Time for Kashmir to show resilience once again

Arun Joshi

The privacy of everyone is to be respected all the time. Time, however, has changed. It is in the fitness of things for all individuals to come out of their closet of privacy and self-declare where they had been in the recent weeks. This would help the administration in a big way to counter the fast-spreading curse of coronavirus. There is no other option if the larger community interest is to be served.

It is now a fact that all those hiding their travel history of the recent weeks can pose a potential threat to society. The secrecy about the places they visited is not their fundamental right any more in the time of the epidemic. Yes, there has been an extraordinary delay in recognising the devastation that Covid-19 can unleash. There are failures that have no precedents. The most important phrase, “Stitch in time, saves nine,” was completely disregarded. The country is paying a very heavy price for that. J&K is among the worst-suffering places in this conflict between the coronavirus and the mankind. The numbers have spiked and there is no certainty that these would be halted anytime soon. The numbers are terrifying. The UT of J&K has already recorded 38 cases and two deaths. This is alarming. It can become more alarming if the right to privacy is not shunned at the moment by those who know that they are a big risk factor for the community.

It is not a theory. It is a real-time story. Eleven persons in J&K have tested positive who came in contact with a preacher who had visited many places, but landed at the Srinagar airport without being subjected to the mandatory screening. Whether his influence as a preacher and the religious sect that he represented or the sheer negligence of the people involved with screening made him escape the process is a matter of investigation, but what is clear is that the man behaved in the most unfortunate manner and has left more people battling between life and death.

If this is any guide, J&K is due for a period of earth-shattering change. It is very difficult to change habits here – history has intertwined the communities. Kashmir’s maximum neighbourhood is made of clusters. The community feeling is of the highest order. It has deepened and strengthened over the past three decades.

Since early 1990, governed by its political nationalism and religious affinity, it generated a new sense of oneness. They have stood united every time they faced a challenge. Whether it was the natural disaster in October 2005 when a massive quake jolted it, or the worst-ever floods in Kashmir’s history in 2014, the Kashmiris stood as a united community.

They took on massive rocks and waded through the whirlpools of dangerous floods to save each other. The situation of violence and counter-terrorism operations also bonded them with each other in an extraordinary way. They are believing in the same old theories of yesteryear.

Times have changed. Their strength may turn out to be their biggest weakness now. The social distancing is an altogether new phrase in their dictionary. It is not easily acceptable to them. They believe that their community strength would sail them through these horrible times. They believe in their own strength to bounce back.

Now, it is time that, we all, including the cluster-loving community, develop new strengths in social distancing, and avoid what they thought was obligated upon them by society and other factors. There is a need to fill the time with work, and that work is to talk to each other through windows and balconies. Kashmiris know this art as well, when they have communicated through the lane-wide distances in the times of distress. It is a bigger distress which they can fight with their social distancing, maintaining their emotional bonds through windows rather than assembling on streets.

Saving Kashmir is of utmost importance. It is the time for it to become a ray of hope for the rest of the country.