Rajiv Vora
Even in my most liberal dose of optimism, and for that matter anyone who knows Kashmir well, would not have imagined what I witnessed personally on the second October 2nd, 2022 by way of celebration of Gandhi Jayanti in Srinagar, Kashmir. Lieutenant Governor Shri Manoj Sinha invited me to be a special guest. Education Secretary Shri Alok Kumar insisted that I should come and “bless” the event! I went in spite of my sick wife who needs specially cooked food, fresh it must be at every time. She too insisted I go. I cooked for two days.
Firstly, it was a one-month-long celebration, not a one-day calendar ritual. Secondly, it was not loaded with ornamented hollow homilies to Gandhi Ji by the ‘dignitaries’; they spoke briefly with sincerity and sense. Thirdly, it didn’t have that artificial veneer that most Govt programs have. The Governor, the Chief Secretary Shri Arun Kumar, the Chief Advisor Shri Rajeev Ranjan Bharadwaj, Education Secretary Shri Alok Kumar, although all of them non-Kashmiri, and the teachers and students made one community that gelled well because none of these high officials had the air of officialdom.
There were fewer words and more deeds, not lacking in enthusiasm and sincerity, officials only facilitated. For one full month, more than a thousand schools, several thousand teachers; and thousands of children – twenty, fifty, hundred, or more per school – directly participated in activities on a daily basis, with full knowledge of their parents and family. Thousands of families through their children became participants in the celebration of Gandhiji’s message and life. What further struck me were things from Gandhiji they grasped as evident in the on-the-stage- presentations on 2nd October.
These one-month-long activities included: painting, slogan writing, essay writing, skits, quiz, songs, poems, ‘pad-yatra’ ( foot march /processions), covering subjects like the message of nonviolence, equality of and respect for all religions, how to resolve conflicts, freedom struggle, the importance of Swadeshi, self-reliance and traditional village and a cottage industry of Jammu and Kashmir; and of course life of Mahatma Gandhi. During these days students took out marches in their towns and villages, a boy with loincloth and glasses acting as Gandhiji, others with banners and placards displaying slogans coined by them and messages dear to Gandhiji and to any peace and harmony-loving people. Three weeks of activities and preparations saw district and divisional-level competition in the fourth week.
A “Shanti- Yaatraa” Peace March involving students and teachers covering all the twenty districts of Jammu-Kashmir converged at Teachers’ Bhavan in Srinagar, Rightly so, because it was all upon the teachers to motivate the students rather than pressurize them into doing a “ project” handed over from the top. On the 2nd of October, about a thousand teachers and students with the best performances presented their items in a grand function with full joy and enthusiasm, spontaneously clapping repeatedly, attended by the L Governor Manoj Sinha as the Chief Guest and top officials of the JK govt and Education department. Dr. Gautam Desi Raju (grandson of Dr. S Radhakrishna) and I were special guests.
Presentations of the best from all schools started with a theatrical life story of Gandhiji by girls and boys “Suno Suno aye Duniyaa valon Bapu ki yah Amar Kahani” which included all major episodes of life right from his birth. Similarly, on Indian freedom struggle; a symbolical story of a land dispute between two brothers; then, how various religious zealots are trying to impose their religious practices on an innocent man; how nonviolence works when there are differences of beliefs and opinion; the message of Swadeshi; what is happening to traditional crafts and industry at the peril of peoples’ health, environment and happiness: shown were “ghani’ traditional oil-press, textile, handicrafts that fulfill basic needs, etc.
In two hours all central themes of Gandhiji’s idea of national resurgence on the basis of nonviolence, communal harmony, equality of all religions, Swadeshi, and self-reliance were well covered in a theatrical manner! It was Hind Swaraj simplified in a way the young can understand well, and relate well.
They exemplified that Gandhi spoke the moral voice of a man. Boys and girls beautifully sang Iqbal’s “Sare Jahan se Acchha” and “Vaishanav jan to tene re kahiye.”
When the LG distributed awards one could see he related personally with many. Throughout the event, the atmosphere was very relaxed rather than heavy with his presence. I did not smell a sense of “Gubernatorial “distance and formality.
Even if the teachers and volunteers arranged awards while the awards presentation, mixed up names, LG “scolded” them in a very endearing manner. It was all very graceful and effortlessly finely balanced between the formal and the informal.
As the Governor came on the stage, he, before I could notice, came straight in the front of my chair and with folded hands very respectfully and warmly greeted me before taking his seat. I mention this only to underline his graceful informality and simplicity, which were so obvious throughout. Friends told me that such a nature of him had won him respect and recognition among the people.
Never has Gandhi Jayanti been celebrated like this, that too among people believed to be hostile toward Gandhiji. It is not a mean achievement to have broken this iron-cast image and a taboo. Maybe people wanted to open up, but so far no one thought radically differently and gauged people’s inner need to overcome the burden of a suffocated common urge for peace, goodwill, and brotherhood which still remains under the threat of a marginalized minority misconstrued as representative of popular sentiment.
Such an image of a common Kashmiri has been used as a double-edged weapon in Kashmiri politics. Contrary to the wishes of certain Kashmiri politicians, and contrary to this image, not a single stone was thrown on flying of the Tricolor in Lalchowk. I do not want to suggest that everything is hunky-dory, but that is no reason for denying the fact of a radical positive shift. Even those “non-Islamist” Muslims who do not like BJP have a word of praise for Shri Manoj Sinha and his team.
Thousands of children, and youth, getting voluntarily involved for a full month in celebrating values Gandhiji stood for, the values all ordinary Kashmiri and all of us stand for, plants the seeds of the fruits Kashmir has been historically, culturally spiritually known for, the seeds no other “Gandhian” “secular” political party while in the rule, busy painting Gandhi’s falsified anti-Hindu image, ever even thought for trying to plant.
Politics apart, this powerful and honest way of making the younger generation and through them, the rest aware of this scale of Gandhian vision is worth emulating all over the nation. Let it be a great gift of Jammu & Kashmir to the rest of the nation. A small, tightly edited video of this entire one-month-long program, with commentary should go to all schools all over India.
Let Indian children and teachers, and the Ministry of Education celebrate this remarkable contribution to the ways of popularizing Gandhiji’s teachings, our essential culture. People will identify with it, and see their own image in it. The image of Kashmiri people created by the media and politics will undergo a radically positive and most required change. We owe it to Kashmir, these teachers and children who have made us proud through their actions.
As Gandhiji said, an ounce of action is heavier than mounds of words.
The writer Rajiv Vora is the chairman of Swaraj Peeth Trust- A Gandhian Center for Nonviolence. He has been part of the Gandhian movement for more than four decades. He is a frequent visitor to Kashmir and got associated a large number of youth with the message and readings of Mahatma Gandhi.
This article is also available in Urdu language, translated and published by Daily Srinagar e Jang on its 30th Oct 2022 issue edit page. Click here to read the article.
