. In March 1965, the designations of Kashmir’s head of state and head of government were changed from ‘Sadar-i-Riyasat’ to ‘Governor’ and from ‘Prime Minister’ to ‘Chief Minister’.
All nations that gained freedom from colonial or any other form of tyrannical subjugation did so by rising against the occupiers
The Indira-Sheikh accord of 1975, a sellout of pure infamy, further transferred Occupied Kashmir’s special status powers to Delhi. These malicious acts enabled Delhi to unleash a reign of terror through its installed governors and puppet Chief Ministers. The tyrannical reign of Jagmohan in the 80/90’s led to him being known as “laash watul” -Kashmiri term for someone who lays down piles of corpses.
On a bitterly cold night of February 23, 1991, 300 soldiers of the 4th Rajputana Rifles cordoned off the Kunan-Poshpora villages in Kupwara district to conduct a ‘search operation’. Reeking of alcohol they entered houses; the gory aftermath of that single night saw the mutilated and raped bodies of 150 girls and women. This state-sponsored barbarism is documented in international reports and a book penned by five Kashmiri women titled, “Do You Remember Kunan Poshpora?”
It narrates heart-wrenching facts of how minor girls, the physically impaired and even pregnant women were not spared; mothers and daughters were raped in front of each other, grandmothers and their granddaughters were raped in the same room. Who would be heartless enough, sans a soul, not to rise against such an extremely demented, cruel and hateful occupier?
How can any individual let alone a nation or government dance to Delhi’s fiddle given this horrifying record of state-sponsored rapes and genocidal atrocities being perpetrated since decades in Occupied Kashmir?
All nations that gained freedom from colonial or any other form of tyrannical subjugation did so by rising against the occupiers. When Nelson Mandela and his ANC was banned in 1960, Mandela became head of ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation). Convicted of treason, he was sent to prison in 1964; it was till 2008 that he remained on the US terror watch list. The same Mandela was made a Nobel Peace laureate in 1993; in 1994 he was sworn in as the President of South Africa. Mandela “the terrorist” is revered globally as a symbol of resistance to subjugation and as an icon of peace and freedom.
In the “History of the English-Speaking Peoples,” Winston Churchill wrote, “When the long tally is added, it will be seen that the British nation and the English-speaking world owe far more to the vices of John than to the labours of virtuous sovereigns; for it was through the union of many forces against him that the most famous milestone of our rights and freedom was in fact set up.”
The occupied Kashmir remained bereft of virtues of the sovereigns; it is not part of the English speaking world (hence the heartless apathy) and has been the perpetual target of Delhi sponsored genocidal terrorism. However, it shall be the vices of Modi that become the harbinger of Kashmir’s freedom; this seal has been tempered in the blood of millions and the robbed chastity of thousands of Kashmiris.
The writer can be reached at miradnanaziz@gmail.com