{"id":4076,"date":"2019-03-03T23:36:45","date_gmt":"2019-03-03T18:06:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/?p=4076"},"modified":"2019-03-05T19:32:57","modified_gmt":"2019-03-05T14:02:57","slug":"nostalgia-prison-tales-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/point-of-view\/kashmir-talk\/nostalgia-prison-tales-iii\/","title":{"rendered":"Nostalgia : Prison Tales III"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/fb:like>\n

Nostalgia<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prison Stories III <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In A Different School <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

ZGM <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the din of war cries, with eyes glued to\nthe television screen couple of lines from\nthe book \u2018Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sundance\u2019\nstarted echoing in my ears:  \u201cI don\u2019t\nknow how to save the world. I don\u2019t have the answers or The Answer. I hold no\nsecret knowledge as to how to fix the mistakes of generations past and present.\nI only know that without compassion and respect for all of Earth\u2019s inhabitants,\nnone of us will survive\u2014nor will we deserve to.\u201d The lines from the book of Native American Rights Activists Leonard\nPeltier, \u2018wrongfully\u2019 serving life for past forty-one\nyears took me down the memory lane to August- September 1965, when   shadows of war loomed large on the region,\nmoreover made me remember one of my classmates Ghulam Hassan Wani, later a Professor\nin Botany- he died of cardiac arrest while offering prayers in 2018. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Ghulam Hassan Wani<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It was our first year in college. These were the times when students in larger\nnumber partook in demonstrations, in August and September these protests\ngraduated into full-fledged student movement comparable to 1968 student unrest\nof France led by Cohen Bendit. Like a couple of other friends, in\nPre-University (Class 11)  Hassan like me\nnever led a demonstration, rarely joined a protest rally and mostly chose to\nwalk away from the rallies return home. He was  \nstudious, spent a lot of time at his desk to make it to the medical\ncollege- that I think was the dream of our entire class. One day on the way to\nhis home unmindful of happenings around,  \na police party chasing some students picked him up and bundled him into\nDodge Bus. The police buses with mesh-windows, painted blue with a thick red\nline in the middle was nicknamed \u2018gaggar-tch\u2019al\u2019 (rat trap)- in fact, people\ncalled this bus by this name only. He was detained in Sub-Jail, Kothi-Bagh, Srinagar,\nfor no crime, he had not even picked a pebble. \nThat he had not torn even a paper nor broken a brick,  like Peltier, he gave testimony after testimony,\n\u2018I swear to you, I am guilty only of being a Kashmiri- a Kashmiri\nstudent.\u2019 Nonetheless, knocking almost at every door of authority and power, it\ntook his friends and family over seven months\nto see him out of the high walls- that too after his innocence was testified by\na neighbour intelligence officer. My classmate was not the only one who had to\nsuffer incarceration, and lose some months of studies for no fault of his; those days such examples were galore. In Bundpore area police had to pick up\none Ghulam Mohammad Lone from a particular village, but they arrested a different man of the same name from a different hamlet, the poor guy despite all his testaments\nabout his having no connection with politics, suffered more than a year\ndetention under Preventive Detention Act (PDA), it was only after the\ngovernment decided to release all political prisoners, also was set free. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our buddy, after his release from prison every now an then turned nostalgic\nabout his days in the Sub-Jail, Kothi Bagh and often talked about the inmates\nand incarcerated  senior leaders. The man\nhe often mentioned  about and had a word of praise for was the \u201cmess-commander\u201d, one of the senior\nresistance leaders Ghulam Hassan Inqalabi, from Islamabad, Anantnag. Inqalabi had developed difference with then\nPlebiscite Front Chief, after parting of ways with the Front, he had joined the\nnewly born Awami Action Committee and was\nits District head. He also talked about his lieutenant, Mohammad Saleem Beg of\nSarnal then equally committed to the cause that their party stood far. Having\nleft his textbooks chemistry, physics and biology back home Inqalabi and other\ninmates introduced him to Syed Ahmad Shahid, Sir Syed, Syed Qutab, Iqbal, Faiz and\nhost of others.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our classmate, totally apolitical student\ngood at biology and chemistry under the tutelage\nof these jailed leaders in this different school  had graduated into an expert on Kashmir and an analyst in his own right. For his in-depth\nanalysis of political developments in the state, the sub-continent and outside\nsome of his friends fondly called him Mao\nZedong, but he was neither a Marxist nor a Maoist.        <\/p>\n<\/fb:like><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nostalgia<\/p>\n

Prison Stories III <\/p>\n

In A Different School <\/p>\n

ZGM <\/p>\n

In the din of war cries, with eyes glued to
\nthe television screen couple of lines from
\nthe book \u2018Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sundance\u2019
\nstarted echoing in my ears:  \u201cI don\u2019t
\nknow how to save the world. I don\u2019t have the answers or The Answer. I hold no
\nsecret knowledge as to how to fix the mistakes of generations past and present.
\nI only know that without compassion and respect for all of Earth\u2019s inhabitants,
\nnone of us will survive\u2014nor will we deserve to.\u201d The lines from the book of Native American Rights Activists Leonard
\nPeltier, \u2018wrongfully\u2019 serving life for past forty-one
\nyears took me down the memory lane to August- September 1965, when   shadows of war loomed large on the region,
\nmoreover made me remember one of my classmates Ghulam Hassan Wani, later a Professor
\nin Botany- he died of cardiac arrest while offering prayers in 2018. <\/p>\n

Ghulam Hassan Wani<\/p>\n

It …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4077,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[325,368],"class_list":["post-4076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kashmir-talk","tag-nostalgia-zgm","tag-prision-stories-kashmir"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4076"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4076"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4088,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4076\/revisions\/4088"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}