Author: Sajad Gani Lone
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: May 26, 2002
My father and I were sitting in
his office that Tuesday morning. He had just returned from an overseas
tour. I was both pleased and surprised to see him in an extremely pleasant
mood.
There were some distinct changes.
His complexion had brightened and every query from my side was replied
with a smile. There was something different. He was too cheerful and resembled
a naughty boy. Perhaps his soul was content that it was on the right path
and his principles were not mortgaged.
I left for my office around 1 pm
and went in to say goodbye. He asked me whether I had any money on me and
asked me to give him Rs 3,500. Again, an unusual request. I handed over
the money to him and left.
Around 7 pm, I was informed that
my father was injured in an attack on him at the Idgah ground. I rushed
home and on entering found two bodies, covered from head to toe, lying
in our garden. I removed the cover from the face of the first body and
it turned out to be the the body of his security guard. The second was
that of my father.
I removed the cover from his face
and then it hit me. My father, aged seventy years, lying still, his body
riddled with bullets. I could not even afford the luxury of being stunned
for a moment and drowning myself in grief I heard my mother wailing, my
nine-year old niece Maria crying, "Who killed my Dadu? Why did they kill
Dadu?" These noises will probably ring in my ears for the rest of my life.
Maria has a question, so do I, so
do the thousands of people who visited our residence for condolences, so
do the thousands of people who lined along the streets to pay homage and
so do the lakhs of people who shut down their businesses for three days
as a mark of homage and protest. We all want to ask. Why was Gani Lone
killed? Who killed him? Who benefited? Who lost? Easier said than done.
Do we have the answers to these questions? Probably not.
The key to the Kashmir issue lies
in sincerely answering these questions. These questions will always remain
unanswered. Did my father make the mistake of trying to answer similar
questions? Will everybody attempting to answer such questions meet the
same fate?
My father came from an extremely
poor family and had to endure extreme hardship in order to study. He was
a self-made man and had risen the hard way. Hardship faced by him during
his youth had made him extremely courageous and rebellious. As a child,
I remember him always going against the stream. We always wondered why
he put himself under so much stress? Why couldn't he take life a bit easy?
I got the answer not from my father
but alas after he was gone never to come back. The stream of mourners who
came to pay homage from the most remote areas gave me the answer. Asi ha
rou aazi bub (We have lost our father today)," they cried. He was not just
my father. He owed his life and stature to these people, who had no blood
relations with him. The scale of grief engulfing these people was a clear
indicator that they had come to mourn their leader and not just a politician.
He was a political warrior. His
forthright views often made him a loner. But he was a fighter and fight
he did-right till the end. He was aware of the risks involved in speaking
so boldly. He was interested in the broader benefits of Kashmiris and not
the personal cost.
In the present context of Kashmiri
politics, he stood for a dynamic approach. A strategy based on realistic
thinking and in tune with the world order. He feared that the ever-rising
costs borne by the Kashmiris in terms of death and destruction were too
high and felt that a constructive shift in the strategy would decrease
the costs, without diluting the original objective.
Right till his last moments, peace
with dignity was the aim of his political struggle. Enemies of peace martyred
him. These enemies of peace have a vested interest in the continuation
of the Kashmir problem. They may have succeeded in killing him, but his
voice has become even louder.
His cherished desire that authentic
Kashmiri voices should prevail will one day become a reality. The cacophony
of illegitimate, rented voices is a cruel but transient phase. The agony
of the Kashmiris cannot be prolonged. We have to learn from Lone's martyrdom.
