{"id":4214,"date":"2020-07-13T13:15:45","date_gmt":"2020-07-13T07:45:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/?p=4214"},"modified":"2020-07-13T16:22:13","modified_gmt":"2020-07-13T10:52:13","slug":"july-13-commemorating-valour-and-martyrdom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/point-of-view\/kashmir-talk\/july-13-commemorating-valour-and-martyrdom\/","title":{"rendered":"July 13, Commemorating Valour and Martyrdom"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/fb:like>\n

My Memoir<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

July 13, Commemorating Valour and Martyrdom<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 By Z. G. Muhammad <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0The Martyrs day! July 13! \u00a0\u00a0My siblings, friends, and I waited for weeks together for this day. \u00a0\u00a0 My mother announced the day byy starting cleaning of the house like on all other religious days; Eid-ul-Fitar, Eid-ul-Adha, Urs-e- Nabi, Meraj-ul-Alam and festivals of other saints buried in our locality. It was a full week of cleaning in our home. She paid a lot of attention towards cleaning of the Kani<\/em>, the top floor of the house. Windows of this floor opened on two sides towards the main road and presented a panoramic view of the road leading to the martyrs’ graveyard. Even the attic of the house, which remained abandoned for the whole of the year caught her attention. It had two windows that opened towards the last resting place of the men who received volleys of bullets in their chests some decades back. Sometimes the walls of the house were painted a fresh for the occasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Martyrs Graveyard Srinagar 1931<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It was not just a day of commemoration, for my siblings and\nme.  It was not only a display of a ‘valorized\nnational narrative’ that passed through the streets outside of our home.  No doubt, it was a reminder to the\ncollaborators that no tyrant can reign forever, and sacrifices made by the sons\nand daughters of ultimately make them bit the dust- their fortresses come a cropper,\nand their bastions cave in and turn into massive debris.  For me, it was a grand pageant- a spectacle\nof flowers. It was a mega carnival that enthused thousands to throng the\nstreets of downtown Srinagar- a mute witness to the saga of Kashmir.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My friends\nand I knew that it was the martyr’s day. It is not that we did not understand the\nmeaning of the word martyr many of my friends and I  as toddlers had seen men being fired upon by soldiers\nlike coots and waterfowls shot in the Dal Lake by reckless bird shooters. The\nGory happenings leave a more profound and lasting impression on tender minds\nthan many pleasing stories, and they rarely etherize with age. The grand\nspectacle of flowers, musicians and folk dancers also reminded me of a chilling\nexperience of watching the first martyr at the age of five from the latticed\nwindow of our house. To this day, I have a very vivid impression about his body\nbeing carried on a charpoy with young men in frenzy crying slogans full throat.\nHe was the lone son of the potter woman, who sold pots in our locality. She was\na familiar face in our Mohalla. She arrived every day from Kralayar, an area in\nRanawari Township barely a mile from our area in the wee hour with massive vat\non her head filled with earthenware utensils, pots and toys: horses, zanapana<\/em> palanquin, miniature Samovar, and\nmany assortments \u2013 these were our dolls and toys. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then we\nwere yet to understand in the words of Mahmud Darwish, “He who writes his\nstory inherits the land of that story.” But, it was the July 13, holiday\nthat made us understand that the big pageants arranged by the state and\npolitical parties were the ‘institutional memory of the day; that had revived a\nnation of glorious past.  The\npreparations for the day started weeks earlier with a battalion of workers of\nSrinagar Municipality draped in blue uniform arriving in in our locality to\nclean the open drains and the street. Then waterman with their leather sacks\nslinging from their shoulders watered the roads. The cleanliness drive in and\naround our locality continued for about a week. Later the fire brigade vehicle\narrived to wash the tombstones of the martyrs of July 13, 1931, and after. The\nmemorial tablet erected on the gravesite carrying the names of the twenty-two martyrs\nwith their age and address would be painted in red, and their names made\ndistinct in golden ink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nprocession would start from the Mujahid Manzil, then headquarters of the\nNational Conference with Bakshi Ghulam Muhammad then Prime Minister of the\nState as its head. The workers of the National Conference on July in advance would\ndecorate the two-kilometre road with buntings, and red arches and these would\nbe joined by traders organizations who equally partook in adorning the streets\nwith multi-coloured cloth archways popularly known as Dee-deed<\/em>‘.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People\nfrom all parts of the city on the D-Day converged  into  in\nmy birth burg. They occupied every open space, rooftops, balconies and windows\nof all houses on the two sides of the roads. We also got our quota of guests,\nmostly women, some known and some unknown. The children would sit on the\nwindows much before elders could occupy them. The carnival would arrive near\nour home by about eleven.    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was\namazed at people’s discipline on this day. No sooner the police contingent\nheading the carnival reached in our locality people on their own made way for\nthe procession. The police contingent was followed by army in olive green with\n303 rifles slinging from their shoulders- perhaps these were the soldiers of\nKashmir militia. These contingent were, accompanied by armed police\ndetachments, companies of fire services and contingents of scouts from some\npremier schools of the city. These would be followed by bagpipers and drum\nbeaters draped in red and blue uniforms- I had a special admiration for the\npolice band for its lilting tunes and turbans that carried a royal touch about\nthem. The police band was followed by school bands- some in green, some in\nyellow and some in red costumes. The police band was followed by specially made\ntruck festooned with fresh flowers. On this truck fitted megaphone stood the\nthen Prime Minister of the state by Bakshi Ghulam Muhammad flanked by his\ncabinet colleagues and party leaders. A short-statured person, Abdul Gaffar\nBhat raised slogans in support of the Prime Minister. This truck was followed\nby another truck filled with supporters of the Prime Minister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\ntrucks would be flowed by groups of folk musicians, drum beaters and clarinet\nplayers. There was hardly a trade union or an association that was not a part\nof this carnival of flowers. The Kashmir Motor Driver Association would make\nits presence felt with its fully adorned buses with sazandars<\/em> folk singers singing full throat on loudspeakers. A\ncontingent of fully decorated tongas, a fully furnished boat placed on a hand-driven\ncart playing a  famous song of film\nShaheed, ‘Shaheed Kee Joo Mout Hai Qoum Kee Woh Hayat Hai” represented\nboatman’s association.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These\nwere followed by a whole caravan of horse-driven carts with traditional men\nfolk dancers dancing to the drum beats of folk musicians representing one or\nanother association.   Of all the troupes\nin the procession, I liked the group of the Municipal workers. Laced would\nwooden swords, they played “talawr-e-\nJung<\/em>” to the drum beats of their fellows.  Some of these municipal workers performed\nlike ace artisan and filled our hearts with joy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On its\narrival, while the Prime Minister, Bakshi laid flower wreaths on the tombstones,\nthe police and other bands played martial tunes and soldiers, and armed police\nbowed their guns in salutation. After the wreath-laying ceremony was over, the\nState flag was hoisted amidst warlike music by the tidy uniformed bugle\nplayers.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It took\nabout one and half hour to the procession to pass through our street.  Towards the end, Prime Minister Bakshi Ghulam\nMohammad would address the gathering at Mazar-i-Shuhdha.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 N.B.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Besides, official ceremonies on this day, from 1964 onwards the Plebiscite Front and the Awami Action Committee took massive procession to the martyrs’ graveyard yard at Khoja Bazar- the Front started from the Mujahid Manzil in early hours of Morning and the Awami Action Committee from the Muslim Park in the afternoon. Notwithstanding working from different platforms both demanded Right to Self-Determination as guaranteed in UN resolutions. <\/p>\n<\/fb:like><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My Memoir<\/p>\n

July 13, Commemorating Valour and Martyrdom<\/p>\n

 By Z. G. Muhammad <\/p>\n

\u00a0The Martyrs day! July 13! \u00a0\u00a0My siblings, friends, and I waited for weeks together for this day. \u00a0\u00a0 My mother announced the day byy starting cleaning of the house like on all other religious days; Eid-ul-Fitar, Eid-ul-Adha, Urs-e- Nabi, Meraj-ul-Alam and festivals of other saints buried in our locality. It was a full week of cleaning in our home. She paid a lot of attention towards cleaning of the Kani, the top floor of the house. Windows of this floor opened on two sides towards the main road and presented a panoramic view of the road leading to the martyrs’ graveyard. Even the attic of the house, which remained abandoned for the whole of the year caught her attention. It had two windows that opened towards the last resting place of the men who received volleys of bullets …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kashmir-talk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4214"}],"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=4214"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4216,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4214\/revisions\/4216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}